"Who am I?"

I can't put in words how much fun I'm having with mesh heads. At times I wear them, at times not. At times I wear one brand, at time another one. This or that applier. With or without mesh head, it's me the whole time. And I'm just realizing how helpful they can be to create stories and let me be one of my many faces.

Composing the following scene was complicated with my old computer. It took me four crashes until I managed to edit everything around as I wanted. The downside to mesh heads (and bodies - and super hi-res furniture) is the render effort on our graphics cards. Mine suffers quite noticeably. Something that added to the complexity of preparing the scene (to me) is the fact that one of the heads showing on the picture, Stella, would derezz itself as soon as I tried to rez it. This forced me to prepare all the lighting without the head on the scene, disable scripts in all region, then rez it, check if it was fine, enable scripts, have the head derezzing, tweak lights, disable scripts again in all region, rez again the head... I will keep to myself what I think about mesh body parts derezzing themselves when not worn. (It's sailor speech and I try to stay a lady.)

But after four crashes and having nearly 500 LI rezzed for this scene (haven't counted yet), I like the result. This picture is inspired in a disturbing scene from the Return to Oz movie: the scene of the heads locked in shelves, for the witch Mombi to select which one to wear.

Why so scared, girl? Today is your big day...

So, who am I? Am I my default avatar head? Am I Stella? Annie? Chloe? Ever? Lilith? Aria? The Doll?

I'm all of them as long as in them, I have stories to tell.

Have a great Sunday :-)

Little update: The scene "weighs" a total of LI 922. Ooooops! (And that's not counting what I was wearing on my avatar.)

A cat lost in a necklace, or how my mind wanders (and some Blender tips)

Yesterday, while staring at photos in Google Images trying to decide if I would make a new set of poses for Lazy Sunday, or set an existing one to discount, a part of me was more interested in looking at Halloween things and a black necklace caught my attention. "Beautiful, complex, and I've never done mesh jewelry before", I thought. I also thought that since I wasn't feeling inspired to make poses, I would give a try to a couple of ideas: plan B was already set in place in case I didn't finish in time, so I could use the day to experiment.

If you wonder, I can't just open Blender and start posing the avatar whatever way. That's not how it works, at least, that's not how it works to me. To me, poses are normally created in the context of a story (Which is why I have so few modeling poses at the moment, but so many poses to create stories.) I look for several search term combinations related to a theme, start looking, and there's a moment when I feel ready: a little story has been written in my mind. I then close all those tabs, and start making the poses while deciding all the outfitting. I said it when I wrote What's in a pose: "There's a lot more in a pose, than simply rotating limbs."

At least, that's how I feel it.

It was about my 1 PM, so, having time enough to decide if I could create a complete necklace, or leave it for another moment and stick to poses, I started first playing with the concept to make the chain in Blender:

I decided on using a Bezier Circle rather than a torus for the links because it would be easier for me to check if the thickness of the link was adequate. Later I could change the link shape to a torus if needed. But for the picture that started wandering in my mind, the circle links were good enough, and I gave them a couple more of vertices per segment:

I was aware that this would have a high Land Impact (LI), for jewelry items are usually small. This means, their bounding boxes are also small, and this means, the medium, low and lowest LODs are going to show up really, really close: they need higher detail than I use to give to the LOD levels for furniture and builds. Still, the links use a simple square section: that makes them round enough even when you get close, thanks to using Smooth Shading.

Then I had to go for lunch (at 4 PM - I need to review some of my habits), came back, and did the pendant after some thinking about what to do there.

One of the fun parts for me was unwrapping one link alone and putting its UV together with the pendant, so just one texture would cover the whole necklace and pendant, except the cat eyes. I decided for them to be in a different material, in case I had time to make them texture change.

I didn't have the time at the end of the day, but the idea remains now in my mind.

I decided to have the necklace and the pendant as separate mesh objects for one reason: whether someone needs to resize the necklace or not, they may need to rotate the pendant part, depending on the size of their breasts. So by making the pendant an independent part, I allow for users to rotate it as they need.

