Codex Alpha

Buy the Premium annual. Cheapest option including stipend that you get back. This gives you the default Linden home that you can do small builds, projects, scripting as well as at least a base you can chill at by default. Premium sandboxes are low population (if anyone), good fps and latency and you can do big builds there. Rent some land starting small, I have used a certain 'bee' based rental vendor, not sure if they are the same today, seems a few people are using variants on their company names. Rent only what you can afford, if 0 traffic in 3 months but sales through Marketplace, no point to keep renting, return back to Linden home. Good luck

We agree then that every system has its pros and cons, and disagree about the validity of mod vs no-mod. As a shopper its never been a consideration for me, as I shop and buy items that I like - so my bias in providing my own items leans that way. Each to their own, but I would stop short of calling for boycotts or other things against other stores that don't believe as you do, or it could appear as 'anti-competitive behaviour' and break the Marketplace Guidelines.

From Yelp to SL, on all review type sites, the bulk of product reviews is either by crazed fanbois (or the proprietor themselves), or the angry customer who had no other recourse. Without context of a review, or an ability to discuss, or the willingness of the participants to concede a point, or come to an agreement, it's either Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down, and therefore is absolutely pointless. I've been informed that people will review something they liked a lot, say nothing if they're satisfied, and low rating if they don't like it. So yeah, make good items, price shouldn't matter, and try to accommodate the occasional customer. I always appreciate productive feedback, its more valuable than an unsupported rating that tells me nothing.

Good job derailing the topic, Chellyne rather than participating in the discussion, and my reply to your post.

Ok, maybe I misread your post then. I would disagree then, because I don't even like the fact that MOD items can have name changed - nevermind being able to do it on no-mod items too! I pick my names carefully, and organize my names by series - modelname, so it's important to me that it is maintained... or I might as well just sell it as "TABLE 04062018", just uv for everyone to texture in world, and leave it at that. I could probably triple and quadruple my objects on my store with such an easier workflow, and save the 'works of art' or originality and profit on sites like Turbosquid instead, and just create generic and less ambitious mod items for SL.

Yet if you upload an item to be used that is under 1m in size but has 3200 vertices, the Land Impact is less than a 8-vertice cube at 10m.... It appears as though the viewer cares more about the SIZE of the object, and not necessarily the vertice count (at least on LOD1, and LOD2) LOD4 seems to count more, but no matter how I optimize a mesh, anything larger than 1m is penalized severely. Got any ideas why? Thanks

I can confirm this happens, and may have posted myself about this in the past. From my observations, it tends to happen to textures that may not have been used by me (or anyone) for a long time (months) and then when accessed suddenly, appears to be blurry and overcompressed. I wondered if it was what LL's servers do automatically to older and unused textures (being accessed by noone for a long period) to save space. As far as I know, these images remain so until freshly uploaded. Never got an official answer from anyone on this though to date.

I can't stand this kind of thing. I want to spend my time designing and optimizing for a standard size, and thats what I do. All my builds will be designed for the default SL Avatar size, give or take a foot or so, but at some point as creators we have to put our foot down and decide who we are designing for. Go ahead and be a minotaur. Just don't expect the human sized bed will fit you. Especially when it comes to avatar sitting positions, animations or even designs where you want a certain fluid look sitting in a vehicle cockpit or what have you. At least when designing for the Sims, there is only one scale to be concerned with. Of course on some items, adding modify works, but on complex builds like a house, everything from windows to even the scale of stairs will get all wonky on resize.

This is true. Probably one of the biggest beefs I have, and would probably ease me into including more mod permissions on future projects, is not having someone be able to change the title of the item to 'My Item', when it clearly is not. I mean, if we're not even allowed to advertise anything in-world to anyone, what else are we to do (besides just spend $L on random advertising schemes). Conversely, you could respect those who put in the time and effort in not only first learning the skills needed to create the 3D items that you take for granted, and also respect them as artists, instead of feeling self-entitled to other people's work on your terms. Without creators, there'd be no content for you to proclaim your self-entitled rights to. Not saying that those who would imply creators of original works are self-entitled, but I have a strong feeling some might be

OBS is more than adequate, and you should spend some time exploring the OBS Options and Settings, where you can record at different resolutions, fps and even a variety of formats to encode to, including MKV. Although it is mainly used to stream online, I have used it to record videos of all sorts for my projects and can record to a local drive with it.

