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Da5id Weatherwax

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Everything posted by Da5id Weatherwax

  1. Da5id Weatherwax
    For me it isn't so much that skills are "brought in" or "taken out" but that they interact. One good example is when building models. (tl/dr: RL skills make SL stuff not so much easier but simpler) IRL I'm a pretty decent woodworker, a barely competent blacksmith and metalworker. I imagine "a thing" and my head is already thinking about how I'd make the parts IRL and how I'd want to connect them together to make "the thing." The parts I couldn't make IRL, I'm sufficiently aware of other crafts which I don't practice myself that I've usually a fair idea how the pratitioners of those crafts would construct the parts I requested from them. So when I'm faced with a blank workspace in Blender I make the parts that I'd make IRL and I stick 'em together into a single object in the same relationship. To my considerable surprise, I found that while this intial workflow doesn't make optimised models, it does make ones that are more efficient than you'd at first suspect from that construction method. It also has the side effect of guaranteeing little technicalities like "clean edge loops" so that when you do come to optimise and do the "finishing work" that proces is a lot easier. Similarly it makes the process of constructing decent LOD models incredibly easy and simple. Same for easy texturing. I lay out the initial UV map for wooden parts like I would if I were IRL planning on cutting them from board stock, for example. Apply any "wood" texture to that and all the grains line up right. It's then trivial to create the "SL UV" with everything laid out neatly on a single tecture image and bake down to that.. Similarly for clothing makers (although this is a skill I do not claim, either in SL or RL) I am sure that their UV maps could at least start out looking an awful lot like they would produce if creating a sewing pattern for that same garment IRL.
  2. Da5id Weatherwax
    Peeve: The fish&chip shop around the corner is STILL on their summer holidays! Secondary peeve: Since moving back to the UK I miss "state fair food." All of it. Fry it all! AND put it on a stick! (This coming from the nation that invented the deep fried Mars Bar)
  3. Da5id Weatherwax
    Well, at least I provoked a little debate with my earlier comment (and I do mean "debate" not the usual internet poo-flinging that sometimes happens - thank you all for keeping it civil ) I guess, for me at least, the bottom line on tipping entertainers and venues in SL is simple. If you want a particular performer to keep performing - wherever they happen to do it - chuck 'em a few lindens. If you want a particular venue to stay open - whoever happens to be performing there - chuck a few lindens. And if you've got a good host who isn't just a gesturebating greeter-bot, chuck them a few as well so that they keep doing it. Otherwise all any venue will have left is the other kind. All three may not apply at the particular event you're attending and it's entirely up to you which ones, if any, you think do.
  4. Da5id Weatherwax
    Yeah, that's trademarks. IANAL but I've worked in a lot of situations where managing IP was an issue... Copyrights you don't lose by not enforcing them, even if you've let a doxen other folks slide on it you can still enforce it against the next one. Trademarks are "use it or lose it" - If you are aware of a trademark infringement and you don't defend your mark, it can become unenforceable in the future.
  5. Da5id Weatherwax
    Speaking of music gear.. This is what I last looked at in SL. I have this weird nerdy thing where I like to setup on stage to perform in SL with my actual RL gear. So I make mesh copies of it. (ok, I cheat a bit and mesh up trussing where IRL I'm too cheap to buy that and I use scaff poles.) Last year, I upgraded my mixer. I hadn't gotten around to making the upgraded version in SL yet. Now I have. I completed the mixer a couple of weeks ago. Made its flight case today.. <rant>Folks say optimised stuff looks like crap. Well... NO. One material each for the case and the mixer, 4 textures in total. LI for the mixer is 1. LI for the case is 1. LI for the linkset is 1. All at RL dimensions. They LOD gracefully, don't dissolve into vertex vomit at long cam distances.</rant> Sorry for the rant. But it does bug me when folks make excuses for not optimizing their stuff. So yeah, My SL today looks a bit like "down in the weeds" and I'm OK with that. And OK with the results too
  6. Da5id Weatherwax
    Can't speak for @Bagnu, but I know @Seicher Rae and I can guarantee she wasn't making that assumption. I suspect she was giving these hatemongers* the treatment they deserve. Pointing and laughing. Ridicule. Any kind of engagement with them they will strut and spout and when you get tired of the game will declare they "won it" - this is a trademark of all these small-minded and hate-filled individuals, whoever it is they have fastened their hate onto. Just point your wand and say Ridikulus! like banishing a boggart in Harry Potter. The way to defeat them is to laugh at them. Call them on their obvious folly and stupidity and you stick a big ol' pin in their hatred at the same time. And once you've laughed at them, shun them. *The description I was thinking would have gotten me banned in pretty short order
  7. Da5id Weatherwax
    As a performer, thank you on behalf of ALL of us for your tips. Also as a performer, thank you for supporting the venues - without them, we'd not be able to stand up and entertain you. One can't just roll up on a corner of Linden roads and start busking, the grid dont work like that. Now, let's talk about the host(esse)s. They don't just stand around and greet people like a "hello bot." If I have a good host to work with at a particular venue, they handle representing the venue owner to me and representing ME to all the folks who might be familiar with the venue but who have never heard ME perform. They send out groupnotes and group chat advertising my upcoming set, they keep me informed about stuff going on at the venue I might need to be aware of. Their job is to make everything run smoothly and do all the irritating crap that a virtual venue demands so I don't have to fit all that in around a live soundcheck and warming up for a performance. They do a lot of work that, as an attendee, you never see - that you aren't supposed to see. So do tip 'em. Please. A good host is an absolute godsend to a performer of any kind. Show your appreciation of the work they do, so that all of us performers continue to have good ones available.