If you're new to creating meshes, UV mapping and texturing, you may have noticed something now. The necklace and the pendant are different objects, yet they share texture: One texture (which I uploaded to 512x512 size) is texturing different objects with different UV mappings.

How is this possible? Because when you're UV mapping, you're deciding what pixels of a texture will be painted on the mesh. If there's empty space on the UV map, you can unwrap another object in that empty area, and use the same texture for both items. It's economy of resources, and it's very much needed to do in SL.

Also, if you wonder, the cat eyes live together in a 128x128 texture. Really, as soon as you've zoomed out just a little bit, you're not going to see any detail: you do not need big textures in jewelry, which will help your users, and anybody else around you when wearing the item. Part of the texture trashing issue in SL (and further crashing) comes from using many, many, 1024x1024 textures everywhere. And in the corresponding specular and normal maps, when used. Viewers have their texture memory filled quickly, and once they've reached the limit: Crash. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but this is not an issue caused by Linden Lab. It's an issue caused by the residents. If you want to complain, complain to the right source, those that can fix the issue: the creators.

At first I baked gold textures. Then I uploaded the necklace parts, and eeeeeeek! Why is my pendant showing up this way? The edit window gave me quickly the answer (although by the time of right clicking, I knew what I was going to see):

This issue can be fixed in Blender: Extending the bounding box of the item by adding an extra triangle that we set to make the total size of the object, bigger. This triangle must be transparent in SL, so remember to assign it to a different material in Blender, to later be able of changing transparency only for that triangle in SL.

When the problem was solved, I decided I wasn't too fond of the gold texture, and baked a silver one. And it was finally done! My first mesh necklace!

A cat lost in a necklace is now out for Lazy Sunday, at the Poses and Props store, and I don't know yet if it will be my last jewelry item, or the first of a future line of items.

One thing is for sure: If I want to continue making jewelry, I have to practice more with lighting and material settings, to create better textures. Also, I need more practice with glass textures, for all possible gemstones.

In any case, I've liked the experience, and the issues I've noted in my mind give me also hints as to where my research should continue. Also, now I understand better which decisions taking once I start coding the scripts that jewelry could require.

Have a great day :-)

The Witch

This may be hard to believe, but... I've created a gacha set! I'll talk about reasons and how the creating experience has been, as an OCD merchant, but before that, I want to tell a little story. The story that started to write itself in my mind when I had completed the first two items, and that decided which would be the rest of items despite I had written down to create something else. The story of The Witch.

There are places in the world whose names have been forgotten. Ghostly places, enshrouded in ancient magic, almost like if they weren't there, are waiting for inadvertent visitors that step within their boundaries to never be seen again.

One of these places was once called Inhn, but nowadays nobody even knows the place exists. Back in time, Inhn was inhabited by a cruel witch. She was nameless, for part of her power lied in being an unknown entity to those that fell in her small realm. Her cabin and the graveyard around were surrounded by a forest. Only part of the forest was reached by this ancient magic, enveloping it, but it was enough to set a trap for those who were wandering by the other side of the forest.

The witch was known to mutilate her victims to then transform them into disturbing creatures that lost their humanity. Those creatures were then caged like birds and set outside the house, in the darkest part of the graveyard, left alone to die.

She fed on their suffering and their blood. She kept all of their limbs to continue torturing them even after they died, for the torment of their souls trying to reach the hands that no longer they could touch and reach was a delightful scene for her to watch. Their limbs in jars was what those poor souls wanted to recover, but even being next to them, they could never be complete again. Their despair and denial about the situation was what tied them to stay in the place, exactly where she, the nameless, needed them.

But even witches grow old, and as she aged, she was losing her power. She needed more people than before if she were to regain strength, but the forests around Inhn had been forgotten, and barely if ever new visitors showed up. She had sowed pain when she was young, and now she was too tired to watch her own back.

That's how one night, it happened. The legends aren't clear about what happened exactly. The only thing we know nowadays about the events is that the last two of her creations that despite dead, still were able of breathing air, buried her alive. Exhausted, their bodies fell and rot over her grave, and since that moment, their souls guard the nameless' tomb, to make sure she'll never raise among the dead.

