Persephone Emerald

So in using the 2 new tools together, could an avatar attach an object that allows them to teleport to another area, such as a magic ring or bracelet for instance? I much prefer them just being able ot walk through a portal though, without having to own the portal. Maybe they cold own the surface of the portal, & then a new one could rez for then next person?

I finaly decided to use a display name for RP, but now I don't know how to turn it off. I don't want eveyone calling me by this name. I just want to use it while I'm in the RP sim. Is there a way to turn off displaying it to everyone?(7-210 (7-21-12) Thank you everyone for your answers. Using a titler seems like the best solution. Since I use hover text frequently for packaging, I'll probably do the same thing for my RP title. Maybe I can even drop a hover text script into my hair, so I don't need to wear an extra prim.

Yabusaka Petite avatars (on which others of this size are also based) provide free full perm mesh clothing templates so that owners of petite avatars & creators can make & sell Petite-sized clothing. Rather than adding clothing template textures to the system clothing layers, you can add them to these mesh layers instead. It's pretty easy if you already know how to make clothing. One of the biggest differences is that because these avatars are mesh, their clothing has to be specific for each type of mesh body, or else it won't fit right. You can get free full perm mesh clothing templates for Yabusaka-style Petites, Minikins & Little me mesh avatars. I don't like using the Minikin clothing templates, because they are just one piece, rather than top & bottom pieces. If you know how to use a clothing design program like GIMP, though, you should be able to design for any of these just as you can for system clotihng layers.

I'm sure there are others equally good, but this is the one I use: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Weight-Scale-Script-Counter/1835786

I put a couple surrounding sculpted mountain sets on platforms to create the look of terrain. If part of the sculpt sticks up through the platform & part of it is below, you can have rocks with a different texture than your flat ground. Also, if you taper & squish your platform so that you have 3 sides of the box on one side & one on the other, you can texture the middle part like semi-transparent water & the interior surface like rocks under the water. This would make a shallow, straight canal, though, rather than a natural-looking stream.

Whatever it's called, if the number over your head is green, you're good. Generally, it's scripts you want to watch more so than prims. You can check how many active scripts you're using in the Advanced menu, but I like using a free script weight scale from Marketplace instead. It's only one prim & looks like a bathroom scale. I stand on it before going out to see how many scripts I have in my hair, clothing & other attachments. Then I look at what I'm wearing & select Edit on each object that might be scripted to see if it has scripts in its Contents. If you find you're wearing scripted objects, you can usually make a copy & then delete the script out of one copy. Some creators still sell scripted items that are No Mod & don't have a menu option for deleting the resize & recolor scripts. But those kinds of items are frowned upon, so most resize & recolor scripts now have the option to be removed. Worn mesh isn't generally a problem, just as worn prims don't create much lag without scripts in them. Rezzing mesh, however, may show a higher land impact than you'd expect.

Beams of light such as the headlights in this picture are semi-transparent & generally phantom prims. They can be set to glow or give off a bit of light as well. The pattern on the floor that looks like sunlight is a flat prim with a sunlight texture (generally an alpha texture) or is a pattern that's part of the floor texture.

We all know that except for Linden water, there aren't real reflections in SL, so creators have to use tricks to create the illusion of reflections. One trick I like to use it taking a snapshot from the perspective of the mirror, then Flipping it & putting it on the surface of the mirror. The same trick can be used on windows. The main problem with this trick is that avatars will not show up in these fake reflections. Thus, I refer to such mirrors as "Vampire Mirrors", from the idea that vampires don't cast reflections. The other trick used in making "magic mirrors" is to get the camera to face the avatar, so it looks like a reflection in a mirror. One of the problems with this trick is that the view behind the avatar won't be a reflection of what would really be behind them. I just bought a really cool magic mirror that has an animation & shadowy demon grabbing the user. I added a reflection of what would be behind the avatar, using the 1st trick above, & thus combined both tricks to create a more realistic illusion of a real reflection & a cool trap. Initially my mirror seems to reflect the window on the opposite wall & the view outside. The viewer turns off their AO & selects "Sit Here" from the mirror to look into it.. They then see a demon grabbing them from behind in what looks like a reflection in the mirror. Now they select "Stand Up" & find they are still seeing themselves as a reflection in the mirror. Looking around, they find they are trapped in a hidden room, almost as if their soul has been taken to a parallel mirror world. I think combining the "Magic Mirror" camera trick used with a reversed image reflection trick could help designers create more realistic reflection illusions in SL. The major problem is that the reflection has to be customized to each location, so you either have to do a custom job each time, depend upon buyers to make their own reflections, or control the background for the mirror yourself. I can see this trick being used effectively in rooms & buildings that you could sell, because then you can control the background image yourself. Do others have more ideas for creating more realistic reflections in SL?

