A little housekeeping on the Wilds of Organica side:
Medusa Gorgon Hair Update
Updates to the hairbase were made and sent out this afternoon for all Medusa Gorgon hairs. This update fixes a permissions issue which had not been caught for some time (the hairbase tattoos). With that said: as I have no way of tracking individual Relay for Life sales, purchasers of any Amethyst or Pink Medusa Gorgon hairs which have been sold so far at Fantasy Faire will *not* have received this update. If you would like one, please IM or email me and I’ll be happy to send you an updated pack.
Centaur Applier Update
Updated centaur applier boxes will also be going out this afternoon. They include new Omega appliers for your fur layers, allowing for application to all Omega-compatible mesh bodies.
Of note: If you are using the Niramyth Aesthetic body, it is recommended that you make use of the ‘compression’ clothing layer for this purpose.
Gacha Garden
Wilds of Organica will be participating in Spring round of Gacha Garden!
Work is still in progress but here are a few sneak-peeks!
If you enjoy what I’m doing here or think someone else might also find it of use, please feel free to share this blog with them. If you’d like to keep up to date with posts, the RSS for this blog is here, I can also be found on Twitter and Plurk. The Discord server is here.
If you really like my stuff, perhaps consider donating to my Patreon?
Perks include new release postings, access to beta testing (should it be required), a monthly L$1500 credit, and (recently unlocked) monthly Patron-exclusive gifts !
Your continued support helps to produce regular content (written, modelled, animated or otherwise) and helps to keep original content creation in Second Life!
Fantasy Faire is quite possibly my favourite time of year in Second Life.
It’s a time when creativity across the grid comes together and is on showcase. Above and beyond the big money makers and monthly mixers, this is the opportunity for folks who create something truly different and magical to show off what they’ve been doing all year and to help raise funds for the American Cancer Society in the Second Life Relay for Life.
That said, it’s also bittersweet because, as an event raising funds for the American Cancer Society, it also serves to remind us of those who have been affected by cancer.
This year in particular has been rather poignant as someone I knew passed away rather recently from cancer – a week ago, as of this writing.
I didn’t know Mishellereine very well, but we shared the hobby of fountain pens and it’s a subject she could be deeply passionate about. Her passing leaves a hole in the fountain pen community and we miss her greatly.
She loved purple things, so I figured I’d make a Wyvern coat that would suit her colour preference. All proceeds from the sale of this Wyvern colour will always go to the American Cancer Society in her memory.
Amethyst and Pink Medusa Gorgon Hair are now available as donation items for RFL – be sure to try a demo to make sure it’s for you!
Of note, as of this writing, the Fantasy Faire team has raised a total of L$3,487,572 (US $13,950) for the American Cancer Society Relay For Life over a three day period.
Additionally, this year, I set about the task of updating the Centaur avatar for a more stocky appearance, as has been requested in the past.
This new body shape still utilizes the original centaur UV layout (and thus is also compatible with the Centaur applier system) but makes use of a modified rig which makes size adjustments more gracefully than the original Classic body. I’ve also added Omega applier support for fur layers, so folks with mesh bodies now have greater flexibility when it comes to transitioning the centaur bodies to mesh human bodies.
Has been tested with: SLink Physique (Female & Male), Signature Gianni, Niramyth Aesthetic. Full details on the Stocky body have been added to the Centaur info page, here.
Next week, keep your eyes open for a new release at Gacha Garden! NeoBokrug’s worked extensively to help make the next release super fun!
More on that later 🙂
If you enjoy what I’m doing here or think someone else might also find it of use, please feel free to share this blog with them. If you’d like to keep up to date with posts, the RSS for this blog is here, I can also be found on Twitter and Plurk. The Discord server is here.
If you really like my stuff, perhaps consider donating to my Patreon?
Perks include new release postings, access to beta testing (should it be required), a monthly L$1500 credit, and (recently unlocked) monthly Patron-exclusive gifts !
Your continued support helps to produce regular content (written, modelled, animated or otherwise) and helps to keep original content creation in Second Life!
It’s been a long while since I first posted about Animesh. Apparently, it’s been a good 18 months since Linden Lab started working on it, and just this week, the new functionality hit the AGNI grid (not just on RC channels) completely. If you have not yet updated your SL viewer to 6.0.0 or higher, you may wish to do so now!
That LL announcement was the final kick in the butt I needed to finalize the look & feel as well as packaging and pricing for my new Medusa Gorgon Hair.
While I would have preferred to have released these prior to Halloween, it just didn’t work out from a scheduling and feasibility point of view. With that said, I am glad LL took their time to ensure all their ducks are in a row moving forward, and look forward to making much more content that takes advantage of the new functionality.
