Mardi Gras Masquerade 2012!

Time creeps up on you, and before you know it it's the most important day of the year. Anniversary? Birthday? Christmas? No! Mardi Gras!


Can you believe this will be my sixth annual Mardi Gras masquerade? This year, I've decided not to do my usual "event group". So there is no need to join anything, if you can come, come! There will be a free mask for the party (shown on the invite), prizes to be won, as well as exclusive event masks to be unveiled and awarded to the two people with the best outfits. The theme, as always, for Mardi Gras is purple, green and gold. Please also keep in mind that my sim is rated General, rather than Mature, and think Venice, not Rio. Because how often do you get an excuse to break out the ball gown and tuxedo and truly dress your best? Just please, when planning your outfit, keep an eye on the following so that we can all have a relatively lagless experience:

Check your Avatar Scripts

This info can be found in Place Profile->About Land->Script Info->My avatar. Check the list to see if there's any scripts you're wearing that you could delete from copiable items or remove, such as HUD's, resizers, invisiprims (switch to alphas!) etc. Your total script memory total should be as low as you can get it, under 100kb would be ideal.

Keep your prim count low

In the past I've had a solid guideline for this of 200-250, but this year with the new prim equivalency it makes things more muddled. For this party, I just ask that you leave the extra fluttery petticoat layer at home, and not wear the 256 prim wings with your alpha flexi hair made of 180+ prims. Remember, you're going to be on a sim with a lot of other avatars and please dress as if you were going to the classiest expo ever.

I've done my best to do my part at the Event Hall by making it secluded from the rest of the island, and keeping the number of unique textures, sculpts and resolution down as much as I could while still providing an elegant venue. With a collective effort we can all enjoy everyone else's outfit as well as our own, and not end up dancing with gray ghosts.

Alright, enough technical talk. I have music to find for my playlist and masks to make! I hope to see you at the Masquerade, don't miss it!

Illusions Mardi Gras Masquerade 2012

February 18th, 4pm SLT
Held at the Illusions Event Hall on Carnivale
Costume contest winners will be announced at 6pm SLT

Curia

As I'm getting more comfortable sculpting with mesh, I realized that compared to my newest creations my signature mask, (the Velodorno), was starting to look a bit dated. So, I set out to create a new one.

My signature mask is always something traditional, elegant, and with ornate and delicate curls. Making that in mesh was an interesting challenge and taught me many new things about efficient geometry and UV mapping a complex shape. But of course it resulted in something beautiful I'll be proud to put in my header.

I think you'll notice that along with this release I've changed up my vendor layout a bit. I was getting a bit dissatisfied with my other layout and wanted something crisper, cleaner and more modern. I also wanted to start showing off the mask! I won't be updating the vendors of older items, but I did go back and change my other mesh creations to this layout. It also helps add another visual cue to people who might still be unable to see mesh items that these are different.

The differences between these two masks are subtle, the most noticeable of them being that one has a nose piece and the other doesn't. I simply couldn't decide if I liked it better with or without so I compromised. The other difference is in shape: the Civetta is always more "owl" shaped (Civetta actually means owl) with a pronounced pinch in at the nose. The Columbina is a more feminine line that goes straight across the face and curls up to a taper by the temples.

Doing all of the little curls was a delight and a torture at the same time. Playing with high definition to add little flares and definition to each little taper was fun, but then facing the ordeal of UV mapping it wasn't. If you're not familiar, UV mapping is the process of trying to "unzip" a 3-dimensional object into a 2d one for texturing. Imagine a map of the world, and how it's a bit distorted because it's trying to describe shapes that are a part of a sphere. That sort of map is very simple... a map for all of these curls on the other hand, looks like this:

I wasn't even able to stack islands due to a glitch D:

That took me literally all day, but it was well worth it. I had another draft of a map that was more clumsily done, and saw a dramatic improvement in the invisibility of my seams as well as detail which is always nice to see!

I'm sure I'll get better at it as I continue, and look back at this with the facepalm of hindsight and wonder what I was thinking.

Out now at the store: 300L each
Buy the Civetta Curia on the Marketplace
Buy the Columbina Curia on the Marketplace

Naso Turco

I've set a goal for myself to make as many masks as I can before Mardi Gras. It's a chance for me to really get more comfortable with mesh and to expand my collection of classic Venetian masks.

The first one that's been completed is one of the most instantly recognizable:



The Naso Turco is a traditional mask from Commedia Dell'Arte. There are a few different types of Naso masks (meaning "nose"), but this is one of the most iconic and popular. The Turco in the name might refer to the noble family of Verona, or perhaps to Cesare Turco, a renaissance artist. The Naso Turco has a very distinctive arching curve to the nose, as opposed to others which are perhaps shorter or more crooked.

I made a mistake in planning with this mask. I had a bit too much fun with drawing details directly onto the model and didn't think that I might want those aforementioned details to be a different color. I was playing around with it just being a solid color at first, but ended up preferring how it looked with contrasting trim.

