It's a spooky season surprise! I have another release, just in time for October, and for Fallen Gods' 16th anniversary celebration. Unlike me, the distinguished Mr. Baroque never took a multi-year hiatus which makes his achievement certainly worth celebrating. He and his partner were kind enough to invite me to have a spot in the marketplace on Selidor and that was good motivation for me to finish up a project I've been working on in drips and drabs.
Something that surprised me, once I started paying attention to my market listings again, is that of all the things that I sell in my store one of my old sculpted masks from 2011 (!!) was still selling pretty regularly. While that's quite a compliment, I realized if that's still selling then it's about time people have a mesh option.
The Ladro mask is a classic rogue's style bandit mask, made of supple leather and tied behind the head with a knotted cloth. Included is a version of the mask without the sash as well, and two different fits for masculine or feminine faces. One has a pronounced brow and wide forehead, the other has softer features. If that's not enough options for you, I also am trying out something fun with Bakes on Mesh.
While it's been out for a few years now, Bakes on Mesh is new to me, and after learning about it and seeing what it's all about I decided to experiment with it. I figure everyone else is used to it by now but just in case you're out of touch like me or haven't been paying much attention, here's the basics: When you wear an object, instead of using a texture from inventory, you can now assign it to read a texture from a wearable clothing layer. If you wear both the object and the clothing at the same time, the item looks to the clothing layer for its color information and updates it along with your skin and other worn textures to show the viewer one, "baked on mesh" texture to download. Now, the cool thing about this is that there's virtually no limit to how many clothing layers you can wear, which means that, without any scripts or extra geometry, you can have a tintable base layer underneath a shading and highlight layer, allowing you to infinitely customize the color as you wish.
In the past I've considered doing this with actual geometry layers, in fact I did do this with my ears, but decided against it as a common practice because that much extra weight on your character was... well, quite gauche. Now we can have the best of both worlds: any color you'd like, but without losing the fidelity of the texture details. You'll notice, though, that I am also still selling this as a scripted mask with my usual texture choices. I am still experimenting with BoM and not willing to completely swap over just yet. Let me know how this works for you, if it was easy to use, and if you prefer it to the scripts. I think some of my pre-made textures are still nicer than some of the similar colors I got with tinting, but if people really like this I'm willing to start implementing this with existing designs.
And, before you ask, yes I've been working on this for the elf ears! It's still in progress.
The Ladro Mask can be exclusively found on Selidor for the next few days, in the beautiful marketplace there. It will be released more generally on October 5th at my store and at the upcoming 2023 Halloween Hop and Shop.
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