Two new Pewter Totem Necklaces released this week: Raven and Lion. I have quite the little assortment of these necklaces now. As usual, click the images above to go to the respective product pages.

Relay for Life in Second Life 2012 ended with a donation total of $348,919.

And no, that's not Lindens.

I think everyone was pretty happy with the general outcome this year. While this year was quite a bit less than last year, repeating a donation of over a quarter of a million dollars is definitely nothing to sneeze at.


To all the donators, coordinators, committee members, organizers, builders and teams:

Thank you!


As I explained in my last blog post, I had been asked to bring back "Paper Boats in a Paper Sea" for the main Relay for Life event in Second Life. I think I under-estimated exactly how much it would take to fill 1/4 of a sim without making it look like my shop and art display exploded all over a parcel. I had decided to create custom content for the event. I also had to display the names of the committee members, somehow.

Since I had a strange corner parcel that worked best at a diagonal, I had to wait until I actually saw the parcel in-world before I could begin designing my display. I sketched my draft the day the sims came online.

I had 9 days to complete it.

Issues began cropping up immediately, importing sand sculpts. The technique I used for the Fantasy Faire display, for some odd and unexplained reason, was no longer functioning. Not that this is a surprise. We're in Second Life, after all. I ended up scrapping the sand and decided to just terraform instead. To make matters worse, the entire week we struggled with crippling lag and repeatedly crashing sims. A few times I had to retreat to my Home sim to complete assets and position objects because I could not do it on location.

Admittedly, most of the time working on the parcel wasn't creating content for it, or managing out how the interactive display would work. It was setting out all the bleeping grass. Grass, stepping stones, flowers, trees. Landscaping. At one point my two helpers (Iloh and Saikatsu Epsilon) and I did nothing for several hours but set out grass. The lag certainly didn't help. Eventually Iloh shoved me aside and decided to take about 75% of the gardening into her own hands, if not more. Thank goodness, too. She did a stunning job!

While I'd never seen Iloh do any landscaping before in Second Life, it was as if it came second-nature to her. With minimal instruction and critique on my part, she managed to help churn out exactly what I needed. It took a lot of stress off the fact that I was sleeping in 4-hour chunks and working in 8-9 hour intervals.


I made several clusters of stepping stones, customizable wooden signs and some of the most beautiful crystals in Second Life from scratch. All low-prim and customized Level of Detail for optimal performance. I coordinated the positions a few of my sculptures and my new Dancer's Triad. Rocks, plants, particle effects. The finishing touches on the installation itself. We decorated the seating areas with 'chairs' in the form of floating bubbles by HPMD*, and put out some of their wonderful trees and bushes. The crystals were a mad dash (I created them in 8 hours) but they were worth it. They definitely tied everything together.

The last object was placed at 5:56 AM July 14th. 4 hours shy of the start of the event.

Surprisingly, I managed to stay awake and coherent long enough to witness the opening of the event.

Then I took a 12-hour nap.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

I have officially nine days to finish my display for Second Life's major Relay for Life event.

I have never done this event before, and I am stoked.

40 sims large (that's a lot of sims) and packed with artistic displays and themed events, users follow a gigantic track that spans through the sims in a large circle. Users continue to raise money and follow the track over a 24 hour period.

I've been invited to display on one of the major campgrounds along the side of the track. Once more, Kadmon Wytchwood and his incredible scripting talents is making sure "Paper Boats in a Paper Sea" can return for the 24 hour event!

As the event only lasts a day, people won't have enough time to customize their own boat textures, so the boats are being limited to a dedication that will broadcast over instant messages.
After you make your donation to the vendor and receive your boat, you'll be able to wear your boat and click on it. This will rez a boat that will go out on the water. Follow the instructions to make your dedication with a chat command, and click on the water to place your boat. The boat will then remain on the water until the end of the event.

If there is one grid-wide event that I can completely get behind, it's Relay for Life in Second Life. Many donation events in Second Life are questionable in terms of where the donations actually go. There are quite a few individuals who have used donation events in Second Life as a means to scam residents, taking their money for charity and transferring it right into their own bank accounts.

