Ruth and Beauty

Ok, people are idiots I just had a “i can’t use the new viewers my net isn’t fast enough conversation”. I don’t know how to deal with that. Who is putting out this v3 doesn’t work rumour? Honestly in 6 years in sl its giving me the best looking fastest experience I ever had. I’m told it’s no good for building. I build in it.

What I have noticed is it turns off features your pc isn’t fast enough to run. So there are an army of people installing 6 viewers sharing 1 cache logging into a viewer which disabled this restriction to play sl at 1 frame a second. Maybe v3 could use a photo render mode where it freezes a frame and renders the shit out of it to placate these people. I don’t need it I’m running a 3 year old pc on ultra all the time with everything turned on. I can only assume the people who struggle are on Windows 95 still cos these same people told them it’s cool and better somehow. Anyways back to the point mesh is live and I fuking love it, but you can’t see it. And u know what, i don’t care, you know best.

-expleted deleted- u

Quietness

Been walking the earth the last few months.I just completed the mesh Questions.There fairly easy and i would assume apply to everything uploaded to sl.The thing is leaves most of sl in the hot steamy stuff.All the gesture shops are gonna be vulnerable cos if you haven't cleared the sample powww.Similar names Prda would be a no no lol logos and trademarks which I knew about but sl is knee deep in counterfeit gear.Its a smart move the up loader requiring proper payment details.Should keep them on their toes when they chose to upload with out the correct Licences.There looks like an incentive to shop makers of knock off gear to reduce the competition.And well fancy dress shops will become a rare sight as it now requires a licence to use a likeness, im sure it did before.Watch this space

The mesh quiz is in your web account under mesh uplaod status leemmie know what you think
FA

U know that bit in Tron where he gets chopped up

Little bit quiet on the posts lately.

I been working on shoes yes still for the shoe fair .It’s not as straightforward as see shoe make shoe. I try to improve each element of what I make and to do this i have to keep learning new skills. It’s a messy process that takes me in unexpected directions. I spent an age trying to make a better bake. Baking is applying light and shadows etc to the plane texture. I had a look at both blender and 3ds max during this process and both kind of work differently to z-brush in that once set up they will back the light etc of from all angles all at the same time, which is kinda nice but I was at the i could spend the rest of my life learning these tools. http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13974203 this is me trying to explain how to use zb and max together to bake. Ill come back to it I’m sure.

The other week i got an xbox ikr but i was reading that the kinect cam has been made to work on a pc, and a lil Google later I find that now an up and running motion capture solution letting me create animations in seconds that I can use in Secondlife , its amazing fairly simple and if id spent thousands on a mocap solution id prob be dangling from a rope by now, it’s that good.

Todays discovery is the Brekel software http://www.brekel.com/?page_id=155 will capture objects as 3d models see pik

Damn if we aint living in the future. All this stuff ill go into a little deeper and make some vids about. Speaking of vids I got to watch Siddean demonstrating her extreme sculpting prowess in ustream the master at work indeed. I learned a lot link here http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13971892

We found out about you.

There’s a prog a device in sl u can buy lets u snoop at peoples ip address so u can hunt them down irl and make a suit from their skin.

That’s not true it takes at least 5 skins to make a suit. A good pair of boots however can use up to 7.

There is a device in second life that will allow people whose viewers are set to hear music like would be played in a sl club or who use the built in browser to store cookies. The ip address visible would take u as far as Manchester in my case. More or less its being used to flush out peoples alts under the guise of preventing copyboting. Either way I have thought about it and the vagueness of the ip address it can provide is subject to coincidence and likelihood to the amount that its utter crap in reality.

Why am I telling you this? Well I was passed a device that outs the sims using this device like its some huge wikileaks busting reveal. It won’t stop copybotters it won’t stop the endless paranoid ocean of internet sloshing about. The people with their online “who’s blocking me who’s on the map shit”. All you can do about that is get over it you can’t control the endless paranoia of other people.You can’t see what someone else is thinking.

Let it go Indiana

If you want to see what paranoia does for people go check out Sl Secrets on shopping cart disco. There all about me I’m fucking them all one by one and breaking there fragile little hearts.

