Chic Aeon

Easy enough to make. Put a "ad" in the WANTED FORUM. I have an extensive pose library from tons of pose makers (so over 500 for sure) and don't have it. Good luck!

There are times when negative reviews are warrented. There are times with COMPETITORS buy items simply to give a bad one star review and force the item down via the star thing. SELLERS CANNOT GET A REVIEW REMOVED JUST BY ASKING!!!! Yes, caps. Somtimes negative reviews are simply mistakes and those reviews are often removed. Others "stick" even though they are not legit. This is NOT new. It is what it is. HENCE, best to get a demo or view item in world before purchasing. I certainly DO THAT.

That not cheaper inworld has been part of the marketplace terms from the beginning. I haven't checked the rules lately but suspect it still is the same. ACTUALLY looking at the listing guidelines just now, I can't find a reference to that long-standing "rule". BUT if they took your product off, then I guess it is still in effect. Here is the listing practices page I looked at: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/listing_guidelines#listing-guidelines

Yes, Aditi has been messy since the "unification" of the databases. I have my alt over there and since she doesn't have much (I noted yesterday that she doesn't have a backup copy of her mesh body there which she SHOULD) it is working well. Actually it works better as "she" can do something there and "I" can do something on the main grid coordinating the uploading and such when needed. Also the beta grid mesh uploader isn't exactly the same as the main grid now. Have noted that over and over again so guessing it is NOT just my perception. Still a good place to upload mesh and it has saved about 15,000 lindens just since she started doing the uploading. Have no clue how many if you count all MY uploads . So, yes, but all means, if someone needs to test, an alt is safer for sure. Glad to know it wasn't just me with all this database mess. Not sure what I lost (sure I lost something). Guess I better check the marketplace as I don't put things up there that often. PS. Looks like my Marketplace listings are fine. I don't have that much up there so that might have been a help.

There seems to have been a major database issue this week. I had folders appear in VERY random places (a couple of tiers down on the inventory tree for example in places they should NOT have been). Haven't found missing items but that is has been reported and I have likely lost things (happens often to me; perhaps I am on the server from hell ). So likely (possibly) this has something to do with that. Also major issues on the beta grid re inventory. Lots of reports. I found that also with my alt (I don't go there any more personally after spending a WHOLE week getting my inventory sorted out with lots of losses (this months ago)).

I never triagulate so wouldn't have known to mention that. I am sure you CAN do it as I have garments that DO work . Not made by me though LOL.

I found some very strange things going on in invetory this week. Folders in VERY bizarre places; folders that I seldom go into two levels down etc. You CAN actually lose inventory although plenty of people will tell you that it is just "you" . If you have done all the tricks to get the viewer seeing inventory, a last thing you might try is installing a different viewer and seeing if your inventory is still missing. You can put in a support ticket but I haven't known anyone who actually had that work. IF you have been over to the beta grid (probably not too likely) there was an issue with the double inventory feature there awhile ago. Someone also reported that Agni inventory wasn't showing up on Aditi this week. "I" haven't been over to the beta grid this week, so that's not MY issue . Sorry; been there many times unfortunately. Now I try to rez as much as I can which sometimes protects things. Of course you can't rez clothes and things. Good luck.

It seems to me that there are at least three categories of lands owned by landlords. Mainland Islands Island owners that opt in for double prims at an extra charge Homestead (if you differentiate them from full prim islands) I currently rent at .69 linden per prim on mainland. It used to be a bit over $1 per prim which is what I always try to rent at. While mainland rents could go up, I expect that they will not as there is so much empty mainland AND landlords -- assuming they were smart -- bought the lands at rock bottom prices (often well below $1 per square meter). If I was on island land and my landlord opted to pay the extra $30 (assuming that the land barons will indeed have to pay that -- I have no clue) then I would expect my rent to go up a tiny bit -- like 10 or 15% IF I got those prims. If they use them to beautify or make their own place on the land somewhere then I would likely not expect an increase -- or a very minimal one. Right now -- as opposed to many time in Sl's history -- there is a TON of land available. It is cheaper for me to rent than to pay tier, but should I be faced with the choice of paying more or moving I might opt for my OWN quarter sim which can be purchased fairly cheaply if you are a good land slueth (and I am *wink*). Everyone has a CHOICE where they live. There are TONS of places to rent. If landlords that are raising rents see folks LEAVING it will likely deter the rent increase. I think there will be some shuffling, but since EVERYONE gets more prims now, it's not like some folks have an advantage. If it costs more in real dollars to pay the rent, it ALSO means that the folks renting are paying more in REAL DOLLARS since they get less when they cash out. I suspect that there is a small contingent of folks that gather cyrstals to pay their weekly rent, but those are likely a small number. And yes, those of us working are perhaps working harder these days . Some landlords have been making a LOT of money off of their renters for a long time (I don't rent from those guys). Others have been very reasonable (I rent from THOSE guys). We all make choices.

