Chic Aeon

I agree. Not the house. The furniture. I have decorated at two story fairly large house with 100 land impact and had it full and very "House and Gardens" even with some outside touches -- so it is possible. Look at the land impact of your furniture. You can typically get a LOT of decor items at 1 land impact and extremely nice lounge chairs for 3. Check the venues as well as some of the popular shops that sell low prim furniture. You can have a great time decorating!

Uploading things full perm is just the same as uploading anything else. While permissions can be set in the viewer before upload, they can also be changed afterwards, so your final permissions are not an important part of the upload process. You need to set (or make your own) LODs for upload. For a picture frame it will likely not matter . BUT you do want to make sure that someone can see your picture frame when using LOD 2 or 1.25 or whatever you decide is the level you are "building for". I suggest uploading your item using several different settings in the upload panel. Again, custom LODs are considered better, but small steps at first. TEST TEST TEST to notice what the differences are. Change your LOD settings (Firestorm has an easy method in the Quick Preferences Panel if you use FS) and not how things fall apart if your LODs are not good. A very old but still relevant is a vide called "Kettle Quest". Look that up and learn about LOD making and settings. http://blog.machinimatrix.org/optimizing-meshes/ Just so you know, there are tons of picture frames out there to buy full perm, but a picture frame IS a good beginner project. Likely most of us made those when starting out. One of the best things you can do is to go through this forum and read the posts. Even if you don't understand what they are saying always, it will give you a background of sorts.

**** FOR NEW FOLKS HERE **** Sorry but I feel I really need to respond to this post. The rental agent may certainly have some better values available but this is not one of them. So beware. You can not turn around in a 4 meter space -- especially if you are new. So be sure and see the demo before renting and check others. You would be paying $3 a prim which isn't unreasonable but 10 prims is almost nothing. And this is what really got me: "Alternatively, if you are a premium member, you can buy this house and land for L$698 (the cheapest 48 sqm parcel available at the time of this post)." The reason it is the cheapest in that category is that it is a rediculous category. You pay the same amount of tier (free for your first 512) for 48 meters as you would for 512. You can often find 512s for LESS than a linden a prim (so $512 for a 512 or even less). So there are TONS of better deals out there. So new folks --- DO SOME RESEARCH! BTW -- I do not have land for rent. I am old and have a fairly good reputation as someone that tells the truth. So I am not the competition trying to trash this person. I have no idea who they are. I just don't want new folks to think this is the standard here in SL.

In general you can RENT much cheaper than paying tier these days (not even considering the cost to buy). The best deals are mainland and there are a few companies that basically rent a a buch a prim per week. So for example a 300 prim parcel would be 300 a week which is much cheaper than tier UNLESS you get together with friends or alts and buy land for a group. If you want an apartment, there are some pretty nice ones for about $2 a prim per week which includes the house and very nice neighborhoods. Check the classifieds and go exploring. It is great fun.

Well I have Maitreya, not Slink but I see no one answered you so I'll say something. If the Eyes Open on the hud won't work, then then I would try unpacking your original body again or if needed get a redelivery. That is certainly what I would try if I had a similar issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3PWk7RW7SE

You may also want to experiment with uploading in pieces rather than as a linkset (or a joined object). Oftentimes the total land impact is lower that way. The beta grid and testing are both your friends .

It is going to be very difficult to find a commercial homestead (less prims than a regular sim and doesn't hold a many visitors) as most homesteads are residential or LOW commercial and not that many are adult. So you best bet will likely be the mainland adult content Zindra. If you are buying you should have no trouble. The last time I looked over there most of the continent was for sale (yes almost all yellow and quite surprising). By the way, a typical lot would be a 1024 with 234 prims for $5 a month with your free 512 discount. The next step up would be a 1536 with 351 land impact. I think that is $8 a month tier again with the free premium tier bonus. Make sure you check the amount of tier you will pay before buying. There are breaking points of you are on mainland and paying directly to Linden Lab.

Changing your shape yourself: https://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Controlling-your-avatar-s-appearance/ta-p/700709 You can also buy premade shapes (some are free on the Marketplace). In order to change your skin you need to buy a skin (some are free for group members). To add feet and hand enhancers you BUY them (almost always Slink) but I would suggest waiting a bit and then perhaps buying a complete mesh body which works much better. You can only "reshape" clothes that are made from prims and sculpts, not mesh which is the standard now. To learn how to reshape "prim" clothes if you want I suggest a few basic building classes which really everyone needs . NOTE that some non-rigged mesh attachments like hats and a few shoes can be adjusted. Rigged mesh that move with the body cannot -- hence ALWAYS try a demo. Current eyelashes, fingernails and toenails come with mesh bodies and heads. Older style you can buy attachment for the eyelashes. Fingernails and toenails are "appliers" for either you hands and feet attachments OR you mesh body (many brands of those to try out). Have no idea about the LIFE hud. It sounds like a "game within a game" thing but no idea. Good luck. MUCH to learn. A little bit at a time is good.

