Medhue Simoni

Elinah Iredell wrote: Thanks for your review of Blender. The fact that it can be free and better then the extremely expensive competition is impressive to me, but do they really need to make it so confusing? Even you an expert in your field found the interface difficult at first. Is there anything about Blender that can be improved in the future ? Are there things you would like to see added or changed about it to make it even better? First, I'm not an expert. I'm just like everyone else here, learning. At best, I can say I make a living doing this, and I have almost touched every feature in Blender. It's confusing because it does alot, and you need more time with it. In many ways, it's less confusing than SL. The added effort to get used to Blender's right and left click also make it worst. It really did frustrate me to no end, and then always moving the 3D cursor, which I didn't even know what it was for. After deciding that I would not fight Blender's right left click setup, and I embraced it, I started to see the genius of it all, and how the 3D cursor can become your best friend. Outside of clicking, the Blender UI is pretty logical, and totally customizable. The standard layouts for each task, like UV unwrapping, or Animation, are pretty good, but you can make them how you want them. I have my own layouts for both those, cause I tend to have to deal with textures alot, and a different layout makes it faster for me. That's the other big reason for much of the confusion, which is speed. Yeah, Blender could just have 1 way to rotate a bone, but that is likely not going to be the faster way for most. There are literally, 6 or more ways to rotate a bone, just off the top of my head, and the inherent Blender way, is easily the fastest. Even with modeling. You use those exact same shortcuts, like r+x-90, or s+z+0, in both animation, modeling, or any other task. That's when you really become a Blenderhead, when you learn all the shortcuts. I even connect my most used but obscure shortcuts on the extra buttons on my mouse. You know, expecially in the case of LL, I usually have all kinds of gripes and advice on how to improve things, but I really don't, in the case of Blender. Maybe, applying textures could be easier, or less confusing, but other than that, I can't really say much. I also hear alot about what the Blender devs are working on, and it's all good with me. Every single version just seems to get better and better. I do wish that Blender had a direct, already set up, 2 kinect sensor tracking for animations, so I don't have to use other mocap systems, but my workflow right now is pretty easy. Some kind of inherent 3D sensor setup would me nice tho, and some simple face tracking system for mocap facial animations, which I'm playing around with now. It would be nice to have something easy tho, like you just capture your video camera and Blender just tracks the whole shape of your mouth and other features to apply to a character.

Nalates Urriah wrote: And Medhue gives Blender lessons in SL via Builder's Brewery. He does a very good job. It is well worth your time to attend those classes. Doing so would get you most of the basics and some advanced stuff within a single month. I do? Dang, I got so much going on, I don't even remember doing those. I think you must be talking about someone else. If I was doing Blender lessons, I'd definitely go, cause I know what that guy knows. lol I do make tutorials tho, and if anyone wants a tutorial on something specific, then just ask and I'll try to make time. Hope I don't kick myself for saying that. lol

Well, I'll give my Blender fanboy view. I started out a 3DS Max user. I was fairly proficient in it. Blender had always confused me, but I kept watching Blender tutorials, even tho I wasn't using it, because I wanted to watch the development, and compare it to 3DS Max. Over 2 years ago, I made the switch and learned Blender. Because of my experience with Max, I caught on to the basics fairly quickly. Now, after using it fulltime for over 2 years, I would never think about switching to anything else. Blender is down right amazing. As Arton said, not alot of AAA game companies are using it, but I'd say that is because all their workflows and software they create, in house, are made for Maya. That said, Indy developers are where it's at today, not AAA. Today, a good 5 man team can create the quality of a AAA game, and pretty much all those indy teams use Blender, not Maya. I'll state here that Blender will eventually make Maya and Max dinosaurs in the industry. There are just far too many bonuses to using Blender. When I work on a decent size team, the Blender users can easily trade files and all of us are using the latest version. Everybody that is using anything besides Blender, can't trade files at all, even when they are using the same program. None of them are ever using the same version either. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating with not being able to trade at all, but it's a common problem. The bigger the teams, the more problems you will have, or you could have the company pay for 8 seats, for everyone to use Maya. ROFL! IMHO, the biggest reason that Blender will take over the industry, is because it is just all around better. Other than some minor annoyances with not being able to name layers, and not having full compatibility with all FBX imports, Blender is miles ahead of Maya, again IMHO. Maya needs 3rd party plugins just to do things that Blender does inherently. You could create a whole professional movie in Blender with crazy affects. You could do camera tracking on videos and add in 3D elements into the video. You could track someone's arm and put a robot arm on them, and then composite the movie to look ultra realistic. You can do realist water, fire, and smoke simulations in Blender, with literally a few clicks. Imagine filming a 3D scene with volumetric fog that moves as avatars walk passed. Of course, these are just my thoughts.

