Madeliefste Oh

1 and 4: I like to cooperate in SL. In my current brand we are with group of 3 people: two of us are sculptor/texturemaker and we have a scripter. My collegue sculptor does animations as well. So we have all skills in the house we need for our products. My collegue and I both do our own products, most of the time. Only now and then we cooperate on the same product together or with the three of us. I always have more ideas then hands to make then and my collegue likes to get ideas for what he can make. We now and then discuss the things we are working on. We both are critical and appreciate the critical eye and honesty of the other, it's helps to make better products. So most of the time the cooperation often doesn't exist of working together, but more of being involved with each others work. We avoid to use work from others. For our business (full perms items) it is important that we can guarantee our customers that we are the legit copyright holders. Sometimes for little parts in textures we use pictures or stamps or such that are donated to the public domain or we ask permission from the original creator to allow us to use his work in our SL product. But that is seldom, most is home made. The 'dirty work' of running the business is done by me. I do the sales strategy, the promotion, I own the land and the in world shop, I'm the marketplace merchant, I make plans for the business and discuss them with my partners. Customer service is done by all three of us. Each does the support for his own work, cause you simple know your own work the best. Now and then, when a customer has an unusual issue we ask each other advise on how to deal with it. 2: When we launch new products we send out two notices. One is to the people who have subscribed for our update group, the other is to a SL media network. We don't advertise in world. (The only exception is when we are approached to sponsor a charity event, and we agree to do so. Advertisement is part of the sponsor deal in most cases.) Sometimes we advertise on the SLM, sometimes we don't. Apart from that we take advantage of all free publicity we can get. 3: My sculpty/texture partner and I both make our own product pictures.For product images we have developped a template for the presentation as brand. We both use the brand template as base for the product pics. Nice thread.

Photoshop. Go to blending options, choose Outer Glow.

I didn't even know RC LeTigre is a server. I thought is was the name of a group of sims. In my mind it had nothing do with me, cause I'm on a 'normal mainland sim'. But okay, I get it now... back to the sandbox.

I have used the Mesh project viewer for weeks to upload models to Agni. And now suddenly the option 'Upload model' is not available anymore. When I go to Aditi the option is still there. But at Agni it just had dissappeared. The version I use is: 2.8.1.39677 What can I do to get the 'upload model' option back again? Edit: I can upload in the mesh sandboxes. But for some time I could upload on my own land as well (mainland). That is just seems not possible anymore.

I'm working with C4D as well. You can make what you want, then export the file as a collada file and upload it to SL. You might want to check the Mesh Forum for more info. There is a lot to discover.

My sales were average. In general I sell about 80% on the Marketplace and 20% in world. Yesterday it was about 60% on Marketplace and 40% in world. But those days happens now and then. Sometimes there are big shoppers that buy about half of the available merchandise in the store, those customers have influence on the percentage of sales coming from the main store.

Sometimes it happens to people that their account is put on hold by LL when LL thinks there is something suspecious going on. In many cases I have heard of the account is available again within a week or two, when the holder of the account was not involved in anything bad. So even when you are always playing by the rules and never do anything against TOS your account can be put on hold. Now my question is: what will happen to your merchandise that is delivered by DD when your account is put on hold? I suppose it is not possible to sell anything anymore in the marketplace. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Would it be possible to have a new permission option called 'user license'? People still seem to think that it is allowed to resell full permission items as full permission items, despite the terms of use of the original creator state different. Marking the item not as a 'full perms' item, but as a 'user licensed' item might help to avoid this confusion.

Vincent Nacon wrote: Madeliefste Oh wrote: The templates from Chip Midnight and Robin Wood are in SL the standards on which skins and clothes are designed. I'm not aware of any other 'standards', but I would like to hear from you which standards you mean. I think we might be confused between few things about "standards". As you should know, Chip and Robin didn't create UV mapping for SL's avatar, as it can't be changed. Linden Lab created the UV map, however... wouldn't call it as standard for that matter either. They made it simple and dumbed down for anyone to create texture for clothes. They left behind a too much voids that could have been used; like independent arms and foot. But despite your problems with the UV mapping of the SL avatar, the largest branche of the virtual goods market in SL is based on these maps. It might not be a standard in 3D design, but it is a standard in SL. Following this 'bad example' that LL has set, I want to make it simple to create textures for my meshes.

