Current WIPs

I've been a busy bee. This is a preview of my current WIPs. Not all of them are for Timetwist: there's also stuff for InfinitiGrid and my new store layout.

Row boat

WIP: Bathing Suit Slink preview

ETA: And... it's live! Updates sent 😊

Oh yes! YESYESYES! Update incoming, guys! After some nail-biting fights with the UV mapping and, as always, the dreaded crotch, the Slink version of the Male bathing suit is almost ready.

What's left for me and Abyssin to do:

- create the LODs 'cause I'm obsessed with details

- changes the scripts in the hud 'cause I'm obsessed with details, and the Slink version uses slightly different textures and UV map from the Classic version... and the hud happily ignores this. Aby will tell it how to behave, you just watch!

Bathing Suit - Slink version (preview)

WIP: more sizes for the Bathing Suit

I'm busy adapting my Victorian Bathing Suit to three mesh bodies:
- Tweenster (pictured -- I've since fixed the poke-through that you can see in the belly area)
- Loki's avatars
- and Slink Physique!

Tweenster and Loki's meshes will be sold separately, in the new (a.k.a so new it's not there yet) Timetwist Kids range.

Slink Physique will be a free update to the current Male Standard Sizes Bathing Suit.

I think it should all be ready in a couple of weeks. 😁

WIP: clothing!

When my computer turned into an expensive toaster two years ago, I had just started experimenting with Avastar and mesh clothing. It wasn't going very well... so imagine my surprise when, two years down the line, I took to it like a duck to water!

It moves, and it fits (well, to a point; I now understand the need for multiple sizes, XD):

Default size

Victorian Nightwear WIP

It fits! It moves! It drinks coffee!!! (ah oops no that's me).

It's far from perfect, but I can say I'm finally getting the hang of it. The pictures above are the same mesh, fitted to the avatar (default size and large). And a bit of poke-through.

The one thing that took a while to click was how the normal bones interacted with the collision bones. You'd think weighing entirely on the collision bones would work. Nope. Sometimes you want the vertex to move with the skeleton, but you don't want it to shrink / grow as much as it would if you assign it all to the collision bone - that's where the old classic bones come to the rescue. They move, but they don't swell! Good old bones!!!

WIP - rigged mesh OMG

OMG. It works! I'm a happy bunny.

Avastar is an invaluable tool. I probably could've reached the same point without it - but it would be a lot more difficult.

Oopsie?

I think I broke Ruth... o.O

WIP - Goggles

WIP I'm working on. It's quite ouch so far in terms of number of tris / vertices, so I'm not convinced I'll inflict it on the grid yet. I'm hoping to get it down to manageable levels, because I'm really happy with the modelling:

I haven't tackled the texturing yet... but I've baked the main maps (ambiant, normals and so on). And, well. My UV maps are naughty. What can I say, I'm a natural!!!!

(I didn't do it on purpose, guv' ! I swear!)

Squeeeee!

Another WIP :-)

Pottery WIP

Quite pleased with this one... I'll now need to work on a damaged version of it.

Little things that probably no one will see: I've tweaked the diffuse map, gloss map, and so on so to get rid of the seams by using the clone brush and smear brush directly in Blender. Took me a while to find that trick. That's different from my usual workflow, which was a painstaking process of endlessly switching between 2D and 3D apps.

By the way, I ran into an annoying issue with Blogger. It took me two days to submit this post because of this horror:

Blergh!

Google+ introduced the Auto-Enhance feature a few months back - feature I promptly turned off with my Google+ account, the one that's linked to my real identity.

Unfortunately it's switched on by default on Picasa Web Albums accounts as well... and if you don't have a Google+ account, there's no way to turn it off. Hence this lovely, "enhanced" creation. I had to create a Google+ account for Raindrop Drinkwater just to set my preferences! Stupid. I deleted it immediately, but seriously, how backwards is that???? Get your stuff together, Google.

More Mycenaean pottery (WIP)

I'm getting addicted to Mycenaean pottery. I like how stylised the designs are; they lend themselves very well to vector art. I've started another jar (not a stirrup one this time):

It's an early WIP. I've almost finished placing the patterns, but I need to roughen them up a bit. Maybe add some grass at the bottom... and something on the handles. I also haven't touched the rim and the bottom yet. The handles is actually a separate material at the moment, which is why there's a seam showing.

The opening is wide enough that I've had to solidify the jar -- i.e., there's a complete inside. It might end up having more land impact than the stirrup jar, although not by much; we'll see. I haven't taken it into SL yet.

On the minus side, I'm really annoyed that I can't seem to bake a texture map from Blender when using material nodes. It just bakes the diffuse colour... Unless I'm missing something, but I don't think so. Ah well, I'm getting there anyway.

Fooling around with Inkscape

What I like about trying out a new software is that crazy phase of experimentation where I just press buttons with no idea of their function. I've created a lot of vector soup in Inkscape, following that method... and also something that looks a bit like a necklace:

Fun! I might use that filter again. It's still nowhere near as cute as the Kokeshi Doll I made, following this tutorial that I've already linked to in an earlier post -- it deserves another link because Awesomeness!.

My Kokeshi doll:

Try it. It's easier than it looks.

Vocabulary lessons

Oh Hello World. I'm done hibernating for a while, and I have a computer that works!

After this long break, I decided to start getting back into 3D modelling with an easy project: a vase. Sounds reasonable, right? So I grabbed some references of Mycenaean pottery, picked up one I liked, and started modelling it.

That was easy enough... but the texturing? Silly old me picked up a model starring an Octopus! Gaaaah! I first painted it directly on the surface of the jar in Blender, just to give me a rough idea, but I then had to clean it up... Vector sounded like the way to go.

Did I have a proper vector-editing programme? No, of course I didn't. So off to Inkscape I went. It's open-source. There's some nice tutorials for it (go to Inkscape kokeshi dolls for awesomeness), and if you already know the basics of Bezier curves, it's actually not that difficult to use.

Then I started adding details... Dear-y-me.

So, work-in-progress of what was meant to be a 1-hour project, and is turning into something a lot more involved than that:

That version is a couple of days old. I've since realised that there's a third bit poking out the top -- and that my jar is what's called a stirrup jar, i.e. two handles and a beak. I've added the beak, presto! It means a new UV map, but it's an improvement on the old one so I don't mind a bit.

The texturing is super-temporary, I've added some fish below the octopuses and scale patterns on the handles. I still need to populate the top of the jar.

I'm quite excited about it. I've learned a lot already... including, and that's not the least of it: how to spell Mycenaean and the plural of octopus.