Archive for the 'sculpties' Category

Pre-release viewer 1.20.0 (84432) sculpt issue

Apr
10
2008 in sculpties, Bug Reports, WTF and Second Life.
6 Comments

The viewer released yesterday doesn’t seem to want to download sculpted prim maps from the server.  Here is a picture of the resolution of one of my sculpted prim textures after about 20 minutes of waiting :

sculpt-mask-downloading

And here’s a (representation) of how sharp the image usually is after mere seconds, with an empty cache :

sculpt-mask

Keep in mind that these are the same sculpted prim textures that I see on a daily basis (and that many of you have seen on my new Taketori beta), in the same exact class-5-sim location I’ve seen them on a daily basis for months, using the same machine on the same network, etc, etc.  The only change is having downloaded the newly announced release-candidate viewer. 

This has the chilling and frustrating effect that my sword has, for the last 35 minutes, looked like a blob of vertex vomit with no apparent intention of getting any better :(

[EDIT] In the 20 minutes it took me to capture screenshots and put together this post, there has been no additional progress.  The viewer seems to have simply stalled and given up on downloading the sculpt map.  Those very few sculpts that have downloaded appear to be at the wrong level of detail.  :(

Popularity: 24% [?]

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Building of a new sword has begun in earnest

Dec
28
2007 in sculpties, products, C:SI and Second Life.
16 Comments

Amazingly I was able to work in Second Life® almost all day yesterday, from about 8:00AM to about 2:00AM with only three crashes.  I must have logged in no less than 30 times, and uploaded no less than 50 textures while trying stuff for a new approach I’m working on.  Building proceeded without too many hiccups, and I experienced only a few of the reversions that had been plaguing me for the last few months.

With Ayame and Esprite coming out with new swords recently, and having taken so much time off from swordmaking, I find that I have become highly motivated to come up with something new, and more excited by the new sword I am making than perhaps any of my previous swords.

Ayame especially helped to get me fired up, though I’m reasonably sure that it wasn’t something she planned.  Ayame has been doing a great deal of very cool work with sculpted prims, using them in a large variety of products ranging from motorcycles to furniture to swords.  [NOTE: Did you know that she makes and sells that many different types of products?  Lots of people don’t.  Look in her profile picks, go to her store, check out all the cool stuff]

I have to admit to being EXTREMELY surprised when I first found out that Ayame used sculpted prims to such good effect on the new Dynasty Flame sword, because when sculpted prims were first introduced I must have spent easily a couple hundred hours exploring their use and researching how they might be used in swordmaking, and ended with the conclusion that while they were very cool and possibly pretty useful for organic-looking items their utility in swords was extremely limited.  Boy did she prove me wrong!

While I do still think that there is a lot that sculpted prims can’t do any better than "classical" prims, I’ve figured out some extremely cool things recently that I can do with them that will (in my opinion at least) enhance the build quality of my new sword.  It’s hard to resist the temptation of trying to use a new and exciting tool like this for everything, even when it’s not necessarily the best tool for the job, but I’m loving the fact that this kind of exploration and research has got me truly fired up about creating a new C:SI weapon.

I still have a very long way to go with both the animations and the actual primwork, but I figured that with all the people asking when I’m going to make a new weapon I had better at least post an "I’m alive and working on something new" message.

Okay, that’s enough, back to work for me!

Popularity: 43% [?]

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Second Life + Vista = Suckage

Sep
26
2007 in tournaments, sculpties, Animating, Textures, C:SI, SL Celebrities and WTF.
2 Comments

Well, I tried to get in-world today so that I could watch the Shadow Samurai vs. Yakuza tournament, but I STILL can’t stay in-world for even 5 solid minutes.  I crashed three times while hanging out in Samurai Edo and trying to find out from Doll Kabuki or someone else there where the tourney location was.

I never found out, as after the third crash I gave up in disgust.

I’ve tried the official viewer, the "experimental" viewer, the Nicholaz + official viewer combo, the Nicholaz plus "experimental viewer" combo, nothing worked.  Even when I am in-world, everything flashes randomly and it drives me freaking nuts, since I’m highly sensitive to flashing (It’s a migraine trigger for me).  I was really hoping the Nicholaz viewer could redeem my Vista experience (he’s been working on detecting "redmap situations", and his viewer is generally much more stable), but alas: not in this case.

I give up.  I’ll either wait until I can get my Windows XP running well again, or set up a dual-boot with Ubuntu (like Colin did), or Linden Lab fixes this stupid crap.  There is absolutely nothing about Second Life that’s compelling enough to make me put up with this crap, and I’d so much rather enjoy my real life than torture myself with that kind of experience.

And speaking of enjoying my real life, I’ve got a new weapon under development, and I’m using my "can’t get into Second Life" time to create some new animations and do some texturing work, as well as play around with sculpties to see if I can make anything that’s suitable for a weapon :)

So far, I’ve yet to find anything that I can do with sculpties weapon-wise that works well enough, since apparently sculpted prims are far more suited to making cool Ice Caves than weapons.  But I’m stubborn, and have some time, so I’ll keep at it, haha.

Popularity: 30% [?]

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