On a lighter note we have$75 shoes in store by means of a Valentine’s Day treat I know im just a big softy

Xox

FA

No raindrop believes its responsible for the flood

imma bit peed of, I just deleted 3 friends from the airport there handing out Armidi and lamb hair to noobs.
This stuff is full perm and not by the correct makers which makes it botted right i use to own most of the Armid hair.I tell the people their wearing nicked things that they should delete it.None of the makers i know are rich outta second life the best get by out of it.
So i call em on it and im a jerk, seems no ones hurt by botting no one looses any money from it and im just a dick for even saying anything.
Am i wrong to say anything. I work hard on what i make.Lamb and Armidi do 2 im sure.

i feel a bit sad deleting em i liked em.But id be angry and upset if it was done to me.But as sl is at the moment there's no come back, going after botters is like chasing ghosts in the machine.If u AR it it if your lucky will be purged front the servers.but its renamed and passed about.Makers cant afford to do anything legally so it happens and is tolerated.
And one by one designers become demotivated and leave.they cant pay the tier on their shops.it was fun and just about paid for itself.

I didn't know it was stolen? i told u and u don't care
no raindrop believes its responsible for the flood...

Backstage with the VU

i belive after death i wont have to pay so many bills
[12:26] Lou: id hate there to be an afterlife
[12:26] Nico: During the last week I heard of five persons I knew, which died. I'm not sad or such. They weren't close ones, but I can't handle this decaying mankind anymore.
[12:27] Lou: the life i have is so textured
[12:27] Lou: i wanna die i wanna live
[12:27] Lou: never the same forever
[12:28] Lou: a friend said 2 people they kinda knew killed themselvesover xmas
[12:29] Nico: Life is so weird.
[12:29] Nico: I dont get it.
[12:29] Lou: if i explained the reall reason for it
[12:29] Lou: why were here
[12:29] Lou: and why its bad
[12:29] Lou: would u wanna know?
[12:30] Nico: I would, but if I'd believe is another thing.
[12:30] Lou: lets say i was god
[12:30] Lou: and made all this
[12:30] Lou: i know u
[12:30] Lou: ud not trust me
[12:31] Lou: if u had answers u wouldnt accept them
[12:31] Nico: If you were god, you knew more.
[12:31] Nico: You could prove things.
[12:31] Lou: i had the plan
[12:31] Lou: the point
[12:31] Lou: u said i dont belive u
[12:31] Lou: i turned ur pc into a frog
[12:31] Nico: Im having a deja-vu.
[12:32] Lou: i made u forget this last time we talked about it
[12:32] Lou: /;
[12:32] Nico: Impossible. :>
[12:32] Nico: Even god would fail when it comes to me.
[12:32] Nico: I'm a goddess myself.
[12:33] Lou: ur jsut the same as me
[12:33] Nico: Brain-damaged? ;>
[12:33] Lou: fat
[12:33] Lou: :D
[12:33] Nico: lool
[12:33] Nico: I'm not!
[12:34] Lou: giggles
[12:34] Lou: if there was a reason for everything
[12:34] Lou: we would be slaves to our fate
[12:34] Lou: what would be the point
[12:34] Nico: But I need a reason. I'm going insane - literally!
[12:35] Nico: Fear eats soul.
[12:35] Lou: what reason would satisfy
[12:35] Lou: say the reason was to ummm
[12:36] Lou: praise islam
[12:36] Lou: or to sing in church
[12:36] Lou: clean out the bath weekly
[12:36] Lou: what reason would u accept
[12:36] Nico: Rubish.
[12:36] Nico: I need something deeper - even if it is a lie.
[12:36] Nico: I tried believing, but sadly I'm intelligent.
[12:37] Lou: ok to learn all there is to know as wisdom inbues dna with evolutionary supremicy
[12:37] Lou: by making urself think
[12:37] Lou: u inprove ur childrens inteligence
[12:38] Lou: eventualy it would be posible to concieve the purpose
[12:38] Lou: have u ever heard a recording of your voice?
[12:39] Nico: Oh yes. I, um, I am starting to sing atm.
[12:39] Nico: So horrid!
[12:39] Lou: ur speaking voice
[12:39] Nico: That too.
[12:39] Lou: im sure ur friends dont wince wen they hear u
[12:39] Lou: but u do
[12:39] Lou: we dont seem able to concieve ourselves
[12:39] Nico: Perhaps they lie.
[12:39] Nico: You never know.
[12:39] Lou: my cat refuses to look in a mirror
[12:40] Nico: I refuse that too these days.
[12:40] Lou: smiles
[12:41] Lou: were wired to be creative and imaganative
[12:41] Lou: the why am i here question
[12:41] Lou: is a side effect of our nature
[12:41] Lou: we tell stories and creat art
[12:41] Lou: to capture our world
[12:42] Lou: in our minds
[12:42] Lou: we created a god
[12:42] Lou: so we didnt have to worry so much
[12:43] Lou: same reason we watch tv
[12:43] Lou: now take ur pants off

