Big Sales, and Post-Apocalypse Pics

There's an impossibly popular sale going on right now -- Truth Hair has everything half off.  Now, that might be a good deal, and they might have pretty good hair, but it's hard to comprehend how popular this sale has been.  Not only has the store sim been constantly full for every day of the sale (I think it's been at least a week), but also the next-door sim has been very crowded and sometime full, because people that can't get into the store sim can sit at the sim border and "cam in" (use camera controls to look into most of the store) and buy stuff that way.

I did this too.  ^_^  I found that I was able to purchase things from the neighboring sim, but that often my purchases would not appear in inventory until after I'd logged off and back on (or, as was usually the case, crashed and then logged back on).  Eventually I even managed to make it into the sim itself and was able to see the whole store and wander around a bit until I was satisfied that I'd bought all I needed to buy.

Some people have said that it's not really worth the hassle, you're saving something like 75 cents on 1 hair package purchase, but I spent a lot so I suppose I saved a few bucks overall.  Anyway I had fun doing it, it was kind of a challenge, and I have more new hair than I know what to do with.

Which is good, because I nearly ran out of money.  Not only by buying hair, but also Curio is having a skin sale (they are about to retire their old skin lines) so I spent 2,000 lindens there as well.

And then... since I've been in a post-apocalypse phase lately -- I went ahead and bought some more things for an updated outfit including new skin and hair.  Here's a few pictures I took at a place called Frozen Mind:

Post-Apocalypse

I saw these sims advertised on SLU and went to check them out -- very nicely designed set of post-apocalyptic sims, about five or six in all I think.  I changed into another of my old avatars, my drow "cyber badlands" avie, and wandered around taking some pictures.

Steampunk World Expo 2013

Thanks to Robert Jung on the SLU forums I went and checked out the Steampunk World Expo 2013.  It's a very beautiful Steampunk sim.  I changed into an old Chinese Steampunk costume/avatar and wandered around a bit, and took a couple of pictures.

More Avatars

Earlier in the week I bought a new avatar for another of my alts, Rei Sin.  This is the Utilizator Rikugou B avatar, an anime robot girl avie.  Like the Avatar 2.0 it's a full mesh avatar, but specifically designed to be an anime robot girl.  There are only a couple of costume options, I picked up one of them.

I'm not really sure how much I like it, but I wanted to try it out anyway.

I had a weird sort of dream that I was thinking about over the last day -- kind of a Second Life dream where, once you die, you are uploaded to a computerized world.  But you start out with a very generic avatar, and upgrading you avatar is very expensive, and if you can't find a job you are kind of stuck in a Generic Avatar Ghetto life.  At first I was dreaming about Avatars with very plain looks or even grayish, almost stick-figure bodies, but later it changed to a situation where everyone started out as a 3-foot doll, and you had to pay money to get a full-sized, realistic human avatar.  In either case, the best and most realistic avatars were incredibly expensive, so that only rich people could afford to look good.

So I was thinking about this dream and I decided to make a doll avatar in Second Life.  I know there are a lot of places that do these sorts of avatars, but I wanted it to be doll-sized, or at least in the range of about 3 feet like in my dream.  This Curious Kitties Broken Ball-Joint Doll Avatar fit the bill perfectly!

I found some "broken doll" poses on the Markeplace from Fruct0se, so I was able to pose my doll in a realistic (non-alive) manner.  ^_^

That was my experiment for the evening.

How I Spent My Free Money

This is ShinobuEden Resident, the new "freebie" character I created back in late Decmeber.  I haven't been doing much with her, I kind of abandoned my newbie experiment after a week or so, but one thing I had done is collect my free 1,000 lindens from back when Second Life was giving them away on Amazon (for a few short hours).  I had done nothing with the money though, until today.

Shinobu Eden was my invulnerable super-strong brute in Second Life.  She was the twin of Sailor Shinobu, my invulnerable energy melee tank.  Basically she was a young girl in a sailor suit with antenna hair, somewhat similar to Sailor Moon.

Having played with the Utilizator Avatar 2.0 the last week, I decided to buy an anime-style avatar for ShinobuEden Resident with my 1,000 Lindens.  I checked out a lot of different anime avatars, but all of them were more expensive than the Avatar 2.0.  Even some of Utilizator's own anime avatars are more expensive.  The Avatar 2.0 is a beta version, it's still being developed.  Also, a lot of the available anime avatars are based off the SL body -- you get a skin, a shape, an anime head. etc.  I liked the idea of a full-mesh avatar, and I only had 1,000 Lindens, so I bought the Avatar 2.0.

