Pierre Ceriano
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Posts posted by Pierre Ceriano
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Thank you Sid and Alwin. I was somewhat expecting these answers. But on the other hand I'm not starting a landbaron business
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Hello folks
If all goes according to plan, I will soon add a region to the one I already have. Which will form an estate of two regions. There is a pricing for the mainland which decreases the more mainland you have. So I have two questions:
- Is there the same principle for private regions ? (The more regions you have, the cheaper each region costs)
- If so, do you have a link to this pricing ?
Also, if you own several regions, I am delighted to read your feedback regarding the cost part.Thank you all !
Pierre
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On 9/30/2023 at 5:16 PM, Love Zhaoying said:
I am pleased about all of the "positive changes" and "improvements", whether planned or still in-progress.
Many will definitely benefit "new users", such as the Welcome Hub.
However, many do not apply to me or fall within my interests, such as:
- Linden Homes
- Senra Avatars
But, advancements in LSL Scripting functions and the possibility of a good new Mobile Viewer are positive points for me.
Many of the other "extremely important" improvements are "still in progress" which interest me "somewhat" but not too much. I think those will improve the quality of Second Life overall, including:
- Advanced graphics
Sorry if my list is poor, I saw a squirrel over there * chases after *
If I allow myself to read between the lines:
L / Does the creation or provision of assets by Linden Labs pull the rug out from under the feet of creators? Does having a Linden home or a Second Life avatar limit sales of creator-created homes and avatars? We saw above that this could also boost the interior decoration market, just like that of clothing.M / Won't improving the graphics create other problems? And in the same vein, this makes me think that
12 / I must adapt my textures to the new graphic improvements already made.
L bis and M bis / Could a terrorist squirrel be behind Second Life's supposed weaknesses?
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On 9/30/2023 at 5:05 PM, Flea Yatsenko said:
It's not just you. I've always had kind of niche products and never really had to do events or advertise and did well. I've been very fortunate. But for the last year or so, things have been very bad year over year. I'm talking about half of what has been traditionally normal.
Some things that have changed for me
1. Customers who come and make huge bulk orders are basically gone
2. More low cost items selling more than higher end products
3. Massive droughts in sales where I'm making like a quarter or less of what would be normal
4. Poor search placement, older products being shown more. Even results when just searching my own store aren't what I expect. And I'm used to doing SEO from my other work
5. High end products aren't selling and instead it's very cheap builder's kits or older builds
6. The good times that would be offset by sales droughts are not nearly as good as they ever were
I really don't know what's going on. I blamed SLMP search for a while, because the results were bad. But they have improved a lot and things are still rather poor. I've always noticed a pattern with sales where things would get good, SLMP/billing/etc would have maintenance and have problems, sales would dry up, then lower end stuff would start selling, eventually moving to higher end stuff and great sales until the process repeated. But it feels like now that process is broken and it never gets past SLMP/billing/etc maintenance and "entry level" product sales.
I have no doubt events have become saturated and they're not what they used to be. But I have never even done an event and have done well (I thank the market I'm in being not overly competitive), and I'm still having lots of problems.
This is definitely, for me, the worst part of the year in sales and I usually get bummed this time of year. But even comparing year over year (i.e. this 2023 sept to 2022 sept) things are bad. And they weren't actually very good in 2022 either.
The real world economy is also very bad. I had a lot of RL work lined up this summer with a lot of people promising me tons of work. It never came. One RL place I work for had a ton of clients cancel a ton of work. Another had a million dollar house and the $300 check they wrote for some small work bounced when cashed on the same day. I think things are very bad in RL, more than anyone is admitting. Which is actually very scary to me. I have been selling in SL for a long time, I've noticed that usually recessions are great for SL because it's a lot cheaper to have fun in a virtual world than to go out and have dinner and some booze. In fact right now that's even truer, because a dinner for two with booze is easily $50+ here in the states. But that shift when people would come to SL instead seems to not be happening either. It's pretty scary because it makes me feel a lot of people don't even have the money to avoid RL and instead buy a parcel and build a home or hangout or whatever. I think it's easy to point the finger at LL and SL but there's a bigger picture here and I really don't think it's very good. I think people are struggling to pay for food and dropping $20 on a mesh body or something isn't really a luxury a lot of people can afford.