(Still looks awesome though)

So, rather than my usual 3D trim, I decided to try an alpha overlay with this one. I think you can see in the vendor picture that it hardly suffers for it.

I went a little crazy with color options, which is another reason I had to resort to an alpha overlay for the trim. There are over thirty color options, including my usual 12 solid colors, and half and half "bicolors" of those in different combinations. They come paired with black, white, and a selection of twelve additional pairings I quite liked (such as purple and green for Mardi Gras!).

This mask is a mere 400 vertices! If you think of how sculpts are 1024 points each, it's just amazing how much detail can come out of having every point placed where it will do the most good.

I still have no affinity or skill for rigged meshes, so this is once again unweighted and freely modifiable. I certainly am getting the hang of it though and so far am just loving the freedom.

Expect more soon!


Out now at the store: 275L
Buy it on the Marketplace

I realize that I haven't released something in a while now. I had a mesh project in the works for all of December, I had hoped to complete it by Christmas and just ran into too many problems. That didn't stop me from sending out a holiday hat though!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, spent with family and friends. I decided at the 11th hour to just let it go, and enjoy the holiday without stressing over releasing it. Unfortunately, that mesh project is not the only one I've run into trouble with since then, and right now I have multiple projects in varying states of completion. That's usually how things are, but even then I usually release something in the meantime.

Since it's now creeping into January, my silent shame of incompletion has come to the point where I feel I have to address it. If you worried that I was sick or at all unwell, I'm alright! I'm just taking to mesh very slowly, and my progress was not at all helped by Skyrim or Assassin's Creed, or the holiday itself.

I have set a goal for myself to get a good selection of mesh masks released in time for Mardi Gras. I'm hoping you'll see a nice steady influx of new things as I get better and adjust to my new workflow. Expect to see some classical Venetian masks coming soon!

Mythic Masks

They're finally ready! The event masks for the Mythic Masquerade are finally completed. I ran into a lot of problems and hurdles but after a few weeks they're finally ready. I ended up redoing a lot of things several times over but it was well worth it.

If you recall, I gave a preview of the mask a couple weeks ago. So, if you've seen that then you can see what an improvement this is.

The Mythic Masks are regal dragons, with crests of bone and outswept wings. The two versions have distinct personalities, and even though they're labeled as "male" and "female" please don't let that stop you from trying the opposite gender. They're made of mesh, so they're one solid prim. However, they're not weighted, so they can still be moved, stretched and modified just like a sculpt.

With these masks I wanted to really experiment with color. I've been pushing myself to go beyond my normal "hue+20" approach and branch out and explore the depths of gradients and accent colors. There are eighteen colors available for this mask, separated into two sets. The "Dark Dragon" colors are mainly black with colored highlights in my usual red through purple selection. But the "Elementals" are what I'm really proud of:

There are nine different elemental dragons, ranging from Ice and Fire to Gold, Silver and Twilight. I hope that when you look at these you can see what took me so long. A lot of fiddling with layer masks, gradients, brushing and filtering to bring to lihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giffe such vibrant and varied options. I'm more proud of these than of any other texture or color selection I've done. I can't even pick a favorite! (Twilight might be an obvious choice but the Golden is so captivating...)

Please do come by and try out the demo, and see these colors for yourself.


Out now at the store: 600L
Dragon Queen Mask on the Marketplace: Buy it now
Dragon King Mask on the Marketplace: Buy it now

Happy Halloween 2011!

Hey everyone! I hope you had a fantastic Halloween, and got your haunting on. I don't know about you but today I had a splitting headache.

If you want to share in the misery, this lovely utensil of zombie-dom can be found in the Masqueraderie group notices! It is simply a bloody cleaver, so if you like, reattach it to your hand or hand-like appendage to be the one who's doing the cleaving.

Enjoy!

Mythic Masquerade (Aftermath)

Myths became real on Saturday! I was delighted to see the folktales out in force, and it seems the theme gave people a lot to work with. There were a few favorites like fauns and fairies, but there were also more exotic beasts who joined us from distant lands: an Annunaki, Hone-Onna, succubi and more. Amazingly, they all got on famously; there must be some camaraderie in being legends.

Ami Tamura as a Hone-onna and Selos Dae being Selos Dae

Freyja Nemeth as a morrigan

Even Horus decided to descend from the sky, I guess it wasn't as fun to watch us dance as it was to join in!

Tauxieros Rainforest as Horus

It's rather cruel of me but I do enjoy celebrating the best costumes, and so I make everyone have to choose and vote for the King and Queen of the Masquerade. This year, two very well deserving people earned the right to those titles!

Kala Lunasea and Ravenna Soothsayer

I was quite pleased and honored to award them with the new mesh Mythic Dragon Mask, which will be coming soon as soon as I finish fiddling with the colors :) Ravenna even matched the decor! Sadly, although I got a picture of them in the event masks, my snapshots were being finicky and a lot of them turned out just black. However, this was my outfit for the masquerade and should do just fine to show their prize.


