Chic at Ebbe's Place

Day two began with an attempt to upload my Cloud Party hair of five years ago.  I got the polycount low enough to upload but as I suspected hair needs to be rigged to upload and mine was not. I did upload it as an attachment but since you cannot go bald at the moment, that didn't work well. Not a biggie as it isn't wonderful hair. It would be nice to have a bald option though.  I will put that on my wish list.

I did get some earrings uploaded (also from Cloud Party but with new Cycles textures) and placed as they should be, so I guess that attachments have been conquered.  Ears, Glasses, Bracelet and Ring are the four spots you can attach to.

I did some exploring and checked out all the readymade templates which are impressive, did lots more reading in the knowledge base and made a banner for my Sansar store. A really big graphic, it was tricky to produce using my eight year old logo but I managed and it looks good.

The best part of the day was uploading my walkable hills. Landforms need to be under 5000 tris if I remember correctly, a big number anyway. Mine is 326  and 64 meters :D.  The instructions said NOT to use your main object file as your physics mesh as the physics mesh needs to be low poly. Well mine is about as low poly as you can get so I used the same mesh and have perfect physics. A simple tiling texture (not tiled) looks great on the 64 meter pad.



And 64 meters is bigger in Sansar or seems that way as the avatars are smaller. My landform covers a huge area of the empty building pad.  I am standing in the exact center of this screenshot but I am SO tiny you can't see me. 

I also changed the atmosphere and that was fun until I went to save and it took an hour to bake. Now, that was my fault as I chose the "premium" resolution rather than standard. It is a REALLY pretty sky though. 

I learned about "skyboxes" which are actually 360 degree long and narrow textures in a special format. Since you need specialized programs for those, I will need to buy one if I decide to use that feature.

I learned how to move things around better and teleport within the scene and a few other important things, so a very fruitful day.

I also made 25 Sansar dollars which is about 80 lindens :D.  Poco a poco.

It has been almost two years since I typed on this blog, one originally made to chronicle the growth of Sansar and then turned into a more universal metaverse theme.

I hadn't ventured over before because of the Creator Agreement. At the very beginning it was OMG are you kidding? and then later still not something I was comfortable agreeing to. But now BETA is in effect and also the simplifying of agreements thing has deleted a lot of lawyer-speak which is always a good thing.

I spent most of the day at Sansar and accomplished some things. The default avatars, while not pretty have some fairly nice clothes and I found a super cute Pride Overalls item for free on the marketplace.



There were ups and downs and lots and lots of reading in the knowledge base. I got stuck with uploading an attachment that was to be a bracelet. A couple of folks have tried to find the issue but so far no go. "Things may have changed with the new custom avatars" was one comment. So hopefully my "h-e-l-p" note to support will have the missing info needed.

On the plus side I uploaded that bracelet SO MANY times I have the steps indelibly etched on my memory cells.



I did manage to get some crates uploaded. That seemed fitting as my tutorials always start with a crate. These were some of the first items I made in SL but they look pretty good. I have my vendor photo all done and plan to put them on the marketplace for free tomorrow. The bangle will get there whenever that gets solved.

Marketplace vendor photos rules have them very neat and clean -- and easy actually.   This is a render and not an inworld shot as while I did get my atmospheric settings changed a bit, they are not good for inworld shots yet.  I read through all the photo info and hopefully this will be OK. If not, I will find out :D.

I really like the uploader and while there were lots of tiny issues and much sleuthing, it was all manageable and I feel like a good day could be jotted down on the calendar.

I not too keen on the movement key bit but all in all it was easier than I expected.


Early in the wee hours of the the next day I finally got the bangles working. The skeleton had some issues and the transform needed to be cleared.

It's been almost a year since I have written on this blog.

In the beginning I thought it would be good to document the changes in the metasphere, especially those regarding Project Sansar (now Sansar). I also thought that it would be handy to have an existing blog should I want to chronicle my adventures in that new platform and later feature some content from other creators.

It's been fairly quiet on the "what's happening" front this last year and I have been busy with other things -- creating and such. But, Sansar welcomed the first of the beta testers mid month with the opening still slated for the beginning of 2017. That's not too far off.

Meanwhile, mid September promises a new (updated) kid on the block with Space (sinewave.space).   I had forgotten about Space since I applied for early entry last year and found they were in alpha. I am not an alpha gal. Then last week I was contacted again about testing now that they are in beta. I opted out of that after some thinking and remembering that SIMPLE is my key word this year. A trip over to Living in a Modem World added some new info on Sansar and entries in the comments mentioned SPACE again.

Along that journey of exploration I ended up at the older version of SPACE (sine.space) where I managed to change clothes at least. Later I found the high resolution settings and changed my building textures, but somehow those screenshots are wandering around my hard drive, hiding.


It took me awhile to figure out  that I wasn't in the NEW platform, but in its precursor (still open). This is good really and I learned a few things that will likely be helpful AND got a bit of insight that will appear later in this discussion.

MEANWHILE, Opensim folks are talking about breaking away from the SL paradigm.  I can see plenty of problems with this but I will be very happy if the folks in the we want to do our own thing in our own way camp prove me wrong :D. 



All this got me to thinking -- well, of course it did.

I was remembering Cloud Party which I really loved. Both Sansar and SPACE appear to have some similarities to that gone but not forgotten platform. It will be extremely interesting from my point of view to discover the parallels and contrasts. 

The SPACE website has more information than the Sansar website, but then again SPACE is almost open for the masses and Sansar has many months before that happens. Sansar's Flickr photos are beautifully lit and artistically taken, but as a blogger I know that great lighting and snazzy camera shots can make less than stellar items appear awe inspiring. For me, the fairly plain shots with more natural lighting and no depth a field are more welcome.

From the SPACE website, the avatars do not appear to have been upgraded much (or at all) from their sine.space predecessors. Sansar's avatars look better if not up to par with the popular Second Life mesh bodies and garments of today.  That's really OK on both counts ------- as LONG as some talented content creators fill in the gaps.


The first thing I do when I get to a new grid or platform is get myself looking like "myself". Now that can mean quite a few things as each platform is different. Still, I don't want to look like I just came out of the pod -- even if no one else will be seeing me. I do not think I am alone.

There needs to be enough content (free of buyable) available so that perspective citizens can feel good about their looks. There needs to be something for folks to do and places to explore and meet and chat and dance and all that jazz. Quite a ways down the road comes the need for houses, furniture, landscaping and decor.

No one is going to be interested in making a home, if they look like an earlier version of their virtual self. So from a business standpoint, I will be assessing the likelihood of sales and possibly hanging out and doing my own thing and waiting for an opportune time.  Or, I might decide that "now" is just as good as later.

As a content creator I am eagerly awaiting the expansive landmasses that are promised on both platforms. I am looking forward to new and improved tech (although I am quite happy with SL's current abilities). I want to see how my existing products will transfer over -- what new rules will be in effect and how I (we) can work with those rules to make the best products for that platform.

I have to admit that I am still thinking in Cloud Party terms, but I will be very happy to see improvement on that 2013 model. I am wondering if I can use my Cycles skills and still bake glorious textures (I'm not seeing anything in the photos that leads me to believe I can). It would be a shame to abandon those skills.

I will of course be checking out the new platforms, testing and seeing where I might fit in.

I'll keep you apprised.