I agree that you needed that extra geometry when I started (about four years ago). Lots of conversation on the board then about it as there were plenty of new to mesh folks. No one EVER mentioned that it had changed but I do remember Drongle saying that pivot points had been tested on the beta grid. So perhaps it was the beta grid that is the "moving pivot point" memory --- OR for that matter another platform. I always blame my memories that don't coincide with those of others on that alternate world thing -- you know, "B4762-I"

Just adding a screenshot showing that while the RGB choice in the sidebar is active before baking it is obvious (this time but not always and I can't figure out what the differences are that cause that visusal change) that the texture it is baking to is transparent. All same textures used including the SAME texture to bake to. NO changes by me except lighting. The baking before this gave a regular RGB texture with NO tranparency. 

ChinRey wrote: Chic Aeon wrote: I will say that learning how to map for tiling textures is a great place to start for those learning mesh. I doubt though that it is the end goal for most folks Why not? Don't get me wrong, as I've said several times in this thread, the good old style texture mapping still has its place. But currently there seems to be a trend to believe that it's more "advanced" or more "professional" or more "modern" than tiling textures and nothing could be further from the truth. As for cycles, well, it's easy and there's nothing wrong with doing it the easy way. But if you really want to get the lighting and shading right, take a look at the the Caravaggio painting in my previous post. That photo doesn't really do the original justice of course but you should still be able to see it. Can a computer program do that? I think not. (The shading wasn't why I posted that image btw but it works for that too. Caravaggio is after all particularly famous for his light settings and why learn from studying the real masters? The point I wanted to the picture to make was that nobody was going to get the point unless they were told. I'm surprised if nobody knows the answer already though, the picture is used quite often to test people's visual perception and attention to details.) I taught college level art for over 20 years. I do know who Caravaggio is. Not my favorite, but I do appreciate the school. Chic Aeon wrote: So we are talking APPLES and ORANGES here and likely getting folks that haven't put in those thousands of hours even more confused. Yes probably because it's a question of what the purpose of the model is. Exactly. And I am done with this thread . If it's supposed to be a standalone item, complete in itself you want to give attention to every little detail, just like those people who spend thousands of hours building cathedrals from Minecraft thingies (or from matches before it all became digital). But if it's supposed to be a part of a bigger whole like a virtual reality environment, you have to think different and consider boring stuff like focal points, visual layers, context and resource management. That's when things start to get really tricky and suddenly the answers aren't nearly as clear anymore.

entity0x wrote: I appreciate your skill and hard work that got you there, but that's besides the point. What was 'lost' has actually helped you succeed by widening the gap between builders and those who can mesh. There is no envy in me. I either have contempt or admiration for someone. Stop playing the victim, I'm not attacking you, but if the shoe fits, wear it. I have my own abilities as well, and simply stating things as they are, coming from humble prim building origins myself, and fully aware that if I was going to participate fully in building things for SL, I would have to embrace mesh. Those who didn't or couldn't have moved on. There's no glossing over that REAL and sad fact. Above written to Pamela The only gap between those than can make mesh and those who do not is EFFORT. Anyone that wants to can learn to make mesh. It literally took me THREE tries over time -- finally I gave myself a month of 40 plus hour weeks to learn Blender. I can't say I 'knew' it after a month but I did manage to get an item into world with an ambient map on it. I think it was a simple dresser that I later gave away on a hunt. Nowdays there are many more resources for SL mesh makers, my hundred or so tutorials, tips and tricks are part of that. If I was worried about being a mesh superstar, why on earth would I be explaining ways to do things and sharing knowledge? Blender is FREE. There is no cost involved except time and dedication. It was NOT fun for the first six month. It got easier after that. Then I decided that I wanted to learn Cycles which is as someone in Opensim put it is like "leveling up" in an adventure game. Now after a year and a half I feel competent in Cycles. This was a CHOICE and each creator that is making mesh OR is trying to LEARN mesh is making that choice. Both Pamela and I made more money in the prim days and for me anyway with much less effort. You are making suppositions that have no evidence behind them. If you choose not to learn new skills that doesn't make it easier for US, it just makes it "easier" for you. Avoidance is not a skill. Pretending that there can be no improvements, no new methods, no new beauty? Not in my book. Get over it!

