Trinity Yazimoto

So sad news.... Ebbe arrived as LL CEO as a blow of fresh air after the horrible dark times we had with Rodvick. Ebbe arrived with a positive and friendly attitude (at the opposite of his predecessor). He was humble and open mind. Ebbe gave back SL its stability. Ebbe made SL a better place and i will remember him for this. Rest in Peace, Ebbe. You will be missed/ My deepest condolence to Ebbe's family and all the Linden Lab team.

@Chic Aeon, I find your thread a good idea. So yesterday, i tried to catch all the gifts and back to my plateform in order to see what they are.... Most of the time, i dont grab gifts bec, im really in a deep war with my inventory all the year long... I try as hard as i can to not add more to this nightmare lol... But the challenge was interesting ... specially bec it took me almost 3 hours to get all the gifts (SL doble tp'd me in a wrong spot, and i had to redo it all again, bec i ve been lost and i ended up with a huge nausea. Today, that i was able to unbox everything, I may say, that i liked a lot of those gifts and it would be impossible for me to say only one favorite. I classified by categories and found one favorite for hair, shoes, clothing, accessory and home&garden . And here is the results. (i used a decor i had already set on my plateform) My favs are : Hair : The one from Mina... i liked also the No Match, but well... i had to choose lol Shoes : i found the Addams one really cool... there are 2 gifts one with a thicker sole than the other one. and it has a hud with a lot of colors. Clothing : It could be a lot of the other ones.. i really loved the Eliavah blouse, or the red dress from L&B, but Neve got my preference in the end. It has a Hud with 4 colors for top and same for skirt and i find it really good and detailled. Accessory, i got a crush on the first sight with the lil purse from Bauhaus movement. It's pretty well done and very original. It's really a lovely object imho And lastly my favorite category (lol) : Home & Garden item : and i fell in love with this nice guy with me on the pic... (on top is not too much tall for me...😉) This is the snowan from Serenity Style. i must say i ve been surprised by the quality of a lot of the gifts... A good amount of them are really nice imho. Althought my inventory wont like it, ill keep those ones So thank you, Chic, for this nice thread

Yes, i did quote you, but my answer was more to the person you were answering to. I hoped it would catch both post at once, but it caught only yours, and i must admit it, i have been too much lazy to investigate how to get both at the same time (as there are ages i did not post here and since this forum did change meanwhile im a bit lost when its about using this software.) And yes, i agree with you, that since there is no charge for designers its not really much to ask for exclusive release. I made one for the last one (SLBday), and i noticed i was one of the rare one having an exclusive. But maybe it's because we did not get much time between the acceptance notification and the set up start. When i did recieve the notification I was in the process of creating my sled. I decided to use it for the gift as it had to be exclusive and i had no time for another item. Maybe if we had more time, more creators would have released smth ? Anyway, on a customer point of view, i always enjoyed that event, bec i can do almost all my xmas shoping at the same place and as prices are lower i can spoil even more my friends. ☺️

Yep, but the gifts are meant to be new. The requierement was an "exclusive" gift. A recolor (as Prokofy mentioned) was allowed, but the item had to be not previously released anywhere. And some, prob a good portion of them, made a completely new item.

yep, mine is finally working this morning; 😊

Same too. started on the 31st or the 1st ... and since then, i can not access to my transaction history at all... no way to fix the date, I tried to fill a ticket, but there is no category for that... so ... well, it looks they are doing fixes on the billing system right now, i hope its about that and that they are going to fix.

oh and i will also check your tutorials (specially bec you said there is a text version. Really understand talken english is not possible for me, lol). I m always interested in reading smth even if its for beguiners because really, my experience did prove me that i always learn smth new. Because Blender is like Photoshop or a lot of other software : there is never only one way to reach a goal. But a lot of different ways. All leading to the same result (maybe not always exactly but still same value). So i will look at them of course, as soon as ill have a bit of time for that. And yes, i also sometimes starts with a curve (i find them quite friendly lol), i rarely try other shapes that said, im always super afraid it turns in too much vertices in the end. For Cycles and nodes, i find a lot of excellent threads in blenderguru. Some ppl there are like heros for me lol...