You could try using a less resource intense viewer, like Radegast. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Third_Party_Viewer_Directory/Radegast

Gaia Clary wrote: Cathy Foil wrote: Blender is a good choice. YOu can create polygon models and rig in it and some painting from what I understand. Be warned though Blender's user interface is pretty bad making it one of the most difficult programs to learn though the interface has improved a lot over the years. It is probably the most popular program for mesh creators here in SL. Blender's user interface has been designed with the complexity of the topic in mind. Blender's developers have taken a long way to master this and i believe that currently Blender has one of the best user interfaces in the world in its category of software. IMHO the main problem is that Blender is not as consistently documented as it is developped. And that is why it is still not so easy to learn its usage. But the documentation is about to be improved, see here (work in progress): http://www.blender.org/manual/ Not to pick on Cathy at all, but just to point out my experience with the Blender UI. Of course, I've used many a programs, but probably the most comparable to Blender, would be 3Ds Max. So, I went from Max to Blender, and it was pretty much a breeze. I did complain about the right and left click options in the beginning, even opting to change them. After a few months tho, I abandoned that, as it doesn't work across all layouts. This was the best thing I could have done, as it made me learn Blender better and why their set up is far superior than others. Athough I do have some gripes about the UI, mainly around applying textures and materials, I truly feel that Blender's UI is far superior. I'm just faster, and doing just about everything is easier. For the most part, I do it all in Blender. I use almost every single part of Blender, from rendering video, to liquid simulations, to 3D painting. Probably the only parts that I have not played with all that much is compositing, and 3D sculpting. Lot's of people have complained about Blender's UI, but this is only because they are used to other programs. Once they embrace the Blender UI, they stop complaining about it. Just my thoughts. Oh, and the Blender way really blows everyone else away when it comes to animating, IMHO.

More info please, if you want help. First off, why would you select all? You select the mesh you want to export, and the armature to export with, then you export it as a dae.

Theresa Tennyson wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Sorry, I have to add this part, cause it's really a kick in the nuts to people with Drake's attitude. In a free market, which is what the SL market is, the money each merchant pulls out of SL, can be seen as a direct measure of how much they added to the platform. That is the reality. Generally speaking, the people pulling the most money out, are doing the most for SL, and LL. No, the amount someone makes at any given time is based on the perception of their value, not their actual value. Bernie Madoff was taking home big piles of money from people who thought his company was doing what it actually wasn't. Incidentally, the merchant who it was claimed made a million real-world dollars selling shoes in SL has had their account removed, their in-world and marketplace stores are no more, their SL brand website and RL consulting company website bring up "this domain is available" pages and there are reports on other forums that the subcontractors who did the actual work of making the shoes weren't getting paid in the end. Interesting. This is a good example of the free market too. Just cause you hit it big for awhile, doesn't mean you'll stay there. They fell apart and it hardly affected anyone, while dozens more filled their place.

Well, it's fine to disagree. As for insults, if you think narrow minded and jealous are insults, then you should spend some time in Detroit.

arton Rotaru wrote: Hey Med, well in real life retail sales statistics, January; February are usually the weakest month of the year. With Feb the weakest. At least that's the case for Germany. Maybe somebody has some current metrics of the SL economy? AFAIK, LL is hiding those since years though. But I wouldn't be too surprised if the SL market would show similar data. Some may do better than others at times, indeed. It's why I mentioned, "for SL, the last December was the worst month in years, for me". I bet some christmas tree sellers made the most money in this period of time. :matte-motes-smile: Hey Arton, I have no idea why you would drop in sales during the winter months, if anything, I would think you would do better, but I don't have intimate knowledge of everything you make and their markets. Generally speaking tho, from what I saw when we did have stats, the worst time for sales in SL is about mid summer, likely because more people are outside running around. I have intimate knowledge of the debate tho, because I argued for years there was no summer decline. I was wrong. My problem was that my business had never seen a decline, up until a few years ago, so how the hell could I have ever see the summer decline. I admit now tho, I was wrong. All that said, I'm hearing terrible sale figures from pretty much all real world businesses for the holiday season, so I would not be surprised if there was some decline in SL also. For me tho, over the past almost 2 month, I've seen an easy 10% increase, or more, and I've only put out about 6 new products last year. A couple are kind of hot tho. I've been spending much more time making Unity products the past year, hoping the new LL world will accept those FBX files when it opens.

