Content Creators May Enjoy Playing With iPad Apps To Make Stuffs

Posted on by February 3, 2013
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Most advance content creators may dismiss this as “not that useful or interesting,” but yesterday while struggling with a clothing template I went looking for a sort of “drawing app” that might be useful for making things or editing templates for Second Life.

Actually, I’d already been playing with an iPad app called “Art Studio” that enabled me to create some quite nice looking fabric textures very easily, just in the course of doodling around and playing with some of the settings and filters. I’d bought a simple stylus (not one of the fancy artist’s pressure sensitive ones) and have been enjoying playing with that, too. Art Studio has a lot of goodies; the free version is quite good and even has layers and filters, and the paid version (I think, bought it a while ago) doesn’t have ads and does have the ability to add a lot of extra brushes.

But what I was really thinking about recently was somehow using the iPad as a drawing pad or tablet for my main PC. I quickly found many references to an app called “Air Display,” but the cost (almost $10USD) put me off for a week or more.

Finally, yesterday I decided to just see what it was about, and within a few minutes, wa-la! Not only was I able to slide any open window off of my PC and onto my iPad, I was working in GIMP on a clothing template, with the stylus as the controller.

If you have an iPad already, and have a spare $20 or so (the stylus only set me back $10 as well) you might be amused by what you can do. I was able to draw, write, and work with the GIMP interface.

I suppose I might be able to log on to Second Life – as a curiousity, it would be funny to do that. The keyboard stays active as an input device, and so does the mouse. However, it might be quite useful if you’re in the sort of class inworld where the instructor puts something up on a join.me or Google Docs display while inworld, as the iPad works very well as a seoncd monitor. There’s apparently a mirror mode, too.

In any case, it was fun to play with, and made working with hand-drawn selectins in GIMP more enjoyable than they are with my mouse, which is sometimes rather jerky and stiff for some kinds of operations.

Perhaps somebody with a lot more creative talent might find it interesting to play with; I can definitely say it’s easy to set up (download free drivers on your desktop and install, then install the paid app on the iPad). I’ve made 4 or 5 interesting and unique fabric textures already, and Dhughan was working yesterday on an actual piece of clothing (a rather colorful vest with Art Nouveau-style phoenix figures). He may be branching out into a bit of menswear before too long. It all comes of this playing around with apps and “drawrings” and such; it’s probably just a passing fad but you never know.
Link: Air Display: iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac or Windows PC as an external monitor

2 Victorian Stained Glass Lamps – Table and Column Size — $L30

Posted on by January 30, 2013
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2VictorianStainedGlassLamps3

Single prim lighting with style! Includes additional table lampStained glass in deep purple and green, base suits Victorian or Steampunk styleOne touch and the lamp glows softly. No fuss."Click" sound effectModify with your own textures if you like.

via Second Life Marketplace – @DF@ 2 Touch Victorian Lamps lg and small 1 prim each c/m/nt

Now She’s Gone And Done Gone Tiny

Posted on by January 29, 2013
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O HAI!

LookitMeImDancin

Bug is here! I maded a dress today. Akshully, I made the skirt a while ago, but decided to start building a whole dress, AND I managed to make my own fabric for it.

This is what it looks like so far. I made gingham (on a pixelated LOOM and everything) and added a border with dandy lions on it. It’s very summery because winter is BORING and grey.

I have to learn how to do sleeves, these ones don’t move right. They’d be okay for shoulder straps or cap sleeves, though. I safety-pinned everything and went to a pawty in Raglan Shire. Maybe I’ll add some flexi inner sleeves later. I could make this REAL PRETTY. And then I need a dandelion to blow. Uh, that means particles and stuffs.

And then I’d have to make some shiny black shoes. I’ve always been barepaw in SL since mostly going around all tiny. I like making stuffs.

I’ve never done that before, and I never danced before either, but here I am. The typist complains she’s stuck so mebbe I’ll show her how to relax and have many funs.