This didn't put an end to the witch's victims' torment. Their souls had been tied to their mutilated limbs, and day after day, their weeping laments could be heard if you walked close to the limits of the safe part of the forests around Inhn. As time went by, those souls forgot about the nameless, they forgot what led them to be dead without hands, and slowly, they started to vanish forever, in sorrow and pain that would accompany them until the end of time.

That's how another tomb at the graveyard was abandoned, and the power of the witch started to grow back within it, whispering a song in the wind that started to attract people into walking near the forest.

The legend says, this other tomb is waiting for the next lost traveler that crosses the frontier to Inhn and sets foot into that haunted land. The tomb will then announce to the traveler that the day is their last day alive, and this new death will have power enough to bring the rejuvenated witch back to life.

This story is also published in The Night Corner

As I've mentioned at the beginning of this post, The Witch is my first gacha set, created for the Wayward Halloween event, by Wayward Events. Despite the set title, no actual witches show up. The first item I created was a rare, the Witch Cabin, and my first idea was to create furniture for it, and some witch poses. This is what happened next in my mind:

Perhaps a tree outside the house, with a tomb, could fit. Since we talk tombs, why not adding ghosts? Not plain ghosts: Ghosts that show by close presence, and hide otherwise. [Insert Blender break time here while creating the tomb and the ghosts, then scripting them.] Forget about the tree, I like the ghosts with the tomb. Since I'm making ghosts, why not another ghost mourning the separation of his hands from his body? Ohhhhhh... That could have been the witch! And what else happened to these pour souls?

And that's how I ended up creating a set that had nothing to do with my first idea (except for the Witch Cabin), and writing the story of The Witch.

As a consumer, many people that know me, know that I do not play gachas. The reason is simple: I know what I want, I know which choice of permissions I want, and if I cannot get what I want, with the permissions I want, then I do not spend money.

However, as a merchant, I can no longer stay blind to the fact that many people like playing gachas, and even though I don't share their like, that shouldn't be a reason to not give gachas a try, from the merchant perspective. But I didn't blindly apply to the first gacha event I saw showing up. I applied to one that I knew would motivate me (Halloween is every day in my heart.) And I put special attention to likes/dislikes/requests coming from people that like playing gachas, in many threads in Plurk.

One of them is: I've tried making a set where each piece is independent of the other. This isn't an armor set that makes no sense unless you have all pieces with the same color. This is a decoration set where each piece can have its own life alone. In other words: You don't need to get several decoration pieces to create something that makes sense.

Another one is: I'm willing to trade your complete no copy set for a complete copy/no transfer set as long as you obtained the pieces by playing in my machine, using my gacha script. I studied what other merchants do when it comes to their gacha sets and the customer service part, and I wrote my own gacha policies, contemplating the trading complete sets case. If you plan on playing my machine at the event, I recommend you to check these policies and make sure you understand them, for they will be useful in the (nonexistent, let's hope) case you have a delivery issue, or if you want to trade a complete set. I will say here as well: If you obtain the complete set from another place than my machine (yard sale, gift, Marketplace...), I will not trade it. Trading is a benefit for my customers, since I will be taking the time of checking that everything is correct before trading. I'm saying upfront that I'm not responsible, at all, about what happens outside of playing my machine.

I've also paid attention to explanations from merchants about how their gacha scripts seem to work, about complaints coming from customers that rares seem to be extra-hard to obtain and wonder if the machines are rigged, about alarming facts that make me wonder how many gacha scripts contemplate the case of somebody using a modified viewer to pay the machine whatever they want rather than pull price...

... and developed my own gacha script.

It will be soon ready for general release, once I polish a couple of details, write the final documentation, and give it a final beta-test round. But as of now, my gacha script is the script that will be used in my machine at the event, and that's how I will know if you've gotten the full set by playing in my machine.

As for packing the gacha items to load the machine, and checking permissions for next owner... Oh hellish hell! The hell of all hells for someone suffering OCD!