Thank you. Only took a year and a half -- well maybe not quite but close . And I keep learning things by accident now that I don't have to concentrate so much on the "basics". Ah that basics list is a long one.

While I work differently than you do, my aim is also to have pretty much the same look for those NOT with ALM and Shadows (of course shadow will do all sorts of things depending on the Windlight so let's say "simple shadows" ). When I first looked at Chin's note about the mapping it was pretty confusing and then I remembered that those are (I believe) mapped for TILING TEXTURES which I seldom use any more. That method would not work for ME at all and not for you either if I am understanding things correctly. So ONCE AGAIN it is how we work and what our final model will be that determines how we map. Almost all of the UV maps that I have seen on this forum are islands. I can think of MANY reasons why that is good for me -- especially with Cycles. When you are making mesh to take tiling textures, that is a WHOLE different thing. So for any beginners that are getting confused --- well, there is a reason. I have no argument that this UV method lowers upload, but I don't see how it can work with cycles baked or even ambient maps baked with textures added via graphics software. So we are talking APPLES and ORANGES here and likely getting folks that haven't put in those thousands of hours even more confused. This is my in progress texture for the roof areas. It is not the FINAL one as the ceiling is beyond boring for lighting and I need to play with that some. But I wanted to put up an example of the complete bake so that hopefully those reading this thread and blinking mightily might have a better idea. You can see that one section is for the roof (one material) and another for the ceiling (one material) and some for metal trim, and exterior wood and lighter wood (it is a Victorian after all and they were very into many colors and textures).  I will say that learning how to map for tiling textures is a great place to start for those learning mesh. I doubt though that it is the end goal for most folks . And yes, someone buying this COULD put tiling textures on if they would like, adjusting the repeats and placement. I amost always map with that in mind now. They will of course lose all those subtle nuances that I spend time adding LOL, but that's OK if that's what they want.

entity0x wrote: Yet, you and many others benefit greatly financially from it. It's the dream for most company owners to have a steep barrier to entry in order to secure their place - and therefore livelihood (usually with high prices). Higher barriers to entry are great for the established. Keeps everyone else out. But as a prior post stated "Progress is a mixed bag" I agree with Pamela on this. I made more money in the prim days with MUCH LESS EFFORT and not the thousands (many, literally) hours of practice in Blender it took for me to get where I am today. I also keep ongoing tutorials for both mesh and prim building to help OTHER FOLKS that want to create. Yes, I make some money in Second Life, but it is way more about creating. I am not trying to put kids through college or pay the mortgage. ASS-U-MING is a dangerous thing You cannot know what motivates people OR put them all in the same category.