This post is getting rather long winded, but I will make one complaint about SL and LL, and it's the reliability of the grid and SLMP, which completely reduces user's ability both to find and purchase content as well as to use it. As an ecommerce site SLMP is horribly outdated, slow, and shows irrelevant stuff way too much. I always say that people should consider if Amazon worked like SLMP. Sometimes pages throw 500 errors, sometimes your order doesn't go through for 12 hours. You search for NIntendo and get SNES games instead of Switch. But I think a lot of people have lost patience with trying to buy things and being able to use the things they've bought. There's so much fighting for people's attention on the internet and honestly their dopamine receptors are fried. They have zero patience now. And if things aren't working they just leave and don't care.
Also, this is a hot button political topic so I'll try and present it in the most reasonable way. But people from developing countries have found SLMP is a way to make money and they have driven down the prices of content.
This, definitely, and it's demoralizing me for making content for SL like none other. I finally set up in world vendors and yes, that's the stuff that sells mostly in world while old stuff keeps selling on SLMP. Why spend money and time making new stuff if it's not going to sell and you're just going to end up coasting on old stuff? My sales are so low that a major build costs so much it's no longer worth doing anymore. There's something massively broken technologically with the SL platform. And guess what? All these people being shown old, outdated stuff think that's what SL is and that's all that exists so they get discouraged. If you're not making stuff like you used to, you are seeing sales drop massively. Being an SLMP merchant isn't about creating new things and making more L$ now, it's about trying to make enough stuff so you can still make as much as you used to. In the last year I have never sold so much outdated, sub L$100 products ever (excluding my cheap sculpty rock pack people seem to love for some reason I'll never understand).
In fact I used to get excited when I got an email about a sale. Now it's more an annoyance because it's probably some L$99 thing I made in 2015. And I'm in a pretty unique situation to analyze sales because I'm working on a new search engine and sales analysis platform and I imported the last like 5 years of sales data and have been making web pages and doing all sorts of cool queries to look at things.
Anyways, this ended up much longer than I thought. But I do feel strongly that there is something very wrong with SL on a technical level and it's not making any progress at improving.
D / Customers who come and make huge bulk orders are basically gone. Same here.
E / More low cost items selling more than higher end products. Not to mention :
F / Objects imported from various asset libraries without respecting the Second Life Content guidelines : "Examples of Prohibited Content include: (...) Infringing or unauthorized content, such as content that you did not create or do not have permission to use."
G / Poor search placement, older products being shown more. Even results when just searching my own store aren't what I expect. There's something wrong with the algorithm, that's for sure. The subject has been discussed at length in other forums without a real solution being provided.
H / High end products aren't selling and instead it's very cheap builder's kits or older builds.
I / The real world economy is also very bad. I think we don't need statistics here... and I think it's easy to point the finger at LL and SL but there's a bigger picture here and I really don't think it's very good. I think people are struggling to pay for food and dropping $20 on a mesh body or something isn't really a luxury a lot of people can afford. Although other statistics in the real world (and at least in France) tend to demonstrate that consumers tend to want to keep their spending in the "appearance" to the detriment of essential things. And is the reason I will
9 / Continue to create both cheap and high end assets. Although I completely understand that this idea is questionable.
G bis / I will make one complaint about SL and LL, and it's the reliability of the grid and SLMP, which completely reduces user's ability both to find and purchase content as well as to use it. As an ecommerce site SLMP is horribly outdated, slow, and shows irrelevant stuff way too much. I always say that people should consider if Amazon worked like SLMP. Sometimes pages throw 500 errors, sometimes your order doesn't go through for 12 hours. You search for NIntendo and get SNES games instead of Switch. But I think a lot of people have lost patience with trying to buy things and being able to use the things they've bought. There's so much fighting for people's attention on the internet and honestly their dopamine receptors are fried. They have zero patience now. And if things aren't working they just leave and don't care. Is there a driver in the Second Life marketplace algorithm? The G spot is no longer a source of pleasure but a nest of problems!
J / People from developing countries have found SLMP is a way to make money and they have driven down the prices of content. This joins point F. There is absolutely no quality policy on the part of Linden Labs, whether in the choice of "creators" or in that of the objects put up for sale (Also point K). I think that here we touch on the very origin of Second Life: a beautiful idea managed by hippies at heart. Anyone produces anything. And so
10 / We have to find the right balance between the hippie spirit and respect for the work of real creators.
