Lady in red... and green.

My latest acquisition is this lovely evening gown from Pixeladict, I'd been looking for this style of dress for a while and when I saw someone wearing one while out and about on the grid I decided it was the one I wanted. After browsing the available colours at the store, I was torn between Emerald green and Ruby red. I settled on the latter, and set about building an outfit around it.

I started with the skin, I'd just got my hands on a new group gift from MyDear, the Ella skin (although visiting the store later its gone, wonder if it limited edition?) I added some red flexi-prim hair, Ruby red lips by MissMurder, Tesla 'Jane' shoes (fire) Aqua blue eyes by Xolo, and some diamond jewellery.

The prim hair was OK, but it was starting to show its age, since the vast majority of viewers these days are mesh capable, I decided it was time to take the plunge on some mesh hair.

I'd seen some nice demo's in the past from Wasabi Pills, and it didn't take me long at the store to Settle on a redhead pack in the 'Orion' range. The great thing about good mesh hair is that it flexes with your head but doesn't clip through your shoulders.

I had my new outfit and I loved it. I was thinking about going back for another colour when I got an IM from the creator, Ms Rosie Scott. You see, I'd found the store from the SL search. I'd originally looked in her profile, but the LM in her picks was (at the time) out of date, and I'd sent her an off-line IM just to give her a heads up.

 

She thanked me for letting her know, and asked me to pick a complimentary item from the store by way of thanks. How's that for customer service? Since I'd already got my eyes on the Emerald dress it didn't take me long to choose, and I soon had a new outfit to build. I decided, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' and simply swapped my blue eyes for green, the 'fire' shoes for 'lime' and a lighter shade of the Orion hair.


Since I got the second dress as a freebie, I think I might go back and buy yet another colour, since up until now I've neglected to mention that this dress is ONLY L$59!

Pictures taken at the beautifuly built Alchemy Immortalis Sim.

Teeny Tiny and Itty Bitty Kitty

So Imogen got herself one of those tiny fariy avatars, and it's adorable...

Now we just have to figure out how to put a saddle on the cat lol.

.1 tonnes of fun

So a couple of things happened in the last few days.

I got to thinking about avatar physics, and how it still isn't fixed, and that lead to me thinking about the fact I'd never used the 'belly' sliders. Then, during my lunch the other day, I found myself walking behind a generously proportioned gal, who I can only assume left home in a hurry, before she'd had time to finish getting dressed. Then Finaly last night, while sorting my inventory I came across a 'tubby' shape i'd made last year as a joke (next to my 'all 100' and 'all 0' shapes that are truly horrifying)

And all this gave me an idea
I took a copy of my current shape, then wound up the body fat, belly, butt, love handles, saddle bags, chin and jowels sliders, I gave her well fed cheeks and even bigger boobs. I kept the features the same, but added a new physics layer which wobbles all over.

   

Then I had to pick an outfit, and I took my inspiration from the girl I'd seen in the street. I did not make this up, the only difference between me in these screenshots and the girl I saw IRL is that her underpants were polka-dot. I'd like to think that her leggings were opaque before she put them on, and she didn't realise how translucent they got when stretched over her frame, but I've noticed it seems to becoming a new fashion.

After creating my outfit and accesorising with a bar of chocolate, I went dancing.and found myself developing a soft-spot for Overweight Stacy. In a grid of sour faced catwalk models, my happy 'little' fat girl felt kinda special.

Shake it like a polaroid

But... My Butt!

Its wall of text time!

Almost a year ago, LL introduced a 'new' feature to the grid: Avatar Physics.

Avatar physics was a great feature, it took what was previously a TPV only feature (Emerald's 'Jiggly Boobs') and improved on it.

Originally, each compatible viewer could activate settings that would add bounce to the breasts of all female avatars that walked into view, regardless of whether the owners of those avatars wanted a spring in their step or not.

Avatar physics was different, it added a new class of wearable object, a new layer that sat under the skin and above the shape. Now the owner of an avatar could decide how it moved, from 0 movement (without a layer), to helium filled space hoppers. Not only that, but the new system added butt and belly movements (also available to male avatars) to the original bouncing breasts. Naturally some people cried out that there were more important things for LL to be doing than titillating tit shaking, but its here now and it adds another aspect to the ways we can customise our avatars, even to the level of varying the 'bounce' with outfits (For example a high movement layer with a string bikini, and a low movement layer with a sports bra and yoga pants.)

It's not perfect though. The Emerald (and later Phoenix) system, came with pre-defined settings you could tweak if you wanted. Like newly created shape layers (which start out looking human but are pretty plain) new physics layers don't do much and require the user to find 'realistic' settings*. By default the viewer spins the camera around and puts the avatar into the 'edit pose' so you can't see the effect of changes until you save them, and then move the avatar. Fortunately with a V2 based viewer you can start an animation playing while in edit mode to see the effect as you move sliders, In Firestorm (and possibly others I don't know) you can even turn off the automatic camera movement altogether, so you can tweak the settings on the fly, if for example, you were at a club and found you were moving in a way you didn't like.
Incidentally I find dance anims are the best for testing physics settings.

*see the end of this post for some cheat notes.

The biggest problem with avatar physics though (besides the fact it's down to the user to figure out the most 'realistic' settings with a lot of trial and error) is that it's kinda broken.

I spent hours tweaking the butt settings to give my rear the kind of short quick jiggle a well toned behind should have. But when I went to a busy sim, someone asked me why my butt was vibrating. Turns out, when a viewer (any viewer) goes below 15fps (which is quite possible on a complex sim) the physics system looses its shit and starts violently shaking in a way that will never stop (it can happen if your viewer looses focus too). It looked fine on my screen, but i had to remove the layer because their viewer was struggling and telling them I'd gone for comedy settings.