For full details, please be sure to try the demo and to read the documentation fully. There are some caveats relating to Animated Mesh objects which may affect the product’s utility for you.
If you enjoy what I’m doing here or think someone else might also find it of use, please feel free to share this blog with them. If you’d like to keep up to date with posts, the RSS for this blog is here, I can also be found on Twitter and Plurk. The Discord server is here.
If you really like my stuff, perhaps consider donating to my Patreon? Your continued support helps to produce regular content (written, modelled, animated or otherwise) and helps to keep original content creation in Second Life!
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been in the midst of moving house – only recently getting mostly settled in. This week, I had the opportunity to (finally) sit down and work out the next few offerings from Organica. Starting today, Prism Events’ Tannenbaum event will begin!
Newly available will be these three themed wreaths, which touch on tropical, underground and underwater themes! Pick up the Tropical, Ocean Kingdom, and Cavern Riches Wreaths exclusively at Tannenbaum for the duration of the event – from November 17 thru December 22!
Mod/Copy/No Transfer, with some copy-only scripts, range from 4-9LI.
For the moment, these are fully animated avatars with some Bento support + eye control. I’ll touch on plans as follows…
Delay
Some of you may recall the wyvern having made an appearance on the original Bento video put together by Linden Lab. By that point, the main model had been completed and rigged with a preliminary Bento rig. At the time, I chose to make use of both hind and wing bones to make this a mount, rather than a full avatar, but it also meant there needed to be a few compromises when it came to any treatment of a human avatar rider.
While I am not sure I couldn’t have made it work, there were a number of factors that spurred me to abandon the mount-as-part-of-existing-rig solution.
First, I was working on a number of projects at the time and various events called for projects that just made more sense to be released first.
Second, both the underlying Bento rig and development tools have changed since I started. We started off with no wings to some wings to potentially being able to ride rigged objects eventually.
Third, the final rig implementation as it stands best accommodates a fully opening and closing webbed wing structure by using most of the hand bones, which is a lot more difficult to do with just the Bento wings.
The added difficulty of dealing with an especially thin webbed membrane and preventing as much clipping as possible has been a major bone of contention for me and I feel like the current setup strikes the best balance.
As it stands now, I hope to keep an eye on the avatar and how folks like it. As always, updates are free, and with the new vendor system, I look forward to being able to just push updates to you automatically.
I will be looking in to tangential implementation as Animesh and hope to, ultimately, also provide a means for use as an Animesh mount… but until then will be catching up on a few items for both shops along with packing up for a major life change coming up in the next month or so.
Moving
I don’t want to bore folks much about it, but I must say I will be moving at the end of October. While I’ve made good memories where I am now, I’m really looking forward to making the new place my home.
Now that the Wyvern is out of the way, I hope to delve a bit more in to upcoming Animesh releases as well as other things I’ve been meaning to work on for a while.
Look for some freaky Halloweeny stuff coming up soon, along with some new household items as well.
I am also moving things around in the Organica shop and hoping to better feature everything that is on offer. Please let me know if you think things are going in a good direction or if you have any other feedback.
If you enjoy what I’m doing here or think someone else might also find it of use, please feel free to share this blog with them. If you’d like to keep up to date with posts, the RSS for this blog is here, I can also be found on Twitter and Plurk. The Discord server is here.
If you really like my stuff, perhaps consider donating to my Patreon? Your continued support helps to produce regular content (written, modelled, animated or otherwise) and helps to keep original content creation in Second Life!
As I touched on last week, Organica, Wilds of Organica and Akimeta stores on Organica region are now participating in a 25%-off sale across the board (with the exception of gacha machines)!
The sale will proceed until May 5, after which the region will be temporarily closed in order to facilitate a vendor system switch-over and to reassess existing offerings.
Just a reminder – Some older items will be retired from active display (to be made available only on the SL Marketplace) and other items will be removed from the Marketplace entirely.
Drop by today to take advantage of the discount and be sure to check the credit terminal (indicated below) to see how much credit you can apply to your purchases.
You can use your credit on any non-gacha purchase from Organica or Wilds of Organica by left-clicking the vendor and clicking ‘Use Credit’. You will be asked how much credit you want to use and any remaining balance will need to be paid before the vendor will dispense the item.
On an unrelated note outside of the sale, Organica will be appearing at the SL Home and Garden Expo, beginning May 19th. Please keep an eye on this blog for new releases, which will make their debut there!
In the mean time, I’ll continue to document my process and development here on the blog on a weekly basis.
