The Driders Are Here!

Just in time for Halloween, the Driders have made it to Wilds of Organica!

This avatar is a lower body, Bento-rigged attachment designed for use with both male and female shapes! Six coats are available and each package includes the avatar body mesh, an alpha layer, and animation overrider. The avatar is mod, copy, no trans, with some no-mod scripts for updates.

Full, most up-to-date documentation can be found here!

Please note! This avatar uses hind, wing, and tail bones! It may be incompatible with other Bento-enabled products – please try a demo first, as I cannot give refunds (other than for duplicate purchases).

Available in store or on the Marketplace!

 

Work in Progress: Drider Week 4

This week has been a little crazy in meat-space; after taking care of some familial obligations and picking up some supplies, some long needed house-painting took place on Monday. A little later in the week, I was able to put in a couple more sessions working on this staff sculpt for HelpfulNerd, who’s printing, painting and finishing this for one of his clients’ costumes! 

In particular, I’ve really been enjoying ZBrush 4R8’s new live boolean functionality! It takes a little bit of figuring out, but once you get the hang of working with positive and negative shapes, you’ll probably find that it’s quite flexible and like playing with invisible clay.

That doesn’t mean progress has stopped with the Drider, though, and I’m happy to show some sneak peeks of the looks that’ll be available:

Moving forward, I’ll be seeking out testers, tying up necessary animations, packaging and doing some more detailed photography for promotional reasons. We are getting very close to release and I’m super excited!

Finally, here’s a quick snapshot of some #inktober – related artwork I put together a couple days ago. It still needs a few tweaks, but I’m glad I was able to rattle off something topical for this event!


Support my content creation in SL and other virtual worlds by becoming a patron on Patreon! Along with keeping up with new releases, you can keep up with personal and work project writeups, see sneak-peeks of upcoming content,  be informed once new videos are up, access to Patreon-exclusive content, giveaways and more! Check out my Patreon page, here: (link)

 

Work in Progress: Drider Week 2/3

The Drider’s moving closer to release! If all goes well, you can expect to see a release within the next 7 to 14 days.

On top of some client work I undertook earlier in the week, a variety of under-the-hood changes and additions took place for the Drider, involving animations, HUD graphics, additional leg hair geometry, LOD optimization, & documentation.

The avatar comes in at about 8LI, which is quite good considering LOD compromises had to be made in order to maintain silhouette at the ‘Low’ level. A fair number of my other gacha avatars are also in this range.
Over the next couple of days, I’ll be refining the documentation, working out final textures, refining animations, packaging and seeking out testers for feedback! If you’re already a Patron at any donation level, you already have preferred access for beta-testing this avatar – Otherwise give me a shout and I’ll put you on the list of folks to nag for feedback 😉

I’m really happy that this has come along as quickly as it did and really look forward to releasing it for the Halloween season. If you have any particular colour/pattern requests, this is probably the time to IM me with them. I can’t guarantee they’ll make the cut, but I will certainly consider them.


Support my content creation in SL and other virtual worlds by becoming a patron on Patreon! Along with keeping up with new releases, you can keep up with personal and work project writeups, see sneak-peeks of upcoming content,  be informed once new videos are up, access to Patreon-exclusive content, giveaways and more! Check out my Patreon page, here: (link)

 

Work in Progress: Kitten update progress

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, a variety of changes have been in the works for the kitten avatar. This week has been characterized heavily by creation of two new series of coats for them – you can look forward to bi-colour and siamese coats in the short term future. Additionally, updates are being made to the existing tabby & cheshire coats which take in to account new geometry and animations.

New mouth textures. Tooth geometry to follow.

There’s still a ways to go – part of the new work on these kittens has to do with a new mouth – and I still need to propagate these to all of the head textures. Teeth will also be added. Edge touch-ups and tail coat matching are also necessary.

I’m still thinking about the best way to implement facial animations for this avatar – In all likelihood I’ll be implementing it in much the same way that facial animations were handled with the FishEyes and Yetis, although this would confine the provided animations to a maximum of eight. Additional tinkering will also be possible using facial HUDs like the one put out by LightStar.

LOD optimizations are complete. Some tweaks to the top level mesh are also in order. Setup for compatibility with the exchanger/updater is in the works. Testing and repackaging are on the horizon.

I’ve had the chance to explore SL a little bit as the drider this week and (apart from a common unease around spiders 😉 ) generally have received positive response. Animation for the avatar continues and I’m looking forward to making at least one version of the avatar available some time in October.

Additionally, some time this coming or next week I’ll be working on landscaping and accessory items for both the Halloween and Xmas season, with Candy Fair stuff next week as well. If there are particular things you wish existed in SL that fall in my wheelhouse, do give me a shout via IM and I’ll consider putting it on my list!