This would be impossible for LL to do for you, but you could take pictures of your inventory yourself. Every picture you take & save to your inventory costs you $L 10. Personally, I don't want to spend probably a hundred dollars to take pictures of every virtual item I own. You can save pictures to your computer hard drive for free though. You can either save all these pictures in a folder yourself, or you can buy an inventory organizer on the Marketplace that helps you organize these pictures.. I try to keep my inventory in folders that help me find what I want, change the title of clothing folders so I have an idea what the outfit looks like, save pictures that come with items in their folders, & sometimes take a picture myself to put in the folder. At some point, though, we have to ask ourselves, "If I have so much inventory that I can't keep track of it all, do I really need all that stuff?" I'm getting close to 25,000 items now, but I still buy a few things & still collect freebies all the time. At this point it's harder to get rid of stuff than it is to collect more.

You can probably find some modifable shapes that are pretty good, then modify one of them until it's prefect for you.This is what I did when I was new, then I kept tweaking my shape. Sometimes I've made my shape heavier to look more like the real me, then made it thinner again to look good in SL clothing. Same with height. I always shrink down for 1920's Berlin, then end up getting taller again to fit into some clothing later. That's one big advantage of a modifiable shape, that you can change it any time & then change it back again (if you keep a back-up version). I've found a few shape designers ever sell both a modifiable version and a non-mod version, so you can change the shape however you wish, then go back to the original version if you mess up the modifiable one. If you decide you want a more realistic shape, I suggest looking at a mirror or photograph & taking note of how long normal arms & legs are, & where ears, mouth & nose are in relation to each other. Facial settings near 50 are usually more attractive, but I set my cheekbones higher because I have high ones in RL.

After looking on Marketplace, I think Pulse has the best-looking mature female skin, but it only comes in beige with different lip colors. If you want a cheaper skin with more skin tones to choose from, Dolly Rotten has some on marketplace for $L 99. The Brazen skins are priced between there somewhere. I notice the men have many more choices for matuskin & shapes than the women do. Are we women that much more vain than the men are? (Edit to add picture)

I think it's great when people choose to use a middle aged or older avatar without it being some kind of joke. Many of us behind the keyboards in SL are middle aged or older, and not all of us want to play skinny 20-somethings. I like my main avatar to look more or less like my RL self, so she's heavier than average for SL. I don't need a mature skin, but I'd like to have some hair with grey roots, because I actually like that look.

Happy Rez Day Kiddo! May there be many more. :smileylol:

I had this same thing happen to me twice while I was playing the Linden Realms quest. Since I'm age verified, I found myself in an adult sim. I quickly TPed home so as not to be bothered by any creepy folks who might be in that sim. Maybe most of them had found themselves there accidentally too, but I wasn't going to hang around & start asking questions.

I disagree about living in a skybox, but that's a matter of personal taste. I prefer to know a little bit about my neighbors & be able to explore my neighborhood (not going inside their houses of course). My RL roommate & I share a quarter region overlooking the sea. We've tried to keep our buildings more or less in keeping with homes along the Northern California coast. The shopping mall with redwood siding & wooden sidewalks, most of the other homes, & 2 museums next to us fit that environment as well. I like my SL home to remind me of this region I don't get to visit as often as I'd like in RL. There is also a large castle, an underwater mermaid area, & a haunted hotel on an isolated beach. Of course, we can also sail along the coastline. (Darn. I keep forgetting to pick up my free sailboat.) I'm lucky that I have enough land that I can have a home on the ground & a private sky garden above the clouds. The first year I was in SL, though, I rented in different areas. My favorite was a sim that looked a bit like New Orleans & had a small public bar with a brothel above it. When LL tightened up on enforcing the General, Mature & Adult region rules, the quaint little brothel was replaced with a furniture shop. My point is that SL is so wonderful because of all the creative vision people bring to it, so you should try to experience as much of that as possible. You can live one month in 1920s Chicago, then live the next in ancient Rome or on a futuristic space station. When you rent, you're free to move whenever you feel like it. But once you buy land, you have to worry about paying tier every month & probably losing your initial sale price when you want to resell. On the other hand, if you try to live on just 512 m, you'll have to live frugally in a relatively small space. As much as the Linden Home neighborhoods are like poorly planned public housing, at least you'll have more prims to use for furnishings than you would in your own home on a 512 m lot.

Great work, Liisa. That's the kind of feedback I was hoping for. I want to make this parcel near me more usable for anyone who goes there, without adding to sim lag, upseting my neighbors or the Lindens.

