I’ve joined a couple of marketing groups and have realized that I need to update some of my branding, so I went looking for images to adapt that had no copyright issues.
Look at this darling Steampunk Chameleon I found on Flickr!
According to the terms of the license, it’s Attribution/Share-Alike, so thank you, Saundra, for this beautifully inspiring little piece, which exists in the real world.
So this is what I have for the moment:
It’s not the final version but it was enjoyable playing around with GIMP’s filters (mostly GIMPressionist/Line Art and Render/Difference Clouds. I don’t know what I’m doing there, but I liked it when I finally decided I was done.
I’ll be participating in STEAM IX, “Romancing the STEAM” and have tons of ideas. I have to get ready extra early as the typist stupidly has to be away from the computer right before it starts. But ready I will be, I already have men’s and women’s gifts although I’d like to make something special under the theme. Reviewed some clips from the “Romancing the Stone” movie and saw many hats and interesting clothes. What if this story took place in 1884 instead of 1984? What if they had a steam-powered treasure finder?
Time for boycat Dinkies and male Tinies to have a decent walking stick with simple animations – so I started to adapt the Ivory Walking Stick, which is old enough to need some freshening up.
I started by testing some nicer textures for the ivory, and setting it in a sort of cup-bezel with engraved silver fittings (I may play with materials a bit if they don’t add greatly to the land impact (LI). Then I resized it to the right length for a Dinkie or Tiny avatar, and got the pos/rot information with a script so as to update the control script. At last, I hopped smartly on to a pose stand to run it through the animations to test various positions and rotations.
It appears to need a little more work.
In any case, it won’t take long to correct, I’ll have to adjust things to account for the portly/dumpy figure of the Dinkies mesh avatar. It will come with a simple top hat. The tailcoat is by Kaosome Hotshot, the AV is by Etheria Parrott, and already the Dinkies have a lively and fun community, though of course we boycats don’t have a lot of choices for outfits. I hope to do something to correct that.
Here I am sitting on my first (actually second) mesh object ever, which is more than a year old. Yes, it’s that damn Kipling Rock, which I now plan to fix up and put out as a fishing seat in the pond between my store and Dhughan’s Nature Reserve.
Now, finally, I can move on and make mesh stuffs, because at least I got this far in… ugh, almost TWO YEARS.
I’m wearing the test-texture version of my dumb party hat, which debuts tonight at Toot Toot’s.
This tutorial looks promising, and I like how the presenter uses a really big keystroke display:
I’ve bought 2 Blender books, watched many tutorials, and still can’t retain the basics, I have to start nearly from scratch every time I try it, and then get frustrated too quickly.
I’ve got a project for a friend, and I’m hoping not to have to buy full-perm templates for $L400 for sculpt or mesh. This tutorial is for mesh, but I’d prefer a squashable sculpt once we get to that point. It seems like a good starting point just to try to get something going.
Blender: just downloaded and installed 2.69.0, the latest version
Primstar-2: installed from my download directory for Machinimatrix.org
Need to review: everything, but specifically the steps to make a sculpty in addition to mesh
UPDATE:
Knock me over! I made a snappy mesh fedora, although I don’t know what I’m doing and the poly count was high. Still, the video was helpful, though maybe applying all the subserf modifiers before saving all the low-poly models (uh, what?) wasn’t the way to go.
UPDATED UPDATE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9rH_ftPRkA
It’s silent, and “slow” as in “for slow learners and senior citizens,” but it clearly shows how to create mesh 3D text, which is part of this project and a future one that may turn out to be pretty neat.
UPDITTY UPDATE UPDATE:
The project was to make the hat for a special event tomorrow night in Second Life at Toot Toot’s Carolina Pub, in the Sifton sim. The event is the Zuehl Duel, and owner (and longtime SL friend) Symmetry Munro needed a party hat to go with the theme. I walked in there the other night wearing my newest texture-change top hat, the Time Warp, and Sym wanted to know if I could make a hat on commission.
It’s finished, I think, and I picked several textures that worked well with the glitchy, not-unwrapped-properly final version. Actually, there might be a finally final version tomorrow, because I messed up the LOD factor on the letter Z. I hope Sym likes it – she did like the prelim version last night with just the one texture, which makes the hat look like an arty hipster hat similar to the Japanese ones I saw. The other textures, with the same settings, all looked interesting if a bit “loud,” but hey, it’s for a party celebrating a loud, raucous, unsettlingly modern style of music. There are 5 textures and a blank white one so the hat can be tinted a plain color.