So how do you start making clothes for tinies? In some ways it’s completely different from humanoid (biggie) clothes, but in other ways it’s really similar. Most of the clothing for humanoids is created in a graphics program and then imported in as a texture. Prims (primitive shapes) can be added to it, but the base of the outfit is made of textures applied to the built-in clothing options (i.e., in appearance mode > create new socks).

One of the designers I admire has said several times that every time she starts a new tiny outfit it begins with an egg.

Tiny clothing needs to fit around prim bodies. You can’t use the built-in clothes templates that SL has. Instead of starting with textures, clothes for tinies always start with prims.

via Delight – Tiny avatar clothing, accessories, and more!: Making Clothes for Tinies

Plain Gold-Headed Cane Slim – $L100 For Stylish Strolling About #Secondlife #SLMarketplace

Posted on by January 28, 2013
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New walking stick or cane listed at the Marketplace:
PlainGoldHeadedCaneSlim

This simple, dignified cane will take you easily from the sketchy dark corners of New Babbage to society soirees in Steelhead, Caledon, or Winterfell.

It will prop you up when tired, and give you something to do with your hands. Sit with care – some sits are cane-friendly, others are not.

Highly recommended: works well with the excellent "Gentleman Jim Full" or "Gentle Jim Light" Victorian AOs, available from Kamilah Hauptmann’s Posture is Everything on the Marketplace.

The cane is fully optimized to take advantage of Her Lyonesse’s amusing typing and hat-tipping animations. The cane will move as your position changes using the included AO, or the P.I.E. AOs.

Should you require a different length, simply click Edit, then check Edit Linked, then click the wooden shaft and stretch it to fit. There is no ferrule to go astray.

via Second Life Marketplace – @DF@ Plain Gold-Headed Cane Slim

I should like to give a glowing review on the Marketplace page for the Gentleman Jim AO, but I purchased mine at her shop inworld. I offer my cane AO simply to help get you started, but in any case attach the cane to your hand pointing straight down (right hand is preferred, if you use the more advanced AOs, due to rotation tricks).

Tweet:

Posted on by January 21, 2013
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Blogger’s Dilemma: To post, to tweet, or to update? That is the question.

Posted on by January 19, 2013
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After some dithering around today, I think I’ve got things set so that any Tweeter-twit things are posted on a weekly basis and NOT creating a new blog post for every tweet. It’s annoying, but due to changes in Twitter’s API and the original plugin, the plugin I used to use that sent my post links to Twitter AND created a weekly digest now only has as options for post-links, tweets as blogposts, and daily digests. So I had to install a second plugin that will handle the weekly posting duties, and farfle around with the settings on the original plugin. And in the end, I needed 3 plugins to do the work of one.

Originally, Twitter Tools did everything I needed it to do. But then something changed, and the plugin creator advised that I’d have to install the Social plugin (from Mail Chimp). At that point, I didn’t notice that the weekly digest feature had been disabled, and I was distracted by the different way it handled sending post-links to Twitter (and also to my Facebook page, ahem, not much to see there). In fact, there were duplicate tweets and things being posted to the typist’s Facebook page, which was pretty AWK-warrrrrrd at first.

So of course I’ve just enabled a third plugin, which is working on one of my other journals and seems to do what it’s supposed to do. It is Twitter Digest, and thus it will be posting a week’s worth of tweets (within reason) on Mondays.

So enough about that

Blender workflow for rigging #secondlife models: I’m sure this is useful to somebody

Posted on by January 19, 2013
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I will probably never need this, but someone might find it useful:

This is a run-through of the workflow I would use to get models rigged for Second Life upload. It doesn’t include details on weight painting or modelling, and I assume the reader knows their way around the Blender interface.

This tutorial owes a lot to AshaSekayi’s excellent youtube video series, but quite a few things have changed since then, so I wanted to give a clear and more current overview of how the rigging and export/import processes work in a recent Blender version.

via Rigging models in Blender 2.64 – a workflow – SLUniverse Forums