Cammy Snowbear wrote: what i dont get is. at beginning there were at least 2 sales or more every day. never without. which makes less sense. if there would be none at start either i could understand. maybe its the products etc. althought people kept saying its good. so i really dont get what is going on there or if its worth to keep creating stuff. when there is suddenly such stoppage. Not to pick on you, at all, just pointing out the obvious, from a 8 year merchant in SL that makes content full time. You don't have enough data to affectively analyze the market. Markets are like waves in the ocean. Some times they're tall and rough, and some times they are small and consistent. As a merchant, you can see the market fluctuations better, when you have more data to measure it by, meaning you need more products. I'm very big into studying economics, so, when I started, the first thing I did, was put my head down the first year and made somewhere in the range of 5000 animations the first year. Yeah, I know, that is like a crazy amount of animations per day. That gave me a great base to really steer my business and gave me enough data to pick and choose where I should spend my time. So, basically, just keep creating, and once you have a decent base, then you can start analyzing things.

Sorry, I have to add this part, cause it's really a kick in the nuts to people with Drake's attitude. In a free market, which is what the SL market is, the money each merchant pulls out of SL, can be seen as a direct measure of how much they added to the platform. That is the reality. Generally speaking, the people pulling the most money out, are doing the most for SL, and LL. Just to give an analogy, I'll give a real world example. Let's first remember that in the real world, we do not operate in any kind of a free market, as every sector is highly controlled. The markets that are least controlled, are those related to technology, as technology moves faster than legislators. So, the example I'm thinking of is Steve Jobs. The money he earned, or the profits Apple made, are a direct measure of what he gave back to society. Now, I'm not an Apple fan, and I hate their business model, but I do think my point is hard to argue against. The point is tho, that the creator/inventor/merchant does more to help society, than likely any other type of person on this earth, and they should not be demonized, but thanked. Personally, I think jealousy plays a big part, and it's pretty ugly.

Drake1 Nightfire wrote: The difference between RL and SL merchants is a simple one, one you left out of your BASIC facts.. There is not one single RL merchant that is not also a customer or another merchant. Not one. There are plenty of SL merchant that never buy a single thing in SL. They may rent land but they do not buy from any other merchant. They are NOT contributing to the economy of SL. They are a drain on it. Simply selling things does not make you a contributing part of the economy, you must also put some fo that money back into it. Again, you show your narrow minded view. First, there are lots of things that merchants do to try and gain some exposure, namely paying LL for enhancements, or whatnot. They might even pay for other 3rd part advertising things. It's really unlimited what they could be involved in that help our virtual world in some way. Are they a guru? Do they know all aspects of 3D and coding? If not, they will need to pay someone else. Now, I'll show you how a greedy merchant, that gives nothing back, helps the economy. Let's imagine some super elite 3D artist, that doesn't know a dang thing about SL, nor cares. Granted, this person has little chance to actually be successful, as they have no understanding of SL, nor how to best make their products, but let's just ignore that. They just want to exploit SL, and extract money out. Let's imagine that they accomplish this. They make a hot product that everyone wants, and they are raking in the dough. Obviously, people like this product, and they tell others. This could make them spend more time in SL. This could also bring in more people into SL, who bring in more money. Because this product is hot, it also sparks off a whole other industry to supply accessories for the products. Now, that dang greedy merchant wants to take even more money out of SL, so they put out an affiliate vendor for others to sell product for them, cause they are never around. People buy those affiliates and make a small commission. That commission ends up paying for parcels, or give that person money to buy other things. I could literally come up with dozens of ways their products make SL better, yet they spend no time in SL, nor do they really care about it, other than a cash cow. This is the beauty of the free market, because it uses greed to help everyone. What was that shoes company that made like 1 million dollars in SL? I don't know that they did anything for SL, outside of making those shoes. Let's imagine they did nothing but make those shoes. Do you think SL was worse off because of them? Do you think that simple shoe company added to SL? How much economic activity do you think they generated? I'd be willing to bet, that LL easily made millions more because of those shoes, and the hype they brang. And, the exposure, is priceless.

