Sylvia Wasp

A long time ago in SL, I helped someone make shoes with heel click sounds and there were several freely available audio files out there on the net or on MP. Everyone used pretty much the same sound and it was open source (although some tried to sell it). This is a pretty standard sound that is used in many games including SL, and is used in SL by multiple creators. Now I'm trying to make my own shoes and I can't find anything. All I can find is the original advice and scripts from Gwyneth Llewelyn on the topic, (thanks Gwyneth!) but the sound she uses in the examples is not the one I'm looking for. Can anyone point to a sound file (that's legal or free to use of course) for this purpose? It has to be full perm of course, but even though the sound I'm thinking of is open source, I would pay for a full perm version of a good heel click sound. any help appreciated, Sylvia

Hello, I'm a Lelutka Bento head user and I've seen that there is this amazing Bubblegum that you can get at the Catwa store that's Bento enabled. I can't try it because there is no demo, and I can't buy it, because it isn't on MP and I'm banned from the Catwa store and all their properties and holdings anyway (lol). I *can* get someone to purchase it for me and give it to me as a gift, but the big question is .... ... will it work as well for Lelutka as it does for Catwa? Has anyone with a Lelutka head tried this gum? Did it work? I'm looking for a quick review (also not available because it's not on MP). Any help appreciated, Sylvia

Thanks, I thought that was what they were. I've gotten into (mild) trouble before over that sort of thing though, people are prudes and SL has a lot of people who go bananas if they see your (cartoon) nakedness for some reason. It's kind of crazy that I could go to the beach topless in RL, but in SL I once got a three day suspension because someone I don't even know saw my boobies in a "G" area.

Thanks, you've been really helpful. I just wish "Macy's" would carry clothes for my body type (a RL problem as well, lol)

I'm getting more and more lost! esp. with people posting this: Does that mean what I think it means? Anyway, I think to sum up my questions and the answers ... I would say it seems that cheap/lazy mesh makers are flooding the market with lazy products (no names mentioned) and others who are better at mesh are being taken in by the Linden advice to make everything simple so people with awful computers can still see it. The bottom line is that I can't do anything about it, until quality mesh makers want to step up and make full perm meshes for Tonic. I'm not sure why they don't. It's a better, higher quality, body than most on the market. From what I've seen only Maitreya is (slightly) better.

Thanks, this sounds like a reasonable explanation. I have uploaded a few meshes myself for houses and stuff so I should have remembered that. It seems like because I am forced by my situation into using "cheap" (or cheaply done) full perm meshes, I'm always going to see this. I have to disagree about turning the LOD down though. I will do it as you suggested earlier for "preview" purposes, (to make sure my dress isn't an ugly pile of triangles, lol), that's great advice. But SL is simply too ugly and wonky at low LODs to be worth playing the whole game that way (IMO of course). I'm new to mesh, but I've been playing SL for ages and the one thing I know for certain is that when it comes to creation, it's a mistake to tailor stuff to the lowest common denominator or computer or to use anything but the highest settings your computer can stand for viewing. I think the Lindens copious advice to that effect is both biased and in error as well. "Good enough" is a moving target in SL and aiming at it only causes grief (again IMO of course).

So ... you're saying that when creating it, they have to provide a "model" for the four levels of detail, and in this case the person has just not provided one? Because the thing that confuses me about this skirt is that *sometimes* it looks just fine, and at all distances. I hesitated to post here about it for ages, because the behaviour is so random I was sure people would just tell me I was looking at it on an especially laggy day or had my settings wrong, etc. I know it *seems* like that might be the case, but I've tested it over and over (I bought this ages ago) and it seems somewhat random except that it does seem to get "stuck" in this mode at times. The reason I did so is that there are basically ZERO good full perm skirt meshes for my body type (Tonic) and the type I want to make clothes for, so I really, really wanted this to work, but sadly it just doesn't.

This would explain the "flat plane" effect I noticed, but not the skirt I guess. Also what I'm trying to get at is what the setting (during creation) is that causes this to happen as the effect is down to which creator you buy from not just the angular size. Like if I wear a top form one creator and a skirt from another, the top will turn flat at one distance and the skirt may not turn flat at all. If I instead put on a skirt from the same creator as the top, both go flat at the same angular size.

Thanks for your support, lol. Love that song! I wear tanlines because it's very difficult to find realistic skins (beyond head skins) so it's necessary to augment things in order to heighten the realism. Apologies to all for the 1.5 pixels of nipple that I just noticed also. I will attempt to edit it out.

Thanks Rolig, I don't quite understand everything you are saying here, but it's the first useful answer that addresses what I'm asking. When I said "can I change this" I meant that because it's full perm mesh and because in some cases I might even have the dae file, that I might be able to import it into blender, change a setting, and then re-upload. My LOD slider is always at the max as I said, so I guess you're advising me to set it lower so as to see the objects "at their worst" before I purchase them? At least I think that's what you're saying, lol. I think overall, and considering the price I paid, the skirt in the picture is just badly made. The thing that bothers me more is that some of the finest made mesh I have from some of the best makers seems to do that "other" thing where it turns into a flat plane at fairly short distances. I know that we are all essentially naked in SL anyway, but I don't see the value in making my clothes disappear even at fairly short distances. If you use the camera and zoom somewhere, not only are you naked when you come back, but the clothing won't return until you zoom inside your body, find that "plane" and edit it. I still don't really understand what is going on here. What are the settings exactly that creators are using in Blender or Maya that do this? Why would it even be done? still a bit mystified unfortunately.