Relay for Life in Second Life is one of the handful of charity events that are not only backed by the American Cancer Society, but use very specific donation vendors that go directly to their custom-legacy-name avatars (in other words, avatars with last names given specifically by Linden Lab), which you can obtain from the American Cancer Society's very own in-world sim.

If you're interested in joining the in-world event on July 14-15th, be sure to check out the Relay for Life in Second Life website. It's sure to be a lot of fun, with themed walks every hour and prizes for most outrageous costume or how many times you can lap the track in the 24 hour period.

So I've been doing some re-pricing and marking down of older Refined Wild builds that were created somewhere between 2005 and 2008. These builds were top quality for their time and sold very well over the course of several years, but I think it's about time they get demoted to prices that better reflect their current quality in accordance to the rest of the market.

Of course, this means good news for the thrifty people out there who like to get quality stuff for a fraction of its original cost!

Considering that I've been making stuff in Second Life for such a long time, over such a long period of time, the age gaps between pieces can become pretty apparent. At least to me, anyway. I may or may not make more aging pieces 'Classic' as time goes on. I think it will really depend on the quality of the piece and whether or not the price fits the form anymore.

I will eventually be doing this to a handful of my older Wylde Styles, as well. Which ones and when? Only time will tell.

The Relay for Life: Fantasy Faire 2012 is now over and everyone must wait a whole year for the fun to begin again! We managed to raise over $25,000 this year, which I believe is at least a couple thousand more than last year, and we certainly broke (and set!) a couple of new records this time around.

As many of you know, this year I did a public art piece called "Paper Boats in a Paper Sea" that was integrated into my shop's display. I collaborated with Meth Federal, a mind-blowing abstract movement artist to create one of the most beautiful features (in my humble opinion) of the Faire this year.

• The project was featured on the Fantasy Faire's website blog.

• Elysium Hynes, who is this fantastic person and wonderful blogger I've had the chance to meet and chat with over the course of the Faire has blogged my project several times at different stages. She really went above and beyond anything I've seen bloggers do for the Faire.
• Prazillo Lemon also did a fantastic job blogging the project.

• Even Jackie Mondalimare wrote a short story surrounding the little paper boats, to my absolute amusement! 

The response and feedback for the project was really astounding.  I didn't get nearly as many boats back for the display as I had sold, but I certainly got enough boats to fill the pond enough to the point where I was completely satisfied with how it turned out. The boats that did sell raised a good L$30,000 (about $110 USD) and combined with the beautiful abstract art that Meth sold, we raised a really decent amount of cold, hard, cancer-curing cash! Which is always impressive, especially when you're selling a combination of art and Faire-specific items.


Everyone who painted their paper boat to take part in the project did so with such admiration, love and care. We had drawings, memorials, and poems; even an advertisement and a public statement about the health of the earth and how to process your trash! I really wish more people had the time to customize their boats and have it take part in the display. I know that a couple of people had a really hard time writing or drawing anything out, as it was so incredibly emotional for them. I admire that they managed to submit anything back to be displayed. It really does take a sense of strength to put a piece of yourself out there for the world to see.


In the near future, I will have parts of the display for sale. It might take a bit longer for the hanging net (as I forgot to take it back into my inventory after I was done taking photos!), but I will also release along with it a skybox (yes, a skybox!) of the sandy display, itself! Unfortunately, it will lack Meth's "Eclipsing Ripple". However! You can certainly obtain it from his Second Life Marketplace.

I won't try to make your monitor drip with sarcasm, but you know what the best thing is about building for Second Life?

Having to teach yourself a new workflow to suit Second Life's system. Every. Time.

I can't even recall the hours I've spent figuring out new workflow tricks for different projects. Trying to make things easier, trying to make things faster, trying to make things newer, different, more advanced. Working with a shoddy, buggy, forever-in-beta system while catering to its every whim in terms of what works and what doesn't in terms of sculpts, textures and creating new content.

