Madelaine McMasters

Jerilynn, can you show us an image of your avatar wearing the tattoo, so we can better understand what you are describing? If the tattoo is in a sensitive area, make a shirt or pants using the same texture and wear it over some undies. Come back to your question here and Option->edit it to include the image. ETA: Okay, based on what you've shown, I'd say you are witnessing the inherent limits of the 512x512 resolution of avatar textures. Here's an example of one of my skins, (which I do at 2048x2048 before scaling down to 512x512), covering about the same area as your tattoo shot. You can clearly see the pixelization, even though there's less contrast in my texture than in yours. You could try a little blurring in your original file (duplicate the layer before blurring, so you have your original cat) to soften the edges, but that will come at the expense of less distinct lines. And here's a snapshot of a store bought vest and a home built prim necktie that shows the avatar's pixelation compared to the very high resolution of a repeated texture. Unfortunately, the clothing layer stuff is stuck at 512x512. The dandelions on the tie are 256 pixels across. From nipple to nipple on the SL avatar (about the width of the snapshot) is just over 128 pixels.

Hiya Deamona, I'm not sure I'm following you, but it sounds like your avatar is correctly playing all self-relative parts of the animation (like arm going up/down, etc) but not moving with respect to the ground (like moving in a circle around some central point). This motion must be captured in the animation, so if your Daz model (I'm not familiar with that tool) doesn't skip in a circle, your avatar won't either. The reference point for the SL avatar is the hip. In QAvimator, the tool I use, if I want the avatar to take a step forward, I must first create all the joint movements that make one step cycle, then I go back and move the hip forward in each frame by an amount that matches the stride I've animated. If you have uploaded an animation from some online source, like Carnegie Mellon's CMU graphics lab, it's possible that the hip motion either got lost in translation, or wasn't included. It'll be up to you to get back or add it in. With respect to synchronizing two animations, it's just as Rolig says. In addition to having one of the pose balls talk to the other to synchronize movement, you might want to have the script also listen for chat on some channel, so that either/any person involved in the synchronized animation can issue a restart if their viewer gets out of whack. I have couples dance balls that take a "/1 sync" command to resync and do not talk to each other. Long ago I built a dance floor for my home that included a script to say "sync" on channel one every minute so that all dance balls on the floor would periodically be forced back into alignment. Good luck!

Tex, that's adorable! I love watching Adelaide's fingers fly out to make the firework as she shushes Dad, and her eyes as she imagines the fireworks. And Pop is a gem as he plays along. This reminds me of "launching missiles" with my Dad. The two of us would share the sound effects of a rocket launch. He would do the starting roar and ascent (he had a low, booming voice), then I would to the whistle (or try) as it started falling to earth. Then he would to the final poof at the bottom, but I never knew when it was coming. It was a play on Wile E. Coyote falling off the cliff and I would absolutely vibrate with excitement while waiting for the impact. Thanks for posting this!!!

Okay, presuming all of your hair textures are exactly the same size and look, differing only by the tint, you should be able to warp one of the textures while recording it as an "Action". Then you'll replay that action on the other textures to achieve the same warping. You'll have to learn how to record and play actions, but you may find that worthwhile if you're going to do production work. Google "photoshop actions tutorial" and be prepared for a tsunami!

You're welcome, though you should make sure I've actually helped you before thanking me! ;-)

Oops, I tried it myself and see that other transforms work on multiple layers, but not warp. Here's a link to a page that discusses potential methods... http://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/2012/02/ps-warping-multiple-layers-as-one.html Good luck!

valerie Inshan wrote: I just adore squirrels! They are fun to watch at this time of year. They're going nuts burying nuts! You probably don't want to hear this, but I steal walnuts away from them. They'll bury 'em in my flower pots and I take them out and plant them in the woods. I have dozens of walnut seedlings out there, all courtesy of my squirrels.

If the hair textures are all vertical, like the one shown, can you just pull them all into one file as different layers, lock them together and warp them all at the same time?

