[The VaNiTy ThReAd]

Dress: BACI - again Dress, mesh
Shoes: KC - Hedy Heels, mesh
Hair: *ARGRACE* - Soft Breese (flexi)
Body: MAITREYA with Glam Affair skin
Head: SYSTEM with Fiona skin (not available anymore)
Lipstick: Self made
Necklace: ARTILLERY - Corazon necklace

The location is worth mentioning: It's the original Lost Gardens of Apollo built in 2005, re-opened by Linden Lab as a historic build.
It's still a beautiful place to visit. Everything built with prims only, quite amazing work it is.
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Lost Gardens of Apollo/58/74/27

[Do i look pretty?]

On 24/10/2017 at 1:18 PM, megan04330 said:

I never get any comments about if I am cute or pretty, Kind of the whole point of dressing up right?

 

My eyes see cute looks here.  Never mind if there are no comments in world. The most important thing is how you feel about yourself. By the way, not only the looks but also the animations what you have in your AO play a big role what kind of impression others get from you. Some animations are plain silly, so avoid those in your AO and you're great.

[What's your favorite season IRL]

Summer, summer, summer... because I like warmth and long daylight days. Next is spring because it means that soon it will be summer.

The worst time of the year is autumn when all the leaves have fallen and the trees are bare skeletons. It's cold, it's dark, until there's some snow.
When I was a child winter was also fun season with all the snow to play with. Now I don't like winter much.
So, my likes go:
Summer
Spring
Winter
Autumn

[Materials enabled vs. has materials]

5 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

That would only work with copyable items, Coby. It's a  very good system, of course, and avoids the messing about that I mentioned. I was thinking from my experience, and I never sold copyable items.

It's a pity I'm not still selling because I suddenly fancy writing a redelivery system

Yes I know that it works only for copyable (no transfer) items. Personally I never buy transfer items because there is a possibility that SL hickup might eat them. It's also that I often modify the items what I have. For no copy items it's a bit risky thing to do as you have no backup to return to if something goes wrong.

[What are you doing today!? :D]

Ok, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have great news to tell you. As of today it's possible to TP avatars to real life!   At the moment only select few can use the secret teleportal.  I was lucky to be one of the first ones to be given the chance to try it out. Yay!  No date given yet when everybody will have access to this super amazing feature.

PS. To see how your avatar's proportions compare with real people, this is the best way to do it. Just wait for the feature to be released for general access.

[Materials enabled vs. has materials]

4 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

I suspect it's to avoid frequently sorting customers out who have made a pig's ear of modifying something. Even replacing items can be a pain if it happens too often.

How about using "redelivery terminal" in the shop? If the customer ruins an item, pick a new copy from there.
Well, I don't know is it a pain or complicated thing to put redelivery terminal in a shop?

[Materials enabled vs. has materials]

As a quick hack for old things which have no materials I often add a small blank texture as a specular map. Then I play with glossines amount and glossines gray shade to get the desired result. If the item is metal, like gold, then I use gold color as the glossines color. Sometimes the old product (especially jewelry) looks very nice with this shininess hack, it springs to life with dynamic shine . However naturally it does not work well with items which have strong baked highlights in the diffuse texture.

[Small rant: Unfortunately many things are no mod and nothing can be done on them. In lots of items I see no reason at all for no mod, I wonder what is reason why so many things are no mod. Aarrgghhh...   In real life everything is modifiable, to a lesser or greater degree. I can paint my black TV into red if I wanted to . So, what is it with this SL no mod thing?]

[What are you doing today!? :D]

Unsuccessful furniture shopping experience. Way too big rocking chair and even the sitting pose was not favourable to me.
Then nearby I found a church and I went to play the huge church organ to get my mind off the unsuitable furniture.
Suprisingly the keys of the organ, the sitting and the playing animation were perfect for me. Music was great too!   

[Materials enabled vs. has materials]

5 hours ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

Some mesh bodies do not have materials enabled when it comes to appliers. That is one reason they use the term "Materials enabled." 

I have seen that "Materials enabled" term used in the descriptions of mesh clothes. And as I said above, some do have materials and some don't. Which is really strange. That "Materials enabled" term should be dropped off totally. Because everything in SL, except system avatar and perhaps Linden trees and such things, are materials enabled by default. So that term adds no information to the product at all. The items either have materials or they don't, and that should be clearly stated in the product with correct term "Has materials" and "Hasn't materials".