K / And guess what? All these people being shown old, outdated stuff think that's what SL is and that's all that exists so they get discouraged. True, and I hope that Linden Labs' decision to clean up the SLMP will have beneficial repercussions. And also
11 / As a creator, we absolutely must clean our SLMP of anything that is old and dated, or bring it up to date.
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On 9/30/2023 at 12:59 AM, Polenth Yue said:
I don't have that event experience because I do a small number of once-a-year events and sometimes the shop and hop. The biggest event for me is Fantasy Faire, which doesn't look like slowing down anytime soon. Sales were up this year there. Shop and hop comes in next. Sales and gift handouts were about the same this year, but at good levels, so nothing to worry about. For hunts, I do ones connected to those once-a-year events or Twisted (though that's been taking a break).
The issue with monthly events and hunts is everyone is trying to get in on the act, so there are far more events than people to visit. Merchants burn out. Customers become much more selective. Everyone ends up spread out very thinly.
Thank you for sharing your opinion Polenth !
C / The issue with monthly events and hunts is everyone is trying to get in on the act, so there are far more events than people to visit. Merchants burn out. Customers become much more selective. Everyone ends up spread out very thinly. A and C evoke the same trend.
6 / The biggest event for me is Fantasy Faire, which doesn't look like slowing down anytime soon. Sales were up this year there.
7 / Shop and hop comes in next. Sales and gift handouts were about the same this year, but at good levels, so nothing to worry about.
8 / For hunts, I do ones connected to those once-a-year events or Twisted (though that's been taking a break).
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On 9/29/2023 at 6:46 PM, Marigold Devin said:
Peaks and troughs I guess.
Perhaps there are many more merchants and creators now than there have ever been, so the money that everyone has to spend gets spread across more merchants and creators.
From my own viewpoint, I see people come and go. I took a break for a while myself (I've taken several breaks, from months to years at a time since 2012).
My optimism comes from something new and shiny perhaps, like the seasonal items. My pessimism comes from when a dress that should fit me does not fit me. Or the attitudes of my fellow residents. Or my own attitude can be my downfall at times.
Do you participate in things like the 55 linden dollar Thursday or anything like that? I have found some great vendors that way, something for everyone on this type of thing. Word of mouth is always the best form of advertising and these note cards which are sent out weekly are helpful.
The newest Linden Homes - for quite a few years now - have caused an increase in sales of home furnishings, I am sure. There is indeed a thread running on these forums that acts like a showcase for the creativity of the residents of Bellisseria, and the merchants who supply to same.
Thank you for sharing your feelings with us. I note down a line of thought and two ideas for something to try. (Letters and orange font = thoughts / Numbers and green font = Ideas to explore.
A / Perhaps there are many more merchants and creators now than there have ever been, so the money that everyone has to spend gets spread across more merchants and creators. Here the idea that the more the merrier, the less rice there is. As with many observations that we will make on this forum, we will not have conclusive statistics to support them. Which should not prevent us from formulating them: there is no smoke without fire.
B / I too think that the number of creators has increased and that a significant portion of them no longer need to use full perms assets created by others.
1 / Do you participate in things like the 55 linden dollar Thursday or anything like that? No I don't but the idea is under study.
2 / Word of mouth is always the best form of advertising and these note cards which are sent out weekly are helpful and I will add
3 / The use of a subscribing and posting system.
4 / The use of groups.
5 / The newest Linden Homes - for quite a few years now - have caused an increase in sales of home furnishings, I am sure. There is indeed a thread running on these forums that acts like a showcase for the creativity of the residents of Bellisseria, and the merchants who supply to same.
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On 9/30/2023 at 7:30 PM, Sid Nagy said:
I see SL as a hobby. So is my tiny marketplace store. What I earn in SL stays in SL. I pay tier and other expenses with my procedings.
There are months that I make more than I need and months where I see my stash of L$ vanish and there are even months that I have to pull my wallet to buy a few Linden dollars to stay afloat. Hobbies cost money and if I would have taken golf or snooker as a hobby that would be far more expensive each month, than what I pay out of my pockets for Second Life yearly.I don't do events, because I don't want the pressure of deadlines and the continuing need to produce new stuff.
It's my hobby nothing more, so if I produce nothing new for a while, that is perfectly okay for me.SL's economy has its ups and downs. Always had and always will. My thought: Better a slow economy in SL than in RL.