awww that's cool. Im going to give the link to one of my best friend. She bought some blender courses on the web but finally she gave up, so maybe your tutos will give her the willing to dive in again. to answer Pussycat question, id say there is no a single way for learning blender. We are all different. Some will be perfect wtih a book, some other need to see in action so videos will work better. Imho what i would ideally have needed is a rl teacher in a rl class... i first tried alone with tutos, but english is not my native language so it failed. i found then a french guy with a youtube channel with tutos for blender for SL... but it failed too... it was so long... that was videos done during classes, it was long long long and in the end i was lost. Too much practice, not enough theory I bought some french books about Blender.... it was really too much blurry for me... too much theory not enough practice. So i bought a Marevelous Designer licence and it's been really easy to create some clothes... But.... when i came back to blender in order to rig them. It's been impossible... because as Chic said, i was on the path of densely modeled mesh lol... no way to rig that... and even less to import that in sl. So i gave up for some month. Disapointed of course, and not sure i will try again. Then one day i saw in the french blender group the french guy from youtube sent a notice saying hes going to give classes again. I dived in !!!! And then its been 2 X 5 hours per week of classes.. painful... really painful... a torture... i was doing nothing good... it was coming...I thought that maybe i wasnt done for that and i had to accept the idea i will never be able to do anything in blender... Then after some months of classes our teacher showed us how to render to texture on our object with the Blender Cycle engine. And that day has been the THE day i got the blender mind lol.... I was so amazed by how beautiful rendering this software was able to do that wow ! So next class, i ve been working better on my object just because i knew that at the end i will have something to texture with this fantastic blender feature (Cycle).. So it began here... and i was doing better things each time. but after one year the classes stopped and found myself not enough at ease with the software to create alone. So i ve been discouraged again... i had no idea where to start.... it always start from a cube, that's what my teacher taught us, but it was a hell to figure out how from this cube i will end with the object i had in mind. So here, i thought i was needing a bit of theory.. so i found a website with a few classes in text. Not for SL specifically. But from the start again... and i followed something like 5 lessons... and it started. For good. Of course, im still a beguiner and its really exciting bec every new item is done with more ease and always better than the previous one. I thought i would never say this before, but yes, i can tell i have super fun with blender now. We are friends. Well sometimes its a bit of a sado-maso relationship lol... as this pesky software still likes to torture me. But the more i use it, the less its a pain. Im super proud of myself because really, if some years ago you told me that i will one day be able to do smth in blender i would have laughed insanely. I think one thing that helped me a lot is the day i accepted the idea i had to make SIMPLE. Simple objects at first. Simple but well done. And go slowly. One thing at a time. Step by step. Slowly but surely. Take my time. Stop working on smth if its failing and do a break. Think to it after and come back and usually i know how to do straight away. Finally i find it passionating. It's a challenge everytime. It's a passionating investigation everytime. its fun ... its rewarding... And i never thought i could say this one day but i do. SL changes made me push my limits way beyond what i thought possible and really im thanksful to that.

That's good to know. i knew some were investigating but i wasnt sure an efficient solution had been found. If i happen to design items that have to be rezzed (and not avatar accessories that must be worn, as i do now) i will remind and do a lil investigation in the mesh forum or maybe ask you directly. (who knows... i have a project for a whole sim in a corner of my mind and id need buildings, so unless someone accept to go with me on that path, ill have to reproduce myself the buildings... .... one day... one day.... when ill have time for it... )

