While wandering about, I came upon the lovely Diva sim. It's an island with beautiful trees and buildings and.... giant hummingbirds?!
Cheyenne... we won't get any of these on Whimsy, will we? (whimper...)
(OK...must not think about hummingbirds...)
I saw Luki Davi, the lady to thank for all this beauty (including the items she sells in her store on the island)... she was understandably busy, so I left a thank-you IM and went on my way...
Alas, the lovely buildings and scenery were impeded by something I first noticed when I ran across the "feature" of the arbitrary limit on the number of vertices the client will render at any one time. The limit is modifiable, but I more than doubled it, to no effect. So, move your POV, and things pop into and out of sight. Here's an example:
You can see how pieces of building appear and disappear as we move the point of view. I will drop back to the RC or the release client and try to narrow things down.
UPDATE: It's something to do with, or at least provoked by, having shadows turned on. I see it in Snowglobe and the Emerald client.
I don't use colloquial terms for body parts in general, and breasts in particular. Maybe it's how I was brought up.
But, as they say on Airplane!, that's not important right now. What is important is that we've yet to defeat breast cancer, and so I urge you to participate in Second Life's Second Annual Boobie Ball. I'm sorry to say that RL events make it unlikely that I can attend (darn it; I could wear that Cretan outfit outside the Minoan Empire!), but the Balls are but a part of the 2009 Blogger Boobie-Thon.
For still more info, take a look at this entry (among others) on Eva Bellambi's blog, The Realm of the Red Rose.
...does anyone know who was the first to make them in SL?
I mostly remember whose I first came across: the Rhenworks shirt, made by a sweet vixen whose name I am abjectly sorry to say escapes me right now; Kayi Laa's breasts, by far the most advanced of their time; Ittindi Gavaskar's fine work. But I have no idea who was the first. I'd like to know so I can appropriately honor him or her.
Of course, nowadays, there are many makers of prim breasts; we really do have it far easier now. I'm a newcomer compared to many, and I'm sure that there are many stories of way back when a lot of women made their very own prim breasts--and some still do. I have huge respect for them.
If historical clothing interests you, by all means head to Italia Vire and check out the amazing SL recreation of a dress from a painting of Anne of Cleves.
(I'm working on a draft of a notecard to urge people to join my group, and so, as I did before, I post it here...)
Hi. I'm Melissa Yeuxdoux, a Second Life resident. I delight in the ability to remake myself here, and in particular in the availability of prim breasts.
What are those, you ask?
One of the things you can do in Second Life is build things. Objects in Second Life are created from one or more "prims", primitive objects of various shapes (box, ellipse, sphere, cone, torus, etc.) and sizes that can be attached to one another and painted with "textures" (square images that are stretched around objects and glued on--figuring out how to draw them so that they look right when stretched is one of the difficulties of building in SL).
Aside from things, Second Life contains people, or rather avatars. Second Life has two basic avatars, one for (human) men and one for (human) women, each adjustable in certain respects, but only within limits. If you've read The Making of Second Life, Hamlet Au's history of Second Life, you know that Linden Lab did this to avoid an "arms race" of height, muscularity, and other body parameters. That choice arguably succeeded, but it has meant that those who wish to go past these limits have to do so by means of attachments built up from prims and sneaky tricks played with the avatar shape, and so doing has major drawbacks.
That said, the unfailingly creative builders of SL have done amazing things to work around the limitations of the avatar shape, and one of those things is the creation of prim breasts.
In this context, one obvious limitation of the SL avatar is size, but that is not the only one:
- When you have a spare moment (and have saved your shape!), try adjusting your appearance by running the "breast size" slider up to or near the maximum. Save it, then pan around looking at yourself. Surprise! You have Bizarro World breasts, with corners!
- Remember about the painted-on textures? For the most part, SL clothing is just textures. Basically, in SL we all walk around like models with trompe l'oeil body paint--but your oeil can't be totally tromped that way. Real clothing jumps across concavities; SL clothes look like they're vacuum sealed to your body, and that sealing distorts the most exquisite T-shirt artwork and text into junk. Real clothes have stress wrinkles; SL clothing at best has painted on shading to suggest them.
- No jiggle.
- No nipples, either.
So, someone came up with the idea of prim breasts, attaching to the chest. Since there's only one attachment per attachment point, if you wish your breasts clothed, the clothes must either be simply a texture applied to them or the portion of the top that fits over them must be built in from the start.
Since that first creation, prim breasts have advanced considerably, in shape thanks to the use of "sculpted" prims, in options and user interface, and in clothing options. Prim breast makers have always made some tops, but that divides their attention, and they've not been able to make many.
Recently, some clothiers have taken to creating tops (or outfits including such tops) intended for one or more prim breast makers' work--though often their work leans towards the, shall we say, revealing end of the spectrum, and one is still largely cut off from the vast cornucopia of SL fashion.
So, one ends up having to adapt textures from mainstream outfits, typically retrieved via a screen capture or snapshot, or stick with solid colors that don't have details of weave or shading. (Some do amazing work clothing themselves thus; the lovely and talented Mesha Sewell leaps to mind.) I think that the former is "fair use" if you don't sell it, but as they say, IANAL--and how many out there are put off from prim breasts by the thought of not being able to go to Nicky Ree, or the Crystal Queendom, or RFyre, or any of the other amazing clothing stores in SL, and buy and wear what one wishes, at least not without a lot of work? I think very many indeed.