I don't make mesh clothing but I can tell you that most fitted mesh is not smaller. GOOD fitted mesh fits all bodies perfectly or close to perfectly depending on the skill of the modeler. Some need no alpha layers at all. So if you are having an issue it is not an inherent one because of the "fitted mesh". I suspect that some searching will get you quite a bit of info on the making of fitted mesh and I understand from folks that DO make fitted mesh that looking into the Avastar tutorials might be a good plan. So far as designing for other bodies, you need a developer kit. Also from what other have told me -- it is not easy to get some developer kits. The people making the bodies seem to want to make sure the folks that GET those kits actually know what they are doing -- and that seems a sound idea to me. So learning how to make BASIC fitted mesh is most likely the best plan. Then when you can show that you can do that, you may be able to join in with those deveoloper kits.

I have actually lost friendship with my alt --- and obviously I didn't do that, so yes it can happen. DID it happen? That is a different question of course.

While I haven't made a lot of hair, I like the finished product of cylinders (or another 3D shape) over planes. Unless you have a ton of planes, they seem less than convincing (at least the ones I have seen). The folks that I blog for seem to use a 3D shape of some kind and I love their hairs. From my point of view (again I don't do this often) the solidifier and duplicating and flipping are often very close to the same thing. I suspect that which one would be better would depend on your shape. 2. i uploaded some of my attempts at making hair to beta grid, and it cost about 290L$ to upload the mesh. is that considered reasonable? about how much, on a rough estimation, would it cost to upload mesh hair to second life? NOOOOOOOO. Not good. LOL. The uploader has three sections that count for the land impact. Download, Physics and Server. If Physics is the issue, use a plain cube as the Physics model (browse choice, find the dae cube you have saved, use it). If it is SERVER -- then you likely need to JOIN all those pieces of hair before exporting. Most often it might be DOWNLOAD, and there the last LOD should most likely be set as low as possible. We can't really see an avatar well half way across the sim, no reason to see the hair of said avatar . Most of my uploads, even fairly complex ones are 1 land impact ($11 or $12). Hair is "small" so it gets a break on that part of the equation. Go back to the beta grid, see what category the offending number (highest) is in and adjust your method - settings accordingly.

Just adding to this thread with an example. Most of my round building (see post above this) did better LI wise as unanalyzed, but there was a HUGE difference in this balconey. Using the same balconey file and same physics model dae the analyzed one on the left is 2 -- the unanalyzed is 13. THEY ARE BOTH 2 in the UPLOADER; the difference happens when changed into prim which is of course needed here. So from now on -- until I get a better subliminal idea of which is better for different shapes and complexities (or whatever) I am just going to test both ways 

As far as I know there are no uses for diffuse maps in SL. The texture pane takes SPECULAR (light reflecting) and NORMAL (bumps) maps. I doubt that Linden Lab will change Windlight to support one program, but this is a resident forum so they don't typically read comments here execpt in the technical (server) areas. You can make specular maps with Shader Map 2 or Crazy Bump and I believe there is a plug in for Photoshop that is free. Not all software makes things good for our world here.

Yes search is your friend (search for size and price) and unless it is protected land or waterfront you shouldn't spend more than a linden a prim. You can often get for less . OR look around the map. Find what size yellow square is 1024 and you can click on most to see their price. You can learn a LOT from a map photo.

Super clever on the stairs and LODs girl! I personally am not fond of stairs at all but I will remember that for the future. I have been doing much more experimenting on the beta grid with analyzed and unanalyzed and find that unanalized often works as well as the other method AND is lower physics. Now most of the time my physics is way lower than my download but I did make some improvements (and hopefully learned a few things that I will remember in the future ). The uploader really likes QUADRALATERALS (not a big suprise) and normally I am in that straight line mode -- but I have been working on a steampunk build and the only rectangular pieces in there are windows and doors LOL. So to reply to Pamela's question -- I think the only way is to TEST the differences. I imagine that eventually one "gets a feel" for things just like lighting and Cycles but it might take awhile judging by my experiences. Long ago and far away Drongel (at least in my memory and my stickly note) said "cubes not touching - analyze - change to prim". That's what my sticky says still. Of course I was VERY new then and likely missed a whole lot of what he was trying to say. So I am glad at least that I know now to try both ways while I am working on reasonable LODs at long distance (I check at 2. Anyone using 1 ? Well they will need to be closer than a half a sim away LOL. Here's my house in progress. I made it four times actually. Beta grid, Opensim, Beta Grid (with upgraded model from Opensim testing) to Agni. Whew. It is currently at 46 without the "fire escape" stairs in the back and the lights that will go in front (they are 1 li so not a big deal). I am pretty happy with that. About half that in Opensim with the same files but the rules are different there. 