So I am continuing to work on my little house. Since it isn't "due" until the end of January I have no reason to hurry and am just kinda blissfully wandering around in Blender and daydreaming a bit (unusual but kinda nice). Anyway, two things. One, is YES TO TESTING. You ("I") can only do so much inside of Blender when it comes to houses. Furniture? Not a big deal We know what size a table should be; we can resize easily after upload. But I have visited a fair number of other people's houses lately and have noted that while they are very cute, they don't "work" very well for living. This leads me to believe (supposition only) that they were not tested during the building stages (or after for that matter and by then it is pretty late in the game to make changes; if the creators are like ME, they get to a point of "IwantogetthisDONE" ). Anyway. I was starting to work on the doorway which has two tall windows on either side. They looked a bit narrow in Blender so I decided to upload just the frame and see how things were. Actually it worked fine, but I think I will still widen the opening a tad and perhaps do away with the arches that were going in the window pane areas. I found that my frame was too SHORT and will now adjust rather than stretching it out later (not so good for the textures). Walking around INSIDE your build gives you a better feel I think anyway of how the house IS in the virtual world -- rather than on the RENDER screen LOL.  "I" don't venture over to the beta grid any longer ---- after spending a week fixing (or trying to) my inventory from dual usage. In the process I linked joined the walls with all the windows and uploaded. Well THAT was easy! And something I rarely do. House is currently 22 with the roof. There is a big porch and an "awning" to add so I am thinking it will likely be around 30 when I get done. This includes see it across 180 meters or so on LOD2 setting. Tiny window woods break at that distance of course. I can live with that.

LOL. I used to sew for a living in real life and taught sewing classes in college when I was (gasp - 20 - and folks had a hard time "finding the teacher" amdist all the older women - funny memory). I was a fairly mediocre clothes maker. I CAN do it and I HAVE (mostly in Opensiim where my options were limited at the time). I think it took me a week to make my overalls. And I am getting better with scripting although it is not my first love for sure. Still, I can get my texture and tint (and now shadow) menu that I made in a class LONG ago adapted and working the first time on a good day. We learn, we grow and we find our niche if we are lucky. And here is a MUCH better photo of those pants. Somehow the uploader for the forums loses the lights and darks in compression. I checked my original photo and it was SO much better than what ended up here LOL. https://www.flickr.com/photos/24257589@N03/30596465384/in/dateposted-public/ Zoom in to see the details. Impressive. I want a really nice turtleneck APPLIER for Maitreya

Just wanted to add that it seems like SOME of the issues have been fixed in the uploader now since that post. a year ago. I have noticed it often lately and I frequently reference that post which happily comes up in search if you remember the PHONG part . In that thread along with making the "inside" one material and the "outside" another I believe you also had to let the uploader generate normals (something that I had never done). At least there was an extra step similar to that. That is the only way THEN that I could get it to work for me. Lately when making glasses similar to the ones I showed at the end of that post, there was no need to do that. I just uploaded as I would normally and it worked perfectly. I even put wine in the glasses with no issues. As it has been said your design might have too many overlapping areas to have a clean transparency, but making the underside of the skirt one material and the rest another material would be the first thing to try. You "might" also have to make any small thickness at the bottom (if that is a part of your mesh) a third material so that you wouldn't have a tiny thin "line" showing through from some angles. I have only seen that once on a garment but it was there. Good luck!!!!!

If you pay attention to the news you know that ANY company including the very biggest as well as governments CAN be hacked. Before I joined there was some kind of fiasco with personal info getting out from SL (likely a Google search would find that out; it must have been 11 years back or so). The big risk of course is clicking on a wrong button or sharing your password. As far as I can see you are as safe here as anywhere on the web or the real world where a computer is involved. I also suggest that you NEVER leave your login info on automatic login in your browser or viewer. That is most likely the biggest risk folks take.

While it has taken me awhile, I have definitely bonded with Cycles and enjoy building modeling in Blender. That being said, when I was in Opensim I did a ton of building with prims and even made video tutorials on prim building. You can do some pretty spectacular things with prims and in Opensim where the land (and hence prim costs) as SO inexpensive, it is a more viable method. Still, by using the convex hull trick you can cut the prim count down a lot AND as some of the great prim builders of the past taught us, a whole lot of the quality had to do with TEXTURES. I was never all that good with drawing my own textures, so Cycles lets me get the look I want without the painfulness (for me) of graphics programs. I love all the wonderful things mesh has brought into the world, and I do spend a fair amount of time looking at my work in progress IN world (hence better proportions than some well known builders -- who I am guessing do NOT continuously test their builds on the OMG BETA GRID! LOL). We each work in our own ways. But, while there is some nostalgia in my post as I had some of my best times in building classes -- I was mostly mentally extrapolating the difference between prim building (all in world), current mesh building (part in world) and "hitting that publish button" that has been mentioned. While it "may" be OK for me, I am thinking it might be too far removed from virtual life and much more of a simple commodity. That's not a bad things for some folks. Just not sure it will work for me. And to Rolig maybe or whoever left clothing -- there is still a niche for great texture garments. I live in my applier jeans and just got some new pants last night. I wish more "old time" designers would delve into that a bit more. Now with mesh bodies that look so smooooooth, those clothes look super. Here is a shot of some newly released applier pants. Pretty amazing. We would have beaten down the doors back in the day to have something this nice. Skills and software have made improvements in all areas. 