[Materials enabled vs. has materials]

Why some creators advertize their products with confusing wording like "materials enabled"? Well, since Linden Lab implemented materials all prims and meshes in SL are now materials enabled. Materials enabled does not mean that the product actually has materials, it is just enabled to have them, just like all prims and meshes are. If the product has materials why not use clear term such as "has materials" or just "materials"?

In the Marketplace I have seen products with description "materials enabled". Some of those do have materials some don't.
So if the product has materials please say so clearly "Has materials". Thank you.

[What are you doing today!? :D]

Running to the beach to watch amazing sunrise. Must see, must see... (O.O)

[Your Biggest SL Disappointment]

Display names (and removal of last names) is my number one biggest dissappointment and how people abuse them with some crazy unreadable characters. The naming system was totally broken when new accounts could not have last names anymore. This was one of the most disastrous decision Linden Lab has ever made.

[What are you doing today!? :D]

After meeting that huge cat earlier today I continued shopping and found this amazing free mesh gift 'Pirate dress'. There was also pirate hat included which I don't have on in this picture. I dug in my inventory and found this cool flexi 'Witch doctor hair' (made in 2012) which goes perfectly with this outfit. Some old stuff still works nicely with mesh.  Naturally I had to go to a ballroom to see how it works in dancing. 

[Mesh body: skin has no applier to match color. What to do?]

What I did is that first in the Maitreya HUD I chose the skin tone which had the closest colour to my system head skin. Then I just started playing with tinting in the Maitreya HUD. Just gradually changing a bit by bit until I got a reasonable overall match. In many lighting conditions it looks quite ok, with a slight seam visible when looking at close distance. At two meters or more distance no seam is visible at all. However in some, especially in coloured local lights, the seam can be more clearly visible.

Anyway, I'm quite satisfied with the result. Slight seam on the neck, often barely visible or not visible at all, does not bother me much. And I'm often very picky how my avatar looks. 

By the way, even if you use exactly the same skin on the mesh body and system head the seam might come visible in some lighting conditions. It's because the light behaves differently on the mesh body and on the system head. So, an exact match in all lighting conditions can be only obtained by using mesh head with mesh body, both having the same skin.

[Extra versions of same product]

It's my common paractice to delete everything what isn't for Maitreya body (which I'm always wearing). In some rare occasions, when an item has cost a lot, I keep the original package as a backup.

Note: Deleting the items does not remove them from the inventory, delete just moves them to the trash folder. To permanently delete the items from the inventory they must be purged from the trash folder. When shopping a lot and deleting things the trash folder grows amazingly fast, so it's better to purge it regurlarly.

[What are you doing today!? :D]

Meow! (^.^)   While I was shopping today this little furry one suddenly approached me.

[What are you doing today!? :D]

Early morning sailing in tropical waters - perfect way to start a day. Ready to raise the sails at once when the captain arrives.  (O .o)

[What are you doing today!? :D]

28 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Yes, though "sound" isn't the word I'd use.

Look out for snakes, Coby.

Oh my, I forgot to rez my tip jar!

[What are you doing today!? :D]

Today I started practising to learn to play American Indian flute. It has even sound and nice little animation. How cool is that, yay!

[How many of you use Advanced Lighting / Materials settings?]

I have ALM always on because everything looks much better as you can see the materials effects. ALM has almost no effect to fps on my system.
When doing something outside I turn shadows on too, that really makes big difference how things look.

Using:
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz (3411.14 MHz)
Memory: 8169 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 15063)
Graphics Card: NVidia GeForce GTX 970/PCIe/SSE2

[What are you doing today!? :D]

Cha, cha... ♪ ♫ ♪ ♪

[What are you doing today!? :D]

Day for some exercise. Yay!

[What are you doing today!? :D]

Catching mosquitos on beach.

[Mesh Head Question]

In leLutka store there are signs stating: "Due to the implementation of Bento, previous heads will no longer be updated. They will continue to be supported if in need of customer support, however no additional features will be added to the current products. This applies to Aria, Ever, Leda, Karin, Stella, Lotte, Simone."

So this means that non-bento heads will never be updated to bento heads.

[What are you doing today!? :D]

Everything is ready. Expecting 29 quests to arrive at any minute.