If you enjoy what I’m doing here or think someone else might also find it of use, please feel free to share this blog with them. If you’d like to keep up to date with posts, the RSS for this blog is here, I can also be found on Twitter and Plurk. The Discord server is here.
If you really like my stuff, perhaps consider donating to my Patreon? Your continued support helps to produce weekly content (written, modelled, animated or otherwise) and helps to keep original content creation in Second Life!
Fantasy Faire is probably one of the most long-standing events still held yearly within Second Life. It’s moved in lockstep with the Relay for Life movement since at least 2009 and I can count myself fortunate to be a part of it for many many years.
There are relatively few events which are offered at the same scale for the wide spectrum of fantasy and scifi genres and I’m happy to say that, for the most part, I’ve had positive experiences – at least enough which keep me coming back year after year.
This year, I’ve chosen to release Corgi avatars on the virtual world! More details are available here, but I’ll just say that five coats are available to start, including a special RFL Pearl Lavender exclusive.
Additionally, I have decided to release a new line of coats for the kittens – Point furs! These are coats where the majority of the coat is a pale, creamy colour and the snout, ears, paws and tail gradiate towards a darker colour. There is also a brand new Point-themed RFL purple coat, PLUS the old Cheshire RFL coat has finally been updated to bento as well (if you already have one of these previous to update, please contact me directly for a free update)!
These new coated kitties have been released with the updated bento kitten avatar (1.2) so you can expect to see tail and facial movement in response to Bento animations, just like the update that was applied to all of the other kitties earlier this year.
Both of these new items can now be found at my booth at Fantasy Faire for the duration of the event (thru April 29) along with many other WoO items. If you missed the chance at picking up the two free Fisheye avatars last year, this is your chance! Additionally, this is a great opportunity to pick up various editions of wings, ears & tails, and masks – in the process helping to end the fight against cancer. All items in official RFL vendors will donate 100% of their proceeds to the American Cancer Society.
It’s been a bit of a week for me – April is typically busy for me because it’s the convergence of multiple events. At the very least, Fantasy Faire and planning for Home & Garden Expo. This year, Bloom has also been a factor, and in previous years I also had the privilege of being a part of The Arcade.
Adding to that the fact that most of my WoO releases are full avatars requiring a lot of out-of-the-ordinary setups and this is a recipe for a lot of stress!
Nonetheless, I wouldn’t be doing any of it if it wasn’t stimulating to me and I didn’t learn anything from it.
Athenaeum Arcana is a vast library, shattered by a gargantuan presence, put together by Elizabeth Jarvinen (polysail). Elizabeth has made an immersive space, making use of repeated assets to minimize load times and seamless Materials (diffuse, bump and shiny maps) to help give the region subtle but important and immersive detail that draws a visitor in.
Setting up at Fantasy Faire this year went off with minimal issue. Thanks to having been given a mock-up of my store space beforehand, I was able to roughly figure what I wanted where, although by the end of setting up, this had changed a moderate degree.
I did take a fair amount of time to juggle and rearrange, mostly because it’s not always easy to have a shop space fit just right at first try, even if a mock-up has been offered. Environment, eye-lines, figuring out what kind of eye-catches are available on-site – these are things that aren’t always present in a mock-up and may not even be ready at such time that they are delivered.
In addition to this, I spent a fair amount of time setting up RFL vendors, although I must express immense gratitude to whomever revamped the vendor situation this year.
In previous years, vendors connected to a website and required multiple variables to be set web-side before functioning in-world. This year, it seems all the team authentication got handled up-front, and they seem to have done away with any sort of web-side editing. Instead, the system is as easy as dropping the reward item in, clicking to add a price, then dragging the vendor texture to the appropriate prim.
I’ve only had a chance to skim through the other Fantasy Faire regions so far, but certainly intend to explore in greater detail when I get a chance later. Perhaps I’ll see you around?
Looking forward, keep your eyes forward to April 25, when all Organica, Wilds of Organica and Akimeta products on Organica region will be marked down 25%!
Full details to follow.
If you enjoy what I’m doing here or think someone else might also find it of use, please feel free to share this blog with them. If you’d like to keep up to date with posts, the RSS for this blog is here, I can also be found on Twitter and Plurk. The Discord server is here.
If you really like my stuff, perhaps consider donating to my Patreon? Your continued support helps to produce weekly content (written, modelled, animated or otherwise) and helps to keep original content creation in Second Life!
By now, some of you may have heard that a fairly major vendor service is closing its doors. On April 11, DavidThomas Scorbal announced, to existing E2V customers, that the service would be closing on May 31.