OK, so I know it's verboten to say anything bad about creators here so I'm excising any information that could identify the creators involved but I have a serious question so I'm going to (carefully) ask it anyway. I'm trying to make clothes but I don't know blender so I buy full permission mesh and then try to texture it (an ongoing struggle, lol). I'm having trouble with some of the meshes and I don't know enough to know what it is. The picture kind of tells the whole story. What I've noticed is that some of the meshes seem to (at various sometimes random times), degrade into a very low detail version. All I can compare it to is back when we still used sculpties and they went through that tedious multi-level rezzing kind of thing where you had to wait for it to get more and more detailed. With the meshes though, it sometimes just refuses to go to the "most detailed" level at all. But then sometimes it does. The skirt in the picture (texture removed), often rezzes just fine, but then for days at a time it won't get any more detailed than you see in the picture. There seems to be no way to force it to rez properly and no way to tell when this will happen. Before anyone answers (hoping that they do), I will close off some obvious avenues: - I'm running a new-ish workstation class 8-core computer with dizzying computational power, dual graphics cards with 6GB of RAM each and 16GB of system RAM. - I run SL by itself, in a separate account on the computer so that there are no background processes etc. - I run with all the settings on Ultra, except I often turn off Ambient Occlusion, and I keep my particle count low because I don't actually care about particles - All my LOD sliders are at maximum (objects and sculpts at 4.00) except trees, because almost no one even uses Linden Trees anymore. - The picture was taken 1,000's of metres in the air, with no major scripts running and nothing that should slow things down. - The situation seems random, with the exception of the association with certain creators. Like, it's not that it happens under heavy load or whatever. On the negative side, despite it being one of the fastest computers you can buy, my computer *IS* a Mac, so the terrible, years old code-base that Second Life uses is an issue, but that issue doesn't as far as I know, affect mesh in any way. The chief downside of running a Mac seems to be just that Second Life graphics are about one third as fast as they would be on a similarly specced Windows box, and of course the dreaded "grass lag" is a big issue because of the alpha. For those that don't know, a grassy field will lag a Mac into the ground most of the time. OK ... So what I suspect is that the creator of this mesh (and this happens with a couple of other creators as well) has somehow "built-in" to the mesh a sort of LOD that can't be changed by the user. Does that make *any* sense? I've noticed that certain creators mesh will also disappear completely, or change back into a simple 2D plane, when you back away from them. This always happens at the same viewing distance, but that distance *differs* from creator to creator. Like creator A's stuff will vanish from your body if you zoom out to distance X, but creator B's stuff won't do that unless you zoom out TWICE as far. This seems very consistent from creator to creator. Is it possible for the creator to "build in" this sort of thing when making the mesh and is it possible for me, the owner of the mesh to alter it? thanks for any help, Sylvia

I have some really beautiful long mesh hair from eXxEsS that has a "breeze effect." It has a very subtle movement, but it does move a bit and I've never noticed any alpha problems.

Preaching to the choir, lol. I have even found makers that helpfully include a "large breasted" size and a "small breasted" size, but even the small breasted one still floats a half foot above my chest. And it's not like I'm *that* flat. I try to make myself look like RL which is just a standard B cup.

Coincidentally, this thread made me go out hair shopping again and I ran into Stealthic. I bought the demos for these exact hairs! :-) Unfortunately, none of them fit and they are all rigged, so no joy there. I understand why mesh hair is rigged, but here's a CLASSIC example of a sale that will never happen simply because the creators don't understand that people might not all have the same head. These are well made, expensive hairs and I would have bought two or three items at the store, but I can't, because they don't fit, and can't be re-sized. Even though re-sizing scripts are common and easy to install. I will never understand why creators don't want to allow us to re-size the hair and instead insist on us changing our heads to suit their hair. Not to criticize Stealthic or come down too hard on them because their hair is beautiful and this is very common across the board, but to me, creators are literally throwing away potential sales when they do this. Edit: *some* of the hairs have resizing scripts in them depending on which ones, so Stealthic is doing it right in some cases. In the case of these two hairs in particular ... Vivacity can be resized with a script but Erratic seemingly cannot.

