Today is the start of Midnight Order, a dark and noir themed shopping event. Since coming back to SL it's been one of my favorite events, full of luscious gothic elegance. As I've been catching myself up to modern workflows over the past three years, I daydreamed about being able to make something worthy of the theme. When a friend involved with the event tapped me on the shoulder and told me I should apply, I felt I was finally ready to make something deserving.
The Ravenna Hennin is inspired by the costume of European noblewomen during the late medieval period. It's a tall structured hat, worn with layers of fabric to create drapes and veils with a wimple or cowl to hide the hair. My version is also inspired by the magnificent garb worn by the attendees of the Venetian carnival, and my recent desire to give Evil Queen vibes. It comes in two pieces, with a cowl to wear underneath, and an upper crown that can be worn rigged to the body with the drape, or unrigged and free to resize without it. It comes in my usual selection of twelve colors, with four separate colorable areas for maximum customization. You can wear just the crown with hair, but it will probably not play nice with most styles. There are no specific body fits, but it was tested on Legacy, Lara, Lara X and Reborn and didn't seem to have any terrible conflicts. Please forgive my newbish rigging if there are peeks of your neck now and them.
This was a very ambitious project for me. I have not tried making cloth since the Ladro mask, and have only made baby steps into rigging. This was a chance to experiment with Zbrush's new (to me) cloth simulation system and to learn how to make something that actually moves with the body. Not only that, but I wanted to make something built from the beginning with PBR in mind. I still am not comfortable working with modern material programs (I am learning Instamat but haven't been happy with the results yet) but I am actually getting the hang of manually manipulating the image maps that make up PBR materials. This allowed me to play with creating bump and shine on the brocade, and the way the threads in the floral pattern catch the light makes me so happy.
The rigging was an adventure in troubleshooting, and an education in how the bones of Second Life avatars work with sliders and with animations, as well as 3rd party body parts. I uploaded dozens of test versions on the beta grid and made many many tweaks, and I only just barely managed to get most of it to behave without clipping. I still don't know why the edge of the cowl clips through the back sometimes. This, along with some nonsensical technical issues that decided to crop up during texturing, ate up my time and necessitated the support of my family this weekend while I neglected my usual responsibilities and pulled an all nighter to get this done on time. Right now, it is only rigged for feminine avatars, but I will be starting work on getting a masculine version done after I crash. I'm exhausted, but when I look at my avatar, it feels worth it.
The Ravenna Hennin is available exclusively at Midnight Order for 600L until February 20th, after which it will be available at my shop on the Twilight.