The WTF Ladder: Revisited

Remember that ladder tut? It so isn't a video. I don't know what the hell I was on when I looked at it the first time, but that little voice? Doesn't exist.
Anyway, despite the fact that it isn't a video and I might be schizophrenic, I did kick that tutorial's ass.
I didn't, in fact, make a ladder. I didn't wanna. I made a few random objects, uploaded to see how they look inworld and promptly got kicked outta my own sim and then outta Sandbox 1. The latter was a quite cordial kicking, the former not so much.
I can't seem to sleep so I'm up at 2 a.m. blogging while my poor, nekkid opensim avatar stares a pile of sculpts. It's ok that she's nekkid, she's the only one who exists in her world. ^.^
No need to cover the eyes of impressionable children. I have artfully placed an unused sculpty prim for the snapshotty purposes.

These are rendering so nicely, even in Imp which tends to give me problems with sculpts. With graphics slider on low, and cammed out until I disappear at 32 meters, the sculpts look PERFECT. I dunno what they are, but they're perfect whatevers they are ^.^
I am so absolutely thrilled to have this technique under my belt. The only problem is, as with everything I learn, it opens so many doors to new projects.
I'm going to have to start seriously considering the making of lists.

Another finished project, could it be?

Oh, aye.

A sneak preview of my Halloween Treasure Hunt prize finished just in time for the, uh, hunt.



Sorry, there's no creepsome-yet-cute girl in the treasure chest. There is, however, the Twisted Comfort Tree with sit pose overlooking the Twisted Comfort Casket with comfy lay-down pose and fog I made all by m'self. ^.^

Houston, we have railings!

Ok, so. I've been using Blender forever. I'm pretty darn good at makin' all sorts of sculpts, but until recently very precise edges and 'things that look like ladders' and other such configurations completely mystified me.
I've been working on the interior of Vicky Green and having found a really awesome sculpted staircase all I needed was some sort of railing around the perimeter of the open space above the entrance 'hall' of the house. I'd used a 3-post railing for the outside porch area, but I'm becoming prim-conscious again (there are currently over 400 prims on the build parcel!) and wanted something simple with more posts per prim. I had no idea how to make this happen and all my inworld shopping turned up nothing I liked.
I had looked at this tutorial a while back and about the time the little voice says 'collapse the something or other' I had gotten lost. Whatever I had done at that point in the instructions was very, very wrong and looked nothing at all like the demonstration. I missed the class on collapsing the something or others and so, as I often do, I gave up and wandered off to do something else for a few weeks.
While messing about with Rokuro (look 'mara, I spelled it right!) I had a sort of revelation.


I had moved a bunch of little points in Rokuro and made a stack of lines that when imported into blender looks like a nice plateful o' pancakes. Mmmm, pancakes.
The significance of this didn't really hit me until a few days later. With some obsessive compulsive handy work I managed to turn that stack of pancakes into something that closely resembled a stack of very square pancakes.
I uploaded my fabulous new sculpt map and that's where it all went to hell. Sort of. Here is the stack close up with my graphics object slider on about 'medium'. Followed by the same stack at about 6 or 7 meters away.


This will never do. The rail posts that resulted from this mess were absolutely unacceptable. My beautiful 'space in between pancakes' was gone! So, again I wandered off to work on something else - sleep and actual work.
Sometime this morning it dawned on me that I could reproduce this stack within Blender. D'uh, you say? So did I. Looking at what I'd done in Rokuro, I finally understood what the something or others were that I ought to have been collapsing.
13 hours - a full day of work, a fabulous turkey and veggie soup and tons of profanity - later, I had managed about 15 sculpt maps that were completely useless. I learned quite a bit about multires and levels through trial and error, lemme tell you.
And I have this to show for it. Each prim has four posts. The posts are not perfect. No matter what I did, I could not get them to be more 'square' but I'm actually really happy with the way they turned out. They've got sort of a hand chopped wood plankie feel and I think they fit in nicely with the rest of the build...or they will when the rest of the build is finished :D Also they don't turn into a mess of weird flattened arrows until I have cammed quite far out.
I present, La Railing de Tormie.
15 prims including the the banisters up top and the cute lil columns.

P.S. I'm totally gonna go watch and kick that ladder tutorial's ass, now!

Terrafabulous!

Tonight with the help of Dark Langdon of Southern Comfort I got a little terraforming done on sim. I built the checkered grass and rock textures and I think they're workin'.
In the distance you can see poor Vicky Green thrown unceremoniously in the air for the good of the terraform endeavor, but I believe she'll like her new home in the corner when it's all done. ^.^
Also imported two awesome willows from the TGIB blog. They're floating around back there to the right, and after some more tweaking of the land, I'll begin planting them and mushrooms and lots of flowers...and some stones and maybe a bunny or two and...well, I dunno what else :D
The way I'm closing in the sim corners with megaprims to blend with the terrain has given me an idea of how I'll connect future sims. I should be able to add one at a time without disrupting the original sim's design too much. I hope.