That’s why the hats are called “Z is for Zeuhl,” because tomorrow night at the Zeuhl Duel, anyone who admits they switch the stream or turn it down because the music was too weird has to wear the hat. I gave Sym Munro a giver box with a big Z on the outside so people can just click it to get the folder. I could jazz it up by adding a large rotating Z and hovertext and… okay. It’s late, time for bed. Here it is, in all its questionable glory.
This texture is one I made on my iPad one day, just goofing around.
This is a goofy Linden Department of Public Works texture designed for some kind of weird mushroom. I like the weird look.
The hat is tinted very pale butter yellow so one texture in the contents is just a plain white, so people can tint. A future version, with a proper UV map, will be a shademap or AO or something, so that the highlights and shadows are in the right places for a tintable option.
I attended a very intensely focused “Intro to Mesh” class at Caledon Oxbridge taught by Wordsmith Jarvinen that included an incredible amount of links, resources, archives of mesh user group meetings, and a vast array of useful information, with citations and source links. I feel a lot more confident that I can improve on this thing, but for now, it’s fine as a PARTAY HAT for the shindig tomorrow. I had already re-learned that an UNRIGGED attachment or object can be scaled and squashed like a sculpty, so there.
Have a look at another event at Toot Toot’s Carolina Pub – my friend Mistletoe Ethaniel turned her evening there into a little vid:
Look at all the fine hats! And soon mine will be one of them!
Being a community where mad scientists are respected, Steelhead has seen many interesting creations. Question is, what would these creative minds do when asked to make a snowman? Well, the steampunk community is about to find out, as leader TotalLunar Eclipse has announced a snowman building contest.
The rules are, “Fifteen prims per snowman you can enter up to two times. The winner and runner up will have their unique snowman displayed in front of town hall until the snow thaws for all to see.”
…
Those entering the contest are asked to drop their snowmen (or snowwomen or snowbeast) at Steelhead Port Harbor (96, 111, 1028). This will be the location for Steelhead’s Friday Night dance this week, the theme being “A Snowball’s Chance in Hell.” (with thanks to M. Bixyl Shuftan, reporter)
My modest entry in the Steelhead Snowpersons in Hell contest for the shindig, shown here after placement. It may be that I’ve been watching the outworld documentary programme “Mythbusters” a bit too much during my self-imposed time off.
It is exactly 15 prims and depicts a snowperson of uncertain gender using a very unlikely boat to survive a few milliseconds longer in Hell. It’s on view at the specially constructed ballroom high over Steelhead Port Harbor (96, 111, 1028)
Although a shy person by nature I was cajoled by my business partner, Miss Carver, to attend the dance. I should say coerced, because she spent the evening heckling me and attacking me with snowballs as I sat in my little boat. She was in the aspect of a wee kitten on ice skates, and as such she skated around the ice-and-lava dance floor, chatting irrepressibly and pausing only to ambush me. Infernal feline!
Mr Lunar was in attendance, as were a number of other Steelhead worthies. Miss Carver took a few snaps for her Flickr page as well.
Rather hopeful of my chances but no word yet, perhaps it will be announced at the Tuesday town hall.
High Fidelity is Philip Rosedale’s new virtual world project. This is currently in the very early stages of Alpha but you can signup to that Alpha from the main webpage. However you won’t be able to login to High Fidelity or see any of its features.However it does seem as if it is possible to login to High Fidelity. There are clues on how to do this, starting from the jobs page. There a challenge is laid down to people who may want to do paid work for High Fidelity:“We are seeing lots of great applicants! If you’d like to get our attention and also have more fun than sitting in an interview, do the following:Checkout our code on GitHub, build the Interface client, and see if you can login to Hifi. Then, take a look at Worklist and see if there’s a job you can do to show us your work skills.”