When I wrote the preparing your products for sale, permissions and more chapter of the Merchant Help series, I talked long about setting permissions, and at the end of that section, I said:

Important for Gacha Merchants
Gachas, by its own nature, mean that permissions should be set to no copy. You may want to send blogger/review copies of these gacha items. Do you send them as no copy too? If you do that, then you should be aware that bloggers could sell the items before the event opens, whether they blog them or not. Not all of them will do, but the possibility is there. You should set permissions of the review packs to copy/no transfer, and remember: This means that you have to change permissions of contents too!

And it's anything but funny to do this. I swear by the Old Gods and the New =)

You have to prepare your bloggers pack with all items copy/no transfer. Send it to your alt. Check permissions of the oh-so-many items you've decided to include in your set. Then, you have to prepare one box per gacha item, containing the gacha goodies, store landmark, ad (or gacha key) and a notecard explaining things.

I repeat: One box per gacha item.

Send them to your alt. Check that the boxes arrive in inventory as no copy, yes transfer. Unpack them. Rez all the items. Check all the permissions. Pray some more to the Old Gods and the New for you haven't made any mistakes. Curse a little (or a lot) when you find out you've made some. Fix them. Start again.

And when that double permissions check is done, you're finally ready to load your machine.

Enjoy The Witch, coming October 16th. It's been an experience to me :-)

The Black Widow

I've heard all the stories about us. Vain and shallow creatures, hunting husbands to suck their lives and money. Heartless, self-centered, monsters. Sluts. Whores. Scum with no remorse. Yes, I've heard all of them, and then some more.

I call it envy. Of our strength, of our independence from the rules that make them call us whores while secretly wishing being one.

It's not true that we don't love our husbands. We do. We love each one of them, and we keep that love alive even after they've gone, which makes our love for them particularly strong. That's why we need them gone: Because we're creatures of love, able of that rare affection and loyalty that survive death, and we need love to carry on with our lives.

Not every woman is fit to the role. Your secrets can never be known: they are your main strength. Solitude will be your second skin. This is how it must be, in order to feel all that intense and lasting love for your future husbands.

When you dust envy off the world's eyes, what's left is how they really see us: Charming, mysterious, attractive in ways that go further from simply entertaining the most basic desires. We feel no shame for that, and we'll use what we are.

But dare exposing us in front of our lovers and we'll show you why everybody fears a black widow.

This story is also published in The Night Corner

(The Liaison Collaborative is back. This month's theme is Fright Night, which inspired me for six pose sets. Photos in this post feature poses from The Black Widow series. There's another series of poses: The Cursed Doll. They'll be available tomorrow at the event location, at discounted price.)

PHOTO CREDITS

Mesh body: Lara, from Maitreya
Mesh feet: Lara’s feet, from Maitreya

Skin: Dark Side - Ginny 01 A, from Glam Affair
Skin tone: Pearl, from Glam Affair (included in Lara's HUD)
Freckles: Cassiopea Cosmetics, A (tn), from Glam Affair
Eyes: Phantom Eyes, Blind Rage, from Dead Apples
Makeup: Scarred Face Tatoo and Insomnia Makeup, from Corvus. Halloween Makeup - Spider Web Classic, from {C.C.M.}

Hair: Young and Beautiful, Dark Reds (Russet), from Exile

Corset: Alexis (Maitreya fit), black, from erratic
Panties: Giselle (Maitreya fit), black, from erratic
Collar: Dahlia, black, from Baiastice
Gloves: Long gloves with claws, black, from Baiastice
Dress: Mesh Spiderweb Dress, Black Widow outfit, from Boudoir

Earrings: Pearl earrings I, black, from hoorenbeek
Necklace: Aeranae's Embrace Necklace, from Empyrean Forge (EmpyreanForge Resident)
Head adornment: Aeranae's Embrace Adornment, from Empyrean Forge (EmpyreanForge Resident)
Spider wings: Spider legs Backpiece, from Zyn (ZynDyrr Resident)

Poses: The Black Widow series (including the ghost), coming tomorrow for The Liaison Collaborative, Black Tulip (mine)

Windlight Sky: Phototools- Hufflepuff Light 01, Phototools- Breakwave Building Light (photo with the ghost)