Just when I was thinking of changing my emails over from Yahoo to Gmail, this happens.
Yahoo keeps marking my parcel rent renewal notices as spam, which is NOT GOOD. But one alt uses Gmail, and her emails get tagged as either Important, Starred, or Spam, apparently at random. It may have to do with whether I read before deleting, or move false-positive spam back into the inbox.
Linden’s Patterns Gets Materials
Maybe I should fire Patterns up and play later!
Insane Bump 2.0, overhauled Crazy bump alternative
If this really is a new version of InsaneBump, I may play around with installing it. I currently use the GIMP plugin, but the improvement sounds intriguing.
If, like me, you’ve barely scratched the surface of animating for Second Life but don’t really understand how it all works, you might want to look for a class at Caledon Oxbridge conducted by Red Quixote to get a really solid grounding in the basics, with lots of detail. It’s presented in a very focused, text-based format (YAY for text instruction, BOO for voice instruction).
The class consists of a series of engaging slides (many of which use classical cartoon animations to illustrate the theory behind avatar animation using the SL skeleton). A LOT of text will scroll by, full of seriously detailed information. You will be given a notecard with the slides and the class transcript as a part of your materials, plus there is a tutorial on how to create a simple animation in QAvimator on your own later. This is the method that seems to “stick” best for me – I need to refer back to notes a lot, and trying to make decent notes from a lecture-based class format has let me down badly as the typist’s brain cells get older.
Dhughan’s most popular products are all dependent on animations, and it’s becoming clear that improving them is necessary, but neither of us were willing to spend the
Also, for some time now I’ve actually had QAvimator installed, I downloaded a lot of Linda Kellie’s .bvh files, I’ve got BVHacker installed, I’ve watched a number of tutorial videos and even dabbled with creating a standard “start” file that’s supposedly already optimized, but that was months ago and of course, I don’t remember much.
Not only that, but I’ve got New World Studio installed and have a private grid handy as a test bed… actually, I’ve got various versions of NWS installed and my file structure is a mess, but I’ve got a place to build, backed up as an OAR, so that I can upload textures and animations and mesh for free. I’ve put in some time today to straighten things out and re-learn how the server commands work, so after some struggle I’ve got my most recent inventory loaded, running the current latest version of New World Studio. It’ll always be a private grid; I’ve toyed with the idea of opening something up on a spare machine that could be a server, but don’t have the calling, I think, it be the goddess of an open grid.
Some of the sites I frequently visit on these “refamiliarization trips” are:
Hypergrid Business: Making New World Studio work for you to remind myself how to configure a specific viewer (currently Kokua)
Inventory Archives – Opensim
Opensim Archives – OpenSim
Next time I upgrade, I really need to follow Maria Korolov’s advice and configure before unzipping the new version. I did it the bass-ackwards hard way this time.
Anyway, QAvimator, tutorial, test bed for free uploads.
For anyone using Caspervend products, there’s now an online marketplace where your products are listed, similar to the Second Life Marketplace, but scripted to be much faster, easier to search, and with better options for showing color variations and demos. It’s found at
I’ve got our stuffs (Dhughan’s and mine) categorized, and it’s all ready to go. I think there’s some kind of promo pack with clickable links and whatnot pending. It seems to load fast, and the categories are pretty nice (you can choose 2 categories plus a theme, like “Historical” or “Asian”).
Need to get a “Hats” category added – Dhughan got “Canes and Walking Sticks” and “Wands and Staves” added last night, so I’ll try it by IMing the tech support person listed on the Caspertech group profile.
There are plans for storefronts and banners for merchants, according to the wiki, but for now my stuff is searchable under my name (and Dhughan’s under his).
UPDATE: added the proverbial missing link to the CasperTech Wiki. And I’m still boggled that a search for any basic, generic keyword still shows some of my products on the first page – this can’t last.
The last time I visited Ferd’s invaluable Phaze Demesnes website to check on a script, I noticed that he had a workflow for working with Blender for Second Life or OpenSim, but it was leading to a 404 error. It’s been updated with a checklist in several parts, which I need to read carefully to see what his process is. Mine probably has more screaming and frustrated ragequits…
There are differences in standard Blender models and Second Life/OpenSim that must be taken care of. There are also several plugins and add-ons, some free, some not, that make Blender work really well for Second Life modeling. This post shows you my setup and my workflow. Not everything I do is necessary for modeling for Second Life, but some of my settings may prove useful to you in your ramblings around in the wonderful world of Second Life and Blender.
The amazing and totally not copyright-infringing 2 Daffy French Robots performed for the second time since August in a specially constructed multimedia performance space in Steelhead Port Harbor. As it was Halloween, the outfits were more outrageous than normal.
Yes, this is me, in various bits and pieces as a smexy robot. I’ve simply got to save this outfit. It’s mostly bits from STEAM hunts.
Daft Punk show in Steelhead Port Harbor, originally uploaded by Lelani Carver.
Thank God, I was getting really tired of the lame lighting and phototools in Kokua.
We had hoped to be able to have all the latest Linden Lab bug fixes and service improvements in our next release, but it looks like it’ll be another month or two before that code is ready from LL. But we also wanted to get a release out before 2014 with the latest released code from LL and the latest Firestorm development work. This includes new features like Content Import/Export and Collada Export, plus new features from LL like Materials, ribbon particles, etc. Click for the complete “Change Log” and “Known Issues“. Unfortunately we only have a small window of time to get a release out before 2014 due to the coming holidays, so we haven’t had time to polish it up to our normal quality standards; thus we are calling this a BETA. This means it should be considered a fully supported release, but expect it to have some quirky bugs here and there. Upgrading to it is recommended but not mandatory. You can grab the Public Beta release from our Downloads page. CLEAN INSTALL RECOMMENDED!