Organica, Wilds of Organica, Kitheres, and Akimeta have all been running on this system for years and it’s with significant reluctance that I undertake any move to another system. Nonetheless, in order to continue offering perks such as gift cards and loyalty points, this is something that I’ll need to do.
What does this mean for Gift-card and Loyalty point-holders?
First off, ALL gift card holders MUST expend their credits by May 5. I cannot guarantee that any remaining credit under the E2V system will transfer to the new vendor system, although I will ascertain who has what upon close.
Secondly, as of current accounting, Organica and Wilds of Organica customers have amassed a non-trivial amount of store credit from the Loyalty program. Several hundred of you have at least L$100 or more! Please come use up your credits before they expire(Also May 5)! Again, I cannot guarantee that any of these store credits will transfer to the new system, so drop by soon!
You can check your remaining credit by visiting the shop and clicking on this kiosk graphic on-site:
To apply store credit to a purchase, *left* click the vendor you’d like to purchase from, then choose ‘Use Credit’ and follow the instructions from there.
Additionally:
The need to switch over to a new system is also a great opportunity for me to take some time to shelve old material and to revisit the store layout, which I have been meaning to do for the better part of a year.
What this means to you is that, starting from April 25th thru May 5 2018, ALL items being sold from Organica, Wilds of Organica and Akimeta (excluding gacha vendors) will be on sale at a 25% discount, to help prepare for an extensive shutdown and switch-over to the new vendor system.
Once the sale concludes, the sim will be temporarily closed to help finalize the vendor switch-over. Purchases can still be made on the Marketplace as normal.
Yes, this means some items will be retired from active sale. While they’ll still be available on the Marketplace (and Yes, I’ll still be able to rez things upon request for viewing), this will be your last opportunity to check out everything rezzed in one place. There will also be some selected old material, which at this point is currently MP-only, that will be removed from the Marketplace entirely.
I’ll send out an updated sale notice as we near the event! Please keep your eyes and ears open either via this blog or the in-world subscribers or via the Wilds of Organica group.
I’m recovering from a couple of setbacks this week. I have been recovering from a bit of a cold – the weather here is warming up slightly, which always means more colds and flu floating around. That said, I figured I’d update you of my progress on the corgi.
Animation has been progressing well. Our corgi can now walk, run, jump, swim, crouch, sneak, and has some limited ground sits. I’ll be working on some object sits soon. At this time, I’d say the animations are around 70% done, although I’d like to do some more specific animations that will also take advantage of sounds and keystrokes via SL’s gesture assets.
Textures have also been dialed in a bit from previous posts, with the help of Substance Painter (which underwent a major UI change recently). It’s been interesting to make use of their texture resize feature, which allows for quicker brush stroke application at lower resolutions but which preserves the type of brush stroke if you need to flip up to higher resolutions, allowing for the higher detail to be preserved as one sizes up.
Predictably, all of this brush stroke recording does become a bit memory intensive, so I predict that some export to Photoshop at some point will be necessary for me as I begin to work in some of the other coats I want to work on.
Fantasy Faire arrives soon (next month – runs April 19-29) so moving forward, I’d like to tie this up and revisit the wyvern for use as an avatar before addressing some other Fantasy Faire exclusive editions for certain items. Additionally, you can look forward to some Organica content soon at Bloom (also next month – Runs April 15-30).
It’s still unknown as to whether Animesh will be made available on the main grid by Fantasy Faire – In all likelihood, I doubt it. Linden Lab has always been reticent to put out a specific deadline for releases like this and as of the most recent meeting, true testing for final LI accounting and poly-count limits has not yet concluded.
It’s for that reason that I’ll be mostly concentrating on avatar-related releases for this year’s Fantasy Faire – and if the opportunity for Animesh arrives subsequent to that, I’ll deal with Animesh kits as the need arises.
With that said, what kind of animations and functionality would you like to see out of a pet corgi?
Leave comments below or message me directly in-world at Aki Shichiroji.
See you next week!
If you enjoy what I’m doing here or think someone else might also find it of use, please feel free to share this blog with them. If you’d like to keep up to date with posts, the RSS for this blog is here, I can also be found on Twitter and Plurk. The Discord server is here.
If you really like my stuff, perhaps consider donating to my Patreon? Your continued support helps to produce weekly content (written, modelled, animated or otherwise) and helps to keep original content creation in Second Life!
To adequately modify weighting for the avatar, there are a few methods of particular relevance:
Automatic Weights
This is a shortcut – one which attempts to assign the mesh to the bones that are closest to that particular area on the mesh. Automatic weighting is achieved by right-clicking the mesh, THEN the armature in Object mode, then Parenting the former to the latter by selecting ‘Ctrl + P’. This brings up the ‘Armature Deform’ menu, from which ‘Automatic Weights’ should be chosen.