Your butterfly meadow looks very pretty, Charolotte. I have to admit the bottom picture is an example of what could be done with abandoned land. It's actually a photo of land a friend of mine owned & landscaped. I was thinking of asking her if she'd like to landscape the empty lot near me, since she's better at that than I am. I think I'd like to put in trees, meadow grass, some small animals & a log to sit on in the empty lot near me. I want the space to fit into the neighborhood & be usable by everyone.

Probably most of us know of empy abandoned land near parcels we own. Some of these parcels allow prims to be rezzed or drug onto them. If you had such a lot next to yours, would you put landscaping or other items on it? Do you think landscaping empty land could improve the feel & use of your neighborhood? Would you ask your neighbors what they'd like to have on that land? I did this once with an abandoned roadside lot in front of group land. The previous owners had left a pond, so I drug some trees around it. Then I placed a car with a body in it & headlights on in the pond, as if the driver had swirved off the road & crashed. I thought this created a more interesting scene than empty, flat grassland. What do you think? What would you like to have next to your parcel rather than an empty lot?

Since you now have one Premium account & one Basic account, be sure to friend your 2 avatars to each other & give them the right to edit each other's items. Then if your premium account is ever suspended (such as for not having paid tier or any other glitch), you can go in as your alt & take care of rental payments & such for your main account. Having an alt account is also good if you decide to build something as your main & want to see how it will work for someone else. So you don't forget your password for an alt you may not use much, keep the same password for both accounts. It's easy to give money to another resident (including your alts). All you have to do is call up their profile or click on them in your Contacts list & Pay them the money. If you want to give them items (including Landmarks or Notecards), just drag those items from your Inventory to their profile, a private Chat window with them, or onto their avatar in world. Many items are not transferable, but if you have land where both your avatars can rez things, you can share items like buildings, furniture, plants & some animals. If your avatars can Edit each other's items, you can move or modify those items no matter which avatar you're using at the time. $ 30 US should last a long time in SL if you have the time & desire to shop carefully. There are many good free & inexpensive items available in world & on the Marketplace. If anything, one of the biggest problems for long-time users is that there is too much good stuff available. Learn to organize your Inventory so you can find what you want quickly. Also delete duplicate items & things you know you won't use. Explore, take some beginning building classes, & join groups for activities that sound interesting. If you get bored, try the Linden Realms or go on a Hunt. There are always several hunts going on, with merchants hiding nice freebies inside of various small items. I'm going to assume that you're starting out with a Linden Home. That's a good starter home, but it's also fun to try living in different environments. Just don't spend more than a month in advance on rented or leased property & don't buy land until you've been in SL for a while & know what you're doing. Land is easy to buy, but generally much harder to sell.

I don't know if avatars ever disappear unless you delete them. You should definitely ask for tech support on this one. Is it possible you just forgot your password? When you create a new avatar it doesn't replace your old one. It just creates another one. If you can access your old one, you'll now have 2 avatars.

I'm curious why you would abandon land at the beginning of a month. Won't you have to pay tier on this land for the month of January, whether you still own it or not?

If you are paying subjects a small fee for their time, you should post in the Wanted section of the forums.

Facebook (& some other social network) sites have a policy of deleting accounts that they find out are not in the person's legal name. Since the old avatar naming system for SL prevented people from using their legal name for their avatar, it's pretty easy for Facebook to tell if someone is using an SL pseudonym for their FB account. If someone decides to report you, FB will contact you & tell you that you have to use your legal name on their site. This has even happened to bloggers who were using a pseudonym because of political repression within their country. If you want to use a different name in SL than you use on Facebook, you can list your SL name as a "nickname" on Facebook, by which others can search for you there, but that will destroy any anonymity or separation from RL you might wish to have in SL.

A quiet spot near a sandbox (that may be an oxymoron) would allow you the ability to rez things at the sandbox. However, if you find a parcel where you can rez packages & dress in privacy, which seemingly nobody else knows about, that will give you the most privacy & feeling of "home" without actually paying for a home. Don't go into other people's houses to dress or otherwise use their stuff though. Some newbies do that, but it's bad manners & usually annoys the owner if they catch you. There are a few places that offer free dressing rooms. When all else fails, you can also dress underwater. Alternately, if you find a public place where you just like the setting & feel comfortable, that works too. Some groups have club houses, pubs, lounge areas & even group sandboxes. There's a haunted beach-side hotel with cheap room rentals near my land that could be cool if you like the spooky atmosphere. I think the name is Artisted Out Motel.

I like the Happy Hippo builders group. You can do a Search in world for them & join the group for free. They have many classes from Begining to Advanced levels, with a schedule of classes published on their website. They also have some begining building Tutorials to do on your own time. The best beginning class they offer, imo, is the one that teaches the Edit Menu tabs, one tab each class, because this gives even the least experienced newbie a good foundation for building & editing stuff in SL. Builders Brewery is another good building group, but I haven't taken classes with them myself.