I found a few more mods for the Avatar 2.0 in my search, so the picture above is with a modified skirt and corset top -- Utilizator doesn't sell these in pink.  This was just two textures for 50 Linden that you had to apply to copies of the Utilizator products.  I also discovered how to edit the stockings that Utilizator sells to make the feet invisible, so that was good to learn.

I spent 300 Linden on the avatar, 200 Linden on the outfit, 50 Linden on the mod, and I think 100 Linden on the boots and 100 Linden on the stockings.  I also bought blue open-front shorts and a blue short hoodie.  That reduced me to 69 Lindens, so I think I did pretty well.  ^_^  Sadly, she doesn't really look like my CoH character, but at least a bit closer than she did before.

Racer Girl

One of the outfits that I bought for the 2.0 Avatar is a kind of race girl outfit.  I really like it -- this is what I mean by a very short mesh skirt that never looks out of place.  And I don't mind saying that the 2.0 Avatar makes it actually worth someone's time to peek under the skirt -- unlike the default SL avatar where the area between the legs is a geometric disaster.

I liked this outfit so much that I spent several hours today trying to find a really good place to take pictures of it.  I wanted to pose myself leaning across the hood of a sports car, but I wasn't able to find a handy sports car with such an animation, or in an area where I could rez an object to sit on for poses.  I wound up buying my own sports car, a BWCC Vortex coupe.  Then I spent more time finding a place to rez it for photos -- my own land didn't have enough prim space.

Mission accomplished!  Wasted the whole day doing this, heh.

Adventures In Avatar 2.0 Clothing

I found Utilizator's blog for the 2.0 avatar (linked to the right) with suggestions for clothing options from other designers.  I spent some time buying things and checking them out.  Bear in mind that none of this stuff was designed to work with this mesh avatar, so the results are mixed to say the least.

The DECO mesh jeans for her were recommended as one of the best options.  With the legs hidden (the 2.0 Avatar has a hud that will hid legs, feet, upper body, arms. hands) the jeans look fairly good.  Please ignore that I didn't remove my boots in this picture, they stick through the jeans but obviously you could take them off.

Unfortunately because the jeans do not match the avatar precisely, and because the HUD hides all of the legs, rather than just the important part (as a good alpha layer would), you can see there's a gap and no body to be seen just below it.  I find this disturbing, to be honest.  I know nothing's ever perfect in SL but not seeing all of me is weird.

I bought a bunch of things from Simplicity.  These are advertised as fitting the 2.0 Avatar perfectly.  This is sort of true and sort of not true -- the maker has gone to a bit of trouble to include textures that allow you to adapt the item for your avatar, but it doesn't always work that well, and it's kind of a pain to accomplish.  But when it works, the above pictures show you want you get.

The problem is that you have to rez a copy of your avatar in-world, then drag copies of the correct alpha texture (not the alpha layer itself, but the texture used to create it) onto the body.  This allows the texture to hide only that part of the body you want to hide for this clothing.  Then you have to wear that version of the body with the clothing.  I renamed my alternate version bodies and moved them to the clothing folders before altering them so I could keep track of everything; once altered you can't change the name.

But I found that sometimes the alpha-textured body makes the clothing vanish where it sticks out.  Sometimes this happens when I put on the outfit, sometimes after I've teleported.  Removing the body and rewearing it (IE, putting on the alpha textured body after wearing the dress) made it work again.

The good news is that Simplicity's stuff is cheap, so it's worth experimenting with.  I bought a siamese furry skin from them that I haven't experimented with yet, and a set of shimipan (striped panties) that were just textures to apply to the default panties that come with the avatar.  Once I'd made copies, renamed them, rezzed them in world, and applied the textures, I had panties that I could use at any time -- but it seems silly to force the customer to do all that work.

The technique that Simplicity uses to add alpha textures to a copy of the avatar 2.0 body would likely work with lots of mesh clothing that normally comes with an alpha layer -- but most sellers don't provide you with the actual textures, of course.  I bought a couple of other things that mostly work with the default body, but overall I'm not very impressed with the options for adapting normal clothing to the 2.0 Avatar.  I don't think I'll be working very hard to find more almost-but-not-quite adaptable clothing.

The flip side is that the clothing built for the avatar works better than any clothing in SL, because it's designed for a specific size and shape.  A mesh skirt can be very short and very tight and never have part of your body bleed through it.  I like that aspect of the avatar 2.0 a lot, and if more clothing appears for it I'll be even happier.