maxxwell
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Posts posted by maxxwell
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1 minute ago, Gabriele Graves said:
Signature give out their mesh kit for each body which includes a mesh body model for use with Blender. There is no vetting process, it is sent out instantly when you fill in a web form with your avatar name and an email address.
That's great info, thank you! I'm more familiar with 3DS, but I do have some experience with blender. I'll definitely check it out.
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4 hours ago, Sasy Scarborough said:
There would be a lot of interest in good Male clothing, as long as you are willing to cater to the various body types available. On that note what do you know about how SL is used now with mesh bodies? you mentioned years ago, but things have certainly changed, you would not be creating for the SL body type only now, it would be various bodies.
What is the price range you are used to charging for items in IMVU, I have no idea how their currency works, but here at 251L to 1USD give or take an L you usually see items around the 200 - 600 mark depending on what the item is.
Are you able to sustain your income in IMVU if you are here (as you would not want to lose that 6K a month when SL will take time to build on, something not mentioned, or I did not see is that while you have all the aspects such as marketing to take care of, it is the customer service that will take up a lot of time depending on your products and audience. Again unsure of how IMVU is, SL is very much a 24 hour economy, with IMs coming in at all times, while people do not always expect an immediate answer there are some that do. While you get even more popular that will increase, and time is a large factor.
By years ago, I mean I used to create my own items on SL, then I stopped as it was just a for fun kind of thing, and I can get the same for fun experience doing it on IMVU while making money out of it. I am fully aware of mesh bodies and the sorts, I have several of them myself, male & female (TMP, BLZ, Slink to name a few). SL has always been an on-off hobby of mine regardless of whether I make stuff on it or not.
Prices vary, so very much between IMVU and SL, a developer makes $0.40/1,000 credits. Product prices vary greatly but each sale makes me an average of $0.08 with a range varying from $0.02-$0.60 depending on the item, category & etc. But of course this is supported by the thousands and thousands of products sold.
Sustaining my income would be a challenge while I build SL, but I know the ins and outs of IMVU and the drop I expect will be fine, as long as it's possible to eventually make more with my time on SL, hence this thread. I've given that plenty of thought lol, that is my main reason for not already having my own store on SL.
4 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:Also note that in order to GET the bodies that you will need to be able to create for (guys or gals) you pretty much have to run a gauntlet and prove that you are a great creator and are worthy (yep) to get the pack so that you CAN make things. This is reasonable really from the body maker's point of view, but it is a big stumbling block.
Yup, already on it 😁
2 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:Other than turning into another Kim Kardashian "urban outfitter" platform IMVU did get one thing right and that is derivatives, something SL has needed since its inception and something LL has no intention of implementing.
It has its pros and cons. From my point of view I'm actually glad SL does not have this system, I could go on for days as to why. From a business point of view for LL, it would also have many advantages and many disadvantages. I feel LL wants to keep SL as the *superior* system in terms of quality, design and innovation.
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53 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:
Every time this question comes up, my advice is that you should be creating because it's what you enjoy doing. If you can happen to make some money at it, that's icing on the cake but not worth building your RL budget around. Competition is steep, marketing is not easy, and your time is limited. All of that is easy for me to say because I am retired and in the position of having more than enough creative work to fill my time without looking for more. Even if that were not so, I would still balk at trading all my recreational time in world to earn a hefty regular income. That's not why I am in SL. YMMV, of course. 😎
I love it, I wouldn't be asking otherwise. As someone who's been there done that on another platform and is confident in doing it on SL, I'm wondering if expanding, or even moving my business over to this platform is worth my time, the end goal for me is more profit. 😊
28 minutes ago, Catrie said:There isn't a lack of male users, they just don't have a lot of choices. There are many guys that would LOVE more clothing options. I know my partner would love more Victorian, Gothic, Edwardian and "Lord of the Manor" options. Think dark Mr. Darby looks. There have been a few threads regarding the lack of male clothing options. I know @Skell Dagger gave a lot of really great options, that he would love to see, in one of them.