Thank you Sid for your very philosophical intervention, which I completely share. Second Life is a hobby that I self-finance with the sale of my creations. If tomorrow my activity completely collapses, my hobby will change: no more simulators, less attendance on my part; perhaps an escape to a cheaper grid, also with fewer interactions. It would be a shame because apart from earning a few kopecs, selling my creations also proves that they are popular and have a use. The subject of this forum goes well beyond financial questions.
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On 9/30/2023 at 7:04 PM, Love Zhaoying said:
Responding to the Title of the post: "Has Second Life a fleeting weakness or I'm just imagining things ?"
In my opinion, it is not an "either/or" proposition. In fact, Second Life may have a "fleeting weakness" AND you may be imagining things!
And here I must point out that I may be having ideas because we do not have regular official statistics from Linden Labs, particularly regarding sales. Suddenly the temptation to generalize my weaknesses to the entire economy of Second Life. Hence this forum topic: distinguishing between what is my errors and what is due to the "Second Life system".
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I'm getting old and probably becoming a pessimistic old fart. But it seems to me, however, that things are changing profoundly on Second Life and the purpose of this forum topic is to understand how and why. I am not going to talk only about business but also about the attendance of Second Life in both qualitative and quantitative terms. I don't need Second Life to make a living but Second Life is my main hobby and I finance it through my sales.
From an economic point of view, I have never made so many things, I have never participated in so many events. I also organize events. And yet my sales remain stable. Sometimes anarchic: one calm day, the next day explodes. I sell old stuff on the Marketplace and new stuff almost exclusively in-world. Strange, no?
I participate in events such as hunts, with things given free of charge. Well here too visitors are decreasing.
Generally speaking, I find that Second Life lacks punch, and this has been the case for at least 6 months. So I would be curious to know your feelings and your experience. Not just "I'm fine, thank you" or "It's total *****...", but what explains your optimism or pessimism. I too will come back to my experience through your comments.
I would also like to point out that the aim here is not to shoot red-hot at Linden Labs. Let's try to sort things out and be constructive.
Thank you in advance and hugs !
Pierre
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Hi everyone
As I consider Second Life as a hobby and not a source of income, I just noticed today that there were more than 600 product sheets missing from my MP ^^
I had seen that sales had dropped on the MP while they normally continued in-game; but I thought it was due to the summer period (it's always quiet during this period). Until I valiantly decided to put an item up for sale today...
Ok so I submitted a ticket to the technical team but ALSO to the management team, because I consider that MAJOR BUG, occuring at least since Jully, will impact the incomes of the Linden Labs and jeopardize my favorite hobby.
I also asked them if they want us to do a crowfunding to buy them memory sticks
(That said, you still have to find some on the component market, which is at half mast)
Good luck everyone and be patient !
Pierre Ceriano
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The April round is ready ! With Aquatica Mesh, Clutter for Builders, Comptoir des Tissus, Isaak Vasiliov, Ondine Sweetwater, Pierre Ceriano, Tool Shed and Tranquility.
Taxi : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Mieville Verne II/63/34/1501
Link for large pictures of the new and discounted items :
https://buildersdigestnetwork.wordpress.com/
Be welcome !
(As creator of Full perm assets, this way if you wish to participate the May round !)
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The Factory event is a themed event occuring 8 to 28th each month.
Actually recruiting full perms creators for its first round : 8 to 28 March.
It gathers creators of full perm assets and their customers.
March theme is "Historical Americas";
What makes the event special is the theme : it aims to fuel our creativity !
If you need more infos, please read the website, and the Exhibitor guide.
I stay at your disposal,
Pierre Ceriano
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Hello Cole,
To upload your own avatar needs to accomplish several steps :
- First, if you did not create the avatar by yourself, using modeling tools, you might check if the creator allows you to use it in Second Life, to modify it, etc
- Then you will have to learn the process and as usual you will start by reading the "Knowledge base" tab just up here on this page. Or here.
- In the knowledge base, there is a section "Uploading a mesh model" from which you will have other links such as "Model Upload UI reference" and then "Uploading and wearing a rigged mesh".
- It will be long and laborious to explain the entire process in a thread because many explanations will depend of the specifics of your avatar ; a good idea is also to find a learning community in-world, just search for dedicated groups.
Good time creating !
PS : Ags Falconer started a thread named "My journey making myself a mesh avatar".
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Thank you from the bottom of my heart
Indeed there was an adjustment with the 3.1 version regarding the location of the distance setting.