Well, from what i know and from my own experience, because i shop at the same places and i have the same issue, its not old mesh at all. Those are the ones you find in all the famous events we were talking about, those are the designers who sells the most in sl nowadays. Now to say they are the best quality, well.. that's of course another topic. But even if its not the best and most optimised mesh, their design and look is still really good. But yes, technically, they arent probably the best mesh. On the other hand, their price range is usually not really high. Im glad i recently changed the building of my store and opted for an not recent huge one from JOMO, which is maybe not entirely but for most part all prim. And well, althought i usually prefer mesh, this store is a total relief for me, bec things rezz super fast and i may rezz whatever i want inside, it NEVER fails. On top i could modify it as much i wanted thus, it looks exactly how i wanted now. Before i had the beautiful watermill from Jenne Dibou, it s one of the most beautiful building i know in sl, imho. but everyone landing in my store had to wait long minutes before things starts to load. and rezzing anything inside was failing 80 % of the time, so i had to rezz a cube and make it flat outside, move it inside and do my stuffs on it, then derezz it... Not a big deal, but still annoying. I will miss the watermill, but i think my store is better now with the new building.

Well, marketing isnt my thing, either but i do a minimum. I create for my own delight, i always did, and probably will always do. I limit myself to 4 events requiring an exclusive per month, this is the limit i can produce. I work full time RL,(librarian) i love my rl job and my SL hobbie NEVER did enough money for even paying for my parcel (in the past) and my sim nowaday. I pay with my own RL money. I also pay all my shopping bad habits with my rl money. My hobbies pay the event fees as i start now to get my money back for those, but barely more. I dont do this for money, as i money and I have always had a weird relationship anyway lol.. I have my own website, where i post about my items and also its an opportunity for me to create new pics and so use a tiny portion of what i buy (lol). i have Flickr, google +, Twitter and recently FB. People seing me there would tell you that really my marketing there is not agressive, i prob post twice a week, (the days im not working in rl) and that s all. I also have a small group, and so i may offer them 1 new groupgift each sunday + 1 monthly. I love to create and for me as long it remains fun it will be ok. The day i will not enjoy it anymore, i will do something else. SL is not my job, there is no reason i bound myself to things i do not enjoy. I do love working in Photoshop and Blender. And more than that, i think i need it ... The rest is a bonus but not a need

yes, and you are the perfect exemple that everything is not always working the same and that sometimes, what we think being as a rule is not one. You are also an example showing that quality can guarantee success sometimes (i said it before, even if i focused more on the bad side of the market). Because, yes, i know your store as a reference, i sent a lot of my friends there who almost all the time came back with a house they are total in love with lol... When mesh came out, you silently and bravely dived into 3d software learning and you made the transition really smoothly and perfectly; Finally, i m realising that yes, there are also the creators like you in SL , who arent maybe the one we see everywhere, but for sure, your items can be seen often bec you are driving your business perfectly (imho). And it's good to remember that ! Im going to bed on a positive note just thanks to you

Exactly ! of course, there are the ones doing really original work, not even copying an existing item in rl but just following their inspiration, but they arent the majority, sadly

yes and i have friends working with templates and creating beautiful things and happy to go to events accepting them. But you cant compare traffics of those venues with the other "big" ones (you know which ones i am talking about). Althought im really happy finally to have dived in blender, and so have pushed my limits, i still think that sometimes its best to let talented ppl do what they do the best and leave the rest to other ppl more talented on another aspect of the work. Also yes, i know also about those who hire meshers.. and its not illegal either, nor against sl tos, yes... but still..usually ppl think (and maybe the mistake is on the side of thoses ppl), that 100 % original mesh means done by the creator themselves. Of course, noone says that it is true.. noone claims it... but well, still it is misleading most of the ppl. it would probably change nothing to a decision of buying or not, imho. But... what is the difference with buying a template and texture it finally ? You can also buy an exclusive template or semi exclusive. The fact is that you didnt made the mesh yourself and your job consist on texturing only (which is of course a lot of work and imho, not less than meshing), so what is that different from ppl using templates obviously and not allowed in most of the biggest events ? For me the problem lays here. i dont mind who does what, as long it is honnest and things are fair. but In SL market, just like in RL, i see no fairness..;.. Well, there is long time im not expecting any anyway, rl or sl lol

