Posing the other way

Tree sit

Along with scripts and sculpties I make poses too…. Some things sound easy but turn out to be a real pain in the a.. Like this sitting on a branch pose… Toke some time to make it look natural.. Please give me some credit for sustaining…

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Juicy%20Del%20Mar/33/157/24

Me in my bath tub

Hot tub

I love to take relaxing baths.. so we have decided to give Amon and Sevenstar their own… of course there is no particular reason for an avatar to take a bath.. but it’s fun fun fun… As easy as it looks it contains lots of sufisticated scripst and particles. It’s cheap so why don’t you have your own. 

<a href=”http://slurl.com/secondlife/Juicy%20Del%20Mar/14/158/23″>slurl.com/secondlife/Juicy%20Del%20Mar/14/158/23</a>

Sculpting tools – sense and non-sense

Okay, okay… In my last article I touched the issue of sculpting tools. Many people wonder where to start with when they are planning to make sculpted prims for Secondlife. My first – and maybe most important – advise: don’t aim too high. Many tools are designed to design 3D objects for purposes that lay way beyond the possibilities of Secondlife. Consequently these tools require loads of exercise and training.. It would be like learning to speak fluently chinese….. just to order an egg role. And in the end you are risking that the they don’t even understand what you want. That is just what happens in Secondlife. 3D objects that are too complex will get rubbish when you import them.

So for all sake.. start small.. but not to small. I will try to give you a guide to sculpting tools. Not pretending too be scientific or complete. So don’t be offended when I forget your favorite tool.

First of all there is a difference between inworld and outworld tools. There I can be short. I have not seen any inworld tools that are really useable. Although there is a lot of potential in some inworld tools.. it will take some time yet.. Guys, keep up the good work.

Outworld tools basically work all the same, at least in concept. You sculpt a 3D object, save it as a TGA file which contains the actual sculpted texture map. Upload it to Secondlife. Wrap it on your sculpted prim and there you go.

The first low aiming outworld tool is Plopp. But this is really a very very low aiming tool. Easy tool to install, easy to learn.. but a very limited useability. Try it. It is really fun and free too.

Still having Plopp’s big smile on your face you should immediately try Yuzuru Jewell’s product. He has made a whole range of sculpting tools for different purposes. All very user friendly and all designed for Secondlife. So no hassle with formats or results.. it works great forSL. Instead of making one big tool he has made Tatara, Rokuro, Somato, Nomi and Tokroten. Each has its own specialization but they all work much the same. Free to try and cheap to buy. Almost anything you like can be made with these tools. Actually I have used it for months and am still very satisfied. Sevenstar still uses it to make her less complex sculpties.

For the next stage in you sculpty odyssee I do advise AC3D by Inivis. This tool is not specially made for Secondlife but can make sculpted 3D objects for many purposes. If you use it for Secondlife however, you should be watching your steps carefully. Secondlife can only handle very special formatted objects. AC3D has some predefined SL objects you can use for starters. Do not add or delete vertices (points) and do not make holes or dramatic alterations to the basis object. They would get messy in SL. AC3D saves files in its own .ac format so you can reuse your stuff. To use them in Secondlife you must use the Export function which can make a sculpted texture map in .tga format. There are two options.. normalized or not. It takes to much to explain the difference here.. just take normalized. I use it in Windows XP, Vista and Ubuntu Linux… works like hell.

To be honest here stops my detailed experience. I still use AC3D and am very happy to use it. It fullfills all my wishes and demands for use in Secondlife sculpting. I have used Wings3D which is a bit of a look-a-like to AC3D but less user friendly. I have used Sculptypaint but could not get very amused using it.. than again who am I. Some people love it. I have used Blender too, which is great, but I did not have enough time to get familiair with it. I even looked into Mudbox and 3d Studio Max. Marvelous.. but at a price of L$ 978.600 way too expensive for the purpose.

A complete list you can find on Second life Wiki 3D Software guide.

to be continued…

Fashion and sculpties

You readers might wonder why this blog is called fashion and sculpties. This is not coincidence. Fashion and sculpting are really interconnected. Let me put it this way.. Creating fashion with the standard Secondlife tools has it’s limit. Okay, you can make a nice T-Shirt or even a pair of pants and a jacket when you are great at Photoshop or Gimp… but it gets boring very soon. Adding prims makes it a lot more interesting… Especially when you make jewelery or accessories.  The real thing however is using sculpted prims aka sculpties.

For whom is not familiar with building in Second life. Prims are the basic building forms of which any object in the virtual world consists of. Normal prims are limited in form and size. There is a cube, a sphere, an torus etc… You can stretch them in 3 directions and put a nice texture on it. Basically everything consists of a number of prims glued (linked) together. Texturing is the first step to make things look a bit real. Take a picture in real life and wrap it on a prim.

Sculpted prims however are not limited to basic forms. Compare them to clay. You can give each prim its own 3D form. It takes not much imagination to see that this extends the building possibilities in Second life a lot. However sculpting prims is not that easy.. for most users it is a bridge too far. Most sculpting is done in off world software tools. Most of them are all that user friendly. You have to import the forms as texture maps into SL and put them on the prim.

But if you get over this hurdle and learn how to properly make sculpted prims the sky is the limit…. well almost….