Sculpties were bad enough, but I think SL Mesh got the new "Hardest Easiest Thing You'll Ever Do In Second Life" award. And when it received that award, the award burst into flames.
Usually things don't work this way. You go from building in Second Life, to actually developing for projects outside of Second Life's workflow, and you freak out because it's too easy! It's too gentle on your sleep-cycle! Where is the laundry list of technical limitations you must follow? You mean I don't have to spend a bazillion hours optimizing something? Why does this work immediately after I import it? Witchcraft! Witchcraft!!

Maybe I'm overreacting. Second Life Mesh was mostly irritating because it really shouldn't be as difficult as it was to create a larger low-poly object with a reasonable prim count; at least, within the perimeters that have been set. Especially when relating it to the perimeters set for regular prims.
Each prim is built up of about 1024 quads, which works up to 2048 polys. I've always said that prims are excruciatingly wasteful, and the transition to Second Life Mesh only hits that home. Uploading a mesh comprised of what is meant to be exported as a sculpt map will drive your Prim Equivalent up so high you'll begin to wonder how Second Life managed to function by itself all this time.

A 2048 poly count is fantastic if you're building a very large, complex or detailed model, such as a furnished house or castle with all the structural fixings. Of course, the point of low-poly modelling is to use the fewest number of polygons possible. It is an art form in and of itself.


While modeling my Egyptian Obelisk, I discovered that as long as I have a polygon count below 20 on Low Level of Detail and a polygon count below 10 on the Lowest Level of Detail, I could retain the full model on both the High and Medium Level of Detail settings and still have a very decent Prim Equivalent (1 prim at regular size, and 4 prims at 64 meters, which is the largest you can size a Mesh object).
Of course, this is with an object that would only take up about 100-300 polys. Once you breach the 500 poly mark, things start getting a little bit tougher in terms of balancing the Level of Detail quality and low Prim Equivalent at the size you want to use your object.

I experienced this problem several times while building my Dancer's Triad, a stage accented with draped cloth, huge 'giants' and several elegant metal lanterns. I wanted to try my hand at making a very large mesh object, with high quality Level of Detail and a reasonable Prim Equivalent. A reasonable Prim Equivalent, I think, would be to use your imagination to split the object into what would be normal prims, and count them. If your mesh object has a higher "prim count" than a prim object made of the same parts/pieces (sculpt or non-sculpt), then it is no longer a reasonable Prim Equivalent.

At almost 20 meters and counting in at an 85 Prim Equivalent, I think I beat my reasonable equivalency by about one or two prims. Lucky me! I'll probably use sculpts for cloth pieces next time, though. Second Life Mesh isn't very kind to organic shapes in the way of good Level of Detail and Prim Equivalent.
The entire mesh model comes out to about 3,500 polys, which includes everything except the lantern bulbs, which I had to sculpt to preserve Level of Detail at far distances.

Another reason for a higher Prim Equivalency would simply be breaking the mesh parts into different pieces and not uploading the entire build as a singular object. As an individual who completely supports build modifications and allowing customers to change and modify my products to suit their individual needs, I try to make my relatively unchangeable mesh builds as modifiable as possible. I want people to be able to break apart the build, use pieces of it, shrink or expand, add or delete.

While with mesh, the more pieces you upload as one object may create a lower Prim Equivalence (depending on how you've broken down your Level of Detail), but you won't be able to modify the pieces. Doing the opposite may create a slightly higher Prim Equivalence, but it's not enough to justify not allowing individuals to modify a build within the means of working with mesh.

Pricing these pieces has also become a bit of a bother, considering the mesh market isn't too strong yet. I decided that I wanted to price about half of what I might get on a 3D content site for the Triad, as it's excruciatingly detailed and includes UV maps, and price the other accessory items at normal, every-day accessory-like prices. These items are one prim, come in multiple colors and don't include UV maps.

Anyway... without further adieu, I give you my three first mesh releases!