I'm sorry Charlotte, but the keyworld listings are abused so much, that if you were to even try to combat and report each listing that does so, your finger will break off. I doubt SL could improve their search engine, but needs to work more like Google does currently, where the content of the product has to actually match the keywords used, or to abandon keywords altogether - as even Google realizes that are an abused method and therefore an invalid search mechanic.

My free items are gifts back to SL'ers for giving me TRULY free gifts when I joined SL, and some items also function as examples of my work which leads to other models based on it, so it effectively becomes a DEMO that they can keep and use. Kind of like a loss leader... If you like this free item, you may want to consider looking at this advanced item in the same genre..

Could I mitigate this with a very informative video that may include a walk through, instructions and demonstration of the item? Not sure that after I upload some more complicated items that demo items would even help, when a video might be much better.

Who cares why? If it's not a freebie, don't advertise it as such. All my items marked free or freebie ARE free. No exceptions. If you want to gift someone the item, send them the marketplace url to them inworld, and thanks for advertising the item for me, I appreciate it.

If I were to purchase an item of yours, and give it a fair but maybe a disappointing review, that somehow my review should be removed? What difference would it make if I am a fellow marketer, or if I purchased the item under an alt? As you can well imagine, I've had reviews deleted and flagged, under claims I was 'harassing' the store owner or giving an unfair review, as part of some campaign to undermine the store owner as a hostile competitor.. completely unfair. I had been developing an alt and purchased an item from one seller, who's LODs were so out of whack, I had to leave a review about it (I remember your specialty is talking about LODs, lol :D). This item would 'blink out' (on default LOD settings) on LOD2, and therefore was impossible to take photos of oneself with it even from 5m away... In the short term I used your advice from one post to increase the LOD setting, but that shouldn't change my review. Not only was I scolded in-game for 'leaving a review without contacting creator first' (as if that's even a thing), but when I refused to remove the fair and honest review, she went to the Lindens flagging my review as 'hostile competitor'... Umm.. no.. PS. I no longer leave reviews of any sort, or give any feedback. If I cant submit 3 star reviews, then I won't leave 5 star reviews either.

To be clear, my no-mod items are on multiple-mesh items, and usually items that are presented as machines, and really have no need to be torn apart and used as spare parts - since I assume the customer bought it for what it was intended - as a work of operational art. I am not a Lego-kit creator, my intent is to create unique and original designs for people to use in SL. If it's a simple item like a couch, or some simple replication of RL world item in 3d, then mod permission is included. I assume my customers are not buying my items because of their potential as Lego-kits, but rather because they appreciate the work of art itself. In that respect, I've done quite well for the number of item submissions I have for SL - and am currently working to add more unique items to it as I RL life obligations allow me. End use is an important distinction. A premade house design is also made up of multiple mesh parts, and the end use of the product is to be used as it was built.. Something like that may be sold for $500L. For mod permissions on the same item, which effectively turns the simple house into a Lego building kit, the end use is much different and therefore might warrant $3000L as a list price - since the customer can now create ANYTHING their heart desires. Workflow DOES indeed change depending on the intended end use of the item. Most of my items I have created and will create will be as unique as I can make them, including scripted functionality, and an INTENDED design ( tech, hobo, rustic, etc) - where having mod permissions is not useful or would only break the item's look and functionality. Workflow changes when providing multiple texture designs (or skins) for said item in lieu of mod permissions, which includes a few more hours of texture work, custom handpainting and baking shadows, AO, etc. -- vs simply creating UV layouts optimized for in-world texturing. Workflow changes when intent is to create a prebuilt item like the house example, vs providing the individual, walls, doorways, windows,columns or whatever else. The workflow would effectively end once each individual mesh piece was completed, rather than extra hours spend inworld now using those pieces to create homes, shops, cathedrals, whatever. Any perceived business loss asserted to not including mod permissions is gained back when people view and enjoy your INTACT product in-world. I'm sorry, but some garish texture applied to a mesh that I created in-world, or an object frankensteined into a new composition in world LOSES me business, because the customer won't even know WHO made it, and judgements will even be made based on how the MODDER presents your mesh... Most of my business is from people seeing my products in-world and finding the store as a result - so I'm not too worried. My original post on this topic was to defend a creator's choice of using non-Mod permissions on their products and give reasons WHY they might do that, and WHY customers should still seek such items, and not simply condemn (as was in original post or blog cited) creators that did so.