So, all of you who currently use prim breasts, or who would use them if only they didn't mean forever looking longingly through the windows of SL clothing stores, unable to wear the clothing therein, please join my (now somewhat misnamed, with the added hoped-for membership!) group, "Prim Breast Users". I hope that there will be enough of us to perhaps convince mainstream clothiers to farm out the adaptation of their work to us to those who have proved their skills in working with clothing for prim breasts, and convince animators to come up with prim breast-safe animations and poses.
I tried to ask on the SL forums, but for some reason, the "preview" and "post" were broken.
Has anyone tried to build the Linux SL client for something other than the x86? I ask because ARM is making noises about dual and quad core 2 GHz ARM CPUs for netbooks and smartbooks, and the nVidia Ion chipset-based netbooks that folks like Samsung and Lenovo have been promising don't seem to be showing up.
I really would love something small, lightweight, and portable on which I can run SL reasonably. ARM also has some OpenGL capable graphics hardware (look for sample videos on YouTube).
Before terribly long the little Ubuntu graphic on this blog will change, as the countdown to Karmic Koala, or more officially Ubuntu 9.10, will get close to the release date. I'm very much looking forward to it.
If you are a fan of elegantly curvy abstract art, then you should head over to Idle Rogue, Yeongheungdo (26, 203, 89) and check out Marnix Malifozix's artwork. If you're also interested in the techniques and the mathematics involved, you should check out Marnix's group Swirly Disco Flames (which is also the collective name he gives his art, as you can see from the photo).
I've taken the plunge and created an SL group, the rather prosaically titled "Prim Breast Users".
As the charter says, we know that those 25 slots for group membership are precious, but if you use prim breasts, we hope you'll join the group. Here's what I hope: I hope that all of you who use prim breasts will join, so that we can show we're a significant market in SL.
Then we can go to mainstream SL clothiers and say "Look! There are at least [fill in blank] people in SL who use prim breasts, and are cut off from the cornucopia of mainstream SL fashion. They'll be especially appreciative if you accomodate them, whether by adapting the textures of your tops yourself, or by entering into an agreement with one of the growing number of clothiers who specialize in tops for prim breast users."
We can go to animators and show them there are people out there who will appreciate animations and poses that don't leave us with our arms going through our breasts.
We can go to prim breast makers and urge them to work together to make it easier for us to find quality clothing, no matter whose prim breasts we prefer.
If you use prim breasts, please consider joining.
UPDATE: If you'd love to use prim breasts, but don't for some reason, please join too and let me know what's keeping you from it.
Well... I'm on SL even less than just having to work seven days a week for nearly a month would indicate, because now Snowglobe is dying on me even without shadows enabled. It hangs, though thank goodness it doesn't take the whole OS down with it as it does when shadows are enabled.
Ubuntu's Jaunty Jackalope repositories are behind what nVidia has available for download--perhaps updating is the answer. I'll look around.
UPDATE: Keep your fingers crossed. (OK, if you have to type, you can uncross them...) Adding the X-Updates repository and updating pulled in the latest (official) nVidia driver for Linux, 185.something, and I just got through a much longer session in Snowglobe than I've been able to lately. (And met the delightful Maggie Bluxome in person. I should introduce her to Xaxoqual Mandelbrot somday--they both have impeccable taste, and I think they'd hit it off nicely.) Next stop, as they'd say in Firesign Theater: back to the shadows again...
(Is that one word? Surely it should be; "birthday" is.)
It must've been uneventful; once again I didn't write about it until the better part of a month later.
In the onward march of SL, I can't quite say shadows are there yet, since they're not official... but were I to do the now vs. then snapshot comparison, I'd definitely use a screen capture with shadows enabled for now.
Three years isn't really old--though it seems that way; SL years are often compared with dog years. I did just have a "You know you've been in SL a long time when" experience, though.
Just now, ironically enough in a CSI:NY rerun (no, not one of those episodes), Mac just said to a guy, "We're not done until a second life sentence is added to [your punishment]" (sorry for the []; I should have typed it immediately rather than trust my short-term memory). Of course, I heard it as "We're not done until a Second Life sentence is added..." and imagined someone in jail in front of a computer with a guard looking over his shoulder to make sure he really was on the grid... yeah, that'll show him.
Wow. It turns out that someone does make beards in Second Life. Yes, ZZ Top could come and perform here. :)
I went to Alli & Ali Designs and there they were, and searching on Xstreet shows that there are other beard makers as well.
I remember seeing a photo of a poster of a bearded lady as a child... I wonder if those beards are tintable?
UPDATE: Yes, they are!
Hmmm... I think I'd better raise it a bit.
UPDATE: The photo is on flickr, too. Gee, 0 views after nearly a day. Maybe that should tell me something. :)
I did finally leave the nude beach. I went to a store and was more taken with the surroundings than with the items there for sale...
I'm working in honor of Labor Day... and ditto for the two weekends after that, so I fear that I will have even less time than usual in SL. Like MacArthur and Schwarzenegger, though, I shall return, or I'll be back if you prefer.
Recently I put up a photo that really is in accordance with Marnix's meme. I guess I felt guilty, and besides, having (mostly) working shadows was nice.
I guess that opened the gates. Since then, I've put several pictures (OK, screen captures--shadows are still preventing photos from working...) up on flickr, taken with shadows enabled and on the same nude beach. It's even been a while since I've been anywhere else in SL.
Eventually I'll get back to normal, but for now it's kind of fun.