arton Rotaru wrote: Yeah, january, february are the slowest month of the year usually. And for SL, the last december was the worst month in years for me. There might be a few other reasons at play here as well. Perhaps the majority of people who are interested in your products, have bought them already. Constantly bringing new stuff may help in that regard. The other reason might be that the Next Gen Platform is getting closer, and people aren't willing to spend as much on this platform, with the new world on the horizon. It's at least my take on it, all of the above together. But we have to wait and see, how things are going in march, april. Although, my expectations aren't to high actually. I beg to differ, Arton. January and February are usually some of my best months, and for others as well. It is usually the summer months that fall off a bit.

Drake1 Nightfire wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Seriously Drake, I'm not sure you understand how an economy works. Most of the land in SL, generates more money than the owner pays for it, or they make alot more than they pay for it, in the case of merchants. If this was not the case, there would be no SL. If there were no payouts, then the owners could not make a return on that investment, and LL could never charge $295 for a sim. Well, they could, but they wouldn't sell many. Without payouts, SL is not even possible. I know quite well how an economy works, I don't think you do. If all those people who buy you $L stopped doing so, SL would vanish. Who do you think is buying the most $L every month? Land Barons or regular users? You keep talking about land, I keep saying "aside from land sales and rentals". I am talking about Merchants, not land renters. Merchants who USE SL, not the merchants who actually explore and are a part of SL. The merchants who do nothing but make goods, sell them and cash out. Who cares if they rent land. They are not contributing to SL. The amount LL makes on upload fees is a pittance. More and more merchants are doing away with inworld stores and selling just on the MP. Let me try and explain my viewpoint.. If , as a merchant, you do nothing but make goods, sell them and cash out, how are you contributing to the SL economy? Even if you are renting land, you are still not a contributing member of SL. I have seen so many shops with bot models that have white skin, no hair and the creators clothing on. They don't even bother buying a single thing from other merchants. How do they help any other member of SL? 2 words to start. OMG & WTF! Let's look at this in RL first. When a person makes something in RL to sell, that is his contribution to society, which is why the free market works, because every merchant is contributing to society. If every single person in the world did this, then we would seriously have a utopian world. It is not the merchant that is controlling the process or society, because they can only sell what people are willing to buy. If the merchant can't sustain themself because they make products nobody needs, then he/she will soon become a drain on society, not a positive. So, it is the market that drive individuals to make the things that society wants or needs. It is the merchant that should be praised for supplying the society with the things they need or want. No more needs to be done by the merchant to help society, as they are doing more with their products than any charity or government could ever do, because those charities and governments produce nothing. This works similarly in SL. It is the products that make SL appealing, and that drive the economy. SL is unique, in that it is very similar to RL, but without the NEEDs. So, it is the wants that drive SL. It can be seen as a future world where society has taken care of people's needs, and people only need to think about their wants. In a world where the wants drive everything, who do you think are the most important people in that society? It's the merchants. Yep, it's not the merchants, or the land barons that flood SL with real money, it's everyone else. The point is, that those people would not be bringing any money into SL, unless there were things to buy. Nothing to buy, then nobody brings money in. So, now that we have established the BASIC facts about how the economy works. It should be obvious, that the merchant is the MOST important people in SL as it pertain to wealth creation, either by the merchants, or by LL. So, each merchant, by creating products, is doing more for SL than almost any other resident in SL, and they need not do more to contribute.

Great Zak! Good luck! I just wanted to make sure you understood, and didn't give up on fitted mesh just yet.

Seriously Drake, I'm not sure you understand how an economy works. Most of the land in SL, generates more money than the owner pays for it, or they make alot more than they pay for it, in the case of merchants. If this was not the case, there would be no SL. If there were no payouts, then the owners could not make a return on that investment, and LL could never charge $295 for a sim. Well, they could, but they wouldn't sell many. Without payouts, SL is not even possible.