via So You Want To Login To High Fidelity? » Ciaran Laval. I’ve been following a few blogs that have commented on High Fidelity. So far my comment is “Why can’t Philip Rosedale name something with a uniquely searchable name ever?” If this thing takes off, John Cusack will wonder what’s going on with his web hits. I boggled at GitHub and looked at Worklist – it’s all way over my virtual pay grade. And forget about compiling a client, that’s not alpha testing, that’s cuneiform torture. Still I did a silly thing and signed up for the alpha. I haven’t built much recently, though Dhughan caught the bug tonight and did something quirky. But I’ve been thinking about Second Life almost constantly, wondering about things to make and kind of… building up a static charge of creativity (literally not much more than the proverbial spark). So today, knock me flat, I get an email with a link to a survey. I’m on the alpha test mailing list, so I duly filled out the questionnaire. I’m not a highly skilled builder, but I can knock prims together, and texture them, and when I get the bug, I enjoy building. Where I get bogged down is with some of the tedium, and I am too easily frustrated (insert obligatory “Blender broke my brain” comment here). They asked that the survey link not be shared, but they emailed back the survey and my responses. Edited to protect the clueless (me):
Email * [never you mind] I am a * potential virtual world resident virtual world content developer (designer, programmer, artist) What are your specialized skills? I have built things using the Second Life build tools – buildings, attachments, scripted fountains and picture frames, etc. I have some knowledge of Blender and own two good reference books: John Bain’s “Complete Guide to Blender Graphics” and Ben Simonds “Blender Master Class.” I belong to various inworld Blender support groups and also to a couple of Google+ groups (as GinnyRED57, feel free to follow me on G+, all 3 of you) I’m a GIMP user and have created my own textures for my objects, and also I create abstract digital art occasionally with other programs and apps (and High Fidelity makes me want to play around with this more). I’m good at texturing, aligning small prims, and have some familiarity with using scripts (though I am NOT a scripter). I have done some work with a standalone Open Sim workspace and can load OARS, IARS, and terrain files. I take photographs in RL and in SL; my inworld pictures are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/lelanicarver although I am behind on uploading. I enjoy photographing landscapes, streetscapes, and friends’ events, as well as large builds and “art.” I have a large-ish catalogue of RL travel photos on Flickr as GinnyRED57 and wow, I need to upload my backlog. I use my photographs as inspiration for SL projects. I have several WordPress blogs, and several Twitter accounts, and am comfortable with social media. Hours per week spent in virtual worlds and/or games: 6 Do you play Minecraft? No List any other online games you currently play Patterns Have you ever used an online virtual world? (Second Life, ActiveWorlds, There, et al) Yes List any virtual worlds you currently use Second Life, OSGrid, and a standalone installation of Open Sim Have you ever sold things you created in a virtual world? * Yes — I’ve earned MORE than $100 USD In a new virtual world, I’d likely do this the most: * explore what others have built Do you mostly use a … * desktop When did you buy your laptop/desktop? * 2012 Tell us more about your system * Well, I like it, I had it built at Fry’s: CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz (3292.53 MHz) Memory: 4077 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601) Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 560/PCIe/SSE2 Windows Graphics Driver Version: 9.18.0013.3165 OpenGL Version: 4.4.0 On this computer I have: * 4GB to 8GB RAM What’s your preferred mousing interface? * High-end mouse with buttons I program The operating systems I use most are: * Windows 7 When you are at work or away from home, is there an internet-connected laptop or desktop left behind at your house? * Yes (I wonder what that’s about? Distributed computing, probably) How many? 4 (actually this varies from 2 to infinity depending on your definition) If High Fidelity created a much better virtual reality experience using extra hardware (like a 3D camera or a motion-sensing glove), how much would you be willing to pay for that equipment? * less than $200 Any closing thoughts? I am excited by the possibilities that High Fidelity could realize and look forward to hearing back from you whether I am involved in the alpha or not.
So that’s that. I’m not sure what will come of it, but I’m curious to see what happens next. In the meantime, I discovered that the pond by the St Helens shop froze, so I went ice-skating. IN AN AWESOME DINKIES OUTFIT. That’s Dhughan’s nature reserve behind me, with the miraculous frost-resistant plants.
High Fidelity is Philip Rosedale’s new virtual world project. This is currently in the very early stages of Alpha but you can signup to that Alpha from the main webpage. However you won’t be able to login to High Fidelity or see any of its features.However it does seem as if it is possible to login to High Fidelity. There are clues on how to do this, starting from the jobs page. There a challenge is laid down to people who may want to do paid work for High Fidelity:“We are seeing lots of great applicants! If you’d like to get our attention and also have more fun than sitting in an interview, do the following:Checkout our code on GitHub, build the Interface client, and see if you can login to Hifi. Then, take a look at Worklist and see if there’s a job you can do to show us your work skills.”