  8. Da5id Weatherwax
    On the whole "lights" thing... Peeve: That folks dont light their builds correctly - if it has lights in it let there be light. If it doesn't, let there be dark. We've had ALM on by default in the viewer for YEARS. If you don't enable "shadows from everything" and all the other bells and whistles you can run it on even a potato graphics card. And it looks BETTER than the earlier lighting model. But no, stuff gets set fullbright (only appropriate to something that emits light,) invisible lights are hung all about it (and you) to make you visually significant to the non-ALM environment that only a tiny fraction of avatar will ever see, while at the same time making you - or your build - look like 20 lbs of ass in a 10-lb bag to anyone running ALM. AND, for the extra (dis)credit, making the whole place look bad for everyone else that is using ALM because you are glowing like a demented firefly and lighting your surroundings up like the floodlights on a rugby pitch! And if the builder had constructed their envirnoment with appropriate local lighting, you wouldn't have gone "ewww" and turned ALM off the LAST time you tried it!
  9. Da5id Weatherwax
    Never been really seriously griefed - Not enough to get under my skin, anyway. I did get accused of making a griefer tool once. As part of a Star Trek RP group I made a tribble. It would make purring noises when touched. It also had a % chance, every 20 seconds or so, to drop a copy of itself. The tribbles were physical so the new copy would simply roll to a nearby spot and then stop, purr and breed. Needless to say I made a second thing to go with it which would poison all the tribbles in region and cause them to delete themselves. A buddy was playing with it and made sure to delete all his tribbles before logging off. He'd missed that one had rolled over a region boundary...
  10. Da5id Weatherwax
    I prefer this version... https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/489954-tastefully-naked/?do=findComment&comment=2511456 *carefully avoiding embedding it rather than linking it, because nakedness
  11. Da5id Weatherwax
    Fear not. it wasn't YOUR challenge so there's no obligation on me to respond to it, now, is there?
  12. Da5id Weatherwax
    I do remember reading that when you posted it. And, for information, I am NOT "keeping her away" from here. Wouldn't do that, at least not intentionally. I have been conspicuous by my absence, it's true, but here's the thing. I have a day job. Thats 8 a day, 5 a week. I also have music career, which WAS (I'm currently taking a break) in SL another 24-32 a week plus rehearseal time, then there's any RL gigs I get. And I have a girl with a 5-h timezone difference. Yeah, those timezones suck. I get off work, I head to my computer and I call her. Every day. I've got a half-built house in SL that I need to finish. I need to finish meshing up a guitar or three. I have PROJECTS, dammit! And they all go by the board because Id rather be in discord talking to Seicher. Don't hold your breath but we WILL be back.
  13. Da5id Weatherwax
    Isn't it the other way round? They get all indignant over something, complain at the the Lindens and then, when the Lindens tell 'em to take a hike, they come to the forums to express their outrage? The Lab should pay US for ridiculing them until they go away
  14. Da5id Weatherwax
    IRL I buy a boat - let's say a 24-foot GRP-hulled sailboat with a lovely shade of teal blue in its gel-coat. Now I glass in a new through-hull fitting on the port side and discover that its such a proprietary shade I cant topcoat the new fiberglass to match - the maker wont sell matching colors. A drunken buddy (it WAS a hot afternoon in the boatyard, after all) says "hey, I got some in orange, why not use that and more to the point stencil 'F [boatbuilder's name redacted]' into the bargain?" If I've had enough beer while we were working to agree and deface my boat that way, that's on me, not the builder.... even though anyone who looks at the boat will identify her class and know who built it...