Lend me your Arches

Seems there's no copyright for fashion. There's trademark protection but nothing actually preventing me copying every good pair of shoes I see. Explains a lot about Secondlife shoes, really. What do you want? Should I make pairs or Doctor Martins boots Converse and Burberry or shall I continue doing my own thing. I don't really have any interest in producing a re-branded replica pair of shoes beyond the technical exercise. Music is copyright-ed up to the knackers to the extent that I feel it is litigiously cutting off its own creative fountain. Only the rich can afford to pay to use samples and god forbid u produce a tune that sounds the same as another u will be slapped in the pocket faster than u would believe. wasn't always like that la Bamba , twist and shout anybody. Two great songs with the same chords and still sounding unique. But cover versions? Opium for the masses, why trouble your audience by providing them with anything they would need to develop a taste for. Anything they don't already know. All of secondlife wear converse rip-offs, call them what u will. Does this bother me? well yes a little I don't really like my sl becoming to rl. Sl shoes offer more creative expression than rl shoes ever could. For one they don't need to be wearable. My best shoe designs would have even the most hardened supermodel confined to a wheelchair in a matter of hours. practical doesn't have to be a consideration in sl neither do toes, have u seen those hooves? I love those. Sl design should remain a test bed for fantasy not simply a mirror of rl trends. I want the flow to turn around and for our creations to find their way onto the rl street. If they can land a man on the moon they can stop the mega blisters. Besides we are designers we deal in perfection and beauty, not u chubby short arsed little bitches...

Humbled by the Marvellous Toy.

I just watched a video interview of Rod Humble(Linden labs new CEO) being interviewed by the Gnoriad. The first thing that struck me was ooh he's a Brit XD. This is good there's a fundamental difference between Brits and Yanks and that is enthusiasm and motivation .By nature the Brits hate all that shit. that isn't to say were not enthusiastic and motivated just we don't believe staring wide eyed at u and punching the sky will polish the proverbial turd. The second thing was something I'd never really considered and that's the difference between a toy and a game. Secondlife is a toy he didn't say that he was talking about the products he'd developed but it's a toy. It doesn't have rules and an objective like a game does, anyone u meet new in Secondlife will ask what their suppose to do assuming it's a game.

People who spend time in SL know it's not a game have they thought of it as a toy before? I always thought of it as a chat room with shoes but this never fitted my experience as u could have read in my previous posts, but a toy? I'm comparing it to the first day at playschool you enter the world nervously alone, unsure of yourself and what is expected of you. Slowly u discover the toy box this isn't an actual box in SL, but it is similar. imagine the playschool toy box and what it contains dolls, hats and clothes toy cars building blocks. Slowly you begin to play with the toys, and as you gain confidence others start to join in and play along with you and that is Secondlife

It went "zip" when it moved and "bop" when it stopped,
And "whirr" when it stood still.
I never knew just what it was and I guess I never will. (T.Paxton)

After all is said and done, I gotta move it's still fun, I'm gonna walk before they make me run.

