Torley Lives

RENEGADE MASTA!

MY VERY FIRST SL SHIRT!

Futurist and Yoshi's Island references aside…

I'm really getting into this content creation thing. A few dayz ago, I said I'd make a shirt. And so I have. What I did was use the Linden-provided templates—altho Resis should really check out this wealth of resources—and import them into Painter, which is splendid with my Wacom Intuos3. Started sketching as I normally would, which was easy.

I wasn't going for "photorealism", just something me, sorta tiedye hippydippy with my favorite colors and their intermediaries, yellow and blue. Played with various brush and stroke techniques to get the depth and shadowing you see, and tried to get the seams right too by pencilling out the edges fo' sum extra consistency.

Then came the hard part. I couldn't get the alpha layer to show right as a 32-bit TGA, and altho I've given the advice many times, "If you want a transparent graphic in SL, upload it as a 32-bit TGA", I've seldom created one like this. So I read the included Using_the_SL_Fashion_Design_Templates.pdf carefully and looked at all the layers. I eventually realized I had to do something for a cheap-'n'-dirty alpha layer like in the past, which is: select everything from my main graphics layer, paste it into the alpha, inverse it (since white = solid), and then cranked brightness and contrast to get the right balance. A simple blur to soften the edges, and these are by no means advanced graphics techniques, but what I've experimented with to get the job done.

Uploaded it into Second Life, threw off the default purple shirt, and then played around with the shirt params to make it fit better on this stock avatar (since clothes like this don't exactly fit on Torses):

Sleeve Length = 60
Skirt Bottom = 96
Collar Front = 88
Collar Back = 88
Shirt Fit = 14
Sleeve Looseness = 50
Shirt Wrinkles = 0

I moved the slider for the Shirt Wrinkles but couldn't see a difference—wonder why, since I remember seeing this setting change before. Will have to experiment more.

And what's on the back, you may ask? Hehe… you'll have to see for yourself. Either ask me inworld for a copy of the shirt—FULL PERMISSIONS!—or download the completed .TGA, "Torley's 1st Shirt", courtesy of Ourmedia.

In summary, my experiences:

• It's easy to draw the shirt.
• Not easy (and time-consuming) to prepare it (layers and such) for uploading. Presumably I'll get better with age, like wine.
• Seams are tricky, I've heard of better tools to smooth them out, I'll reinvestigate.
• I have a newfound appreciation for Resi textiles peeps.
  
• Lots of good info here if you want to make clothes in SL.
• Very rewarding to create your own schtuff, even if you aren't doing it for profit. The satisfaction of viewing your bod view it in 3D and walking around is extremely gratifying.
  

Litestepping on!

True to form, something's new in Second Life every day. Here's a quick roundup of eclectic schtuff that caught my eye-in-hand!

Bob Bauhaus—who helped me test a bug the other day and shown here as mashed potatoes—and Hydra Shaftoe were talking to me about showing off SL at anthro and fur conventions. Infact, some Lindens recently attended Further Confusion 2006. This led to me getting in touch with others involved. Chromal Brodsky has a great gallery here. Creations in SL are asynchronous in that you often see offline art being imported inworld, but not so much the other way around. Sad, I know. What's so awesome is this is the reverse. Arito Cotton is wearing himself as made by Shawn Keller, in the flesh and fur! Awesomeness. If I had a Torlop or Torse suit, I'd totally wear it.

Pathfinder Linden shared something on a related tip, a program called OGLE which extracts 3D graphics as they happen, and you might be able to do something like make a figurine out of your SL avatar, as this page illustrates, even using Second Life as an example. Hey! I know that dragon! It's by Olympia Rebus… I should let her know. I hope they got her permission.

In official Linden news, CEO and founder of Linden Lab, Philip Rosedale is headlining the Serious Games Summit! (And I love how SL makes it into all these events even tho it's not a game, but has games within like we have hearts and spleens.)

Something I enjoy highly about my job is the level of curiosity which it requires. Not unlike Mythbusters or other epics of the Discovery Channel regime, I find myself involved, on a daily basis, in practical experiments. A lot of questions come up on Second Life Answers that involve empirical evidence. For example, Carson Hadlee asks a timely question, "Force Inventory Loading?" which I'll be answering shortly after I blog this. As much as possible, I like to get involved inworld and really dig into what's happening. Not if, but how.

I've also joined a group inworld for the Second Life Hacks book. I've never read one of these books before, but it looks kind of like one of Heloise's hints texts, only more techy. w00t. Wilder Linden is devoted to this project, and in the SL Forums, she's posted: "Help author the O'reilly Second Life Hacks Book - Call for Submissions". Also new today: project ResMod begins, and there's a Community Team Roundtable on Feb. 1! Big picture on the Announcements, but what I'll go on and say is I like waking up and finding myself in unexpected situations. I kind of wish there was a "random" login setting for my avatar… pick up where I left off.

Here in Second Life there's a lot of love. I reckon, come Valentine's Day, there'll be even more. A lot of Resis have seen it already, but if you haven't—and I think this is just such a goshdarn kewt idea—there's a Kissing Booth set up at the Luna Infohub @ Luna (137, 102, 24). Something fun in the spirit of L-O-V-E. Wilder Linden has more info here, and SL is a really diverse place so there's also a minibooth for you Tinies avs!