sure it is, Read till the end of my post, i say SL is same than RL Yes i did hear some saying that and i know people doing it. Also i wonder how you can decide i have a big problem with other personal preferences. I wasn"t aware of it. I usually, really really, accept the idea other ppl have a different taste and opinion than i do..So well, just by explaining i know people buying even if the demo does not fit but bec its a famous brand and they must omg have the item and bla bla bla, makes me having a problem with other ppl preference ? Well... i didnt know that... and i strongly disagree... i find a bit impressive the way you judge me (not my opinion or what im saying, but the way i am - ie having a problem accepting other ppl preference)- while we never met neither discussed anything, except today in this forum.. Im impressed, yes. i go to about all the popular events listed on seraphim website. You think everything u see there is originally done 100 % by the designers in most of the cases ? You are wrong. im not saying they stole anything. They didnt. But in a lot of cases (and some well placed persons would tell you 80 % , but i wouldnt go so far i would say 50 %) the mesh are not done by themselves while the vendor claims otherwise and while the SL TOS forbide you to upload anything you dont own the copyright for .. i thank you for worrying so much about what im supposed to have a problem with, but in order to make you feel better, i can tell you i have no problem, all is fine... the convo in the thread came about what sells more and why and i was giving my 2 cents on the topic and saying, exactly like you, that SL is same than RL (you sems to have missed this point). This is my own opinion. you seem to have a problem with it, on your end.. but no worries, i also accept really well that not everyone agrees with me when i say something. So it's fine for me

And how things have been so unfair for texturers !! how unfair ! yes... you can see "original mesh" on vendors with pride... you rarely see "original texture"... When mesh became a thing, if you were not able to do original mesh (or to cheat, like 80 % do), you were nothing. ... leave the mesh work to the ones skilled for that and use your skills doing beautiful textures fpr templates you buy legally and in compliance with the SL tos ? naaaa ... you are bad ! you are nothing ! you are zero and not worthy to go in the good events where the customers are... you still can go to the ones that are empty... that's for you... So at some points, we had a few choice : --- learn blender, maya or any other 3d software u ll make mesh with .... monthes, years of pain, tears, discouragement... and well finally one day, you start to see the end of the tunnel and get pride and fun with it. but OMG that pain ! (i think it show... how much i did hate being forced to learn blender, and on the other hand. how much im super happy now... but yeah.. oh the pain !) --- cheat and lie.. using mesh you dont do yourself but still proudly saying you do --- and the third alternative has been when appliers became possible and so giving a new opportunity for ppl skilled for texture to make tattoo, lingeries and all sort of appliers. --- and ultimately stick with templates and keep doing what you are talented for (texture) and be ignored half of the time but yet... you will barely see 100 % original texture proudly print on vendors... I know a lot of brands with great mesh and horrible textures... but for this too.... who cares ? Really, come on !! its all original mesh !!! wooot !! (we are not even sure its really original but let's pretend we believe it) , who cares the texture really ? texture is for the weak... and texturer are nothing... talent ? them ? naaaa... mesh is the talent... well, humans remains humans...

expensive ? i dont find them particularly expensive. Of course, if you want the copy version, it can be a bit pricey but still not that much if you compare with the market. And you may buy the no copy versions , so you get exactly what u need and you can mix and match the trees and its not expensive, imho. And also the land impact is good. But who is the one you said then ? i am always in search of good items for my sim lol...

if the second tree is from a person whose firstname is Nadine, you are wrong. She's famous. Shes a kind of exception to what i just said in my previous post (but i could name a few like that.. not that much tho) For me she does the BEST trees in SL. i have them all over my sim and i can tell you i see her trees all around SL . Because again... they are the best from far.

