A Long Way - 2 Months

Two months in with much accomplished, I am beginning to feel like "me". This may be my winter outfit as it took me more than a week to make -- if you count my very cool shearling boots that didn't make it into this shot.

Sweater and vest are ONE garment (no layering here at the moment). I added the earrings to my hair after finding that it was nearly impossible to even FIND a much enlarged earring, let alone move it (them) to the appropriate spots. So this works on a personal level.

Just for comparison, here I am on day one.



So very very VERY happy to have new hair.

It has definitely been fun and I have decidedly learned much -- more than I expected.

There is more to come.

I know not what.

But I am ready.

Two Months In - Almost

Another week and I will be two months old!

The time has certainly flown by. I have been building eight to ten hours a day pretty much every day. And, obviously it is time for a break.

I have accomplished a ton of personal firsts here and learned much. There is plenty MORE to learn of course and I will tackle that in the not too distant future.

Meanwhile I wanted to leave myself a list of accomplishments so that I can look back and see what happened in the first days of my citizenship.

* Seven builds - in order, The Mesa, California Dreaming, ChiC buildings, The Village,  The Beach, A City, Chez Chic

* My first mesh tree
* My first mesh hair
* My first mesh clothes
* My first mesh shoes
* My first animated idle

Blender and I are better friends than we were a couple of months ago. Not having to deal with physics is a wonderful thing. I still don't know how to rig but that is on my list for the future. Animations are much easier with Blender than the other program I used, so I enjoy making poses and movement.

I have things on my personal todo list. Some boots I want to try (finding a middle ground between looks and server friendliness is always tricky) and some fancier hair. It would be very easy for someone coming over from another grid to start hitting that subsurf modifier; the mesh is SO dense some places. So it is a test of creativity to see what you can do that looks pretty good and still have a relatively low poly count (actually tris are the measurement standard here).  

I also want to build in the snow and have a place for that - WITH accidental particle snow. So I won't be bored and it will be fun to watch the world evolve. My goal was to get more content out there and I accomplished that.

Fashion Frenzy

Hard to believe but the stars finally aligned and I made a wearable. It certainly isn't up to the standards of the folks I blog for on "the other grid" *wink*, but relatively? Yep, it works for me.

Easy color change and I made a belt to go with.

On the way to Jumpsuitville (there was a time when the typist lived in these rather than leggings and tees) I made some sleek and shiny leggings which will pair nicely with tops.

LOTS of things on my "todo" list.

A couple more new hairs appeared in my inventory this week and I redid Helga a bit. Marcy is my favorite so far but I imagine she will be usurped by another style sometime soon.

I also made a long idle and it is SO nice not to be standing around like a zombie.

A friends pose and a camera prop with pose rounded out the animation work this week.

There have been many improvements at Cloud Party including the ability to upload double sided mesh (now in a planned way :D).

On The Way To Fashionistaville

Well it isn't "Truth" or "Vanity" (and if you don't know the references that is OK) but it is BETTER than the default hair by leaps and bounds and not bad for a first try.

It is also SD (Standard Definition) hair which means even those with marginal connections can see it well. I made this in the VERY early morning hours after a terrifically painful day with nothing accomplished -- going down a wrong road trying to attach a hat. Well the hat (nothing to look at) eventually got attached thanks to Lilli and I moved on to hair which was my personally biggest WANT since I arrived.

I also changed my face a little. It will no doubt change again as I try to find myself.

I also got a collar made. Fairly simple but works quite well and I made two definitions of it - one for High Definition folks and one for "coach" :D.

That is twice as much work (well almost) so  an easier plan for many things would be to try and stick to the maximum triangles allowed for SD items. Then, like the hair, there is only one mesh to get into world.

That's the news this weekend. Off to add to my jewelry set. CLOTHES are definitely a problem here. Aside from the ones included (some fairly nice and the guys sets seem better perhaps because they were made by a guy? I know not. ) there isn't much to choose from and while I can MAKE clothes, I have no idea how to rig them and my long journey with some trials and many errors lead me to believe that I don't care - LOL. Unfortunately my black leotard only shows up for HD, alas. So this is my photography outfit but I have to put system clothes back on if I am out and about.

I think my jaw is too square, so back to the sliders.

New Skills

A very busy week in Cloud Party, I worked on a new BEACHY build which ended up including a campfire (particle skills) a hanging beach bed in a cabana (Blender skills) and lots of practice on making items customizable.

It is so funny how simply thing are when you know how they work and so complex when you have no idea. Well learning is good.

Somewhere along the way I delved back into animations, mostly because I only had two - LOL; animations that don't have hands flowing through bodies are scarce in CP.

After trying to figure out how things worked in Blender with little info on the web for what "I" needed to do, I chatted up Rift and he told me how to delete those nasty keyframes ("right click and hit delete" - well DUH!).

Eventually I found one helpful tutorial and now I know the rules and pretty much how things work. It is much easier than Qvimator or whatever that program was called and I think working with BONES rather than FLESH is more to my liking.