I appreciate your anecdotal opinions as responses, but in general, review sites utilizing star ratings are usually 5 star or 1 star reviews. It's either extreme, just go look up some statistics on the internet, and why star ratings are fallacious and pointless, and why many companies including Facebook and YouTube no longer, or do not continue to use such systems. Example: 5 star ratings systems are useless As for my own 'anecdotal' experience which forms my personal opinion, most ratings I get on products are either 5 star or 1 star as well, with a dash of (5 stars - "i didn't like the color so take away 1 point") style reviews that do nothing to help improve or critique products. In the end though, any rating system is pointless if the reviewer doesn't provide context or constructive feedback as to how to improve the product.

Ambient Occlusion and Shadow maps are made in a 3D program, as they use the information from light sources to calculate the darkened areas and shadows of a 3D object. The 3D software will then 'bake' this information to a texture that you can apply to the object, or use it to add and create full detail textures. Try finding out what you can from this angle.

Yes, that is true. Hopefully people can read my responses with temperance as I have read theirs. An appropriate response I would have liked to made would be too long... I can only do my best responding without sounding like a know-it-all. I am actually very good at looking at many sides of the argument, and research things on my own, as my end goal in discussion is to learn in the end. My job is not to have to write an essay with 100 citations, but rather give just enough that someone can research it on their own, and expand their search from there.

MissDeeMeanur wrote: What is needed is a virtual Saint Nicholas, who used to go around secretly giving purses of money to ugly women so that they could afford the dowry to persuade men to marry them. It had nothing to do with if the women were 'ugly' or not. Since when was 'ugly' a problem for women, as every 'ugly' woman I know actually got married or pregnant - as there is ALWAYS a man who will get with them in one way or another. What you are referring to were families who were so poor, they literally could not front the traditional 'dowry' that they were to give to the groom's family to help the couple have a stable start. "...In those days young women had to have money in order to get married. This money was a "dowry" and it was used to help the new family get started. If you didn't have dowry money, you didn't get married." "Nicholas continued helping people. He always tried to help secretly. He didn't want any attention or thanks. Years passed and he was chosen to be a bishop. Bishops look after their people as shepherds look after their sheep. And that is what Nicholas did. When there wasn't any food, he found wheat; so no one went hungry. He always helped people in trouble. All his life Nicholas showed people how to love God and care for each other." - History of St. Nicholas (St. Nicholas Center)

Pamela Galli wrote: Until quite recently, the only career most women had was wife and mother. Therefore every such woman was looking for a good situation. Accepting a marriage proposal meant taking herself off the marriage market, something not done lightly! So as a pledge that the proposal was in earnest, the prospective husband gave her something of value -- something that, if he failed to deliver, she could keep as compensation for time lost. And if she broke it off, she could give it back. It was insurance. No, traditionally women were married off in order to get rid of the expense from the origin family (one less mouth to feed - not as valuable on farm as stronger sons), to seal alliances or strong ties between families, and also to create stable households in which to raise the next generation. There also accompanied the marriage was a dowry, supplied by the family of the daughter, to provide an element of financial security in widowhood or against a negligent husband, and may eventually go to provide for her children. Sometimes it was the groom who literally had to pay the daughters family to have her as a bride. Rings were more symbolic, rather than of value, but could be made of simple hemp-like rope, to copper, to iron, to silver, to gold, and now the modern equivalent, the diamond ring. It is only a modern invention for a woman to think the ring is some sort of security, especially the more lucrative diamond ring, whose wide use in engagement and marriage was not created by tradition, but rather by a corporation, the Debeers Company. A corporation created the rules and traditions by which many engaged and married people carry out their customs, complete with their own rules on 'how much should be spent' on it. History of The Wedding Ring. Pamela Galli wrote: It wasnt really all about feelings or romance, neither of which figured much into marriage plans until quite recently in history. Marriage was a practical thing, so was the ring. Therefore all engagement rings in SL or RL should be transfer. Marriage and ring are two different topics. Of course marriage was practical. It ensured that families were stronger through commitment to each other in order to create stability in socieity so that civilization could advance. I refuse to pay for a diamond ring. I'd sooner craft my own set of rings for my potential mate, which should show my commitment to her better than any purchase from a corporation, or price point could ever demonstrate. Also anyone obsessed with the price of her engagement or wedding ring, one who plans to 'show it off' to her friends and family and one who would feel any less about her mate based on how much money was put into it, just demonstrates her materialism and should be avoided anyway.