ralph Alderton wrote: Why should the back of the fan occupy the same size area on the UV ? Because every pixel counts when you are making objects for realtime streaming worlds. The back and front need to be the same size otherwise the back will be a different resolution to the front. The back will have less pixels and won't look as good as the front. Also it makes matching up the front and back seems more difficult for your customers if the back and the front don't share the same amount of pixels on the UV map, for symetrical objects You should also only be supplying a maximum 512x512 UV map for an object of this size, so every pixel really does count. You don't want the back to look fuzzier than the front I don't agree with you. In this design the front site is much more important then the back site. A fan is worn with the front site to be seen by the world, the backsite might be shown now and then when the avatar moves with the fan, but much less then the front.So because every pixels counts, I like the best quality to be on the front site, and not loose valuabe pixels for use at the back that will get a lot less attention. And also when the fan is not used as an avatar attachment but as a decoration it is most likely that the fan will hang against a wall,showing the front, not the back. Making the front and backsides match is not needed in this design. At the sides the paper is covered by the sticks, so a matching seams is not needed there. Since the object is rather flat, you cannot look at the front and the back site at the same time anyway, so nobody is able to see if the seams match at the top and the bottum. While we're at it, your sticks have not been unwrapped they are just planar mapped, straight through right now. The texture would drag down the sides. you need to unwrap the sticks, so each side of the stick is available for texture mapping The sticks are very thin at the sides, and the object won't be rezzed at a very large size, so this planar mapping is not a real problem either in my opinion. You only will see the sides when you cam really close with the camera. Who will be interested to zoom in at the sides of sticks, when the fan paper is the eye catcher in the design?

The templates from Chip Midnight and Robin Wood are in SL the standards on which skins and clothes are designed. I'm not aware of any other 'standards', but I would like to hear from you which standards you mean.

ralph Alderton wrote: The back and front UV's for the fan should be the same size - right now the back is smaller Why? ralph Alderton wrote: As Vincent suggests the sticks should be stacked and there are ALSO way too many vertical verts and edges in the sticks. As there are 10 sticks that's a whole bunch of unecessary polygons Also the knob looks seriously dense with verts and edges as it appears white in the UV - more optimisation needed Yes, you are right. This is not a final model I will put for sale, because the model is still too prim heavy. The final model uses less polygons and has a prim count of 3. But this is what I just had for hand to show people who don't know anything about mesh or texturing mesh how a UV map might look.

Vincent Nacon wrote: Not trying to be mean or attacking you but.... your UV mapping and texture size is making me cringes. You really should think about using up all of the unused spaces in a texture. and simpfity texture's DPI to the least instead of most. For a example, line up all of the wooden sticks straight and stack them next to each others. Flatten and straighten out the fin-paper into rectangle to add more pixels into the area for more details. This way you can take up about 95% of the UV's area instead. If you're worried about the dissorten of the image for the fin, you could apply Photoshop's spherize dissort or polar coord. filter to rectangle. On other hand, if you're thinking about your customers and make it easy for them to texture their own? While it's a nice idea, but it scream a big no-no for me. Full perm is even worst for the markut wiet and your own sales. Thanks for your feed back. I see comments from people with a critical eye more as a present then as an attack. When it comes to efficiency of using texture space, you are right. But on the other hand skin- and fashion artists work with non effecient used texture space for years already. So it is a kind of format the community is used to. But with the sticks you have a point. It would even make it more easy to apply a wood texture to them when all sticks are lined up next to each other.

Thanks all for your replies. I understand it now.

Gaia Clary wrote:...what about naming them "texture faces" ? Or "texture areas"...

For texturing I like to work on a big canvas, because you can always shrink back in size without loosing quality. Now I made a UV Map on a 2048 x 2048 canvas. When I upload the image to SL as a 1024 x 1024 texture the texture fits perfect on the mesh (the fan in the back). But now when I shrink to size back to 512 x 512 the UV map doesn't fit the mesh anymore (the fan in the front), but it includes the outline of the UVmap. Is this a bug? Or what is happening here?

What is the event?

So you would need a whole bunch of licenses, Pamela. Permission to make derivals of the mesh its self. And since LL does not allow you to upload a mesh model when you are not the IP right holder, you will need a permission from the original creator to allow you to upload your version of the original. Would it bother you when one of the conditions for the upload permission would be credits. For example a line in your productdescription or in a attached notecard that says 'This piece of furniture was modeled after the orginal 'lounge-chair' by cYo'?