Hi Olive, I'm not sure you'll ever get a handmade alpha to line up with a photographic hair texture. I use Photoshop and would try the "Warp" tool to bend the hair texture to follow the existing alpha, but I don't know if you'll get good results, as hairs in your photograph don't all align with each other. The top hair in the image you posted looks like it was built entirely in the graphics program, perhaps by painting vertical strands of hair in different shades, perhaps thinning them in areas, then warping the final image. That would warp the alpha along with the hair texture.

valerie Inshan wrote: Morning hugs Hippie! Have a wonderful day too! Since Maddy loves Halloween so much, she might want to adopt this pumpkin and the puppy that comes with it! Good morning Val, Hippie and Kids!!! Oooh, I'll add her to my collection. I have a squirrel from a few years ago. He ate a hole in one of my punkins to get at the seeds. When he turned around to look at me, his tail was still poking out of the hole, over his head. I named him Donald, after Mr. Trump...

Hippie Bowman wrote: Here are some pictures I took the other day in Bay City. Peace! Thanks for the wallet, Hippie!... ..and the watch! ;-)

Hi Lilith, Are you wearing any tattoos already? You are allowed a maximum of five textures on each of the clothing layers. Perhaps you've got lipstick, eyeliner, etc and you've filled up all five slots? If so, try removing something from the tattoo layer and see if "Add" becomes available. If that turns out to be the problem (I'm only guessing), you might move one or more of your tattoo layer things to an undie layer. ETA: If you're still having problems, select "Options" on the right side of your question here and edit it with additional information. That'll allow us to keep everything in one place and won't push other's questions off the front page. Good luck!

valerie Inshan wrote: Good morning Hippie and Maddy! Say, isn't it a bit early for pumpkins? 6 weeks to go before Halloween, geez Maddy, you are early! Hugs you kids! Halloween is my favorite holiday. It can't come soon enough, or stay long enough.

Amethyst Jetaime wrote: It is fun to share movies with friends and have a movie party occasionally, particularly with the campy ones that provide fodder for jokes and kidding around. It sure is. During my college years, there was a TV show called "Mad Movies" done by the comedy troupe "L.A. Connection". They recut and redubbed classic movies and they were hilarious. After that, we'd do our own, turning off the sound. My friend's takes on the commercials were often the best. When out dining with a friend somewhere, I'd make up dialog for couples having conversations in public nearby, but out of earshot. It was great fun to imagine what they were talking about just by watching. Czari, if you figure out this theater thing, invite us over for a Mad Movie night!

Good morning, Hippie! It's Monday!!!!!!!! Time to go punkin pickin'...

You'd not be putting php inside MySQL, as entries in a database are data, not code that executes. You'd be putting php directly on your web server and it would connect to a database hosted there as well, responding to HTTP requests from LSL scripts in SL (as Rolig pointed you to) and executing queries into your database as a result. Most web hosting services provide bundled PHP/MySQL services. If you have a web server out there on the internet somewhere, the hosting provider will have support documents explaining their services and how to get started. If the database is hosted on your personal computer, you'll have to obtain a static IP address or register your computer through a service such as DynDNS to nail it down in a stable location that your LSL scripts can find. You'll have to dig through the support site for your computer (MS, Apple, Ubuntu, etc) for tutorials. If you haven't accessed a database via PHP scripts on a web server before, I think you've got a fair amount of work ahead of you, Gunner. It's been years since I've done it, it was fun, I learned a lot, but it took me quite a bit of time. Good luck!

Rolig Loon wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: [ .... ] And finally, which is worse, to be mediocre at something you love, or the best there is at something you hate? That's an excellent point. The saddest comment I think I ever heard from the parent of a freshman was from a Dad who told me candidly, "I woke up on my 45th birthday and asked myself, 'Why did I ever decide to become an accountant?' I don't want my son to be 45 before he asks himself the same question." Yep, it is happiness we're all pursuing after all! Getting back to your educational experience, which sounds familiar to me. My 2nd mom (the neighbor, lived next to us for 62 years) was a Kindergarten teacher. She could tell which kids were "going places" by that age. But she stops short of saying those kids were smarter. She says they were "brighter". I could spend pages describing the difference, and I'd probably be wrong.

I think it's a mix of aptitude, attitude and fortitude. The IQ bell curve puts 95% of us between 70 and 130, with the top of the curve at 100. A plot of household income for the US puts 95% of the population between about $5K and $200K/yr, with the top of the curve at $15-20K. A chart of happiness vs. income shows little correlation. So IQ ain't driving the whole show. I've met smart people who won't get off their butts, poorly educated people who work them off, people who hate what they do, and it shows, people who love what they do, and it shows. I don't tell people my IQ because I'm afraid they'll ask me why I wasted it. I don't know if I have an aptitude for engineering because I was raised by an engineer or because I was raised from an engineer. Or was it that I was raised by two parents who loved to play, and that it's through play that we learn adaptibility? In our family, if someone asks you to try something new, you say "okay!". I value attitude and fortitude over aptitude, as the latter seems more consistent, just as in the IQ curve. But intelligence isn't a homogenous thing and as both you and Chosen have noted, it's important to have some sense of your capabilities, but not too much. Similarly, it's important to know what you love, but not too much. And finally, which is worse, to be mediocre at something you love, or the best there is at something you hate?