It would be nice if sculpted prims had no limits.. but they have. Besides that they are not easy to make, have to be uploaded, need more time to rezz and cause some lag. They miss some of the features that normal prims do have. What I personally miss most is flexibility. My customers are mostly designers of fashion who choose not to make their own sculpties. And in fashion flexibility really makes a difference. So if I have one big wish to Santaclaus this year…. please let Linden Labs finally add this functionality to Second life.. They promised! And if they do.. I promise that Second life will get a lot more beautiful.

Off the record: It is often said that it is already possible to make flexible sculpted prims theoretically.. but it would cost way to many server power to run them in world at the moment. If they have made this decision for that reason I can sleep well… because all server power problems are solved by time.

Right… having said that.. don’t be afraid. Anybody can make sculpted prims. But if you choose not to.. call me!

Amon

Christmas decoration

Looking for a wonderfull decoration to snapshot this years christmas cards? Well have a look at the Stitch by Stitch mainstore at Juicy del Mar. Sevenstar has spent over a day to create this winter wonderland where Polar bears rule in a shear fantastic light atmosphere.

In fact, we give away a wonderful male and female fashion suprise box for FREE for the best looking picture taken at our mainstore! How’s that?!

The birth of the SbyS Male label

Our fashion label Stitch by Stitch has broadened it’s horizon. Under the pressure of lots of customer requests we have decided to design and produce male fashion too. It is a complete new challenge which however fits completely in our work field. We already started to work with great  male models in our Berlin Models Agency earlier this month.

We think it is just not fair there is so much great female fashion in SL.. and still some little for men. Sevenstar is working her ass of (excusez le môt, but it’s true) to put the first collection on the market. Of course the new collection will get great accessories too. That’s mainly my part of the work…. Just think of your greatest belts.. wait for our new collection.  High expectations? Justified!

NO, I will not show any pictures yet. The only way to get a sneak peek is to find me in SL. You can get a first look. I promise to be wearing some of her new stuff for you! In fact, I love it and just can’t wait. Sevenstar keep up the great work my love!

Amon

Proof of origin! check the SbyS Male logo

2nd year in 2nd Life

Last weekend I was in Berlin to celebrate the Second Birthday of Youin3D, founded 2006 by Jan Northoff and Tobias Neisecke. They have started to rebuild the magnificent city of Berlin in SecondLife. And it is really awesome. Those two guys saw the huge possibilities of the virtual world and managed to realize their dreams. Congratz boys!!
Youin3D by the way has a very special meaning for Sevenstar and me. At the night of the 1 year party we met for the first time. This year we celebrated with Jan and Tobi in the headquarters at the Hanoversche Strasse in Berlin. Hundreds of friends and contributors celebrated with us at the live inworld festival at the virtual Alexanderplatz.

Youin3D

Copybot activities

Yesterday I was urgently called by my partner Sevenstar Amat. After we had a great advertisement our shop at Fuzzy had been crowded with customers who appreciated and bought her stuff “en masse”. However, after the customers had left, there was one individual who did appreciate our stuff too.. but was not buying anything. She was apparently copying all the designs as a copy bot. It is a horrible feeling to see how some person without any creative ability from her own tries to earn a living by stealing others peoples designs…

As Sevenstar stated in her blog “it would be naive to believe SL has better people than RL”. But at least in SL there can be take measures by e.g. landowners or LindenLabs to prevent people from doing it. But still it is easy to sneak yourself into GOD mode and copy anything you like. I wonder what ist worse. Not being interested in doing anything about or being a copybot.. Reminds me of people who look to the other side when people are molested on the street…

Than again, Sevenstar and I will not bend for these activities and continue our creative work in SL.. Just because we love to do it.

Now that I am writing this, I wonder if copybots can steal scripts or scultymaps… that would be the next disaster for SL… corrupting carefully designd and coded scripts would be as bad for SL as virusses are for the Internet… Just think of it! Maybe this will be a reason for LindenLabs to be consequent on GOD mode copybotters.

Amon

First modelling steps

Last night I took my first modelling steps in SL. But not until Sevenstar had completely reshaped my avatar, so I could meet the standards for a guy in modelling business of cours. Thank you my dear for creating the coolest av I have aver (b)(s)een.

Well, so there we were at Berlin Models. Sevenstar was teaching me the first tricks as a model. Spontaniously the two other guys Secret Nightfire and Abel Muggins dropped by as well as our teacher Imogen Miklos. So we started our first unplanned catwalk lessons. We had a lot of fun.. but found out it’s not just walken up and down a catwalk. Practice, practice, practice… however the ladies in the audience, all trained and experienced SL models thought we were not bloody dillitants at all.

Here some shooting of my new av, taken by Sevenstar:

… more about my modelling and more pictures will follow soon..

Amon

Busy, busy, busy…

Hi you guys, I have been so busy lately that I neglected my blog.. Shame, shame.. But it is true. Sevenstar have been working so hard. I cannot even recollect everthing we did. We had to move our mainstore Stitch by Stitch again, cause the landlady settled down at an open space. Than we had to make a lot of new products.. and we did. Look at our main store and Digital Clay for all the new stuff..

And last but not least … Amon was reshaped and remodelled completely. By Sevenstar personally. Main reason is that she started a brand new great superlative model agency Berlin Models. And this modelling agency need models… and male models too… But as Amon was a cool but not so fashion guy het was not usable for modelling. So, together with Secret and Abel I am one of the first male models of Berlin Models.. Do you believe it! We had our first catwalk experience with teacher Imogen Miklos.

Pictures and more info later!

Amon