Rather than a round-about, mysterious response many like to give, here is a free script that you can use, adapt or study that demonstrates what you would like to do. In short, it's called an Animation Override ( AO) , that is triggered when you attach an item to your avatar. Example Drink Script PS. You're a 'newb' or 'newbie', not a noob.

Chic Aeon wrote: It was stated officiall years ago that Maya would be the software they would be working with and "eventually" there would be support for other 3D programs. It will be very telling if that doesn't happen before they open. But perhaps that is what they want and I guess if people REALLY want to create for Sansar they can always learn Maya and pay the monthly fee. I won't be doing that though. I create for fun and learning another program after four years in Blender isn't going to work for me --- not even thinking about the all in one interface toolset thing ^^. But there is visiting. Always good to have a place to visit. It wouldnt be the software in question anyway, rather the format of the files required. If they needed FBX, and made it so that other software like Blender didn't provide the proper FBX format (cuz proprietary), then yes, people willl be forced to use the 'industry standard' to participate. At least with SL, even if Blender can be a learning curve, at least the barrier of entry is lowered compared to if only 'industry standard' tools could be used, so at least we have that. We'll see what happens in the future though, as plans include uploading to asset sites, and what they require as files will dictate in the end the format and software needed.

ChinRey wrote: entity0x wrote: I found out that Sansar may be using C# and Javascript as the languages. THis is something I have looked for, as proprietary languages is a waste of time, when they'r enot transferable, and all the time is wasted learning its nuances. C# actually. It's High Fidelity that uses Javascript. C# is often mispresented as an object-oriented programming language but that's mainly because object-oriented is such a buzzword these days. What it really is, is a kind of Jack of all trades that can do a decent job under just about any programming paradigm you can think of. Unity supports both C# and Javascript but C# seems to be the most popular choice and it's likely many scripts from there can be adapted for Sansar.

Yeah, I'm trying to make sense of it, especially after they were talking as though the Sansar 'experiences' were literally 'baked in', like pre-rendered game levels, which reminded me of IMVU. In that context that's why I wouldn't look to SL as being the same as an improved IMVU, since SL is rendering 'real-time'. I get the points though. It seems more locked in fo sho. Chic Aeon wrote: Even at the very beginning when Sansar was announced Ebbe stated that items made for the then just underway platform would go through a process (I am guessing this is now called publishing ) which would make the mesh item unusable on other platforms -- hence lower theft issues. While some things planned at the beginning (we know know money won't be transferable between platforms) have been lost along the way (understandably) this seems to be in keeping with the original intent. It is going to be interesting to see who goes and who stays in the content creator arena as it appears that the learning curve is kinda in that professional area and those professionals can likely make more money elsewear. It also appears from the latest videos that the "repetition" factor is in play as it was in Cloud Party. I am thinking of the grand ballroom which was a myriad of identical pieces repeated and the roses in an earlier video. In Cloud Party, once something was in the system and in use on that "experience", it was basically free. So you could have one tree or a hundred trees -- the tree being in a viewer's cache. This is all supposition on my part. I am obviously not there being a Blender gal. And since Blender is not considered an 'industry tool', I wonder what support would be for it anyway in Sansar. I hate Maya so much, I refuse to use it. LIke I said before, maybe it's just better to focus on selling game assets in general, and let people buy them from freelancers to put into Sansar.. rather than entering into some crummy agreement for pennies on the dollar. I found out that Sansar may be using C# and Javascript as the languages. THis is something I have looked for, as proprietary languages is a waste of time, when they'r enot transferable, and all the time is wasted learning its nuances. I might just move on to working with my own projects in Unreal/Unity in the future anyway. I can create my own 'experience' and market it that way - in the form of a game or app.