Thanks. I did remember the walkable hills part. I made a pretty complex building with many interior walls and doorways. And while my physics model "appeared" to be correct, ONE doorway (a very wide one that was not going to get a door -- so an archway really) repeatedly filled in half of the walk through area. I decided that it was likely the uploader (both SL and OS) got confused with a lot going on. I took the piece out above the archway and it worked as expected. So good to know my guess "may" have been correct. Most of the time my download weight is the highest (almost always really) so I haven't had any big issues with the physics weights. Thanks!

I haven't done this in awhile but I think I just moved one of the avatars to the side to line up. You can do that in the second set of sliders (underneath the ones you use most often in the sidebar).

Also it wasn't mentioned if there was a handmade physics model. If someone just let's the uploader "do its' thing" then that could certainly be the issue. The default is low I think and that is SO not good. And "high" using the uploaders ideas is often prohibitive so far as upload cost and land impact. BUT what I really want to know (yet again but hopfully I am smarter now and will "get it"), WHY would you not analyze your physics model before upload? I always do and I don't normally have any issues (except last month when I was definitely having a blond moment and tried to use a very odd shape as part of the physics model --what WAS I thinking?). I know there are times when you might want to not analyze as I remember discussions but I don't remember what those reasons were. Some of us learn slowly. I do have to say that I am getting really good at PRETTY though LOL. Thanks.

Try the role play forum here. There are cities that let you rez your car IF you are a group member and IF you live there. Most that I know of have those rules. You can rez your car in many Linden areas including right outside of me new shop. Long ways to drive.

Just bumping this as I had no idea this was happening until I read it on an Opensim's grid blog. What???????

Just wanted you to know that there is another testing method. You can use the ADITI (beta) grid which is free to upload. Since Blender is not the easiest of programs to use or get around in (let alone when models are added) I suggest that would be easier for you. It is free to upload and you can test to your hearts content. Since you won't be uploading mesh, you won't have to take a test and you should be able to get there easy enough. This wiki page looks pretty darn old but will likely be of some help. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Preview_Grid And I am pretty sure there are some videos on getting to Aditi on YouTube. So a Google search should get you there if you decide that is a good way to test. You can upload tattoos anywhere but you might want to go to a SANDBOX where there are frequently naked mesh bodies being tested and no one cares . I use the MESH sandboxes and they are pretty much griefer free.

Thanks. Will try and work around and hope it gets fixed soon. You can work "all day" and leave stuff out and then get things over to the main grid. Many times I do that so not a huge thing. If they can get it to actually work, it will be great . I very seldom clear my cache as the Firestorm folks have asked users REPEATEDLY not to do that unless absolutely necessary LOL. If I can't work around I will clear cache.

The inventory sync sims to have more issues than reported :D I fixed this issue by logging out and into Aditi again (seemed a logical thing to try). So if you see this happening -- try that. Another thousand items showed up INCLUDING all of the things I cleaned out of my inventory last even on Agni - HMMMM . And while yesterday's work is there -- sort of, the textures have disappeared from inventory so I need to upload those again. Indeed it looks like the textures on older things (a couple of weeks ago) are also missing :( So BEWARE and adjust work accordingly. I am going to TRY putting the things I am working on in their own folder and see if that helps. Meanwhile expect quite a few issues. :D ************************************* Well while I am glad to LOOK better, when I logged into Aditi this morning ALL my past worke was gone. Nothing from last night (10 pm SL time) is gone along with everything else from my Aditi inventory. The only thing left THAT I CAN SEE in my inventory is the toolbelt I typically wore for the last few months over there. It is now in my objects folder. There is very little left IN my objects folder as I cleaned it last evening on Agni. The inventory SAYS I have 57,144 items and I have about 41,000 on the main grid. Searching for the items that I know should be there does no good. If they are there, I can't see them. So unless you are lickety split working this isn't going to be a great thing. The only thing left in from my Aditi Hopefully they will get this working better soon.

Well there used to be "land bots" that monitored the grid and bought up any land set at a low price. This is quite awhile ago when land was much more of a commodity. It caused isses as the bots bought things instantaneiously and sometimes there were errors OR the land was supposed to be sold to an alt for example at almost no money and the person setting the land forgot to put in the name -- etc. So reasonably that same scripting (I am NOT a script person so no guarantees) could be adjusted to look for land ste to sale to someone. This only seems like it would be of use to someone that buys a LOT of land . That's all "I" know.