Saraya Starr wrote: I am slowly learning how to use that scary thing called Photo Shop. Slowly, Saraya? Your ability to erase the evidence of your half-blind justice suggests you're more than a little acquainted with Photoshop. Thankfully, I've an equal ability to hack into photo libraries to extract the originals. Now everybody will know that I'm not the only femme nefarious in the forums...

I'll be watching concurrency for the same reason, though I expect most residents are not aware of the recent change to the TOS, even though they've accepted it.

Hiya Mystic, There is no e-mail in Second Life. There is the internal messaging system that you use to chat privately with other residents. When you are in-world, those messages come directly to you, real-time, in the viewer. If you log out and someone sends you an IM, it will be queued until you log-in again, at which time you'll receive it in the viewer. If you want to see these messsages while you are offline, you can have them forwarded to your existing external e-mail address. To do this, log-in to your SL web dashboard, click on "Contact Information" and check "I would like to receive offline IMs via Email". You can also communicate with others via your feed, which you'll find by logging into my.secondlife.com. That system can also notify you of messages there by sending ticklers to your e-mail address. You'll find those controls under the "Notifications" tab of the "Settings" page.

Hi Novelas, There may be an AO out there with a perfectly still animation, but I've not seen one. If you are trying to freeze your avatar for taking snapshots, perhaps because the eyes keep following the camera, here's how to do it... Notice that you can freeze your avatar in the middle of any animation, so if you are fast on the draw, you can freeze yourself mid-dance, mid-fall, mid-jump, etc. Although you will see the selected attachment highlighted on your screen, it will not show up that way in the snapshot. Good luck!

Hi Agent, Make sure you are exporting the sound as 16-bit WAV at 44.1KHz. I imagine you are already doing that. The last step before exporting should to select the entire clip, then pick "Normalize" from the Effect menu. Make sure "Remove any DC offset" is checked and "Normalize maximum amplitude to:" checked, and set to somewhere between zero and -1.0dB. This will scale your entire clip so that the loudest sound is just below clipping. That said, I can't explain why your clips sound fine when played in Media Player, but not in SL. If Rolig's and my suggestions don't help, come back and edit your question (Using the Options pulldown on the right) so we can continue working on it all in one place without pushing other people's questions off the front page. Good luck!

Rolig Loon wrote: Yes, if you have rezzed objects that are not set to the same group as the sim, they will be returned if you then activate autoreturn. It's late to do anything about it now, but remember for the future to never use autoreturn if you even suspect that you have items that are not set in the group. Take Maddy's advice about locating coalesced objects in your inventory. Coalesced objects are a handy feature, but they can be tricky to deal with. You may also want to read here to be sure that you understand the concept. A couple of things that are not usually well-understood: 1. it is wise to open your Build/Edit tool (CTRL + 3) before you rez any coalesced object. That's because the parts of a coalesced object are not linked --- they are simply packaged together in inventory. Once you rez the object, the parts will be independent again unless they are rezzed while your Build/Edit tool is active. While you have total control of the object, you can move it around, see any parts that may have rezzed underground or on your neighbor's parcel, and adjust. 2. Especially if you do not know how big the coalesced object is, be careful to rez it as close to the middle of your parcel as you can, so that it does not lap onto someone else's land. Even better, rez it on a sky platform in the middle of your land. Finally, if you use Firestorm's "Restore to Previous Position" function, as Maddy suggests, you should know that it will not work unless you are on the sim where the objects are supposed to rez. Even then, the function will fail unless you have permission to rez objects at the extreme SW corner of the sim (<0.0,0.0,0.0>). That's because the "Restore to Previous Position" function rezzes things at that spot and then moves them to their final position. You need to have permission to rez there and that parcel cannot be too full to handle your prims. Oooh, that's a bunch of stuff I either didn't know, or didn't think about. Thanks Rolig!