  15. Da5id Weatherwax
    I would hesitate to put this down to "arrogance" - The trend towards "no-mod everything" started as misinformation. I was around at the time and it was promoted as "protecting items from being ripped" to have them no-mod and with a resizer script (for unrigged items, which at the time were the vast majority.) It didn't. Somebody willing to risk their account by using a ripper viewer could still do so with the same ease. In the process legitimate modifications were closed off, we got the proliferation of color huds and the like. The resizer scripts were clunky and laggy, the HUDs were abysmal. They've improved a lot and the environment has changed, but the misinformation about it protecting a creator's work remains endemic. It's become "just the way we do it here." There are technical reasons why some creations should be no-mod, there are aesthetic and other concerns that would make a creator not want any item with "their name on it" take on a "look" they didn't design. I get that. But if your only concern is "protecting it from being ripped off" then don't bother. You can't - not if it ever shows on a user's screen. It's been loaded into the memory of their computer where they have absolute control. You take other methods to protect your intellectual property which DO work, because they are backed by law, not by some technical gimmick. SL is full to the gills with creative people. Even the folks that have never laid out a vertex in blender or any other 3d prog. They will mix and match items from different creators to produce looks and effects the creator of each item could never envisage. Others will want to join together bits and pieces of different creations to make a totally different whole. Still more will want to make their creations work with somebody else's, if only for their own use, and might need mod perms on the things they buy for that to work. Bottom line is that for a fairly large chunk of the SL population, no-mod is an irritation that doesn't need to be there. There is a spectrum from "No mod? No buy!" to the less hardcore about it but it still peeves them and why would a creator want to P off their customers if they don't have to? Still, it's the creator's choice and whatever our opinion of it, we do need to respect it. PS: There are also ways to cleanly reverse-engineer a mesh, much of its weighting and its UV map without infringing the creators IP, by the way. They just take more effort, knowledge and time than possessed by the kind of bloke that would just rip the original.
  16. Da5id Weatherwax
    Growing old is mandatory. Growing UP is optional. I fully intend to continue to age disgracefully
  17. Da5id Weatherwax
    tsk tsk. Hallowe'en is no time to be lax in your Ripperology
  18. Da5id Weatherwax
    We were late for the party and I was in such a hurry I left all the flesh back home...
  19. Da5id Weatherwax
    Little bat.. little flying mousie.... (me and @Seicher Rae)
  20. Da5id Weatherwax
    had to postprocess it to correct the contrast levels - I'm still not as good as my lovely girl @Seicher Rae at taking SL photos
  21. Da5id Weatherwax
    Doom. From the start point step BACKWARDS. Off to the left you get the message "A chainsaw! Find some meat!"
  22. Da5id Weatherwax
    OR grab the boomstick. Zombie sans cranium is no threat
  23. Da5id Weatherwax
    I know, it's a really pretty guitar isn't it? I meshed it as a copy of one of my RL ones
  24. Da5id Weatherwax
    SO.... While I was slammed with work I was logged in but afk while I let the lovely @Seicher Rae take photos... Since she's better at that than I am. The results were quite good
  25. Da5id Weatherwax
    I was used to arrow keys, so when mouse-aiming became a thing, I just slid the kb a bit to the left and carried on with kb-and-trackball with my left hand retrained to use the arrow keys. It kinda works in a weird way because with the left hand slightly angled that way, a single finger stretch can hit the entire numpad, the pinkie can hit the spacebar and the right control and shift keys are just there under the fingers already, as is the enter key. ALWAYS trackball rather than mouse, a finger-controlled one rather than thumb-controlled, with a decent sized ball and as many programmable buttons as I can get. The full-speed spin and start incinerating the corridor behind me in multiplayer Doom is so much easier that way. (spin 180 while switching from "run fwd" to "run backward" and start mashing that trigger - other option for the "oh f..." moment when theres somebody on your tail down a corridor and you cant dodge was to point the grenade launcher straight up as you ran for your life and carpet the hallway behind you with boom)
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