"We love you!"

Those are words I grew without, and maybe because of that, I didn't suspect of the lies that could be hiding behind them. Once adult, I started hearing those words. But often they were associated to several people pulling from me to their own benefit, at the same time, while concealing their true intentions under the soothing veil of the sound of those and similar words. Unused as I was to hearing them, needing to feel that some people could really like me, I fell for them until I reached breaking point. Once. Again. One eventually learns, but also ends up developing cold answers and wariness to the sound of we love you, a phrase I now loathe.

Yesterday I slept about three hours (Entirely my fault: I decided reading in bed, and that always ends with the Sun rising, saying "good morning".) Because of the lack of rest, I could not have my guard high, getting lost in memories, not even realizing about it. While I was trying to do some work, my mind was entertained in its own thoughts, distracted on a dark background, and suddenly, an image came to my mind:

"We Love You!", original raw snapshot, in Flickr.

I dropped the writing of the Blender book from my hands, and started a new project in Blender: the poses for this. The idea was so insistent on the back of my mind, that I knew I could not focus into anything else until I had done this. I wanted to show the breaking point, how could I do this in SL? It was actually easy, thanks to the myriad of different and versatile mesh avatars that we have at our disposal. If you're curious, the following snapshots show how I prepared the picture shown before (which is a raw snapshot from SL, with only a little bit of color enhancement).

The pose was prepared for three avatars in Blender:

Once uploaded to SL, and prepared the pose balls for three avatars, I separated them in two groups of two poses. One group would have the girl in the middle, and the girl pulling, and the other group would have again the girl in the middle, and the guy pulling. Then I started sitting avatars on the pose balls. I did with my main, to begin the sequence:

Then I logged one of my alts, already prepared in a Doll avatar, making her sit:

and then, all I had to do, was removing her legs and feet:

Time to log next alt, also prepared in a Doll avatar:

and then I removed all the upper body parts (head, eyes, hair, chest, arms, hands):

Then I changed to a bright windlight to better see where they were positioned with respect to the water, then raised them:

then added my male alt to the mix:

and after that, I did just minor position adjustments, found a windlight I liked, moved the Sun, and snapped. Once the picture was up, my mind shut its voice off, and I continued working.

I hope this gives you ideas for your own pics. We can do a lot nowadays in SL, fooling the eye.

Have a great day :-)

Escaping the dreaded Region Restarts

It's again that day of the week. Tuesday. You receive the first sim will restart in xxx minutes message, and teleport somewhere else, waiting. But then, the destination place also welcomes you with sim will restart in xxx minutes, so you teleport to yet another place. Chances are high, you'll be also welcomed with the sim will restart in xxx minutes. Teleport to another place, and chances continue to be high that you'll be welcomed with the dreaded warning. At this point, you feel like crossing those bridges from the movies: one more second, and the stone right under your feet will fall.

We could of course just log off from SL, prepare a cup of coffee (or tea), and try to log back after ten minutes. But at times, this is not possible. We could be talking to a customer, talking to a friend, or we just plain and simply do not want to log off. Having to jump from sim to sim doesn't help if you were having a conversation.

The good news here is: not all places in SL will welcome us with the "sim will restart in xxx minutes" message, when Tuesday restarts are going on. Actually, regions from the main channel are restarted on Tuesday. All the other regions are restarted... Wednesday (not on the same week). So in order to escape from all the restarts Tuesday, the only we have to do is teleporting to a sim that is not in the main channel :-)

"Well, yes, you say that as if it's easy to find said sims!"

I'm not saying it's easy, but I'm providing with an SL URL to one of them, located in mainland :-) (which means, it is not subject to the owner of the sim deciding to stop paying for it.)

Click here to escape from Tuesday's restarts (This teleports you to Miramare Bay, down the sea.)