So an animation shop is underway. Cool logo I think. Very simple and not all that much in there but limitless room for expansion and playing.

Cloud Party added PHOTO SHARING this week with photos showing up in the build where people took them. That's pretty fun.

Building Frenzy

It's been a busy building week. I made a tree with foliage for the first time. It took forever as hand adjusting the leaves was a tedious process -- especially since I couldn't get the texture to be invisible on the model in Blender - only in the texture pane. Who knows?

But the new patio adds lots of class to the ChiC buildings shop. On Friday I finished the bus shelter and bench. I even figured out how to add two animations to the bench; I used logic and not a tutorial so felt very proud of myself.

I finished up The Village which is a very moody build. There is a mystery to solve if one cares to wander and read.

I especially like the graveyard which is all new to CP. Books, rocks and grasses were all new builds. The church had its beginnings in a previously saved file, but the pews and podium were made for this environment.

I attended the new user meeting earlier in the week and met Cyn and a few others. Cyn and I agreed that HAIR and SHOES were two important needs at CP. We were not in agreement WHICH should be at the top of the list *wink*.


I also made my first custom sky and some new chairs with customizers built in. Progress.

Month One

Week One - Romance or Marriage

 

At the end of week one I look just like I did at the end of DAY one -- well I may have changed sunglasses. So much for fashionista status. I may try making a jaunty hat next week, clothes are way beyond my intent level at the moment.

Is this is a romance or a marriage -- the Cloud Party experience? Difficult to tell at this point. The tech is definitely impressive; the price at free and unlimited can't be beat. Things aren't perfect of course; this is a frontier. That may have been why my first build turned out to be this landscape.

It's good to be creating again. Mesh without physics concerns is SO much more fun. Different rules here of course and adjustments need to be made, but I am enjoying myself and that is what really counts.

Events of the week included the addition of clouds for all with the promise and preview of more sky sliders and the code so we can have our own styles should we want to play Mother Nature. 

Week Two - Seeing Double

I have been "ghosted" before but never able to see myself as a ghost. Actually pretty cool!

I was working on a build for a new area that will include a Treasure Hunt -- actually the whole point of the build. When I came back from blender, I saw another gal that looked just like me. Since there aren't that many variations on a theme in the wearables yet, I just though it odd that we would match. I could fly however and 'the other gal' stayed still. Hmmm.

I turned on my nametags (off by choices for years) and noted that Chic Aeon was away inside the building. She was however ALSO there moving around outside. Had to smile at that. Logging in and out didn't fix the issue but finally the interloper exited the building.

Much accomplished this week with some major additions to The Mesa which I hope to have ready for the public in a few days. Just making those little details now. Also working on prizes for the hunt. It will be free of course as many folks, like me, have no coins.

I added quite a few small but useful tips to the MESH page (see top toolbar).

Cloud Party news this week is the availability of video streaming. I also ran into a fellow machinimatographer who gave me a link to some important tips for making video in CP.

Learning lots.

Week three was a biggie for me with three builds published.

Last, fastest and easiest was the California Dreamin' area, a square kilometer of color that takes you back (just in case you were actually there) to the 60s.

And if your parents or OMG Grandparents were of that generation, it gives you a taste of that time.

There WAS lots of color, Pop Art and "floating" items in the skies.

Do some exploring and come away with a complete retro house and landscape.

The Mesa was the first build I worked on when coming to Cloud Party, a small piece of the Southwestern United States where I lived for awhile.

There is something magical about the high desert, you feel closer to the elements there.

Vista abounds and low hills form a personal space for contemplation. Pull up a hale bale and let the desert sing you a song.

My shop is coming along and open to the public. Of course these days there isn't that much public - LOL. But that's OK.

I managed to make a candle flame and a glowing ball with particles. Still not wrapping my head around that, but improving.

Inworld video was introduced this week. It worked and then it didn't, but I suspect it will work again. That's why they call it "beta" *wink*.

Week Four - Late Afternoons

I am happy to say that I haven't been running into myself at CP -- as often. It comes from going to another Chrome tab and not actually "logging out" and then returning. So at least I know the why of it these days.

I spent the week working on a Halloween build and am pretty much complete and quite happy with it. Will take another look tomorrow and see what might need to be tweaked.

After a month here I feel a bit more competent. I haven't ventured out all that much, too many things I want to build and much learning to accomplish still. I am very happy here which is a good thing as life as we know it may be gone from SL. My enthusiasm is certainly not there and I have taken a vacation from blogging at Phil's Place -- something I have only done twice in over five years.

I will be adding to my blog in a more typical manner now, single posts and such. Very few folks come here except for the tutorial, so it is more of a diary at this point -- a history of roads traveled.

New this week for the historical record was a theater template and the integration of Occulus Rift. Lots of small additions in the build menu appeared, a couple disappeared and I can see that writing more tutorials may not be too helpful. Things change so quickly at this stage that they will likely be outdated soon. I have certainly watched some that no longer have much relationship to our current tools.