June 22, 2013
Vintage 2013
Still workin on stuff for whenever InWorldz gets mesh. Hope it is soon, suspect it is not.
I kind of hate putting things on the SL Marketplace, it feels like time wasted on futility but we shall see I suppose though I do not feel optimistical. Just want to cover me upload fees which add up something horrid really fast.
Also I learned that the SLink mesh hands will go almost as big as my standard hands are, so I am tempted but maybe they are too nice for me to have.
(Pix taken in SL, above Hobo Island sandbox. Hair is Truth, top is Artillei, provocative-visible bra is Armidi. Shoes? DECO.)
June 21, 2013
Meshesies
…coming to InWorldz at some point. I hope. I’ve been makin stuff so that when mesh arrives I am ready for it. As you can see this one is a dress. I put it on the SL Marketplace in the meantime just to see if stuff still sells. It was so damn tempting to put it up as a template, but I am trying to be strong. Uploads that cost are awful, I am draining my spacebux with these things when I bring them into actual SL as opposed to the beta grid where I’ve been hanging out. But I am just so impatient to get to use the shit I made. I am getting better at mesh, though I am still nowhere near anything like an expert or Meli “The Machine” Imako. Still it is fun to play with Blender, as well as super-annoying when something goes wrong with the meshing process.
I CAN’T WAIT I NEED MESH IN INWORLDZ NAO. As for the rest of OpenSim, most people use Imprudence, the dead viewer, and so they can’t see what you’re wearing anyway. That’s one reason I moved to InWorldz, where at least they don’t *have* mesh for me to be annoyed about such things. It’s in beta, I don’t know when it will leave beta, there are vague rumours that we might be getting a deformer. Imagine!
So anyway it’s a preview of sorts.
June 20, 2013
Awaiting Meshy Goodness
InWorldz will be getting mesh “soon,” apparently. I am super-impatient waiting for it. A lot of people say we don’t need mesh, but it’ll help make some kinds of content easier to make (no more sculpting a torus into a cube, innit) and it does make some stuff possible/better that wasn’t before. Since there’s an official InWorldz viewer I’m hoping people will actually be able to see it. Cos yeah, probably the main annoying thing for me about OpenSim grids is how few people can see mesh because they’re using most likely Imprudence. For various reasons it’s more normal to build with standard prims on OS grids than it is in SL, and there is a certain resistance to mesh when people are barely using sculpts anyway. My own Secret Bunker build on Metro contained but one sculptmap among endless normal prims, and nobody thought this was odd or unacceptable in some way. Which is good but also suggests a lack of progress from the users rather than the technology. Why don’t people want mesh? I know it’s a scary thing at first, but by this stage it’s probably an annoyance to see so many people half-invisible.
(Don’t get me started, though, on the attitude some people seem to have of being somehow superior because they can’t see your hair.)
I do hope mesh doesn’t kill texture clothing like the craze kind of has in SL (mesh bras? really?) and I expect to be seeing flexiskirts for some time to come, but dammit I wants mah mesh. Since it’s “soon” I’ve started making some stuff that I can upload when the time comes. Nothing spectacular, but a few learning experiences that turned out pretty neat even if I do say so myself.
I suppose there is the question of whether mesh is a non-essential “shiny” like materials seems to be (I could be wrong on that, natch) but I am these days firmly on the side of the possibilities of mesh and the relative ease of working with it compared to Bloody Sculpties. I can make actual shoes with mesh, can’t with sculpties, and never could with real prims. So there has to be something to say for it in terms of not being as bloody awful as the alternatives can be.
In the photo Chav is wearing sculpted earrings and torus hair. Yes.
June 17, 2013
Paradoxical
I am in the process of building in Garnet sim in InWorldz, I am making some sort of… retro mid-century vintage… thing. Blame the recent going rockabilly. I used about half a dozen textures for the build, just basically tinted and fake-baked mid-century modern colours. I still have a lot to do, but the shop itself is mostly done now I think. Not sure when exactly to proclaim it open though. Should I wait until the rest of the sim is done? But then does anyone ever actually walk out of a shop when you can just teleport home when you’re done?
June 14, 2013
Moar Vintage
Chav is still being all vintage, now with hair and crappy homemade tattoos. It’s a whole rockabilly kick, don’t panic it will pass. Even got a woman AO for it, from Vista. Cue comments about how ha ha u look liek girl nao.
One thing that’s been confusing me is that almost all the events I can find in InWorldz the music is blues or country. What’s with that? Either is fine in reasonable doses, but I want some dance sometimes or punk or somethin.
Vintage
Eek, I look like a lady.
Picked up some nerd-glasses from Epique, which I only just found today, and some template-shoes from a random shop in Vodka. They are tintable, so I made them more or less match the dress. Also got a Vista woman’s AO because well you need more than one AO for when it is annoying you with stupid stands. Innit?
So I made hair! Nothing special, just normal prims, but I was failing to find any retro/vintage hairdos in InWorldz. Yeah, I was feeling a bit rockabilly. Now if only I had a cool 50s house full of tacky decor! Then I would be happy, I am sure of it this time. My home in InWorldz is just a sky platform in Birch Glen, but I’ve been using sandboxes a lot (all the better to meet people) and so maybe I should look into an actual house somewhere? I don’t know, I like where I am.
Photo taken at Phoenix Creations, Midsomer region.
