Peony Sweetwater

I planted Peony in front of the fire to keep warm while I caught up with everything...storms took out power in our area mid week, so I was a bit out of the loop for a little while and spent the weekend catching up with shop stuff. Now to catch up with the forum stuff I missed.

Had a customer struggling to find her desired look with one of my skins, so I played with it a bit for her and made it a bit younger. It didn't end up meeting her needs, but it sure ended up working for me...guess I'm going to start acting my real age

Oh, and there have been some discussions around layering alpha textures when making hair...you might want to look back to some of those for more thoughts on the issue. I’m currently in my iPad on a train and can’t easily link you to the discussion, but a quick search of the forums should find them.

Alpha sorting is a problem on HUDs too (where you have overlapping textures containing alphas). Best solution I know is to set one or all of the layers to “alpha masking”, and play with the level of masking needed. Yes, you lose some of the soft edges and partial transparencies, but for bits like your red circle or those wood squares, it shouldn’t be too bad. (ETA - I only saw this because it was in the building and texturing forum...some of us check there first. Even if it doesn’t seem like a busy section it’s still worth putting it where the people interested in the topic will read it.)

Do it! Prims are made to be used

I’ve always thought that the snowy areas were the best in SL. But then, I was in my late teens when I first saw snow, and living in the sub tropics means SL is the only chance I get to enjoy it. Plus there’s some fun Linden-owned winter activities just down the road from my place.

The thermometer on my RL verandah measured 43C, yesterday so in response I decided to move my wagon to my snow block and totally re-landscape there. It was quite comforting to imagine snow.

The owl is from Jian - it was the sale item they put up this last weekend, and he's really lovely. I haven't tried the companion pet version yet. The wagon is something I'm working on at the moment - I made it as a reaction to wanting a Bellisarian trailer, but never being around when the new homes get released (plus, a gypsy wagon is something I've always wanted in RL).

Starting to decorate my little gypsy wagon - for a tiny home it has a surprising amount of space to fill

Been jealously looking at all the cute little Bellisarian trailer homes that I'll probably never have a chance to snag. So this last week I decided to mesh myself my own tiny house instead...Oh to have one of these in RL!

Wow - thanks for that, and you're right - doubling up on some of those texture islands makes so much sense...so obvious once the suggestion's been made. I've decided playing with UV mapping is like doing a jigsaw puzzle without the reference pic - it takes a lot of trial and error, but I'm sure it'll get easier with practice. As for how I did the texture - I struggle with texturing in Blender (still trying to work out cycles), so I tend to default to my tried and true method in Gimp, working with reference photos I took of my pet Lori. Anyway, now that you've given me the idea of stacking texture islands, I'm going to redo the UV map of a gypsy cart I'm working on - I think I can see how to get much sharper detail on the paintwork without using such big textures. Thanks for taking the time to make the suggestions!

Love this pic! Makes me wish I'd try more steampunky-fantasy types stuff, but for now I'll just admire your artistry.

Parked Peony in the store while I did some work...came back to her looking quite relaxed.

Well, I did mention to hubby that if he happened to get a recording of Lori’s various vocalisations, I might find a use for it...we’ll see. Menu scripting would be a challenge, and I won't derail a mesh thread with scripting questions. for now, on to my next mesh project!

Ah, but would the neighbours appreciate a squarking Lorikeet? Actually, my own Lori in RL is loud enough for me, do I need to introduce SL to the unique aural experience that is an over-excitable Lori? 😁 And as for sharing the wireframes and UVs - I found it useful. Already in talking about it and looking at it again, I’ve identified a few things I could do differently and other things I’d like to try. I might revisit this project when I’ve a few more skills under my belt.

Thanks and truth to tell, it’s always a bit of both...schools are odd places without the kids.

I call this one "Holidays are coming"...in fact, over my side of the world school's feeling a lot like this since the kids are off already and it's only staff rattling around in quiet buildings.

I love the idea of sharing our stuff, especially the chance to learn and get feedback - I know I've still got a long way to go in my learning journey. Today I'd like to share my low-poly lori (don't try to say that quickly too many times in a row!) A bit of background - this is my first real attempt at a non-geometric mesh...sculpting in blender is not something I'd attempted before. I wanted it to sit on a birdbath I'd made for my backyard, and I wanted it to be animated (though I can't rig yet, and I didn't want a tiny lorikeet to take 20+ LI for animesh). So I decided to work with alpha switching since I thought I might have the skills to script that. The pic below is what I came up with. I modelled the basic lori the way I learned to draw - starting with circles (or spheres in this case) and joining and shaping them, extruding the tail. The basic lori (body & legs) is a bit over 1000 tris (I think!). After unwrapping I made 4 copies of the body and rotated and moved sections for 4 different poses. Each body was given it's own face for the finished mesh (which would switch alpha faces), the legs were stationary and had their own face that wouldn't be alpah'd, and then finally I made the lowest LOD imposter the 6th face - 2 planes that would show a standing lori in profile. The final joined lori is a little over 4000 tris. I ended up using the same model for high, med & low LODs as being so small (under 40cm) he switched LODs very quickly. With a simple cube as physics, he came to about 0.8 LI. I was even more amazed when my first effort at scripting from scratch worked too! Below is Lori inworld in my garden...I'm now debating whether I should give him a squark too!

Thanks Nalates...it’s going to be a lot of trial & error for a while, I suspect... I was was a bit surprised when using the applier that it set the head back to non-BOM with the system head poking back through. So I had to go back the LeLutka hud to reactivate BOM. But then I couldn’t see my wrinkles. So now I have to go through and check - is it my windlight or settings? Did I not set up materials properly in my applier? Or does the LeLutka BOM button set the head to default materials? That’s a job for another day. 😏

Aww, thanks RaeLee!

Playing with BOM on Black Dragon...still trying to work out if I can get my materials wrinkles onto the LeLutka head, but loving being able to just use the system layers - it's a bit like old times, but with better graphics.

Going for a relaxing and peaceful glide through Bay City in a bubble, because Second Life. 😊 And then this happened, because Second Life 😝

I finally have proper internet!! No more piggy-backing off my phone's data allowance - Woot! \o/ And it looks like I have a lot to catch up on...you've all been busy! Anyway, in honour of now being able to waste time inworld, here's Peony examining the little animated lorikeet I made in blender while I couldn't spend time inworld.

Glad you worked out what was going wrong. Out of interest, what are the benefits to making the physics a separate object rather than using the simplified model as the mesh’s physics?