Support my content creation in SL and other virtual worlds by becoming a patron on Patreon! Along with keeping up with new releases, you can keep up with personal and work project writeups, see sneak-peeks of upcoming content,  be informed once new videos are up, access to Patreon-exclusive content, giveaways and more! Check out my Patreon page, here: (link)

Work in Progress: Drider Week 1

While away on vacation last week, I started thinking about ways in which the new Bento skeleton could be used to make a Drider – human/elf/spider hybrid – possible. As I’ve covered in the past, the Bento skeleton offers a great number of new possibilities, but has some limitations as well when it comes to repurposing some bone chains to be used elsewhere.

After sketching for a bit, I eventually came to a reasonable compromise that might test well and brought that in to Blender & rigged with Blender Avastar.

Next, I modelled something a bit more accurate, starting low-poly on just half, mirroring with a modifier (which was kept mostly unapplied until I needed to rig parts that were not standard to the existing Bento skeleton configuration).

Rig setup:

I elected to use both the wings and hind legs to articulate pairs of legs here, but also chose to split up the tail (6 bones >> 3 bones per leg) to rig the last pair of legs. This means one less joint articulated in that pair, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Of note: While it’s true you can’t ‘unparent’ bones within the SL skeleton to avoid animation issues involving bone hierarchy, you can to some degree modify Avastar’s control rig – you can turn off constraints, you can parent them to other control bones, you can even direct certain limbs to target newly introduced IK target bones. Avastar is even now sufficiently tolerant to take these non-standard target bones in to account when it comes time to export animations for use in Second Life.

In my case, Tail 4 thru 6 are no longer connected or inherit rotations from Tail 3. I also added two new pairs of IK targets to direct movement for leg pairs 2 & 4.

After a lot of jiggerypokery concerning knee IK targets (which I decided to do away with ultimately), I was able to get a mostly usable rig going. 

A few notes on animations: I had to tinker with frame speed a bit to make the walk work well without ‘sliding’. Tapple Gao makes an excellent (and free) ‘Test Treadmill’ that helps to diagnose speed issues such as these. Also, more often than not, with avatars that use wonky rigs, you will need to export with bone translations. Under other circumstances it’s ideal not to, particularly if the intent is for the animation to have reuse with some other similar avatar; unfortunately when tinkering with rigs where bones have been parented in non-traditional ways, you MUST tell the SL rig to move those bones to (X) location, since they would otherwise just inherit their parents’ transformations.

As of this week, I have a basic walk, stand, fly & jump complete and look forward to getting more done soon. I’ve also been able to unwrap the mesh to create my  UV layout, which is spread out across two layouts. This has allowed me to create additional textural details across diffuse, normal and specular maps that really create a greater sense of detail without adding significantly to the cost in geometry.

Further down the road, I hope to add some geometry to add the option for hair textures on the legs and body. I’ll also need to work on LOD optimization, additional animations and documentation overall.


Do you enjoy keeping up with my posts but find that my products are not quite for you? You can support my content creation in SL and other virtual worlds by becoming a patron on Patreon. Along with keeping up with new releases, you can keep up with personal and work project writeups, see sneak-peeks of upcoming content,  be informed once new videos are up, access to Patreon-exclusive content, giveaways and more! Check out my Patreon page, here: (link)

Centaur Avatar Updates & New Coats

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Centaur avatar has been awaiting some pretty major updates as the new applier system has been in development.

The system wasn’t quite ready for prime time when they were first released, but over the past week or so we’ve had the opportunity to buckle down on all the necessary functionality and to offer additional coats while we’re at it.

What’s changed?

So let’s start off with the major changes – The new applier system shall allow third parties to easily & quickly offer new textures for the centaur body without having to worry about potential issues giving textures away.

To use the new appliers, all you’ll need to do is either wear or rez the applier in a script-enabled area  (while wearing your avatar body) then click to apply. Once all aspects of the applier have been sent to your centaur body, the applier can either be detached or deleted.

What does that mean for people who’ve already bought the avatar?

Moving forward, the Bay coat will be the default coat that comes with the centaur body. All other coats will be made available separately using the new applier system.

In order to take advantage of the new appliers, all existing holders of the centaur avatar will need to update to the new version by rezzing a copy of their avatar body on the ground in the blue exchanger circle, located here: (link)

These packages will each include both one copy of the mesh body AND a copy of the appropriate applier.

Cool, but what happens to those people who bought multiple coats?

Each existing avatar holder is eligible to update their avatar and receive the appropriate applier via the exchange process. (Yes, even RFL edition avatar holders!) Additionally, appropriate refunds for the difference in cost between full body & applier shall be handled individually upon request (please be patient as there may be a sizable queue).

How do I create for this avatar?

Finally, as a reminder for interested content creators, applications for dev kits are now open – you can check out the full details in this recent post: (link)

Last but not least, here are four new coats offered as appliers!