How do I know that this place is not a main channel sim? I find that information in the viewer. If you click the Help menu, then About [viewer name here], a window shows up, with relevant information about your viewer, computer, and the place you're in:

Take a second look at the information at the top:

You are at 128.0, 128.0, 1.0 in Miramare Bay located at sim8953.agni.lindenlab.com (216.82.41.129:13007)
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Miramare%20Bay/128/128/1
(global coordinates 254848.0, 256896.0, 1.0)
Second Life RC BlueSteel 14.11.07.296624

This last line: Second Life RC BlueSteel 14.11.07.296624

This is what tells us, that we are not in a main channel sim. So you can teleport to this place, grab a landmark, save it as Miramare Bay (128, 128, 1) - Run here on REGION RESTART (True name of this LM in my inventory), and keep it always handy for restarts on Tuesday :-)

"But there are restarts on Wednesday. You said it!"

In this case, all we have to do is teleporting to a sim in the main channel. For example, Cape Haven, which again is mainland, and it is a sim from the main channel.

Click here to escape from Wednesday's restarts (This teleports you to Cape Haven, again, down the sea.)

We know this, once again, checking on the Help: About [viewer name here] menu:

Again, read the line: Second Life Server 14.10.24.295913
That tells us, the sim belongs to the main channel.

Little Update: As an alternative, you can also look on the map for sandboxes that belong to each channel. For example, this one: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/BlueSteel%20Sandbox%202/128/128/2, which is a sandbox of the Blue Steel channel. Or this one: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Magnum%20Sandbox%202/45/133/23, a sandbox of the Magnum channel. Or, this one: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LeTigre%20Sandbox%203/145/235/23, a sandbox of the Le Tigre channel. You will need to join this group, Second Life Beta in order to access those sandboxes (copy and paste the URL of the previous link in local chat, then click on it to open the group window.)

(Thanks to Devin Vaughn for this tip about the sandboxes!)

"Ok, so now I know where to escape on restarts. But how do I know when I can go back home?"

In order to know when your sim will be again online, all you have to do is dropping a very simple script on a prim of your choice. You can drop this script inside anything modify you have, or you can rez a box, give it a relevant name such as "Sim Status Prim" (or something else as long as it makes sense to you), then drop in the Content tab a specific script.

"Omg noes, I fear scripts, they always steal my cookies... what do I do?"

Follow these steps:

• Create a new script in your inventory.
• Give it a relevant name, such as Sim is back!
• Open it to edit, and delete everything that's written inside, so you get an empty edit screen.
• Select with your mouse the following text (colored green, to better distinguish it), copy it with CTRL C, then put your cursor over the script window and paste with CTRL V.

default
{
    changed(integer change)
    {
        if(change & CHANGED_REGION_START)
        {
            llInstantMessage(llGetOwner(), "Sim is back!");
        }
    }
}

And finally save this, so the script compiles. You can of course change the "Sim is back!" text to something else of your preference. The script will IM this text to you, when the sim where the prim is, is back online (so, the prim has to be in your place, all the time.) Remember that IMs coming from objects will show up in your nearby/local chat window.

"Nopes. All this script thing is really confusing to me."

Fair enough :-) Click here to teleport to my store, where I've dropped a copy of this script that you can purchase for free. The box is placed next to the Blender books.

And this is all! Restarts should never be again a source of stressful sim hopping for you.

Have a great day :-)

Little update: Antony Fairport has published in his blog a more complex notifier script, in case you are interested in having more details. Click here to check Antony's script. Click here for the script only, in a safe-for-work website. He also wrote a region status checker that could come in handy. And here, the corresponding script in a safe-for-work website.

Wedding Night

I cannot say why I have this preference of making dark pictures over making brighter ones. Somehow I find more powerful feelings within darkness, perhaps because of the distortion provoked by the lack of light. I've always liked dark stories, and probably there isn't a why for it, just an it's just who I am.

The next day to preparing the prison, the exclusive item for A Tattered Page was ready. Inspired in the quote "It is well. I go; but remember, I shall be with you on your wedding-night" from Frankenstein, I called this item (couple pose and ghost), simply, "Wedding Night".