via So You Want To Login To High Fidelity? » Ciaran Laval. I’ve been following a few blogs that have commented on High Fidelity. So far my comment is “Why can’t Philip Rosedale name something with a uniquely searchable name ever?” If this thing takes off, John Cusack will wonder what’s going on with his web hits. I boggled at GitHub and looked at Worklist – it’s all way over my virtual pay grade. And forget about compiling a client, that’s not alpha testing, that’s cuneiform torture. Still I did a silly thing and signed up for the alpha. I haven’t built much recently, though Dhughan caught the bug tonight and did something quirky. But I’ve been thinking about Second Life almost constantly, wondering about things to make and kind of… building up a static charge of creativity (literally not much more than the proverbial spark). So today, knock me flat, I get an email with a link to a survey. I’m on the alpha test mailing list, so I duly filled out the questionnaire. I’m not a highly skilled builder, but I can knock prims together, and texture them, and when I get the bug, I enjoy building. Where I get bogged down is with some of the tedium, and I am too easily frustrated (insert obligatory “Blender broke my brain” comment here). They asked that the survey link not be shared, but they emailed back the survey and my responses. Edited to protect the clueless (me):
Email * [never you mind] I am a * potential virtual world resident virtual world content developer (designer, programmer, artist) What are your specialized skills? I have built things using the Second Life build tools – buildings, attachments, scripted fountains and picture frames, etc. I have some knowledge of Blender and own two good reference books: John Bain’s “Complete Guide to Blender Graphics” and Ben Simonds “Blender Master Class.” I belong to various inworld Blender support groups and also to a couple of Google+ groups (as GinnyRED57, feel free to follow me on G+, all 3 of you) I’m a GIMP user and have created my own textures for my objects, and also I create abstract digital art occasionally with other programs and apps (and High Fidelity makes me want to play around with this more). I’m good at texturing, aligning small prims, and have some familiarity with using scripts (though I am NOT a scripter). I have done some work with a standalone Open Sim workspace and can load OARS, IARS, and terrain files. I take photographs in RL and in SL; my inworld pictures are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/lelanicarver although I am behind on uploading. I enjoy photographing landscapes, streetscapes, and friends’ events, as well as large builds and “art.” I have a large-ish catalogue of RL travel photos on Flickr as GinnyRED57 and wow, I need to upload my backlog. I use my photographs as inspiration for SL projects. I have several WordPress blogs, and several Twitter accounts, and am comfortable with social media. Hours per week spent in virtual worlds and/or games: 6 Do you play Minecraft? No List any other online games you currently play Patterns Have you ever used an online virtual world? (Second Life, ActiveWorlds, There, et al) Yes List any virtual worlds you currently use Second Life, OSGrid, and a standalone installation of Open Sim Have you ever sold things you created in a virtual world? * Yes — I’ve earned MORE than $100 USD In a new virtual world, I’d likely do this the most: * explore what others have built Do you mostly use a … * desktop When did you buy your laptop/desktop? * 2012 Tell us more about your system * Well, I like it, I had it built at Fry’s: CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz (3292.53 MHz) Memory: 4077 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601) Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 560/PCIe/SSE2 Windows Graphics Driver Version: 9.18.0013.3165 OpenGL Version: 4.4.0 On this computer I have: * 4GB to 8GB RAM What’s your preferred mousing interface? * High-end mouse with buttons I program The operating systems I use most are: * Windows 7 When you are at work or away from home, is there an internet-connected laptop or desktop left behind at your house? * Yes (I wonder what that’s about? Distributed computing, probably) How many? 4 (actually this varies from 2 to infinity depending on your definition) If High Fidelity created a much better virtual reality experience using extra hardware (like a 3D camera or a motion-sensing glove), how much would you be willing to pay for that equipment? * less than $200 Any closing thoughts? I am excited by the possibilities that High Fidelity could realize and look forward to hearing back from you whether I am involved in the alpha or not.
So that’s that. I’m not sure what will come of it, but I’m curious to see what happens next. In the meantime, I discovered that the pond by the St Helens shop froze, so I went ice-skating. IN AN AWESOME DINKIES OUTFIT. That’s Dhughan’s nature reserve behind me, with the miraculous frost-resistant plants.
