The saga of fitting prim lashes

   For a while I thought prim eyelashes were a bit superfluous, and that system lashes were good enough. But then I think back to when I experimented with prim eyes and how much better they could look with a higher resolution. The truth is, prim lashes do look better than system lashes – when they are fitted properly.
   That’s where the saga part comes in. That you will need to adjust your prim eyelashes is a foregone conclusion. Avatar’s eyes can come in many different shapes. But eye shape isn’t the only factor you deal with when fitting your prim lashes.
   As I delved into the fitting of some of my first prim lash purchases, I sensed a little bit of a dichotomy in whoever it was at Linden Lab^® who decided that someone might want to adjust their hair down to nothing, but that a “zero” eyelash setting of about one quarter normal length would be enough to satisfy even the most extreme minimalist. There is always a little bit of system lash left to get in the way of your prim lash fitting and, as far as I know, creating a custom skin with a complete alpha subtraction of the lash area would merely reveal the default system skin beneath, complete with lashes.
   This is one thing I never saw mentioned, as far as I remember, in any of the fitting instructions that came with the lashes I have so far purchased. I would have appreciated a little “The system lashes can never be completely zeroed.” System lashes are just something you have to work around and overcome when fitting prim lashes.
   Some good advice I did get came from my friend Nissa Nightfire. She gave me a white mannequin skin which makes fitting lashes easier. Not having eye makeup makes positioning the prims easier.

   I met with success, finally. I kept working at it because I had seen plenty of “live” examples of well fitted lashes that looked really good. As not all skins will look good with every shape, so it is with prim lashes. Eyes come in many shapes. There are many parameters that change the way they look. I found lashes from Celestial Studios that use three prims for each side, two uppers and one lower. This made fitting the upper lash easier for me as I find my upper eyelids have more curve than the lower ones. And for me, I found that I had to place the prims so they were all in front of the system lash meshes while at the same time trying to keep them close enough to my eyelids to look good. This is an example of the alpha transparency bug helping us. So, if that bug gets fixed, something else breaks.

   Just a little bit more UV real estate in the skin head texture could be allocated to the lash mesh would be an improvement.

 

What’s all this then?

   Do you know what happens when first life gets you really busy and you’re only able to briefly check in on the metaverse?
   You discover there is so much new fashion about that there aren’t enough L$, that’s what.

   Holy cow! I went around to some of the shops I had frequented and purchased from before. And I read some of the fashion blogs, which lead me to other places. Some places have changed, and the others just have a lot of new items. It might just be me but there sure is a lot of green being produced by all those wonderful designers.

   I have been quite happy with the few hairstyles I have by Natalie Zelmanov. But I have ventured into the realm of sculpted hairstyles and picked up a couple of them by Onyx LeShelle of Maitreya. I had not completely made up my mind about sculpted hair but Onyx has brought me a number of steps closer. Enough to spend my L$ at any rate. High quality and lovely looks. More than ever now I am looking forward to (well, hoping for) flexible sculpts (thanks Peter).

   Dutch Touch rezzed around me, revealing big changes that I found quite favorable. My friend Peter Stindberg introduced me to Dutch Touch. I admit I have never been a fan of plaid and did not find very much to my liking. The Dutch Touch of today is a much more colorful place and I made a number of purchases:)

   I met Nyla Cheeky a number of months ago and have periodically visited House of Nyla ever since. I found a lovely skirt suit with very nice stitching. It’s called Coco Black…err.. well my transaction history doesn’t show the whole name. Anyway, I wore that right off the shelf.

   I am sure I have only scratched the surface and I will continue following the blogs and exploring. It will take ages for my stipend to catch up.

 

Rusty

   The other day I needed to write a menu dialog script. It was ridiculous how much time it took me to re-figure how it works… how to do it.
   I need to come up with little side projects (small ones Peter ) that allow me to practice things like scripting or other aspects of creating that I might not use on an everyday basis.
   I suppose I could spend a day creating a batch of simple scripted functions that I use most often. Would that be cheating?

 

Can’t see the forest or the trees.

