Chic Aeon

I make the most from gacha events, then marketplace and inworld sales -- other non-gacha events (I do have a choice in that but ones that are not gacha) are sometimes very good and sometimes not so much. It depends mostly on the venue (I have tested with similar products :D) . I don't do customs or have a store group so the last two are out.

Happily I have great news to report on this so looked up this LONG thread to add to. The Machinima Open Studio Project is officially opening at LEA6 this weekend. With that in mind I decided to make a Places page even though my attempts in September 2017 were not great primarily because SEARCH was AWFUL and didn't work at all. Amazingly even before making my pretty new page I tested by searching for "machinima" and there was LEA6's page with no text or photos of course, but still SEARCH found it and with none of that messy "Gogglishious" stuff included. Big clapping here. All went well and there is now an option to add a YouTube video which I will do in the future. I don't think that was there last Fall. The slide show is only three photos now but bigger and it worked well and easily -- as it did before really. My only issue is that I can't get back to the page to edit as the drop down menu doesn't work for me in Chrome. Somewhere along the way I bookmarked the backend page so I can get there for changes via bookmarks. Likely there is another way but that should be looked at sometime. Meanwhile here is my page: https://places.secondlife.com/parcels/64518/machinima-open-studio-project-http-machinimasl-blogspot-com That long title is taken from the land tab and apparently not editable unless I edit in the land tab. Also, a change -- you need to put your land in search if it isn't in order to SEE WHILE EDITING. Not a big deal; just a warning. And, I can see why the change :D. This is the only land that I can have a places page on so cannot test further. My shop land is rental and not "mine". But since things were not searching well at LEA12 (also obviously Linden owned land) I doubt that WHERE I am now has much to do with it. So take a look and make yourself a page. It really is a much more interesting way to search as more folks use it. Now they can since it is WORKING!

Just wanted to pipe in that I tried (oh so many time when I was newer) to get those Blender normal maps to be made inside of Blender -- I failed. Might could do it now. While I actually seldom use normal maps or specular maps -- preferring to let Blender Cycles do its great job, I did quite awhile ago invest in ShaderMap 2 which is very slick and intuitive so you might want to look at that (not free but wasn't expensive when I bought it). There may even be something like that out there for free now if you look. That being said ---- normal maps especially can have a really nasty look under some windlight settings so do a lot of testing before you take a big plunge. I usually use them on natural things like rocks. That's just my opinion. When materials first came out, most creators felt that they HAD to have them in order to sell things -- and that might have been true then. Now, especially with Cycles it doesn't seem to matter much. Good luck and HAVE FUN with it. That's the important thing!

This is working on my test now in both FS legacy (which I prefer) and web search. On web search the EXACT same page shows in the Linden viewer as in the regular viewer. So maybe it is fixed now for both. I used the search term "tunnel" for my test. ChiC buildings of course came up all by itself :D.

Always happy to help

So I went back to this book stack shown and to another that had one extra cube oddly at a corner. Neither seem to make any sense. The one with the open book and the cube at the corner was made by a full perm creator that I do not admire. The sell things with such obvious flaws (bad UV that have black areas showing (really?) etc. The other was made by (or listed as being made by) a fairly prominent creator who seems to put out good quality items. Now as said they both could be downloading models from the web and not cleaning them up appropriately. It had nothing to do with the weight of the meshes. They were fine. They were uploaded with (presumably) too high of LOD for the lowest (at least in my book) so they were a bit heavy LI wise. BUT the lods probably hold for the LOD1 crowd so if given a choice I would go with "heavy". I am pretty sure that some of the builders I know buy or download mesh and use it rather than making their own. It becomes obvious over time since one piece of mesh would be gorgeous and another something I might have made a few years back ^^. The person with this example seems VERY consistent in both work and style so I am having a difficult time thinking that they didn't actually make it. I also am having a hard time with four books needing to animate? So like they would fall off the table neatly in this stack??? LOL. So I guess we won't know.

Just wanted to say that the Machinima Open Studio Project on LEA6 opens officially this weekend but has never be a closed build. There are lots of locations to shoot legally (all LEA lands can be filmed on without asking the owner) and meant for that purpose. Only two full sim areas at the moment but something might work for you should you need a location. Good luck with your shoot.

If that isn't a BIG object, more like decor -- you should be able to get a model in at 1 land impact. Be SURE and check the LODs to make sure it doesn't fall apart at a distance. The default setting for LODs in Firestorm is 2 which is what I personally build for. The Linden viewer is 1.25. And yes always lots to learn. I am learning things now that I "should" have learned five years ago and that make my life SO much simpler LOL.

Did you check for doubles on the problematic LOD? And practically 76 triangle is way to dense for that last lOD I think. Your land impact for such a small thing will be way off base. OR maybe it is just too early in my morning and I am missing something LOL. It HAS been known to happen (often).

OK. That could be it. I seldom get that error but when I have, it had nothing to do with too much geometry :D. So the two things don't HAVE to go together but I understand that they certainly can. OK. I kept reading on this thread after replying and it was interesting. And I have to agree that for some of us details are important. "I" cam in a lot. However a lot of detail can be faked with textures (just like we did a decade ago :D). I have to go back and FIND those books now (been decorating a sim so getting a little dizzy but I think I know where they are) and look a bit closer. Interesting conversation.

I am thinking "no" on that. I see it from a lot of very good creators who have been around for a long while and who have very consistent styles. AND it is differently slightly between the creators but there are always some extra cubes in there, sometimes floating, sometimes attached like you might do if you needed an extra prim for an animation.