Also I add a modest contribution : if you use other models in the scene (lower models for sample), to hide them is not enough. Put them in an other collection and uncheck the "Exclude from wiew layer" square, unstead it leads to a weird AO map, like objects are overlaying.
I started weeks ago to try different settings but without your help I would not had the idea to choose the GPU editor and even to keep the image selected ^^
Now I need to adapt the distance and samples, and to use the Math node too. Also I'll have to understand the AO with multiple materials. Today I have made great strides and it is thanks to you all.
My greetings ladies and guys !
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Hello everyone !
Know what ? I went from Blender 2.79a to Blender 3.0 (and today 3.1.2). For me it is like moving from a vintage biplane to a Boeing 747 cockpit
I sure have fun with the modeling part in 3.0 version but I'm completly lost when it comes to bake an ambient occlusion map. I watched few tutorials but I'm not satisfied. Most of them are using too much steps and include bump maps and other things I don't need, such as in that thread.
Maybe some of talented pilots would share their settings with the community of creators, I will be very grateful.
Thanks and have fun !
For sample these are my settings in Blender 2.79a for the ambient occlusions I create :
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(Warning : assumed unconstructive answer)
Hum, guess I'm going to cry :) Can someone please explain the models bought (or ripped off) external libraries are mostly never upload-ready ?...
And indeed 250 U$ for a 3d model is in short a lot of money.
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Guess around 570 years with a Nasa's computer...
Something to win ? 😎
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Hello ainst, you may have some tips and trick at that thread :
Good time in Blender
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Maybe not all the best but here are some stuff that helped me a lot, and still help me (no specific order) :
- How to use a specific offset pivot point with SL mesh
- Texturing your mesh without having black lines or seams
- Strange white line in AO
- Blender - Pixelisation on bake
- Blender - Bake shadows with a transparency alpha
- Blender - UV unwrapping, pinning, pack islands...
- Blender - How to stitch multiple vertices in UV map ?
- Blender - Bake settings
- Blender - AO mapping closed interiors
- Texture optimization
- From Blender 2.79 to 2.80 :
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Bonjour Lemickeyyy
- Tu te rends sur la page Internet de Second Life : https://secondlife.com/
- En haut à droite tu click sur Login
- Colonne de gauche, tu déroule Compte dans la section Accueil et tu choisis "Modifier les paramètres d'emails"
L'email est partiellement cripté d'astérisques mais il peut te donner une piste.
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5 hours ago, ChinRey said:
Perhaps most telling, a few of the pre-mesh Moles seem to have a slightly better grasp on SL mesh than the newcomers. Even Silent Mole does and she's supposed to be mainly a scripter rather than a builder. I don't kow but I strongly suspect that indicates that experience with and knowledge of the old SL buidling materials are actually mroe important than general mesh experience from otehr environments if you want to make good SL mesh.
I share this point of view indeed. From a technical point of view, persons who master building in-game have good prerequisites to create maximised meshes. And to understand how materials work : a good proof is the way the water will work on a mesh, with the usual scripts.
Primitives in-game are our mother-meshes, we should not forget it
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I had this one time. I had an oldest duplicated version of the model, superposing the final version with the eye off in the outliner. Didn't remember I had made this duplication ^^
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Hum.... For me a builder is someone using prims in-game. And so, for me a master builder and over is someone mastering so well his/her build that I may doubt it's prims made
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Maybe I don't understand all the scope of your issue but there's a thing drawing my attention : your lowest model is 3 triangles and your object owns 6 materials. Your lowest model should own at least 6 triangles with one different material each triangle. Same for the other levels : you must check they all have the six materials named after the original mesh's.
I always create the lowest models from a duplication (SHIFT D) of the original mesh because sometimes the uploading window generate engine won't do the job well.
Also, if I use the Decimate modifier, I always check the operation didn't eat a material, by selecting each material.
To resume :
- Material of model is not a subset of reference model : the sub models don't own the same number and/or the same names for the materials.
- Missing required level of detail : the materials don't repeat on the sub model because not enough triangles. Or some faces haven't been assigned a material.
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Instamat has now been released for those looking for a PBR building alternative to Substance Designer (it's free!)
in Building and Texturing Forum
Posted · Edited by Pierre Ceriano
Precisions
Contrary to what is indicated in the title of your thread, InstaMAT is not free... if you want to compete with Substance Designer (you need at least a Seat License)