Well, i think that there are at least 3 different points of view confronting here. I know that Prokofy goes to a lot of shopping event, thus i know he has some good knowledge about the current SL markets. Also, Chic is designer in a lot of big events and she has also a good knowledge about what sells and what not sells. However, i think you all forget one super important element : the usual "sheep behavior" of the market. It doesn"t matter the item is good quality (Althought, of course, it cant be denied that good quality helps, indeed). It doesn't matter there are 10 and 10 same items looking alike... (ie those shoes with string over the legs we see endlessly in ALL the events... i want to scream now everytime i see one.. and trust me, i bought several of them when they first came, i loved them...but i think im having like a total overdose with those pesky shoes) It doesn't matter, its obvious you cheat, rip, stole... (sometimes it even happen that 2 diff creators in the SAME event are realising the same mesh they took from a 3d plateform, most often legally, they paid for it, but still AGGAINST SL TOS and most of the time those websites TOS aswell..Also you lie ot your customers implying you made yourself the mesh but who cares ? Because, well the question is that : Who cares ? They will buy anyway ! Why ? Because you are famous. Because they know your name... (you may then even release the first cube that comes in Blender when u open it, and slap on it a pic of your rl cat or of your rl feet and they will buy by thousands... Seriously, you just need to open Seraphim website and see the gallery for event and you wanna cry... because really sometimes it's even over insulting your intelligence. (i love Prokofy's blog for that btw, bec well at least its spontaneous opinion, it's refreshing and if he thinks the item is *****, he says it.. not tons of explanations, but it's his sincere opinion.) So of course, Phil is right : marketing does half of the job... With a good adpic you may sale anything. But the other half of the job is not the quality of the item, saddly. The other half of the job is about the psychology of the mass. The group effect... That seems to decerebrate the ppl when they go to those events (even myself sometimes). It looks like they are remoted. "Oh ! Brand X releases the same shoes than Brand Y did last month and which i got 2 pairs yet ? no problem ! After all its Brand X !!! brand X!!! i will buy again of course!!!" "Oh this coat is poorly rigged ! and textures is bad.... yes... BUT it's from brand Z ! omg i want bec its brand Z ! And i saw it on flikr !! if those talented photographers worn it on their pic it cant be that bad ! The demo not fitting me ? naaaa , that's my fault.. i maybe dont see it well... if its good for the flikr photographers i must have it !! That' s all... yes ? photographers are posing, so rig doesnt matter ? yeah well i wont move my avi while wearing this ***** adorable coat ! that's all" And so on... You sell because, it's seen on beautiful pics... your vendor pic first, then you have a lot of famous bloggers in your team, they show on their pics and eveyrone want your item. you sell bec your name is famous. it does the effect of a switch on your brain. Everytime u see the name, there is a something happening in your cortex that makes you click the buy button. How do u make your name famous ? Mystery. And of course you need to be in big events for this happen (but it's not enough, you need the 2 other conditions above first) That's all... You work hard for the quality of your item ? naaaa... instead... work on the fame of your name, work on licking the right asses and you 'll get the sales.... work on quality never did anything except for a small portion of the population who arent the majority bec if they were, our world would be really different right now. And this is SL AND RL... The marketers know really well

yeah i think its better you keep that for limited audience then ! Specially when Phil is around.... just saying ... /me leaves the room silently and innocently....

picture or it never happened !

lmao ! And that's the reason i love you both !

agreed

well you both (Phil and Maddie, arguing like an old couple), in french, we have an expression to describe a stuborn person : "tétu(e) comme un mulet" (studborn like a mule or a donkey). That said... that wasnt the topic of this thread... you are both disrupting as always...

well... Again you should all stop talking about mullet when its about human male when a frenchie is around ... idk if we have a name for this hair cut. but look at this guy ! he doesnt seem super comfy with the idea to be associated with a mulet !