Do you enjoy keeping up with my posts but find this product is not quite for you? You can otherwise support my content creation in SL and other virtual worlds by becoming a patron on Patreon. Along with keeping up with new releases, you can keep up with personal and work projects, see sneak-peeks of upcoming content,  be informed once new videos are up, access to Patreon-exclusive content, giveaways and more! Check out my Patreon page, here: (link)

Centaur Developer Kit Availability

The dev kit is nigh! Wilds of Organica has been working hard (with NeoBokrug Elytis of Desolate Studios) to prepare not only the next generation of Centaur coats but an applier and dev kit as well!

This kit, provided on a case by case basis, will provide the opportunity to explore:

  • Texturing – coat, tail, hoof, hoof fringe
  • Animation
  • Accessory/clothing-making

Provided will be several components, including UV maps , applier system (both provided in-world), armature and a decimated version of the model via .blend file format (provided by email).

Terms and Conditions:

A successful application will license you to use the dev kit with some conditions.
Centaur dev kit resources are released as several different components, each with additional separate expectations.

UV layouts & Applier Scripts

  • You may make derivative content based upon the UV layouts. (for example: coats, tail textures)
  • You may make commercial use of your derivative works either with or without the use of the provided Applier scripts.
  • You MAY redistribute the templates, but ONLY as part of the original UV layout notecard.
  • You MAY NOT redistribute this resource notecard or its contents for more than L$0.

Under the following conditions:

Attribution – You must attribute the work in the manner specified below (but not in any way that suggests that Wilds of Organica endorses you or your use of the work):
Custom coats made with these layouts are intended for use with the Wilds of Organica Centaur avatar. Redistribution of items derived from these resources must be accompanied by a landmark to the Wilds of Organica shop, the SLURL for which can always be found in the profile of Aki Shichiroji.

Armature with decimated model

  • You may make derivative content based upon the work (for example, animations, accessories, clothing)
  • You may make commercial use of your derivative works.
  • You may NOT redistribute the .blend file.

Under the following conditions:

Attribution – You must attribute the work in the manner specified below (but not in any way that suggests that Wilds of Organica endorses you or your use of the work):
Custom animations, accessories, clothing, and other derivative work are intended for use with the Wilds of Organica Centaur avatar. Redistribution of items derived from these resources must be accompanied by a landmark to the Wilds of Organica shop, the SLURL for which can always be found in the profile of Aki Shichiroji.

Additionally,

The following terms apply to ALL parts of the dev kit:

  • You acknowledge that each application applies to you and you only. If you require a separate license for another avatar, please note the alt account name next to your main in the questionnaire, along with any changes in operating business if necessary.
  • You acknowledge and assert that you do not create products which violate intellectual property rights.
  • You acknowledge that your products do not violate Linden Lab Terms of Service.
  • You acknowledge that the information provided above to be truthful and accurate.

Failure to adhere to the above agreement will result in a DMCA takedown request of infringing works.

When?

Applications are open TODAY via this questionnaire, while final testing and preparation is being undertaken over this week. All applications will be reviewed and developer kits will be sent out within two weeks.

Testing & Feedback

Because developing for Wilds means I’m not always logged in to SL *and* sometimes I’m not able to log in for various reasons (usually working on something else or not at home), Wilds now has a text channel on Discord over here, where testing and feedback can take place. The in-world group will continue to exist, but just be aware that I can’t monitor it all the time.

New Azalea Bonsai at Organica

A new set of bonsai are now available at Organica!

 

These flowering trees will brighten up any household or garden. 8LI at packaged size, they have individually articulated flowers and foliage for great closeup detail, all the while maintaining efficient geometry to promote viewer performance. For best results, view with Advanced Lighting Model (Materials).

Eight varieties are available separately as well as a fatpack. Mod, copy, no transfer.

Each variety is available for purchase here at the Organica shop as well as here on Marketplace.

Wilds of Organica – New Release for June 2017 at The Arcade!

Tiny Peryton Avatar – Okapi coat (RARE!)

A new set of Perytons is now available at The Arcade from June 1 thru 30th!

These 1m tall antelope/bird hybrids require a Bento-enabled viewer and come with HUD (AO & Eye control), mesh body, full body alpha, default shape and eyes. As with all of Wilds’ releases at The Arcade, these avatars are transfer-only, but they can be exchanged for non-transferrable mod/copy editions at the main store (just read the instructions in the included notecard).

Visit any one of the Arcade regions here: The Arcade, The Arcade 2, The Arcade 3

Home and Garden Expo 2017

Organica has a spot at this year’s Home and Garden Expo!

This new 8 piece writing desk set includes corkboard, books, pencils, fountain pens, blotter, notebook and ink, along with a classic wood writing desk that’s great for any home!

Pieces range from 1-2 LI each and the set is mod, copy, no transfer.

 

Among many other RFL donation items, these two new hens and chick items are great for both indoor and outdoor use! 3-4LI each, they are mod, copy, no transfer and 100% of proceeds from the following items will go to the Relay for Life!

Visit Organica at Relay for Life at Hope 6!