Home and Garden (now you are smarter LOL). Nice guess but this is ONE SINGLE mesh .5 li for all four books. Other things were even less likely to be scripted (like a table). So I am guessing that it has something to do with the SOFTWARE that was used. Likely not Blender. So stay tuned as "someone" must know the answer

I have been noticing these lately. Sure that they aren't a new thing, but what ARE they are why are they there? This is nothing that is scripted like a hinge on a door. They appear in all sorts of H and G items. Just wondering LOL. Thanks.

The money you transferred out from Second Life to Paypal, stays at Palpay until you transfer from Paypal to your bank. So if that is your issue, just leave it at Paypal and use the money from there.

Remember long ago with most items were TRANSFER and not COPY? Now most items (except gachas of course) are COPY. So I do agree that it is up to the consumers to set the standards. They hold the power. I personally don't by no mod items often. AND I am thrilled that I get the copy version of gachas and not the transfer in those blogger bags :D. MANY designers now are offering tinting huds for wearables so you have a pretty good choice of what you can do so far as color. Not the perfect solution of course, but it helps. That DOES pretty much negate that "they are only doing it so that they can sell more" argument.

OK. I want to add a bit from a content creator's point of view; sort of the other side of this argument. Note that "I" sell my items as mod, but I can certainly understand why some creators will not. You make a lovely item. It has good textures, is reasonably sized, low prim, good LODs et al. You sell it mod. and THEN --- your customer takes it all apart, slaps on some textures from the LIBRARY (OMG), tints it hot pink and violet with yellow accents ----- are you getting the drift here? That would be FINE if no one but the customer SAW this new creation from your creation. But some do. And unfortunately they believe that the original creator ("you" in this scenario) made this atrocious item . The bottom line is that for some designers, the degrading their brand with cr***y mods is not something they are willing to deal with. I hear that. I just still sell myself mod anyway.

The GOOD news is that this does get faster over time. I guess everything gets faster (and easier) the more we practice. I can remember at the beginning I had no idea about orientation and scale (OMG!) which are so very important. Now, when needed I switch out the actual texture to be used for a black and white grid so that scale becomes very obvious. Lots of times now though I can skip that part because I am getting better ^^. And since we often make our textures in the Cycles Render, woodgrain going the wrong way is easy to spot. Gotta think about realism (or at least I choose to!). Happily I really enjoy mapping --- and likely some folks enjoy weight painting. But getting there takes some time. And like you so rightly said, there IS a lot involved that we need to think about. But baby steps to start with. As far as I can tell we are all learning every day. And tricks that make our workflow faster are just part of that learning.

Just in case you get stuck along they way (since it sounds a lot easier than it is when you are just starting) there is a video here that explains: https://www.slartist.com/lesson-1-crate-part-3-mapping-and-materials_c0dc56aba.html There are videos leading up to this one and many after so you could check those too if needed. Good luck.

Odd really and I will go along with the wikis are SELDOM updated in so far as to be useless in some area. A couple of years ago the official rule was you could have as many as you wanted as long as they all played nice and possibly had a purpose. "I" read that as -- as long as you pay some money for premium accounts we are fine with the fact that you have more than five alts. That five alt rule WAS definitely in affect a decade ago and back then if you wanted a legal alt you paid the $9.95 per one of five. The wiki still seems to suggest that you could have more and not get in trouble. I know some folks have tons but I am not sure why except perhaps they are board :D. And if you made too many and were actually charged for one that wouldn't be the end of the world hopefully. You could always make alternate email accounts of course. But again, the wiki is almost never the actual current rule or practice ^^.

Unless it has been re-instituted the long time upload test disappeared some months ago with something simple like a "yes, I know I am responsible" click though replacing it. NOT that the upload test got anyone's real attention of course --- and likely why it was given up. Someone not reading English could still pass just by clicking through a few times with the choices :D.

Also note that the Windows updates of last week were BIG updates that apparently addressed the Intel security leak issue. Mine does it all in the night, but a friend who has passwords on his machine noted that it took an hour and he is on a REALLY fast connection. So not a trivial thing and could definitely have messed up a machine -- especially an older one that had Win 10 added as an update. The TIMING of the problem when it wasn't a problem before suggests to me it was the update. Happily mine seems to have gone very smoothly; that hasn't ALWAYS been the case however. Agree that coffee money should be put in a tin can for a new machine :D.

Well all those suggestions are good ones, you might as well know that there are griefers (and pervs) that hang out at the dressing rooms. Privacy unless you have a security orb or a whole island that you make private, isn't REALLY real :D. And while changing clothes out in the open was frowned on long, long, long ago ---- with mesh we show up pretty much naked a lot anyway as our clothes are loading (applier undies are good when they will work with your outfit or just alpha out the "bits" :D. You COULD if you really want privacy rent a very cheap place with a security orb. I have seen some for like 25 lindens a week which is less than a dime US and you can make that easily at the Realms. AND as someone suggested if you ADD rather than WEAR and then take off the previous garment, you will never be naked anyway. I change out on my building pad all the time and seldom actually get naked LOL.

Some mesh bodies (both male and female and smaller brands) seem to have weighted close to either another brand OR the standard sizing legacy bodies so that quite a few standard sizing and sometimes other brands will work for them IF you have an "average" shaped body. It really would be great to have standarized clothing and I bet the folks making the clothes would like that too :D.

It sounds like even IF possible, uploading would be against the terms of service since apparently you did not MAKE the mesh. It is not an easy process (one of the most difficult) so probably best to forget the idea -- again, read the TOS that you agreed to :D. ALWAYS a good idea.

OK. I just went and checked as Blender is baking LOL. That is no longer a requirement it seems. As long as you have payment info on file it will create a Marketplace account. It doesn't care any longer if the accounts are the "same". So pretty easy and good to know. My alt now has a Marketplace account that she couldn't get in the past :D. Of course NOW she has no plans for it -- but still, good to know.