Peony Sweetwater

I only made it to 11 - I want to try that making it physical thing and watching it explode everywhere...sounds like fun. Now, if I got a point each time I lost a build called "Object" in my inventory, or that tiny "Object" of huge LI lost somewhere on my land...then my score would be in the hundreds...

Not sure, but you might be able to get a look like that with one of the LeLutka heads - maybe Simone? Hard to tell with the hair covering the jawline, but the lips put me in mind of the Simone. Might be a place to start, anyway.

Fantastic! Thanks for that Theresa - I must have missed the announcement...time to play with my system Avi and check that I've updated all my system layers to 1024 already.

Yep, image would help us to work out what's going wrong. Moving your question to the creation section of the forum would also help other mesh creators to find your thread to give advice.

Question: Are you making this texture into a tattoo for a system avatar? Or turning it into an applier for a mesh head? If you're making it into a tattoo for a system head, that will be the problem - at the moment, system avatars only use 512 textures for their faces & bodies, so your nice, sharp texture gets shrunk and pixalised on the system avatar. Mesh heads can use 1024 textures, so this could account for the difference you're seeing.

Just me and my alt chatting about being store owners in SL.

Thanks for reminding me of that - I'm in awe of the knowledge that some of you hold! I did read it the other day, but didn't properly take it in. It's only really started to make sense once I started playing with it in world. I think I'd assumed that it was for the size of the total link, not the individual mesh...or at least I'd hoped that was the case! Certainly it's obvious it changes far too quickly for small objects and far too slowly for big ones. Anyway, thanks for the info - it helped me to work out that joining groups of books for my latest bookshelf project will give better LOD distances.

For my birthday, Peony got a present...a little friend to match my own Lori.

So, in the past there has probably been a show off thread for our mesh creations...but I can't find it. So as a relative newbie to meshing, I thought I'd start a new one...but with a bit of a difference. Here's a chance to show off not only what you're working on, but also having a chance to reflect on how you've improved and what you've learned from your project about meshing in SL. I'm hoping that in learning what others have done to improve their meshing, it might also provide tips and thought starters as we seek to improve and optimise our meshes. Here's a recent example of what I've been working on, with two similar potted plants: My early one on the left never quite got the shape I wanted with the mess of planes, and it was tricky to get the plane LODs the way I wanted them. On the right I discovered simple ico-spheres as the base for the bush, and worked out how to bake AOs and play with normal maps for the pot. Had fun with both working out how best to make the LOD models. I'm still trying to work out why small objects break down to lower LODs so quickly. On the left, the pot & bush are one mesh, while on the right they are only linked meshes. The pot on the right jumps to the medium LOD a lot closer than the single joined mesh, meaning I've had to put a bit more detail into the medium level LOD than I would have had the pot been one mesh with the plant.

I think we all read and respond pretty quickly, often without taking the time to properly comprehend, and often read our own problems into others' comments...hence the wide variety of responses you end up with, even to fairly straightforward questions. For me, with bikinis, I pretty much gave up trying to find perfectly fitting straps - they either seemed to end up inches over my shoulders or sinking into them. I tend towards appliers when wearing strappy swimwear...not always perfect but a better compromise for me.

Unfortunately Beq is right...it is a current and very annoying limitation of mesh bodies. My understanding is though that there might be a coming solution to some of this. LL is working on "bakes on mesh" and from what I've read, along with the texture baking we will also be able to use the old alpha layers that the old system bodies use. Hopefully someone can confirm that I'm right in thinking that. It still won't solve issues with thin straps and badly mis-fitting clothing, but it will give a bit more flexibility when trying to fit mesh clothing.

I don't use a Catwa head much, so I'm probably not the best to advise. Ask for this to be moved to the "Your Avatar" section of the forum, as more Catwa users are likely to find this there. This mesh forum tends to be for creators. i know @Skell Dagger is a CSR for Catwa and he will often help people out on the forums.

Hey - that looks familiar...I'm pretty sure that's just up the road from my store. It's so gorgeously done it's making me work on my stores next door and try to make my little patch of earth more in keeping with the environs. The owner of Ciampi Village has done a marvelous job.

Good point - I haven't checked out the Eloh skins for years...worth following up on the license for anyone planning to use them.

Way back when I started trying to make skins, I played with the Eloh Elliot skin files.They taught me a lot about what it takes to put a decent skin together. The licences for use should be on the files, so you can check them and the CMFF skin templates out - links here: https://www.outworldz.com/download/ . Like the others said - don't rip or use others' work without permission. Btw - if you're using a mesh head, most mesh head makers will put out creator packs which will have the template you can start from. These days, I work with photos I've taken - may favourite, used on my forum av, was sourced from pics I took of my Mum. I also did a skin with my own skin as source. It does take a lot of editing, layering and work to turn it into something useable, but it is doable if you're competent in Gimp or photoshop.

Welp...accidentally deleted the little house from the sky platform. This is Peony smirking at my incompetence after cleaning up all the furniture floating around.

I don't know what happened, but Blender has suddenly started to make sense! After a number of aborted attempts to do little more than just import prim builds and turn them into mesh, I've suddenly managed to work out the Blender basics and start making a few things from scratch. They're only simple, but I'm pretty proud of my efforts, since usually I've thrown up my hands in disgust at the illogical Blender interface. Unexpectedly I'm especially enjoying playing with LOD models and working out the lowest LI and the best way to make them progressively simpler. Here's my building alt looking pretty proud of herself with my attempts - in order of creation: from my very first champagne flute, through the water goblet, teacup set, side table and finally my latest wooden chest. Now I'm only annoyed that my holidays are pretty much over and I'm not going to have the time to spend on making new things.

Playing with windlights, trying to see what I can do without any further editing. I can spend hours just playing with light.

Don't want to go out...

Been remaking my Bay City Boutique...loving how the lighting looks as the sun goes down. Now to get the Christmas tree up and the presents out

I think Peony must be a vampire...

Playing with flexis as part of an advent gift.

It's been a long day...but holidays have started for me! (Well, holidays from school - it just means I work harder in SL) Which reminds me...it's probably time to show my malt a little lovin' and get him a non-starter upgrade for xmas.

That look of satisfaction after a job well done...

What to make next...