The day when I can throw off the shackles of the rudimentary builder, free my tortured prims for a better life and not have to toil over a hot PC unit for hours trying to get a sculptie to simply do what I want. Proper UV-mapping. Painting worry-free, seamless textures on flat surface maps. Sharp-edged objects.

That's right, my Linden Lab-born brothers and sisters: Mesh. Mesh has arrived.

...

Well. Sort of.

Mesh has arrived, but with some pretty strict limitations that won't smile upon individuals who aren't familiar with any grass-roots 3D development. Limitations that even I am having trouble with, and I started this art form creating low-polygon models. Limitations that, when mentioned, will drive such terror down your spine you might as well be standing in the ninth realm of the underworld:

Prim Equivalent.

I know whoever thought this up must have been doing their best to take into account how people would abuse things like polygon count. They must have known how the servers would cripple under the sheer number of vertices individuals end up with when they're making a 3D model and they have no idea what the heck they're actually doing. They meant well, right? Right?
To be fair, I know that the system Second Life runs on is already optimized to use Primitive Objects (you know, the prims we all know and love) within the perimeters that the system has been developed. Second Life is comfortable using those objects, and it has been comfortable using those objects for years (so to speak) and introducing built-from-scratch mesh objects that may-or-may-not jive with the program may-or-may-not cause it to work as well as the prims it's grown up with.

What makes me a bit miffed, as a developer and builder, is the fact that I absolutely must come up with my own separate Levels of Detail (LOD) in order to keep the Prim Equivalent down. I am often making 3 or 4 separate 'versions' of a single object, because I downright refuse to use the near-useless LOD generator integrated into the Mesh Upload menu. I swear it has a personal vendetta to break down the Level of Detail of everything in the absolute ugliest way possible. Like it's jealous or something.


Basically, in order for me to make a mesh object that works very well LOD-wise, won't bog down the system and won't take up a huge number of prims when I rez it, I need to make 3-4 types of the same object instead of just one. To get a good result, I need to do four times the work. Four times the work. Not that doing '___ x the work' of a normal 3D workflow is anything strange for Second Life, but this time it's particularly daunting, considering that making meshes from scratch is much more liberating.

Fortunately for myself, I can work around these issues while still maintaining a reasonable prim count at object size and quality. It just takes time.
Unfortunately for others, the freedom they felt being able to create something easily will be replaced by the task of actually learning a professional skill. It really takes all the fun out of it, unless you like the challenge of learning new things and are wicked-good and everything you touch turns to solid gold.

One of the worst things about this is that it limits the amount of new content coming into Second Life. It will be awhile for a decent assortment of good mesh products (that aren't templates being used over and over again) comes into existence anywhere. Sure, products will slowly leak in, but the really good content will be determined by people who can actually develop good 3D content. Specifically for people who develop good 3D content for games. And this is why:

They know how to create content for games!

Something that I'd been trying to convince people of for years since sculpts came out was to use their skills to learn how to develop low-poly, industry workflow 3D content. There were a few people who made this transition really naturally, because they were constantly experimenting and are aware of Second Life's limitations. Most didn't. A lot of people seemed to assume sculpts and mesh work exactly the same way, because they both use mesh objects to create a final product.

I can't even count the number of sculpts-imported-as-mesh objects I've seen floating around.  It's almost embarrassing. (And no, don't be telling me you don't understand why your tiny mesh object is over 8 prims when it's not even the size of a potato. It's a mesh-uploaded sculpt. You have 2048 polys on that object. I can see it in wireframe mode.)

Whether we like it or not, the workflow for Second Life Mesh is basically identical to developing for games. People keep thinking that since Second Life can import mesh, they can throw any model into the system and it'll end up preforming like a 'regular' game, but that's not the case. Many of the tricks and the know-how involved in creating great looking, fast-loading 3D models for video games is largely due to optical illusion, conservative low-poly modeling and a very keen eye for topology.

And in a future blog post/tutorial, I'll not only explain what that is, but also how to use it to develop your own models.

Because I'm awesome like that.