It is important to note here that with human avatars, it’s usually possible to use it to predict which parts of the mesh should be associated with which bones. The same cannot necessarily be said for avatars that depend upon a modified skeleton (like this Corgi). Sometimes Bone Heat works, sometimes it doesn’t. In any case, there will always be some degree of tweaking required afterward, so tools such as ‘Automatic Weights’ should be considered a useful tool in most cases, but not a magic bullet. This is why the following two methods are also very important to learn.
Manual assignation:
To accomplish either of the following two methods, the mesh needs to be parented to the armature. This can either be done by choosing ‘With Empty Groups’ from the Armature Deform menu (which we got to by selecting the mesh, then the armature – both in object mode – then hitting hotkeys Control + P) OR selecting the mesh and adding an Armature modifier, taking care to point the ‘Object’ field in that modifier to the appropriate armature.
Once this is done, the mesh can be weighted using the first, second or both of the following methods:
A) Assignment as an Edit Mode property – by selecting a single vertex or a whole group of them in Edit mode, you can affect their bone weighting by choosing the (above) indicated menu in the Edit properties tab, adjusting the associated weight and then hitting either ‘Apply’ or ‘Remove’. Vertices associated with a given bone can also be selected or deselected in this same menu.
B) Weight Painting – This is a weighting method which allows you to visualize the degree to which verts are weighted to a particular bone through the use of colour. It allows you to use a digital brush to add, subtract, draw, lighten, darken, blur or otherwise affect bone influence, which in this mode is represented by a gradient of colour, ranging from blue (no influence) to yellow(middling influence) to red (full influence).
There are pros and cons to using each of these methods and almost 100% of the time, I use the second method *after* having used the first, in order to make it look more natural.
The weighting process with the cute, fuzzy and not-at-all skinny corgi has been, inevitably, a bit different (and long-winded) compared to weighting the sleek & non-squishy Drider avatar covered not too long ago.
I’ve always found this to be the case – coming to a happy medium between influence from multiple bones in a soft mass is a very organic process that depends heavily upon an understanding of what you want to move, and where. Don’t be discouraged if this doesn’t work out right away. Understanding a lot of this comes with experience & experimentation.
Whereas you can (for the most part) assign heavy influence of a rigid mass to a single bone, rigging to ensure smooth movement along a curvy mass often requires more of a gradiated transition – sometimes extending well past the immediate location of the bone.
For example, you could weight mesh along a tail rigidly, but when it comes time to move it, the mesh will be overly faceted and easily visible from afar as being unnatural.
Adding geometry judiciously at this stage is a good way of adding a more natural look. This is also a great opportunity to smooth out weights along
It’s at this stage that I have added more geometry to critical areas, such as joints and the tail.
Maintaining a low poly-count to start with is very helpful in reducing additional work when it comes to correcting delicate bone weights, but it’s also in these cases where adding intervening geometry is appropriate, and this is why, despite having used a Subsurface division modifier to visualize, I have not applied such modifiers permanently to my mesh. Being able to easily select and divide up edge loops and rings manually allows me the greatest ability to create more natural shapes while maintaining clean edge-flow.
The weighting and animation processes are inevitably intertwined. In the next little while, I’ll not only be animating but correcting vertices with stray weights as well. I will often be animating, find that a certain movement affects the mesh in some negative way, and as a result find that I need to go back to editing weights to prevent any significant negative outcomes.
It’s also during this process that any final joint position tweaks should be made. As was mentioned in the previous post, it’s important to ensure any such position changes are carried out between *both* the Control bones (green) and the Deform bones (blue, purple, red). Failing to do so can cause some unpredictable results upon export.
(which happened here some time ago while working on the Yeti)
So far, I’ve explained the concept of these weighting methods and discussed a few pitfalls, but I’d like to delve a little deeper next week with some video content, demonstrating the use of these Weighting tools in greater detail. If you’re looking to learn about weighting with Blender & Avastar and have any particular questions for me to work in to these videos, please leave a comment here or drop by my Discord server for a chat within the next couple of days! (Latest March 4, please!)
If you enjoy what I’m doing here or think someone else might also find it of use, please feel free to share this blog with them. If you’d like to keep up to date with posts, the RSS for this blog is here, I can also be found on Twitter and Plurk. The Discord server is here.
If you really like my stuff, perhaps consider donating to my Patreon? Your continued support helps to produce weekly content (written, modelled, animated or otherwise) and helps to keep original content creation in Second Life!