High Fidelity is Philip Rosedale’s new virtual world project. This is currently in the very early stages of Alpha but you can signup to that Alpha from the main webpage. However you won’t be able to login to High Fidelity or see any of its features.However it does seem as if it is possible to login to High Fidelity. There are clues on how to do this, starting from the jobs page. There a challenge is laid down to people who may want to do paid work for High Fidelity:“We are seeing lots of great applicants! If you’d like to get our attention and also have more fun than sitting in an interview, do the following:Checkout our code on GitHub, build the Interface client, and see if you can login to Hifi. Then, take a look at Worklist and see if there’s a job you can do to show us your work skills.â€
I’ve been following a few blogs that have commented on High Fidelity. So far my comment is “Why can’t Philip Rosedale name something with a uniquely searchable name ever?” If this thing takes off, John Cusack will wonder what’s going on with his web hits.
I boggled at GitHub and looked at Worklist – it’s all way over my virtual pay grade. And forget about compiling a client, that’s not alpha testing, that’s cuneiform torture.
Still I did a silly thing and signed up for the alpha. I haven’t built much recently, though Dhughan caught the bug tonight and did something quirky. But I’ve been thinking about Second Life almost constantly, wondering about things to make and kind of… building up a static charge of creativity (literally not much more than the proverbial spark).
So today, knock me flat, I get an email with a link to a survey. I’m on the alpha test mailing list, so I duly filled out the questionnaire. I’m not a highly skilled builder, but I can knock prims together, and texture them, and when I get the bug, I enjoy building. Where I get bogged down is with some of the tedium, and I am too easily frustrated (insert obligatory “Blender broke my brain” comment here).
They asked that the survey link not be shared, but they emailed back the survey and my responses. Edited to protect the clueless (me):
Email * [never you mind] I am a *
potential virtual world resident
virtual world content developer (designer, programmer, artist)
What are your specialized skills?
I have built things using the Second Life build tools – buildings, attachments, scripted fountains and picture frames, etc.
I have some knowledge of Blender and own two good reference books: John Bain’s “Complete Guide to Blender Graphics” and Ben Simonds “Blender Master Class.” I belong to various inworld Blender support groups and also to a couple of Google+ groups (as GinnyRED57, feel free to follow me on G+, all 3 of you)
I’m a GIMP user and have created my own textures for my objects, and also I create abstract digital art occasionally with other programs and apps (and High Fidelity makes me want to play around with this more).
I’m good at texturing, aligning small prims, and have some familiarity with using scripts (though I am NOT a scripter). I have done some work with a standalone Open Sim workspace and can load OARS, IARS, and terrain files.
I take photographs in RL and in SL; my inworld pictures are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/lelanicarver although I am behind on uploading. I enjoy photographing landscapes, streetscapes, and friends’ events, as well as large builds and “art.” I have a large-ish catalogue of RL travel photos on Flickr as GinnyRED57 and wow, I need to upload my backlog. I use my photographs as inspiration for SL projects.
I have several WordPress blogs, and several Twitter accounts, and am comfortable with social media. Hours per week spent in virtual worlds and/or games:
6 Do you play Minecraft?
No List any other online games you currently play
Patterns Have you ever used an online virtual world? (Second Life, ActiveWorlds, There, et al)
Yes List any virtual worlds you currently use
Second Life, OSGrid, and a standalone installation of Open Sim Have you ever sold things you created in a virtual world? *
Yes — I’ve earned MORE than $100 USD In a new virtual world, I’d likely do this the most: *
explore what others have built Do you mostly use a … *
desktop When did you buy your laptop/desktop? *
2012 Tell us more about your system *
Well, I like it, I had it built at Fry’s:
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz (3292.53 MHz)
Memory: 4077 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 560/PCIe/SSE2
Windows Graphics Driver Version: 9.18.0013.3165
OpenGL Version: 4.4.0
On this computer I have: *
4GB to 8GB RAM What’s your preferred mousing interface? *
High-end mouse with buttons I program The operating systems I use most are: *
Windows 7
When you are at work or away from home, is there an internet-connected laptop or desktop left behind at your house? *
Yes (I wonder what that’s about? Distributed computing, probably) How many?
4 (actually this varies from 2 to infinity depending on your definition) If High Fidelity created a much better virtual reality experience using extra hardware (like a 3D camera or a motion-sensing glove), how much would you be willing to pay for that equipment? *
less than $200 Any closing thoughts?
I am excited by the possibilities that High Fidelity could realize and look forward to hearing back from you whether I am involved in the alpha or not.
So that’s that. I’m not sure what will come of it, but I’m curious to see what happens next.
In the meantime, I discovered that the pond by the St Helens shop froze, so I went ice-skating. IN AN AWESOME DINKIES OUTFIT. That’s Dhughan’s nature reserve behind me, with the miraculous frost-resistant plants.