Smiles howdy what a week. Creativity making it happen is like trying to put a cat on a leash. I have been tearing my eyes out with it this week. There are a few things going on with it. As I mentioned before I'm trying to make skin. This is tricky, my idea is to produce a avatar in Zbrush that I can bathe in light and shadow to hopefully produce bakes that when imported into Secondlife shoud look pretty good with no hand painting required. I ran into a few problems firstly I found myself running out of ram memory on my pc , this caused the pc to freeze whilst it shuffles data to and from the hard drive. The expert 3d modelers would all say to work at a lower detail level. I am trying to do this just to be able to see if I'm pissing into the wind I need to jump forward here and there with my model and spit it out into Secondlife to check how I'm getting along. Really it looks ok in world however there's a huge difference between low and ultra on all things in sl. On low the surfaces have no lighting or shadows so a lit face can look quite good. The same skin however on ultra gets many different problems as the surface shading clashes with the game engine shading. Sculpting problems I'm facing is that I spent a long time trying to make the sculpted face look realistic partially to see if I could and also because i felt it would produce the best highlights and shading. When I came to bring test renders in world I'm finding especially around the lip area that the lipstick coverage isn't wrapping the lip sufficiently. So now I'm finding myself back in ZB deforming the mesh to expose the problem areas to take both lighting and colour better.
The next thing I have been fighting with is we were invited to open a store on Mia Snows new sim. This required us to construct something to suit the quality and look of the sim build, our products and to fall within our prim limit. I was happily tootling along with this when I became aware of Turnip Sorbet's build on Lula. I had one of those shit moments. Its not a complicated build its just so fucking refined .It has a unified compositional style and theme. It's using some clever technology in its production but it's been so well integrated I just wanna punch them. Its left me feeling sick and green with envy. It's that good I can't even enjoy it .
I'm learning this stuff I'm just at the stage where my use of the tools isn't intuitive and complete enough to improvise .If I pick up a guitar I can play music I don't have to think where to put my fingers I can just do it, same with a car. The design process uses many different skills. It just needs more work and practice before the parts integrate and sing ...
Re Lula go have a look just don't tell them I sent u ..
Re Mia Snows sim looks like a dream I'm both daunted and excited to be there..
FA

Uncanny valley

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

Is an interesting link . It gets me thinking about sl the photo realism thing. u can take photos of a real thing and wrap them around the prim shape of a thing in sl and it will look like the real thing but in secondlife it will look wrong will look outta place. The freeby shops are full o clothes made this way by people who think all u have to do to make a coat is take photos of a coat. The best clothes are generally hand drawn many of the skins are 2.This skin is is a composite taken from photos of ma gf. The plan is to strip it back and refine it. if you compare this image with the earlier one u can see the eyebrows have gone. Dirty has been photoshoping this further reducing the detail more down to shadow and tone. The plan is to get an entire skin that were able to add make up layers 2.Many of the skins in secondlife use the same base freely available here http://sites.google.com/site/another/resources

Its a really good starting point that I'm not knocking. I just would like to go a little deeper into the process I'm happy to fall flat on my ass and fail at skin, as the texturing process is reflective and feeds back into my shoe work. I became aware that numerous skin designers in secondlife are sourcing this image http://lh6.ggpht.com/_KZ5kc2Sghp0/S8FW5LDk9uI/AAAAAAAAAX4/OlNVr2BZN80/Devon.Aoki.2.bmp of the model Devon an example of which is here for use in skins such as this http://www.brinksie.com/2010/11/11/seductress-of-bums/

It's a really good image I do understand why it's used and I took a photo of my gf in the same manner to obtain the even coverage over the mesh.

I feel using Zbrush I will be able to create my own skin shaders sampling lighting and tone information , Then be able to create original lighting bakes and hopefully produce some exciting new sl skins, inspired by but without sourcing the work that has gone before me.

But as I said I could quite easily fall on my ass 2.If the worst comes to the worst should improve my shoe textures

Zsculpty Markus giveth

:)

Just had my first try on the new mesh ZSculpty Tools, worked really well. That's my first correctly textured mesh. I used the uv master for the first time.My normal sculpy method uses a separate texture for each shoe part the mesh way packs them all together on a single image
It took a little figuring ou, I was hoping I could take the poly-painted parts of the shoe I had, and have them appear by magic on the flattened uv.Maybe there's no way of doing that. I just poly-painted on the new combined uv version of the shoe. A little extra secret bonus of this plugin is the files open in Photoshop extended in 3d. As time passes i'm using Photoshop less and less as I keep finding out zb does all that stuff.Zb is really turning out to be the tool for the job in regards to secondlife atleast it does everything I want in a way my feeble little brain can understand.