I'll look further into it, I did try my hand at entering the male market on IMVU and I did it, but it just wasn't worth the time as there was (and still is) a much bigger demand from females.
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2 minutes ago, Rhonda Huntress said:
Population growth is flat and has been for years. Meaning new and returning users just make up for loss. Actually there is a slight decline but only just measurably so. The rate of decline alone shows that SL will be viable for years to come. Technology wise ... well, this thing is older than dirt.
Linden Lab has been doing an excellent job of adding new features and constantly improving the client and database but just how far can that take you?
I am flat out amazed anyone can use SL as their primary or only source of income because of all the risks involved. So maybe I'm not the best at guessing but I don't see SL as being viable as a money source for another 5 years. But that's just me.
That's a little worrying 😅. They have, SL had and continues to evolve in so many ways. I guess it's a matter of SL being the main and best platform of its sort, and with the lack of competition people don't have much choice and if they want a "virtual world" experience, well, this is where they get it. Although the lack of growth isn't smart business for LL, maybe things will change as they continue to evolve and *hopefully* not crash as a company. If they do, the next thing comes along, and we creators move to the next thing.
I've been saying the same about IMVU for almost a decade, but all that time later, here I still am, making a living out of it. I'd be lying if I said I don't have those days where I sit and think about what's going to happen when all that falls apart, but until then 🤯. I guess the same goes for any sort of "online job".
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6 minutes ago, Peony Swee*****er said:
Hi Maxxwell - if you're interested in the facts and figures, I find Tyche Shepherd's grid survey site a useful resource - http://www.gridsurvey.com/economy.php - you'll probably find most of what you want summarised there.
I'm only a hobbyist merchant who hates the marketing side of things, and I pretty much only put out for sale what I want to make for myself. I'm pretty happy if I manage an average of $100 US a month with my cash outs. But I know there are those out there who can make a go a a RL income. Just find the right product and work hard on the promo side of things. Clothing is a huge market, but there's definitely room for niche makers, especially in things like mesh men's wear beyond the t-shirts and hoodies.
Spend a bit of time in SL, do your research, and I'll be interested to see what you come up with.
Very interesting, I'll definitely be taking a closer look at that, thank you! Clothing is what I spend most of my time doing nowadays.
A lacking male market, the same applies to IMVU. Seems to be a trend due to the lack of male users, or maybe just the lack of interest in shopping. 😂
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A question within a question, how is the user base doing in SL these days? Is it still growing? Are there any figures on that anywhere?
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13 minutes ago, Fritigern Gothly said:
Why would we harass you for mentioning a competitor, we all know SL is best 😉
Seriously though, if your work stands out from the competition, there is still a good buck to be made. However, an important key to SL success is the same as RL success; marketing.
I have found that, even with the most excellent and unique products, failure is almost guaranteed without marketing.Partake in and sponsor events, give out demos and cool freebies, have your products photographed professionally, get bloggers to notice you with special perks and freebies.
Those are the tricks I know, but because I can't afford most of them, none of my products ever made a splash...
I honestly, cannot argue with that first statement. 😂
I believe it does, at least on IMVU and I can surely bring that here. Marketing is my speciality 😉. Thank you for the tips though, bloggers and photographers are a great idea.
13 minutes ago, lucagrabacr said:Yes, Second Life creators cash out 60-70 million US dollar each year, and I know a friend of mine who make around $5,000 a month and they aren't even one of the biggest creators.
The cash out figure can always be misleading, like on IMVU, there are thousands upon thousands of creators that would cash out a yearly minimum with a couple hundred on the maximum end of the spectrum, with far and wide between depending on their skills. I guess it's more of a "what are the figures for each end of the spectrum" kind of question, as I could guesstimate (compared to IMVU's spectrum) where my skills would lay on that spectrum given my all-round knowledge of SL. Although I know no one will ever give me a definite answer.
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Hi, so I've been thinking since the end of last year of bringing my "talents" of creating to SecondLife. I've been a developer on (don't burn me at the stake, please) IMVU for many years, and the income is good, but it could always stretch further. I was wondering what are the typical earnings of the top 10% of clothing creators on SL, if there are any figures anyone has seen or heard of? Right now I'm at around $6,000/month from IMVU, which is considered on the higher end of earnings, not the biggest, but definitely up there.