I tend to agree. I hung onto mine for many years, but in many ways SL is an exercise in compromises. Attached is a picture of pre-mesh me with my "Cutie" hair from LAQ which is absolutely the best hair I've ever had in SL, but again is apparently so unpopular that it's long been off the market. It was unpopular and impossible to get long before mesh hair even arrived. There is nothing like a flexi skirt also. Mesh skirts, except for the tight ones, are just too stiff for me to even bother with. Not even close to realistic. I have some long hair in mesh that has a "breeze effect" that isn't as dramatic, but works (sort of) although long mesh hair is always a problem because even rigged, it's still stiff looking and as you say, not realistic. I have some pixie cuts in mesh that I end up wearing a lot because they look more realistic than most. Mesh hair is also able to use materials which ups the realism factor a bit, despite the stiffness. What I'd probably be satisfied with (if there's anyone out there that wants to make it for me, lol), is something like that Macaron hair above, but less messy, smoother, more realistic textures, and using materials and "breeze effect." A tall order I know (and apparently unpopular enough that no one has made it yet).

Interesting. Thanks for the replies. I use Firestorm so I don't have this picker/viewer thingie I guess. I did check the library before I posted, but there was nothing with that name, I guess I'll check again. I don't see the "mixed race female hair" in that lineup either but it is a bit dark. I will have to get a picture next time. The Macaron from rezology is one I've been using as you see in my icon but I'd still like more options. There may not be a solution at all, I just find it odd that most of my friends in RL have this sort of hair style but that you rarely see it in SL.

hello ... strange question perhaps, but here goes ... Before mesh hair, and for years and years I had flexi hair, ("Cutie" by LAQ), that was very close to my RL hair. It was a shoulder length, basic straight cut like millions of women out there have in RL. I kept it for so long because there seems to be almost no normal, realistic, shoulder length hair in SL. Strangely, there isn't even a category for it in SL Marketplace, there is just short and long. Especially since I switched to mesh everything (and because people will laugh at you now if you wear flexi hair), I haven't found hardly any shoulder length hair. And I've really looked. I've been to most of the big hair vendors and searched the entire store systematically and not found anything. Then the other day I saw a girl wearing "mixed race female hair" which is pretty basic but at least it's a realistic, plain, shoulder length hair cut. It turns out this is Linden hair for n00bs? Does anyone know where I can get this hair? Better yet, does anyone know a quality hair maker that makes realistic, plain, shoulder length, mesh hair? The closest I've found is "Macron" by rezology.

Yeah, this is my beef with bento mesh heads in general. They are responsive to the sliders, but it's pretty clear that the makers want us to leave the sliders alone. Like, if I adjust my chin the way I like it then my teeth are sticking through my lips. Or if I make the eyes realistically close to the surface of the skin, then bento gestures like "roll eyes" make my eyes poke through as well. And none of them (so far) let you adjust for body fat, you have to be close to zero body fat to make any of the bento heads fit. I think what the makers are telling us is that you should pick the head that looks the most like you want to look, because there is very little you can do with the sliders. Unfortunately for me, almost all bento heads look like bitchy models, lol. I like to look pretty, but I don't want to look like a runway model. I want to look like myself. I sometimes miss my old school SL smile too. The ones for bento make you look insane most of the time. Anyway, here is a shot of my "hacked" eyes for the thread. Just standard mesh eyes, not-rigged, added my own crappy texture that I took all of ten minutes with, lol. So, not great, but not bad considering.

Those look really very good. I will have to try a demo. I understand the purpose of the shading on the eyeball, it makes the eye "sit" in the socket more realistically, but when the eyes move, the shading just looks dumb for the most part. Possibly Lelutka just overdoes the effect. I think a part of my problem is that while a lot of folks seem to be fine with controlling (actually freezing) their eye movements, I'm not interested in that at all as my whole purpose in making my avatar is to make it as realistic as possible. I like the default SL eye movement and I like to be able to make my avatar look at stuff and have expressive eyes etc.

I agree about the rigging. The rigged eyes sit too far back in the head for my liking. I am currently using some old mesh eyes with my own textures applied and they work fine. Rigged items only work well when everyone has the same size and shaped head, and I don't see much point in doing that. Lelutka also has 9 different sizes of teeth, (which is great), but only the very smallest ones fit the shape of my head.

Thanks, but making my eyes always stare straight ahead isn't really a solution. I don't want to look like a zombie. I want my eyes to follow my focus like normal.

Okay ... found an answer. The settings are in Firestorm > Preferences > Move & View (duh, lol).

Thanks for the answers. I will check again for that crouch button. In answer to Marigold's question, I'm asking here because the Firestorm user group is notoriously populated by dismissive bullies of course, lol.

Hello, Apologies if this is in the wrong forum, I looked for a while and couldn't find anything specific to Firestorm. This is also a non-technical question, so don't give me grief for my phrasing, and no lectures from the boys in the room about how I'm doing everything wrong ... ok? :-) Okay, so I'm on a Mac and it used to be that pressing the Fn + Up would make me do a handstand, and pressing the Fn + Dwn would make me crouch. Super handy! Since I started using the Firestorm built in AO last year, both of those functions are gone, but I don't see anywhere in the AO interface where I can trigger a crouch or a handstand, (probably because FN+Dwn now equals "fly"). I can do without the handstands, but crouching is hard to leave in the past. Is there nowhere in the Firestorm AO where I can click a button to crouch? A keyboard shortcut?

Thanks Chase I will totally check it out. I'm currently using some old mesh eyes that I put my own texture on, but I'm sure there are others who've done better work on this, lol.