I had a marvelous time, and want to thank everyone who came. I hope everyone who missed it will be able to make it to the next one!

Bad Kitty

More mesh! More more more. I'm still learning and so I'm just doing variations on a theme here, but I'm endeavoring to learn something new with each project. This one was a lesson in point placement and edge loop locations. It has better geometry than the Farafallina, but you don't care because you can't see it. Just know that it's surprisingly efficient, so efficient I was able to use the same model for all but the highest resolution.


Playing with point placement and mesh thickness led me to the comic book vixen look, one I used to avoid with sculpts as I was worried about sloppiness. It's about time I had that sort of minimal, sexy mask you see on some characters and it gives a great amount of mystique while letting everyone see those fantastic features. Sultry, powerful and perfect for prowling.

Out now at the store: 125L
Buy it on the marketplace

Mythic Masquerade

The air is getting cooler, and the nights are getting longer. It's getting to be the time where people would gather near fires and tell stories of incredible creatures, magical beasts and gods of old.

Sometimes it feels as if these creatures come alive, and perhaps one night they might join together in a fantastic dance...


You're invited to a Mythical Masquerade, where the creatures of fairy tale and folklore can arise and gather. What visions from myths and legends have always captivated your mind? What old gods, spirits and stories capture your imagination? Show us, by coming as your favorite fantastic beings.


When you're assembling your costume, please keep in mind a few guidelines which will dramatically help everyone's ability to rez and dance smoothly.

Please keep your prim equivalency in total to less than 250

This limit helps to keep everyone rezzing quickly. Check how many prims you have by going into Edit and holding down shift to click each item you're wearing. The window will display the collected total of those prims.

Streamline your AO, or leave it at home

Nobody likes looking like a noob while being a wallflower. However, if you don't plan to dance, fill a veritably lag free, low prim ZHAOII with your two or three favorite stands. Otherwise, just go without.

Check your script totals
Viewer 2 now has an "Avatar Scripts" total you can view, by going to About Land->Script Info->My Avatar. Try to make new, clean copies of items that have resize scripts and aim for less than 600kb

In past years, the collaborative effort of all of us has greatly improved lag. I know the costume rules are tough to follow, especially when it's so tempting to go for the excess, but I have the utmost faith in your creativity. Hopefully, this year as well!

As with past years, I will crown a male and female winner the King and Queen of the masquerade. Two previously unreleased, themed masks will be awarded as the prizes, along with 1500L Angel Cards to each! I will also be passing out gift cards to honorable mentions and other people whom I find simply fabulous. So make sure to dress your best!

Make sure you join the group, because for the first two hours (4pm-6pm SLT) the sim will be open only for the members of the Illusions Mythic Masquerade 2011 group. You also need to join to be eligible for the costume contest! Masks are required, but the mask shown in the invite will be available for free. Can't wait to see you there!

Illusions Mythic Masquerade
Saturday, October 29th, 4PM SLT
Illusions Event Hall, Carnivale
(Join the "Illusions Mythic Masquerade 2011" Group)
Formal Dress and Mask Required

I think it's funny that in 2007, when I first did my Egyptian God masks, it was right before sculpted prims hit the main grid. Now, with mesh having finally been implemented, I've completed my Egyptian God masks all over again. At that time I felt they were the best I could possibly do with regular prims, and now the same again with sculpts. I feel like the Gods are some sort of term project, like the test to take at the end of a semester to show what I've learned.

For the past month I've been working on developing a work flow for mesh, as it's not as simple as just making something that's not a sculpt. Since mesh was in beta, I've been learning how to make a clean base mesh, how to texture it, work with new programs and generally get out of my comfort zone. But, I admit, I let it slide for a while. Now that it's on the main grid, I had do to some crunch time to get everything perfect.

I got a bit excited at first, and tried to jump into the deep end (weighted cloth! multiple texture faces!) and got overwhelmed. I didn't make anything worthwhile. So, going back to basics I set simple goals for myself: neat geometry, nice UV's, low polygon count.

I'm starting off simple.


This mask is just one prim. At the level of detail shown, it's only 446 polygons which makes it less than half of the number of a single sculpt! This is just be beginning, too. I'm very excited to start playing with weight painting (items that will move when the avatar does) and with different shapes and forms of masks. I think I'll be a lot more adventurous now that I no longer have to treat a mask like a puzzle where the pieces must fit together perfectly. And, with more available detail in the textures, I might even do more interesting and detailed things with surfaces.

But for now, the Farafallina Puro is available to all with mesh enabled viewers. This includes the main viewer 3 and the latest Firestorm.


Oh! I'd also like to specify that this mask is not weighted to the avatar skeleton. This means that the mask is able to be stretched, moved and deformed just like a sculpt. If you've had a bad experience with not being able to modify a mesh item to fit on your avatar, you won't have it with this one.

You'll need a mesh enabled viewer, such as the most recent official LL release or the most recent Firestorm. Try the demo if you're not sure!


Out now at the store: 125L