wyvern – Organica & The Wilds

Fantasy Faire 2019

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.

All of the above releases are now available on-site at Wilds of Organica’s shop in The Shrine Tree. You can pick up other well-loved fantasy critters and accessories from WoO there, along with some fantasy-inspired releases by Organica as well!

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!

Wyverns now available at Wilds of Organica!

The TL;DR:

Eight wyverns are now available from Wilds of Organica. For now, available just in-world, so be sure to drop by and pick up a demo, here: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Organica/100/185/26 .

Full avatar details here!

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 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!

Thanks for your support!

Unpacking – 2016 and beyond

It’s been a while since I last posted, and for good reason.

Much of 2016 for me was characterized by offering in-home care for my Grandmother after she came to live with family and after she passed away in September, the conditions were just right to move on, ahead and out. So on top of some new long-term work that takes up a large portion of my week, the past few weeks I’ve been moving (box by box) in to my new place.

Looking back on the year in SL, I would say that a lot more time went in to testing and experimenting with new content tools (IE: Bento) than general releases. The closed beta got announced last year on or near my birthday and it effectively became the gift I wanted for a very long time but which continued to redefine itself well in to the year that followed.

The bones offered changed numerous times, as did their parenting.

Whereas originally only additional wing, face, hand and tail groups were added, we got hind-quarters not long after I tried making my first centaur with wing bones (cue centaur iteration #1).
Additional spine bones were added relatively late and to date I’m still not entirely sure what the rationale was for their placement in the bone chains (they inherit other parent bones somewhat oddly) (cue centaur iteration #2)
After feedback, some changes were made to bones in the face that allow for a bit more rotation-only movement for those who wanted to keep slider functionality yet still animate the face.

Juggling these changes has been (and continues to be) a trial when paired with the fact that the sole Blender tool for working with this new rig has also been in development concurrently – so for those working on the bleeding edge really found themselves making and remaking content. There are various projects (the wyvern, centaur and a new peryton) on the backburner for me at the moment because they push the limits of what the rig can do and how Avastar can deal with it (Basically, every time something major changes in the plugin that prevents an update in the armature, each of these need to be re-rigged and animated).

At least now, with Bento officially in the mainstream viewer, I have one less sliding scale of development to worry about. Many basic things like tails and ears can be found on the market now. A few mesh head makers have been selling and supporting new human heads for a couple months. I released the Yeti avatar pretty much on the gamble that Bento would go live in December and it’s actually done quite well. You can look forward to some new content imminently, with the onset of Enchantment SL’s Cinderella round (see next post).

Moving forward, I’ll continue making products for both Organica and Wilds of Organica. I have quite a number of Bento-related projects that I’ve been itching to finish up/get-to/start on the avatar side and look forward to working on some more home & garden items as the inspiration strikes surrounding settling in to my new home.

Additionally, with Sansar on the horizon, it’ll be really interesting to see where I can take my skills and push them further.

I’m hoping to get a bit more settled by the end of this month and then we’ll see where my available time leaves me in terms of thinking up new fun things to make. In the mean time, please stick around for my next post, wherein *gasp* actual stuff gets released. 😲