And a bonus vanity shot of me, 'cause I'm just lovin' these dreadlocks from Emo-tions to death.

It's Friday, I'm worn out and emosad and I made a freebie!

I recommend skipping this entry if you hate self-indulgent, emo tripe.

Dropped this in the ladies' freebie shop today. 3 pack of simple lip rings with itty skulls for closures. Is in my little shop, too.



Super cute ^.^

Putting things together does wonders for my mood, but it's just so quiet sometimes that I get irritated with myself. I am overwhelmed by everything I want to accomplish. I have all this stuff in my head that wants to be and I can't stay focused for the loneliness that sneaks out of that little box in the back of my consciousness. It pokes at me and I can hear it giggling.
I have friends. Real and actual friends who love me even when I make them look at me funny. I can usually find them when I need to be around a person or two and that's nice. It helps. But still, they do look at me funny.
This one time, someone didn't. No matter what I said or did, absolutely everything I thought and felt was acceptable. I liked that. I lived then.
I look at what I'm doing, what I'm building. I think about this vision I have and I want to see it done, but then I think it doesn't even matter. Who's going to care? I don't have anyone to really share it with.
I'm doing this for myself, getting it all out a little at a time and mostly having a pleasant time doing it, but I think there has to be more than that and more than the little creature in the box tappity tapping on the lid, waiting for a weak moment to slither out and knock me down.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do and damned if you don't." -- Eleanor Roosevel

This quote is in my IW profile, along with some others that express facets o' me in words I could never find. I haven't thought about what it means in some time.

I've been told more than once that I have a 'strong personality'. I think that's just a nice way of saying 'bitch'. Sometimes that's a pretty accurate assessment. I acknowledge it, but I don't pride myself on it. It is what it is.

Recently, I've been very frustrated, feeling like what I have to say is unheard, unimportant. I had begun devaluing myself and questioning my own principles and my tendency to, well, talk a lot. I say a lot of words that, to me, seem very important at the time. Sometimes I worry, slightly, about their reception, but I try not to allow myself to hold back. Or I was trying. I don't care much about criticism. No one can possibly be more critical of me than I am. What I can't stand is a void. The sense that what I have to say is being lost in the ether.

This past week, I had nearly decided to just stop talking. I was ready to shut myself up on my sim and not post on the forum and not visit the populated places. I felt I was watching some folks become so disenchanted with Inworldz because of a few voices that are not at all representative of what I've come to call my home, all the while I was trying to express that they were not representative.

My frustration stemmed from watching calls for limitation after limitation of the vast freedom we as virtual residents enjoy. From watching people wanting to limit my freedom. Calls for rule after rule to tell us how adults should treat and interact with other adults. Calls to make someone else responsible for our successes or failures. I cannot accept this. So, I talked. Precisely and directly, 'cause that's what I do. But the frustration didn't ease. Very few heard me. Some I spoke directly to blatantly ignored what I had to say.

So I was going to be quiet. The frustration is painful and I don't like hurty things. I don't like feeling helpless and that I'm wasting my time. I was going to allow myself to be a victim. I was prepared to sit back and watch. I was tired.

This morning I saw my quote in someone else's profile. That was a jolt. I thought, WTF is wrong with me? If I'm not using my voice when I feel something is wrong, wtf do I have to complain about? In the grand scheme, I'm really nobody special, but I am what I am. And what I am and what I have to say are equally as valuable as anyone else and what they have to say.

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right"

It would be wrong for me to stop talking. It would be wrong for me to stop being myself because of the limitations others place on themselves. If someone doesn't 'get it' now, maybe they will later.

I have to remind myself that some people do hear me and some agree and feel much the same way I do about things and will express similar ideas in their own way. I need to let go of that bit of ego that makes me want to scream 'but I just SAID that' when that happens.

What is right for me is to use my voice when I am moved to do so, and hope that I am listening to those of others. Both are tough commitments to make, but I think I'll manage. After all, I have a strong personality.

Delayed Tormie is delayed

I'm so very good at procrastinating I not only forgot I had a blog, I forgot where it was.

Crisis averted. I am back and I have many things to show you!

First up at Della Luna, the first building I've actually completed Inworldz, my main store location for Delicately Twisted. As we've established I have an extremely poor work ethic, so it is mostly empty. But it's super cute, huh? It might even be all linked together.

Next a couple shots of the Victorian house in progress. I'm a bit further along now, but the process must be recorded for posterity! So, here are my awesome plywood prims. Once I got started it only took a few days to hammer out the basic shape.



And here we are, much farther along. Nearly every prim on the first floor has been replaced, tortured, tweaked and textured. Parcel count at this time is over 300 prims. Oi. Remind me to never again texture with vertical stripes when I can (therefore must) build with actual windows.

As you can see, quite a bit is literally still up in the air, but I'm feelin' pretty awesome about this build. Even more awesome is once Vicky Green is complete, texturing other versions will be a piece of pie ^.^