Why the ghost? To me, the ghost is Victor's guilty conscience. Victor broke his promise with the monster, but the monster kept his, killing his wife on their wedding night. This ghost represents the burden of his broken promise, coming back at him in the most painful way.

In that mood, I also made two new pose sets that will be released under Pose me Amazing, the 10th: Why did you leave me... (1 and 2)

I guess, some wounds never heal. But life goes on, and now I have to go back to work!

Have a great day :-)

Bring the Spooky in your Windlight settings

This article was published in Fusion Magazine, October 2014. Click for the magazine!

Halloween is upon us! Many of us are already outfitted and roaming SL in a quest for spooky places. Many of us also love taking pictures in SL, to keep memories of all the mischief happening. How about enhancing those memories with a touch of windlight? Do I hear, you're not sure about what windlight is? Then don't worry, because this article is for you.

Windlight is SL's atmospheric rendering system. Our viewers give us a set of settings that allow us to change how the sky looks, the light, Sun position, and other ambient effects, such as fog, clouds... Each of us can change the windlight settings in our viewer. By doing so, we're changing how the sky, light, etc. are rendered, but only in our viewer. Our choice of windlight settings is local, meaning, only we can see it in our viewer, not other avatars around. But that is fine when all we want to do is take pictures.

Now, don't worry because it seems like we need to learn a lot of things in order to use this windlight thing. In this issue we'll begin with the basics: we'll learn where we can find this in our viewer, we'll see a few shortcuts for some third party viewers, and then we'll explore a few presets that we can use for our Halloween-Spooky oriented pictures. Yes: There are premade presets that we can just select and use. Starting to use windlight is that easy.

In the official viewer, the windlight settings can be found under: World: Environment Editor: Environment Settings

In order to select a specific windlight setting, we have to change the selection under Sky/Day Cycle, then Fixed sky, from Default to the setting we wish to use. For example, the picture shows how to change our setting to Blue Midday:

which immediately changes the light settings in our viewer. Press OK to have them applied.

Other viewers, like Firestorm or Singularity, have quick access to the windlight presets at the bottom right area of our viewer. For example, in Firestorm we would click the little icon to the bottom right of the screen, normally next to the AO button:

and that would open the Quick Preferences, which among others, let us to select a Windlight preset under WL Sky (and WL Water for similar settings, only for the water):

Let's make a list here of some presets that everybody has installed in their viewers, ready for Halloween:

• Blizzard
• Foggy
• Funky Funky Funky
• Ghost

These options aren't bad, but it's true that, to begin with, the official viewer doesn't give us many choices. Don't worry, though, because lots of people have created their own presets, including Torley Linden, and offer them to other SL residents. What would we do with them?

First, download the settings to your computer. Open this link in your browser, from the official wiki page, and start by downloading Torley's ones:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/WindLight_Settings

After this, you will have to unpack them in a specific folder. Depending on your Operating System, the Secondlife folder will be placed in one or other place. The previous link to the official wiki lists them:

Linux:              ~/.secondlife/
Mac:                 ~/Library/Application Support/SecondLife/
Windows Vista & 7:  C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\
Windows XP:         C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\SecondLife\

Once you've found this Secondlife folder in your Operating System, the sky presets have to be saved under:

user_settings/windlight/skies
and the water presets (if any) under:

user_settings/windlight/water
Once you're done, next time you log in using the viewer you installed the presets for, you will have them available in the same dropdown menu we used before. If you're using a third party viewer such as Firestorm, note that instead of Secondlife or .secondlife, the folder to look for is named Firestorm (or .firestorm for Linux users). Also, many third party viewers come with lots of Windlight presets installed, so for example, you may not need to install Torley's ones in them.