   I must be very busy all the time. Or maybe I’m just self absorbed….. though I hope not. My time in-world has suffered this Summer. I have found myself in and out and up and down all the time. I can’t remember what I did last Summer. Was it this bad?
   I just submitted an interview to Ana Lutetia for her blog. In it I stated that one of the things that has kept me logging in were my friends. And it is true… but I feel badly this Summer because I have hardly kept in touch with any of them. They do some pretty amazing things.
   Peter Stindberg writes a great blog but I don’t read it (or others) as often as I should; as often as I want to. I really enjoyed reading all the interviews on Ana’s blog… all of them. They’re great. I was really laughing at their wit and personality.
   Trinity writes Rez magazine with Voodoo Buwan and it’s neat too. I want to read more often and I want to write here more often. I just need reminding.. or nudging… or maybe clobbering. Something.
   Feel free to tell me “Hey Iva, go write something.” Ok?

 

Home – a history – Part 2

Until recently I believed there were a significant number of SL^® residents who were perfectly happy calling no place home and leading nomadic SL^® lifestyles. After thinking about it more, I came to realize that just because someone creates an avatar in SL^® doesn’t mean they don’t act like a human anymore. Just because an avatar doesn’t need a roof over her head, a place to sleep, or several rooms in which to keep her 10,000+ inventory items, doesn’t mean the human at the keyboard won’t want a place to belong to.
“Home” can be a very subjective thing here in SL^®. Much more so than in real life. In the real world, we need a home, a place to sleep. In Second Life^® we can spend six hours (grid willing) hanging in place three hundred meters up in the sky. We can spend those same six hours at the bottom of a sea. But in it’s most basic meaning, home is, as I said before, the place where we feel we belong. Home is where we might begin and end each day. It is our base, our place of refuge. It is where we might gather with a few friends after a particularly trying day.
Beachwood is that base for me. And, more recently, another place where our company, GREENE Concept, purchased land has also been a periodic base and home.
I was saddened to learn that a place I had called home, Conway4, and which had of course changed after I left it, has ceased to exist. With the exception of Conway3, all the Conway open space sims seem to have become casualties of Linden Lab’s Open Space sim policy changes. It was a little like learning that the house you had grown up in had been demolished.
It makes me wonder where I’ll next call home.

 

On the messy intrusion of real life.

I have been spending less time in-world. I have had a first life event taking up my time and more than just a little emotional energy. I will say it is extended family related and no details are really necessary. It was something that depressed me and left me with little or no desire or energy to do anything else.
Well, that has more or less settled down to the dull roar of knowing what I can and cannot do about it. And just as I wanted to start spending more time in-world creating and playing, I have gotten a case of shingles.
This is honestly one of the more painful experiences I have ever had. I have a fairly good tolerance for pain when I know no serious damage or blood loss is occurring, or when I know there is something I can do about it. I can only describe this as agonizing, painful, itchy irritation. If you have ever had poison ivy or poison oak, Imagine that on a nuclear scale.

Anyway, I want to get back into my SL groove. I want to continue creating and learning. Peter reintroduced me to the fun of sailing as well. I may spend upcoming free time learning more about SL sailing. I found it more enjoyable than SL driving, which is fraught with space/time anomalies.

Coming up: Home – a history – Part 2

 

Blog Challenge – my bag

   Since I was creating a picture of my phone for someone who wanted to see it, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and do my bag contents.

   The bag is in the back. I didn’t do any cleaning except the hairbrush. Contents: A sheaf of paper, Wallet containing various pieces of plastic, Notebook, Current book, Keys, Pedometer, Spring clip, Pens and a pencil, A lighter, Leatherman Micra, Hairbrush, PHONE, Flash drive, Lotions, Chapstick, Emergency Smarties, Hairbands, Receipts and notes, A stone (no birds were harmed). There was some dust in there too. But it wouldn’t have showed against the carpet.

 