I haven’t had very much to do with marketing groups; I belong to a Victorian shopkeepers one that’s kind of invitation only, but haven’t quite gotten my role updated to “can send notices of new products to the group” yet. But I might make myself a big fat TO-DO list on that, because last night I experienced the power of marketing to the right group of potential customers.
I have set up a vendor with the (currently just two) Dinkies-sized hats at the Dinkies Village at SOMA Design School – it’s a nice little hangout with play areas, dance ball, and some shops and a cute litle Tudor marketplace. The deal is great: the owner of the area gets a decent little commission on all sales, but there’s no rent to make. I had let her know but hadn’t sent anything to her for the group.
So last night I finished tweaking the display, fixed a LM up to send out and took a deep breath before taking a look at the “send notice” function – I had the ability turned on (I guess by the group owner, yay). Sent a little message about the hats, made it sort of cutesy (“Feeling blue about the end of summer and the approach of winter? Why not feel purple, or gold, or warm brown insteead?” and described the hats in the vendor, added the landmark, and mentioned a tiny (dinkie) bonus item. The other day on a whim I threw together a freebie vendor with the little dance ball/bathyscaph that I’ve been playing with since the Sharknado! party, so I mentioned that. It’s a 1L “dollarbie” because of the vendor I’m using… anyway, I clicked send.
Just moments later, I had a sale. Within 5 minutes, I had 3 sales, plus people picked up the dance ball, too. WHUT? I’ve never had such a fast response to a product before! Talk about reinforcement and validation!
Not only that, but I made some new Dinkies friends and visited a gypsy camp they’re building. What a fun end to the night…
So I’ve got those pith helmets handy, and they don’t even need to be resized – they look cute on my kitty bobble head rotated back a little. I guess I’d better be organized about this and make a TO-DO list.
Another set of tasks that’s kind of related to the Dinkies stuff is figuring out the classes I have in this “SOMA HUD” thing that I have. The Dinkies are hosted at the SOMA location, probably because their originator is an alum(na) of their classes in clothing design and the use of GIMP, Photoshop, Corel, etc in making stuff for Second Life. I had started a class – you get the classes for frree if you attend in person, but there’s a cost if you want to pick them up at your convenience. And I had only part 1 of a 3 part class (dammit, I knew I should have gone to those other ones, I liked how they did them).
I am the first to admit that I get frustrated pretty easily with classes conducted entirely in voice (cough, cough “babyvoice”), but the class structure is very picture heavy with plenty of text and pointers with SOMA. AND… the class itself is just a screenthrough of all the slides in the class presentation in the HUD, with pauses to discuss questions from the class. So I enjoyed the class and then got bogged down doing the homework for the first one (too many other irons in the fire).
Last night I went back to try to pick up parts 2 and 3, which aren’t scheduled to run again for at least another month. I paid for what I thought was all three parts, but don’t have any update for my HUD. In the meantime, I may have messed it up because I deleted courses out of it that I assumed I didn’t need (for Corel, Paint shop Pro, Photoshop) but now I’m getting link errors. So, whee…. I have to reload everything I had previously obtained (a free set of Level 1 GIMP courses, plus the single Part 1 of the Men’s Shirt course). That won’t take long, fortunately, it’s a snap to upddate the way they have it scripted. Just time-consuming.
I’ve been in contact with the person responsible for the class vendors, will check back and see if the course has shown up, then she’ll check my payment history and I expect it’ll be sorted out. I should have stuck around longer last night, I think the laaaagmonster et my class. Heh.
So on the Hoomin side of the To-Do list, I’ve got a few more things that I’m working on:
That’s all in addition to my normal online routine of being completely sidetracked by IMs from friends, listening to music, or playing another game of Solitaire (it’s impossible to lose the one game I play, I find it very easy to waste time that should be done doing something more challenging and therefore more threatening).
Currently listening to Radio Riel Main, should really listen via the link that puts the songs up in my sidebar, it’s Gabrielle in Wonderland from yesterday’s show. See what I mean about distractions!
Now that my RL workday is over, it’s time that I checked in and tried to knock a few items off my “To-Do” list and get them onto my “Been-Done” list.
Recently, several bloggers have reported that Linden Lab is working on an official mobile client and they’ve sent emails to people (I assume the sorts of people who update their blogs more frequently than I do).
I would really, really, really, really love to try out a mobile client in beta, if only I were cool enough and less invizibul. But I would only want to try it on an iOS device. Currently I use the pretty solid Pocket Metaverse client, which is non-graphical but useful for sending IMs, group invites, and payments to other AVs. I can send inventory from it, too, but it’s kind of hard to navigate too deep in my inventory tree.
It was reported by several well known bloggers, such as the Hamster (sorry, I’m a Top Gear fan, it’s my mental nickname for Hamlet Au), Daniel Voyager (I got to meet him at SL9B), Inara Pey, and Ciaran Laval.
As I’m not prolific enough a blogger (let alone prominent enough), I’ll have to languish in my obscurity and wait for the Second Life mobile client beta to go public later (if it gets to that point).
Drat.
If only I had some Google-juice, but I’m just not that interesting. ;P