Drake1 Nightfire wrote: That's just it.. There is no set in stone time payout. It is all an estimate. Semantics! Drake1 Nightfire wrote: You are NOT in a partnership with LL. At all. They are NOT paying you. That is a bad analogy. They are allowing others to purchase your $L. Now, over the Christmas/New Years weeks, less people spend in SL. The employees of LL take their vacations then, as is shown by the 4 week Server hiatus. Hence it willl take longer to cash out. I beg to differ. The money tranfers say different, and so does the W9 that I'll have to file. Occording to the government, LL and I are definitely partners. Literally, thousands of companies are able to pay people on time during holidays, without delays. Do you think the LL employees ever get their checks late? Drake1 Nightfire wrote: LL makes a pittance, if any, RL money on any project done in SL, unless it pretains to the land rental. Scripts, textures, mesh uploads, hell you could make a fullly functional Death Star for someone and sell it to them for millions of $L and LL would see less than 1% of that money. LL makes their money on land sales and monthy teir. Really, does that pittance count all the sims we pay for monthly to display our products? So, what you are saying is, that if LL stopped all content creation, or stopped paying out, SL would still be profitable? If not, then content is a bit more important than you make it out to be. Heck, it might even be the whole engine that makes this world go.

I kind of get the feeling you missed the point Gaia was trying to make. There is no real finished solution for fitted mesh, meaning there are no set default weights that can be even remotely perfect for all avatars. This means, even if you could get a set of weights that are close, you would still need to do quite a bit of adjustment for almost any clothing item you make. The default SL fitted mesh weights will not, in anyway, but useful to test with, as they are not weights that are created to accurately weight clothing for fitted mesh. I really do love that Gaia will release her own set of fitted mesh weights. That should really help alot of people. And.... if you are reading this Gaia, please do not worry at all about my set of weights that I sell. I only did that because people asked me to. I really don't have the time to support something like that, but I'll keep mine up and support until I see nobody needs/wants them. Also, I do find that transfering weights from a higher poly mesh really does produce better weights, as the higher polyness gives more verts to produce nicely gradiented weights, if that makes sense. As far as whether to use fitted mesh, or standard sizing, I'd listen to my customers. Of course, I'm not a big fan of fitted mesh, but if the customers want it, then that's likely what creators will give them. Me, I don't sell clothing really, so I would not know. What I do know, is that most people don't like weighting, and I have been asked by dozens of clothing creators to rig their clothing for them. I could really just rig clothing in SL and make a decent living, but I really have too many other things I want to do. Plus, I'm not cheap, and I think the best solution for a clothing creators is to get good tools, and learn.

First, let me say that I love both the new collada work, and FBX work. Both, are a huge help to someone like myself. On a side note, does anyone know if Blender can use the embeded textures in FBX files, cause I'm not getting those to work. Anyways....... I'll just say a few things about creating for SL, and the tools. I create fulltime, for many different platforms. Most of the time, I make my own rigs or change the rigs I'm provided, to suit my workflow. It's not easy being a freelance artist. Many times, I'm asked to do things that I have to figure out, and develop ways to do it. Time, is always of the utmost importance. Anything I can get or buy to make my time more efficient, is more than worth it in the end, especially when I can trust the creators or suppliers. This is why I love Avastar! It makes things easy for me, in every aspect. I not only use Avastar for SL, and all the similar platforms, but also for other game engines. I actually rig characters to my modified version of Avastar's rig, and sell them for other game engines, and it works with those engine's default human rigs. I create anything and everything that has to do with avatars, but I'm primarily an animator. I use Avastar whenever possible, not just for the many features, but especially for the animation work that I do. It allows me to use that 1 rig across multiple unique game engines, and have quick access to the thousands of animations that I've made over the years. I really could go on and on. To me, Avastar is priceless. I'll just point out, that most people know that I can be a very harsh critic. When I see something that is blatantly wrong, I'm not afraid to say it. If you ask me, I think the Machinimatrix group is extremely generous is putting out a free option for Blender users. Economically, that can only hurt their sales of their own product, but obviously, the Machinimatrix groups isn't concerned with that as much. I applaud them.

Drake1 Nightfire wrote: Yeah, they don't have to let you cash out at all. Personally, I would say thank you to them for providing this platform that allows you to make money selling your creations and be done with it. Yes, Masta! Here's a revelation for ya! People can make money anywhere! We choose where we want to make money. If LL can't fullfill it's obligations, then more of us will choose to make money somewhere else. As a business person, I understand that LL's missed steps affect the whole SL market. For each merchant that stops activity, the SL economy becomes smaller and smaller. As a long time merchant, I'm always looking ahead, and LL continuing to struggle to make payouts on time, is not a good sign for the future. When I hire people to help me with project, whether SL or other platforms, they are the most important people to me, besides the customer or client. I make sure they are paid well, and on time, even if that money has to come out of my own pocket. I want to make sure, that the next time I call them, they'll have no hesitation in responding. LL doesn't care, as to them, we are a dime a dozen. It's that kind of attitude that turns successful ventures into a struggling company.