Rhiannon Arkin wrote: Hey Thanks a lot for your detailed example. There's a lot to be gained by paying attention to these lods. For texturing, I am trying to fit as much as i can into a 1024 square by laying out uvs manually. It's just as much work as building itself. Your initial example of uv layout is indeed a huge waste of space. I don't know blender, can you manually generate, manipulate uvs in that software? The quality of sl image uploads is a bit a pain. it was mentioned above, the compression is making everything a lot more blurred. my 1024 photoshop file is substantially better then my 1024 upload. but i guess there's not much to do here. So far the tips I found here in this thread have helped greatly. So i'll update you with my tree project soon. I've so far experimented on other models how the mesh uploader sees things. So i managed to get a pile of books from 5LI to 1LI and it's looking better too. Now. onto the tree. When I first started looking at mesh (maybe over four years ago) I went to a then popular (may still be -- I don't keep up) full perm mesh store that gave away items each month to the group. I found that each (EACH) leg of a table was on its own 1024 UV map. Well, not knowing any better --- we can assume that "I" assumed that was the correct method. OH HOW SILLY. I admit that getting things down texture wise has been difficult for me, but it IS possible and with EXCELLENT results. The trick is high resolution baking with some hand work after. And yes, you can certainly (and should IMHO) map by hand. There are a plethora a reasons why NOT to let the automatic UV editor in Blender make your choices (more than with the LOD uploader for sure (again IMHO) Here is a screenshot of the layout of a new building I am working on. The complete roof, ceiling, trim and decoration is all on one 1024 texture. it looks great in world. It was baked at 400 resolution in Cycles. I actually LOVE laying out the UV maps. That and making the textures in Cycles are my favorite parts. It's like a puzzle trying to see the best way to fit thing into the grid. Remember of course that SCALE is important so that all your wood pieces look the same, metal etc the same.  Not a lot of "air" there. It looks great inworld. Whew!

There are as many opinions on this subject as their are creators. While I am not in the "make the populous turn up their LODS to 4 camp, MANY folks in the sculpt era changed their defaults simply so they could see the world. That doesn't mean it was right, just that it was a necessary. I still see mesh that breaks apart but not all that much thankfully. I run at LOD2. I appreciate the idea that some folks build for LOD1. That is not my choice or actually the choice of most content creators in retail. Public SL builds are a different matter. Things may change slowly and modeler may start testing at lower LODs. That would be a good thing, but this is supposed to be a free market, economy, and for the most part world. If people choose to make mesh that only works at LOD4 they will find a market. "I" don't think that is the best choice, but it isn't MY choice to make for THEM. This has been discussed and discussed and I doubt anyone will be changing their point of view except for the people that had no idea there was even a choice in how to view objects inworld.

Well even in the VERY beginnning Ebbe stated (on these forums somehwhere back then) that content would be converted to a proprietary format therefore limited the "stealability" of things. I just hadn't heard about the "going through channels" type of review . I have no real problem with that, just more and more it is sounding like NOT my platform of choice (sadly as I was looking forward to it). Thanks.

No changes in my system but I have been having "your region is experiencing difficulty" logout which is very unusual for me. On mainland. I haven't been having any texture rezzing issues but I have a hefty computer and a fast connection. It does seem to be taking longer for items pulled from inventory to appear. This since the beginning of the week. I don't watch to see if my region got new codes; I just deal and assume it will work out eventually. West Coast USA.

Well yes, it is indeed the animation in that AO, not the body . BUT "age" isn't the issue. There are still new AOs out there with these problems. You could take that particular animation out of your AO if the others work well for you. Meanwhile, be sure and TEST all the animations in any new AO you get. NEW doesn't necessarily mean BETTER.