Home – a history – Part 1

   I know there are some SL^® residents who are content in an eternally nomadic slifestyle wandering everywhere and calling nowhere home. Unable to explain why, I will simply say that I have always felt a strong desire to have a home in Second Life^®.
   Home for me does not necessarily mean my own plot of land complete with house, security system, and wandering pet. It is enough for me to have a place that I spend most of my time; a place where friends can expect to find me at the odd hour.
   Currently that home is in Beachwood. My workshop is my place of familiarity, my base. It is the place to which I return (if I remember) before logging out.
   When I first rezzed I spent a lot of time at Orientation Station and its satellites. I learned my first building skills there. Eventually I was banned from that place by its managers. I was cheerfully given a folder of interesting landmarks. After following them, I found I could not return. I never learned the reason for it, despite sending a message requesting an explanation. If I had to guess, I would say the cause could have been due to my excessive curiosity (read:nosiness). My more altruistic fractional approximation maintains that I was a baby bird being pushed from the nest by its mother.
   It was after this that I discovered that I felt lost and alone, which is a bit silly, really. It was uncertain at this point whether I would remain in SL^®.
   One friend I had made while snooping around OS was Gina Glimmer (a fantastic person). She was one of the Metaverse Mentors at the time. It was when she later sent me invitations to a few events she was involved in that I decided to keep coming back.
   Around this time I had gotten curious about scripting. I became obvious to me that a large part of building and content creation involved scripted objects. It was fun to put a script in a box and make it chat whatever you wanted it to, somewhat akin to filling a high school classroom computer with the names of popular boys. Short lived entertainment. So I read and experimented and learned more and more. Quaternions still remain outside my ability to understand.
   Gina (a wonderful person) had a photo studio/shop at the Conway4 sim. I went there to see it and also set up a photo shoot with her for my profile picture. I found Conway4 to be a pleasant place to visit and I returned there more an more often after bouts of exploration. One day I met Samba Beaumont there. Samba was the estate owner of Conway4 at the time. He stood in the center of a small island which was itself surrounded by a ring of land containing galleries, shops, and a small church he had built. He said hi and I said hi. Then many conversations began, most of them on that little island in the center.
   Dressed in a nearly signature tuxedo, Samba was interested in Education in virtual worlds. He also liked building things and seeing what could be done with a variety of prim shapes and sizes. We talked about an array of topics. It was then that I learned the fun of building collaboratively with someone else.
   Gradually, Conway4 became home to me. I had no house there, no plot of land with my name on it. I simply felt welcomed there. That was enough.
   Eventually, Samba announced that he was leaving Conway4 and possibly SL^® as well. During his last month of paid lease for Conway4, he was to be heavily involved in rl^® work. He asked me if I wanted to control the estate while he was gone. I jumped at the chance. He got the transfer set up with the sim owner, deleted all structures and flattened the land. I was mixed between missing the place as it has been and exhilarated at the blank slate before me. Then Samba said “I’ll see you in a few weeks.” and then jokingly, “Don’t sell the island.”
   Now it was home. It was my base; the place to which I would return before logging off. It was a place I could build a house for myself of nearly any size if I wanted to; A place where I could create mountains and lakes!
   I spent my month of Conway4 residency well, building, experimenting, greeting the occasional visitor who came expecting something else entirely. And I learned about sculpted prims and how to create and texture them. That was how it was there, building, scripting and learning in relative peace and quiet, with sparse distractions.

   Whew! histories are long! Part 2 later.

 

A chair model.

Wishing I could put more of what I see around me into Second Life^®, I keep modeling things in Wings 3D, trying to make them as LOD friendly as I can. My latest effort has been inspired by an Emeco aluminum chair I got on sale at Full Upright Position in Portland.
The results were nearly what I had hoped for though there are still places in the rezzed chair (six sculpts) where the vertices do weird things they didn’t do in Wings. They are probably due to those mysterious quantization errors I have heard about. What are those things anyway?

Chair model inspired by the Emeco 1006 Navy Chair

*gasp* It’s not green!

 

Six things about me.

Here are the rules:
1. Link to the person that tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Share 6 non-important/habits/quirks about yourself
4. Tag 6 random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website
6. Let your tagger know when your entry is up

I’ll let you decide whether it’s important or not.

1. I don’t sleep enough/regularly. It’s sort of a starve/binge cycle.

2. I have not eaten beef for more than ten years. I used to get a steak whenever I could. But I…. just sort of lost my taste for it. Now I mange le poulet.

3. I’m a slave to music. It takes me places, speaks to my soul and reminds me of friends long past.

4. I don’t shave my armpits.

5. I don’t like Bleu cheese. To my mind, mold is not food. Most fungi, in fact, is right out.

6. I have always been told that I am level headed and extremely patient. I find, however, that the older I get, the less patience I have for immaturity. If I traveled back in time twenty years and met myself, we would not get along. And it would have nothing to do with her complexion!

That’s six little things about me, about a millionth of the whole package. I tag: Dandellion, ArminasX, and ummmmm…… I don’t know who else might read this besides other people Peter already tagged. If you read this and wish to disclose intimate details about yourself, please feel free!