It’s been quiet here, but I’ve been making slow and not very steady process in learning Blender again.

I’m signed up for a very comprehensive Udemy course, I’ve got several versions of Blender installed (and will need to update Avastar soon), and I’ve got plans for Christmas decorations at the St John shop.

But much of my Blender self-education consists of watching tutorials, some of which are helpful, many of which are not, and ONE of which is hilariously bad, strangely comforting, and actually useful.

I salute you, sir. You uploaded a cool chair without a physics model, without any attempt to create Level of Detail (LOD) files, and you have no idea how much you spent to upload your subdivided cube-chair. And at least you did it; you didn’t hold back and think “I can’t figure Blender out” and play endless games of Spider Solitaire like me. Well done, you.

Other things I’ve been tinkering around with:
CMFF mBody Mesh Body – Chip Midnight’s attempt to make a logical mesh body for Second Life is officially abandoned, but it can be used with regular mesh clothing. He responded to my request for redelivery, as I had deleted it in a purge, and remarked that he’s not really actively developing anything and has found a new career (also, well done Chip).

Ocasin Mesh Body – about as hilariously bad as the attached tutorial, it’s a very, very inexpensive mesh body with Bento-capable hands and face and absolutely enormously engorged nipples. The fingernails and toenails are pretty awful, the shape is not bad, the alphas HUD is actually quite good except that it’s rotated 90 degrees and is off to the side of my monitor (probably the creator has a very large format monitor). It was dirt cheap, about 10% of the cost of a conventionally pretty mesh avatar, whch is why I decided to ask Chip for a redelivery.

Various open source skin files and tutorials
Eloh Elliott’s Another Skin
Ferd Frederix’ Outworldz is also hosting all of Eloh Elliot’s skins plus a ton more resources for OpenSim
Splendor by Szezmra Svarog – hard to find, weird site.

Multi-Chan Hax
This bizarre Photoshop tool can be set up to work with GIMP; it requires a PSPI helper plugin and also you’ll need something to take the place of Flaming Pear’s Solidify filter if you have 64 bit as I do. I found an alternative via GIMP chat. And what do you know, once I actually read and followed the instructions, it worked. There’s also a filter called “Resynthesizer” that may do something similar.

I’m in “tinkering and dabbling” mode. I want to work on improving old crappy sculpt based products and make a dream I had come true. And I don’t need to wear a beautiful mesh bod, but wanted to have the option to dump the “oh, God, it’s all gone horribly wrong” lumpy SL avatar now and then. I don’t plan on becoming a skin artist (can’t draw, mousing is crap) but I can manage a light template mod, just for my own use.

Dhughan was busy with a project at Halloween and is working on some men’s clothing from kits; he’s a bit stalled on something but will soon be on the right track, I hope.

I’m feeling more confident now. And taking comfort that trying and failing is always better than not trying.