For Halloween, I would recommend trying out all the presets from Torley that are in the FOGGY, HORROR and NIGHT categories. A few personal choices:

[TOR] FOGGY - Das fog
    [TOR] FOGGY - Silent heck
    [TOR] HORROR - Bloody moon
    [TOR] HORROR - Castle vain
    [TOR] HORROR - Darkside tales
    [TOR] HORROR - Dullard
    [TOR] NIGHT - Moony
    [TOR] NIGHT - That spells moon (1 to 4)

As a final note, know that you can also change the Sun position! In the official viewer we can use two ways. One thing that we can do is go to the World: Sun menu, and in there, select one of the four default positions, corresponding to 12 AM (Midnight), 6 AM (Sunrise), 12 PM (Noon) and 6 PM (Sunset).

Then, and this is a little more complicated: Go to the World: Environment Editor: Sky Presets: Edit Preset menu. This opens the following window, where we begin by selecting the preset we'll be using:

Making changes here will overwrite the preset. In order to avoid this, the first we do is a copy of the preset we're tweaking by writing something more under Preset Name, for example, Funky Funky Funky - My Sun Changes in this example, which will create a copy of the preset under this new name:

Now, we click on the Lighting tab, and we drag to move the green dot in the Sun/Moon Position slider, to change the Sun position:

Once we're done, we have to go again to World: Environment Editor: Environment Settings, and select the modified preset we've just tweaked by changing the Sun position, then hit OK:

We can of course change the Sun position over this work copy we've created, not creating more and more copies of it. The purpose of creating this first copy was not to lose the original setting, but with this done, now we can reuse it and tweak saving over it as much as we need.

This will let you experiment what Sun position gives the best spooky feeling for your pictures. It will also change the direction of the shadows, if you're using the Advanced Lighting Mode with shadows turned on.

Finally, if you're using a third party viewer as Firestorm, you can quickly change the Sun position by using a slider, without having to save a different preset for this! Just notice that under the WL Sky and WL Water selectors there's a color band representing the times of the day, and a slider that lets you drag and so change the Sun position:

With all this, now go out and take lots of fun pictures. Happy Halloween!

Enjoy your SL.

A prison for your mind

Events are all the rage nowadays, even though there are signs that we're living in a crazy overload of them. Still, new events continue to be created, and A Tattered Page is one of them. I confess, when I read what is it about, I loved it.

It sure is not the event for the merchant that rushes into their event items the last five minutes (or worse, the hour after the event started). We have to read a book before thinking what to create for the event. Why? Because whatever we create, not only has to be inspired in the book. We have to provide the exact quote that inspired us. And for that, you need to take your time to... yes, to read the book.

The first round is about to begin (November 7th), and the chosen book is Frankenstein. I never read this book before, and I'm really glad to have been accepted into the event, because it's a book I've enjoyed. Also, the event itself reminds me a lot of the literary workshop I enjoyed so much when I was in high school. I could go on a long ramble about what I've observed as the two main topics of the book: the dangers of playing God, and the despair an unloved child feels, feeling so abandoned and hurt, that said child could turn into a spiteful monster. (Victor's creation hasn't even a name, to add to the injury.)

At the moment of writing this, I've completed my first item, and I'll start making the exclusive one for the event after lunch. In this event, exclusive means that once the event is over, the item will no longer be sold.

Of course, with such a read, I couldn't stop thinking, and it was very difficult to choose one quote, one idea. As much as I'd like to make everything that went into my mind, time constraints keep me straight into being the most realistic possible with what I will be able to do.

My first item, A prison for your mind, is inspired by the quote "But I was doomed to live and in two months found myself as awaking from a dream, in a prison, stretched on a wretched bed, surrounded by jailers, turnkeys, bolts, and all the miserable apparatus of a dungeon."

The worst prisons are those without keys. Prisoners of our own guilty conscience, prisoners of anguish and despair we've created, we sit hoping for the dark feelings to go away. But they don't go. They chase us until either we own up to our actions, or we give a step closer to the darkness and malice that comes with the lack of sympathy. Either we learn or we're a step closer to becoming a real monster.

The idea I have for the exclusive item is inspired by the quote "It is well. I go; but remember, I shall be with you on your wedding-night." Stay tuned to see what it will be, and spread the word about A Tattered Page!

Have a great day :-)