The worst thing is, other than avoiding other people (not too hard on the grid these days - Zing!) there is nothing you can do about it. You can have the best computer with perfectly tweaked settings, but if someone sees you from their crappy old box with the settings way to high, their physics will go crazy, but you are the one who looks stupid.

I've given up on a toned bum now, and opted for a more 'wobbly' and 'fatty' behind, because large gentle movements don't go mad like small fast ones, but I still have my old layers in a box, in the hope LL will one day, you know, FIX IT

A JIRA (bug report) was raised about this issue a long time ago, but it still hasn't been fixed (the Linden originally assigned to deal with it was let go as well).
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-25545?

If, after reading my post you're concerned about this issue, I urge you to go to the JIRA above, log in, and 'Vote' and 'Watch' (you have to pick both, LL admitted they ignore issues with a lot of votes if not many people are watching).

Smallprint: If you're not familiar with JIRA's and don't like the idea of entering your password into a site you got from a link, you can also get to it from the help>bug tracker page on secondlife.com

A Guide on what the sliders actually do can be found here:
http://tali.appspot.com/html/tutorials/avatarphysics.html

*This is where I promised to post my current 'medium' slider setting, and finally I remembered!

Breasts Bounce
21 28 18 66
Breasts Cleavage
6 57 100 71
Breasts Sway
10 28 9 66
Butt Bounce
30 18 45 60
Butt Sway
24 15 36 60
Advanced
14 52 85 14 15 50 1 100 10

That's it for walls of text for now, we will return to our usual service of pictures of half dressed avatars in the next post :p

Ginger

Long overdue, after drifing away from SL for a bit, a new outfit that just 'happened'

After visiting [MyDear] (the creator of my skin) to pick up a new group gift, I also discovered a 'freckle' tatoo.

  

Paired with blue eyes, a pale skin and 'red' eyebrows, as well as some red hair (once I'd found a good match in my Amacci hairbases) I had the begining of a 'look'

I added the shirt, skirt and socks from LoveCats Chelsea, a pair of Vextra Messing panties, Duece boots by Crave, and a dragon tatoo. I finished it all off with a set of sapphire studs to compliment the eyes.

Casual Camo

This was an outfit that kinda just 'happened'. I was trying on a few new pieces and rediscovering some I'd had for a while.

 

When I first put it together, Imogen pointed out the trousers were a bit revealing. She was right, but I wasn't sure the best way to fix it, then it hit me...

Union Jack Pants!

The jacket is LoveCats Snakebite with a tank top by C.H.F.U, the shoes are a pair of Jackass Converse from Little Brittan, Ink is Death of Baroque and hair is by Amacci.

  

 

LoveCat's Roundup

I've mentioned before I have a lot of outfits I want to write about, I've also mentioned that the 'problem' with LoveCats outfits (which isn't really a problem)  is that they're usually so perfect off the peg that there's not much of an 'in' for putting my own spin on it. That also means there isn't a lot to write about, since beyond the clothes, there's usually only hair, makeup & jewellery to choose.

I've had this post as a draft for ages trying to get the pictures right, but there comes a time you just have to say 'post it'

Nonetheless, there are a lot of great LC outfits I love, and I want to share them today.
Note: This list is NOT exhaustive.

Distortion.
Mentioned in my Cyberpunk post, this cute little outfit gets a steampunk vibe from the included goggles. Paired with a free hair from Amacci, BSN green eyes, and my Dragon Tatoo. Not much to say about it except it looks great.

  Natasha.

Channelling the Black Swan in this outfit I saved under 'Dark Ballerina' LoveCats Natasha has a real S&M Vibe. I paired it with a black flexi 'tutu', stockings from LC Anastasia, 'Streak' black makeup by Glamorise, a black updo and Death of Baroque tattoos.

 

 

Kisu.
With the flavour of the Orient, Kisu comes in several colours, of which I have three. Mixed with my 'Tan' skin, unnamed full perm oriental style flexi hair, brown eyes and dragon tatoo.

   

Anastasia.
Elegant and exciting, not for the faint hearted. The boots are the same as LoveCats 'Secret' but only come in the 'tall' version, so I raided the 'secret' folder for a short version. Rose red lips and vivid blue eyes, and some extra sparkly diamond bling.

 

Fallen.

Black leather for that 'Biker Chick'. This is one of those outfits that isn't too 'out there' when you want to look good without looking like fancy dress.

Pyro.
Appearing at the top of this blog, and mentioned in the 'Blog Photoshoot' post, I always meant to go into more detail about how I made up the look. There is actualy a bit more customisation in this than the others in this post, but it's still mostly LoveCats.
The outfit includes LoveCats 'Pyro' Hair (sold separately). With LoveCats 'Nisha' and Ronjas 'Jane' Tatoo layers. The skin is from Little Brittan Design's 'Deadly Assassin' - the 'hood shadows' on the skin hilight the eyes Virzeni Design 'Fire Eyes' really well.
The wings are Coadey Concord's Excelent Free Aurora Particle Wings, colour coded to the outfit.

 

Waterfall.

The other outfit from the top of the blog. The skin is MyDear's 'Bella (Pale)' with Mad design 'Kiss Me' Lips, and hair by Amacci 'Millan' Similarly coordinated set of Aurora wings.

 

Desire.

This ouftit comes in several colours and I have them all! It looks sexy and revealing, while providing cover where it's needed. They glow in places and have a great 'clubwear' feel. You can colour block with them or mix complementary colours (green/gold, gold/orange etc) for a unique look. They come with paw boots, and  matching ears & tail. I sometimes wear them with tattoos, and sometimes I don't. The hair



Desire Lime and Gold



Desire Silver with TESLA heels.