Yeah, the more I think about it, the better I like the idea. It would also set a kind of bottum price or virtual goods. Take the example of the fan. A fashion designer want to add the fan to her design, and she also has the idea to put in some animations. The bottum price of her design would always be the derival amount that is paid to the creator of the fan and the creator of the animations. Upto that bottum price she can add the value of her own work and come to a final price for the end user.

Very well done, Gaia. It's about time that someone models you a statue for being the teacher queen of SL 3D.

Parrish Ashbourne wrote: I started SL about 4 years ago with zero 3D build, scripting, animation, or marketing experience. I managed to learn enough in SL on my own, to get a RL full time 3D building job out side of SL. If I hadn't had been able to buy full perm building components to get started I would have had a very hard time getting to where I'm at today. Congratulations. That's one of the advantage of 'playing' SL, it gives you the possibility to learn a lot of skills, it's learning in the playfull way. Like you I had no experience with 3D at all when I first came to SL. I became interested in it because sculpties became possibility in SL. First as a buyer, I bought collars and sleeves for blouses, pockets to put on pants and those kind of things. Because I often found them so hard to texture I became interested in 3D, as a tool to help me texturing them. And there started a new love that didn't end till today. For me it is the same as for you: If I hadn't been able to buy full perms sculpties I probably would have never developped the interest in 3D. But also people like Domino and Gaia have contributed to my development as 3D creator. They are important because they help me to understand Blender and to 'translate' it for SL. And some people on the content creation forums who are always helping to answer your questions. I think we more or less all own credits to other SL residents, whether it is to people who share their knowledge about marketing, who make their scripts available and even to those who learned you as a newbie how to fit your shoes. We do not all love the same things. I for example have tried scripting for a blue monday, but it's nothing for me. I can understand that there are people who love to script, but I cannot feel a bit of this love myself, nothing of it inspires me. So when I have an idea that needs a script I buy one or I seek cooperation with a scripter to realise the idea together. When I think an animation would put extra value to a product, I buy one or seek cooperation with an animator. This new development of mesh might be a good stimulation for others to give it a try to work with 3D. Some will love it and become mesh masters by time and some will just not have a click with 3D, like I have no click with scripting. And within a few years somebody who has always been a furniture designer in SL might say: "I never had any experience with 3D but then Linden Lab came with mesh. And now I work for Pixar." But for the people who just don't have the click with 3D or find the learning route to stiff or rather spend their time on the form of creation they really love, it just want to offer a possibility to work with it with their own talents.

Thanks for the info, Daniel Rage Riptide wrote: Where there is a problem, there will be found a solution. Someone will no doubt make a site especially for transfering mesh products wholesale. i.e. Full permissons. A mesh warehouse does not have to sell only to SL. Like Turbosquid and many others, they can sell to anyone and as such make money by taking a cut of sales. On Turbosquid, a decent car is about $100... but would SL residents pay that much for the same thing which would be optimised for SL, I think it's worth more with the extra work needed to make a renderable mesh into a game object but $100? When you are a mesh maker and you have no clients and no idea how to market your products a site like Turbosquid is good for you. They bring you the clients you are not able to get on your own, and for that you pay them a percentage of your sales. But why should I pay this percentage when I'm the one who brings in my own clients for my models? I rather like the idea to have my own e-commerce site where as an adittional service my SL customers can by the orginals. (At least if I decide to sell those originals, I'm still not sure about this). The other advantage of your own site in stead if using Turbosquid is that I could offer the possibility to pay in Linden dollars, which Turbosquid cannot do ofcourse.

Yes, that would be a fair system that rewards all original creators that contribute to an end product. It would also be good to stimulate the join of several talents combined in the end product. I vote for it. The only minus is, we don't have such a system. And you know how hard it is to convice LL about good ideas.

It is just as unsustainable as the market of full perms textures. People who make their own textures have to compete with builders who buy full perms packages and 'just slap them on builds'. But you are not concerned about full perms textures. Do they not devalue virtual goods? And prims? You don't even have to buy them... they are freely available for everybody, full perms and all. Do they also devalue virtual goods?