Sassy Romano wrote: Yes it's possible. The majority don't make that. When LL used to post the statistics, that amount would put them in around the > 0.5% of top earners. Yep, when LL would post those stats, it was easy to tell where anyone stood in the whole scheme of things. Most people do not make that much, but when you consider what it cost to own a sim, then you have to conclude that those people are making some kind of profit to cover those costs. So, yeah, people overall don't make that much, but there is obviously enough economic activity to support the system. This doesn't mean it isn't declining gradually tho. When talking strictly about selling content, I think it really comes down to 2 things. 1st is that you have volume. If you are trying to make $50k of a handful of products, that likely isn't going to cut it, not to mention that such few products exposes you to less data to make better decision or learn from. 2nd, is find your niche, and a market for that niche. Many times, it is a few products that support the whole operation. This is also why volume helps, as you never know which products will be the 1's that really take off. Even for myself, it is really only about a dozen products that I sell that make up the bulk of my profits. Today, I put out many fewer products than I did years ago, but sell much better than when I put out products in masses. I also don't think most people can understand the scope of the community. 100 sales on a new release over a couple months is not an uncommon thing, if it is a good product, and a "hot" item. If that product costs 500 lindens, that is a hundred, or so, dollars a month off 1 product. If you can just make 10-20 products that sell like that, you are golden. This doesn't even consider what happens if something is realy "hot". I'm sure that in the clothing market, or hair market, selling 500 on a new release in the first month is done on a pretty consistant basis. I see many people questioning whether there are enough new customers for any merchant to maintain that kind of income. Surprisingly, when I look at my own stats, it's not new customers that are really the problem. If there is 1 thing about SL that should amaze everyone, is the amount of new people coming in every single day. It's almost crazy, and crazy for any "game". Yeah, a certain percentage are bots, but that still doesn't explain all of the daily influx. What I think many people do not consider, when thinking about how virtual goods work, is how the business model is far more superior than any real world business model. The key reason is the fact that the items are easily reproducable. So, in a market like this, there is no cost to replicating, or even holding inventory. After you create the products, most of the cost of production is over with, and a good 90% of all sales are pure profit. It's the only reason the industry is sustainable. As long as you get the product to the market, you are guarenteed to make something back, pretty much. The added bonus today, is that there are many more markets to sell those 3D assets in. This means that today, SL creators have many more ways to capitalize on their creations outside of SL.

Well, I'll just say this. LL is the ONLY company that I have dealt with in the last 8 years that can't make their own, self set, deadlines on paying me. Personally, I don't give a crap what their said reasons are. The only real reason is pure incompetence.

I'm really not sure what kind of advice you want. Are you asking what system to use? Are you asking how to edit the raw motion capture? Every program is a bit different, and each generally have their own solutions for different aspects. At this point in time, there are literally hundreds of ways to make a motion capture animation. What do I use? Well, for most of my work, I like to use the IPIsoft Desktop mocap system, and export that as a bvh. I then import that bvh into blender, and use the Avastar add on to transfer the bvh data onto the Avastar rig. Here, I can save the animation in the blend file, and use it on any other avastar rig in the scene. So, in Blender, using Avastar, I could easily set up 2 avatars, facing each other, and switching the animations between them.

Sassy Romano wrote: Did I mention that Hippo banned me from their products? That was a negative experience that I like to share. You must have been sassy!:smileyvery-happy:

Perrie Juran wrote: So you are saying that if a Merchant defrauds me I should have no recourse and that I should just suck it up? I did not say that. There are other recourses, such as informing your fellow consumers. As a consumer, I've bought many things, in real life, and in SL that I thought were junk, and I had no recourse at all. Some of that, is just a part of life. We've talked about this before tho. If the merchant is engaging in fraud, then there all legal recourses you can take. The best protection a consumer has tho, is their own brain. I think the real question you might be seeking, is what is the right amount of protection, and will those protections help the consumer more, or further hurt them? Word to the wise in SL, if a merchant has a TOS that includes wording around the purchaser possibly losing access to the product, for any reason what so ever, I'd reconsider buying from them.