June 13, 2013
Flexiprims
You don’t realise how reliant you’ve become on skirt rezzers until you don’t have one and they cost thousands and then you’re like “fuck that, I’ll make the skirts myself” and oh it is more difficult than you thought. Still, I got this one made and it’s okay in that it works. I was thinking “eww flexiprims” but maybe what I meant was “eww badly-textured flexiprims”? But like most things I suppose they were never meant to be worn. An awful lot of SL-tech was based on “nobody will ever use that for clothing,” speaking of how nobody has a working deformer yet. No deformer makes Chav sad.
Finally attended an InWorldz music event that wasn’t either country or blues. I don’t know why, it seems to be all the DJs and singers go for there. It’s like being trapped in the past.
Photo taken at Slightlydelic, in InWorldz (obvs).
Delistified
Just delisted most of my remaining Marketplace items. It feels liberating.
People in InWorldz asked if I sell things in SL, and I decided that I didn’t really want to. So I’ve left the few items people seem to like and I took away all the rest and now I am less attached to SL for things like customer service.
The Marketplace is just full of half-arsed template shops selling Meli Imako meshes these days, it’s getting harder to find the original works in amongst them. Seems like everyone in SL has a template shop, but I suppose if it makes them happy. I mean there are templates in IW, but it’s nowhere near the same level. Yet. And I am a bitch, because people say it’s no different from sculptmaps, but those? You still had to make something to go with them. So gone are my templates even though they occasionally sold. I was just supporting something that annoys me on some level.
In IW I am enjoying making clothes again, which I suppose is partly because it feels possible to make any impact in that people might actually buy them, but mostly it’s just nice to be away from the constant tedium of failure and work for no reason. So it’s fun again! Yay! Hand-drawn on system layers with occasional sculpts – so old skool! I *think* I’m ready for mesh when it comes, but it’ll be under less pressure so there’s that as well. Oh, the things I could make with mesh… But anyway, it’s nice. No events, malls that have any sort of purpose, no competing with five-minute template alterations… I swear to God (as an atheist) that this was probably a bit influenced by seeing a new template store on the Marketplace that literally just flood-filled a colour onto a template with no shading whatsoever. I like myself enough that I don’t have to compete with that stuff. Anymore. Hah.
My prediction is that it’s become harder for the noobs to break into clothing if they don’t just jump on the template bandwagon, and that leaves them at the tender mercies of the template-makers because they’ll never have to learn Blender or whatever for themselves. They’ll be in a marketplace saturated with the exact thing they’re trying to sell, turning up for events to find their own contribution has a twin or two on the racks. It’s a bit depressing, but there you go. I just hope some of the talent moves to other grids so I can enhance my shoe collection a bit.
June 10, 2013
Inked
Another day in InWorldz, which is a fairly addictive world all things considered. Today I got arm tattoos from Stellar, which I bought with my winnings AKA spacebux made selling things to people. Clothes, just, nothing exciting. It’s that a) I was making my own clothes anyway and b) I quite enjoy the silliness of running a small shop in a virtual world. I have made things cheap, because I want the spacebux less than I want people to have the things.
There are some boots I am eyeing at Stellar, but I wanted to specifically get something I could afford with said winnings, plus I’ve been looking for a nice arm tattoo that isn’t just ripped from Google Images (the secret of most SL tattoo shops). This one had pretty colours, so it won. Then I went an explore and found morphs in InWorldz. Everyone knows that morphs are the most evil of all virtual things. They always look wrong, and can be very pastede-on-yaye. I don’t know why people think they look good, I really don’t. Worst is when a shop uses morphs in adverts, because then I have no idea what the thing looks like in-world.
Photo took on Inworldz Desert Island 2, which isn’t desert any more than the other one is. I cropped out the feets because I was wearing these ridic-bad sculpted things that I made myself to have Shoe Options.
June 9, 2013
Fashion in InWorldz
InWorldz, if you will, is like a time-machine back to SL circa 2009. No mesh isn’t the only vintage aspect, there’s also the fashion. Which I shall now talk about!
Chav in the photos is in mostly homemade stuff aside hair from Insanya and a jacket from SF Design, both of whom you may know from SL. I hate to say it but an awful lot of the good stuff is stuff imported from SL by the creator. (I *think* I saw some copybotted hair the other day, but I can’t be sure. Put it this way, it was the nicest hair on the grid and I hadn’t heard of the guy who made it.) Oh, skin is from Pulse, I don’t know if they have a shop in SL? Probably?
I don’t want to be a total bitch, but we need hair and shoes. We have Damselfly and… Gurl 6. (It seems to be run by someone else now though?) I mean I loved Gurl 6 hair when I was a noob, but that was 2006 and I don’t think those textures have ever been updated, plus the overreliance on the torus by an esteemed hairmaker is odd by today’s standards. Shoes? Chav has boots from SF Design which were like the only non-template shoes I’ve seen on the grid so far. So if you make shoes then pls to InWorldz, because we are having a Shoe Famine. And I miss the top SL hair shops liek teh fucking woah.
I suspect the “vintage” nature of the fashion on the grid is due to lack of competition, less need to innovate or – as is usual in SL – copy someone else’s innovations. Me? I’ve barely even sculpted so far, that’s how blase I am about things here. It’s terrible, but there it is.
But we can still look good, as long as we avoid long flexiskirts and flat textures. There’s a bit too much photosourcing for my own liking, but that’s just me liking Chav in hand-drawn stuff to complement the slightly cartoony look of our avatars.
Chav Paderborn 