I create some meshes here and there (Not too big on that as my skills are still growing) but that's why I'd love to try it out on SL, I design clothing & create poses (animations I'm more than capable of, which would be interesting to see how it could translate to making ao's for SL). So, my question is how would *potential* SL earnings compare with my IMVU earnings?
Again, please don't harass me for mentioning a competitor, I know how it gets. 😂
Oh and P.S. I do have some experience with meshing for SL, a couple years back I used to make some of my own meshes for myself & friends, but never took that further.
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Thank you so much! The Shell modifier is exactly what I've been looking for!
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Hi, I've been wondering about having double sided objects in 3DS max so the materials show up on both sides of an object. For example, if I make a hat starting with a box, and I decide to delete a face, so let's say the bottom and made it act as the inside of the hat, it would be invisible in the renderer. I have tried to force 2 sided objects in the render properties, but when I upload into SL that obviously doesn't stay. For simple objects, my method would be to clone the finished object, scale to 99% to prevent clipping, flip the normals and attach to the original object, but that doesn't make my object look as perfect as it should. I know I could also model my object without deleting the bottom face, but that would result in a huge hassle trying to work with 2 verticies at the same time all the time, then having to unwrap the UV for the bottom, and this would be even more difficult when trying to make hair, as usually I would use a plane primitive rather than a box, and that is also one sided. So does anyone know of any alternative methods?
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That's not how my file looks sadly, maybe I did something wrong in the whole process. I'll retry on another mesh tomorrow and I'll post here how it turns out.
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I'm not exactly a professional at this, but have you tried to tinker with the scale option in upload options tab when you upload your mesh into SL?
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Hi, thank you for your reply. I have been following that tutorial very carefully. I tried to add the collision bones as you said, but that didn't help either. I've noticed that I don't have the Left_Handle or Right_Handle collision bones and my total bone count ends up at 50, (26 without collision bones). Also, I've tried to look for the "Joints Array" in my collada file, I even used the find tool and that doesn't seem to be anywhere in my file, altough all the bones that I selected are listed.
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Hi, over the past few months I finished my 3ds max course and had enough practice to begin making things for Second Life, I made and textured a simple top, as picture linked below, but the only problem is that I have no idea how to rig it to my SL avatar, I have no idea how rigging works and I can't find any tutorials for 3DS Max rigging for SL. Or would Blender tutorials work just as well if I adapt them? Thank you for any and all help!
Edit: So after figuring out rigging and spending all day working with the skin modifier, I finally got it to work! Everything works perfectly in 3DS, rigged fine no verticies left behind bends/moves with the skeleton correctly, I have added all the 26 bones, and i've changed my units to meters and deselected animations aswell as changed to Z-axis export, although when I try to upload, skin weights is grayed out in SL, anyone know of a fix? Been at this all day :/
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It was the spaces and the characters! Thank you so much, I remember reading that a thousand times, don't know how it slipped my mind! Thank you again!
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It's just planes put together to form a hair, all editable poly, I've tried collapsing the stack, sadly that didn't help.
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Hi, recently I finished my 3DS Max course, and i'm practicing meshing hair. At first everything was fine, but now I'm experiencing some problems uploading the mesh into SL. I get the error "Error: element is invalid" Also, when I export, 3DS Max also pops up with a few warnings:
"-Warning: Null not supported by COLLADA. Node Left Side will lose its geometric information. The node transforms will be saved."
and "The plug-in will tessellate meshes according to iteration values in corresponding TurboSmooth modifiers.
The following objects are affected:".Anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong? Any help is appreciated!
Linden Lab has been doing an excellent job of adding new features and constantly improving the client and database but just how far can that take you?
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Can you still make a "living" on SecondLife?
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Posted · Edited by maxxwell
E x a c t l y the reply I was looking for. Thank you!! Seems I've decided on where my business is going next. 😄
As I said, I love marketing, IIII'm readyyy!