2 posts tagged “reflection”

Promised a few people that I'd finally post about this, but yes, I've moved (again, for the 5th time) to a cool new location finally of my own and for various reasons, this is a special sim and I'll tell you why.

Before I do though, I wanted to clarify some of the things/names here, being Sector 52 is the second installment with in the Cyver Universe, although I'm not relating this as such, but it does take place before Sector 13, The City of Abaddon was built.

Sector 52 is basically going along the idea of a central hub, powering surrounding sectors as the main energy source to most of the world, or what's left of it. Going from there, the story tells of the government known as the Covenant of State and then proceeds into a whole mess of crap that I cant be arsed going into lol.

 

Okay, the reason for moving is for one reason, that I really wanted to expand and with Merricks Landing 2, I could never of done what I intended to do here, which is, build a community. Depending on how this goes, I really would love lub, luv to maintain a small, cool designed mini grid, but again, I'll have to see how it all unfolds.

Anyways, heres the special parts:

This is an OpenSpace Sim.
Yup, thats right. OpenSpaces, if you've been out of the loop are a new region type, unfortunately only open to people who already maintain a regular type sim. Although, you can easily buy your own through various companies in SL that are resident run. The sims themselves are four to a server and only allow 3750 prims per OpenSpace, which, at first glance, is a little daunting. But the cheapnessnessness of these sims will bring in people wanting to create their own small little patch, they can call their own and still brag about how big they are... The sim I mean.

This I really saw as an opportunity to try and create something that looked far from 3750 prims and make a sim like any other... but with a bit of D&D flair :) .

Reflecting on your Path.
I've tried a newish thing. I love the reflections in the water, and reflections is something I've done for a long time in SL, with various things, from my wife's apartment to the Funda Company's half sim ski lodge. So with the reflective feature, I decided to take advantage of it and make all the roads/alleys appear as if they were flooded or heavy rained upon. I do intend to add rain particles, but it depends on how it all runs together.

Less is More.
Tons of the great new Huge Prims that I've acquired from a keen programmer type, hes actually made a great tool namely Salt, that is a huge prim server filled with 15,000 variations that you can request through the Salt HUD. Fantastic little device, holds more than enough sizes to suit any need, be it for tubes, cylinders, cubs and sculpties, you're sure to find what you need for prim conservation.

This helped a lot with the sim design, I really could not of created this without the aid of these prims and as you'll see when you walk around Daemonum, you can see street lights, columns, structures, arches, gargoyles all made from sculpt prims for even more details without the cost of primmy builds.

The art of Texturing.
I'm a bit fan of reusing textures and what I like to call OMNI texturing, as its not quite texture zoning in SL, as to a pain in the arse if you can be bothered lol. But, I like to create 'Strip Textures' too, which help out considerably with the recycling of the same texture, but making it look completely different.

Strip Texturing is what it sounds like, you create a 1024x1024 (If need be) and create different seamless strips from end to end. You can fit a variety of strips on the one texture, depending on how thin/thick they are, some of my main ones hold several. Then, all you do form here is apply them in various ways. They work well on sculpties, also tubes/torus shapes and long column styled cubes and cylinders. Best way is to play!

The Sky is Falling!
Woot, I can finally make use of Windlight and custom water ideas, which am loving with Hi-Def. Completely irrelevant, but I'm happy as punch.

Flux-Capacitating.
Be sure to check out Flux whilst you're wandering, Acid Zenith has come a long way in such a short time on the sculptie scene. He's been creating some amazing designs with the use of specular material shading in Maya. Considering about a month and a half ago he was asking me to create shapes, I'm now asking him lol. He seriously has come with leaps and bounds and for that I commend him, he really does deserve recognition for what he has done.

Expanding your Expansion.
Hopefully, when everything has been finished and sorted, I'll be expanding the sim into a further 4 sims, creating residential and also commercial areas for people to rent and vend through unique buildings, rather that the normal malls you see spotted around SL, I want this to feel more of a metropolis, with a great community for people to come and live, play and have activities in a lush environment, without the eyesores of pink buildings with rotating advertisements.

Anyways, check out Sector 52 - The City of Daemonum @ The Underground Sim, and to wet your appetite, heres some more piccies.

After my wife, Summer Axon (Thanks for the post by the way haha) and her great friend Velvet Beebe agreed on moving in together, I thought it would be cool to give them a nice house to get changed in, mooch about and have friends over for midnight pajama parties.

So I set out in creating something quick that turned out to be something typically not lol oh dear.

But saying that, I'm glad of what this project turned into, as its become more of a miniature spectacle rather than a simple habitat.

So here it goes in explaining a few things, in which you might want to try out yourself.

First thing you'll notice is the city, I think its seattle, I'm not sure seeing as I've never been.  This is one of the main features that you'll see from the pictures, as it uses a special alpha overlay, highlighting only the shine, glows and lighting effects on the image. So, what does this do? Well, it produces an environment transition effect that you can use with Second Lifes lighting. Thus, when you change your Day/Night timeframe, the city changes with it, without the need of scripting and its viewer compatible for each individual perspective, yay.

How do you do this? Easy Peasy if you know your finnicky bits in Photoshop, took me 5 minutes to do all 4 alpha overlays, so its not that hard really. All you need to do is copy the original image/images into another document, convert them to greyscale, so its easier to handle. Then adjust the curves so it blackens out everything you don't want and white out the lighting areas. Just have a play in curves, its easy to get the hang of. Then from there, blacken any parts that curves cant do without losing its lighting areas, eg. on my city, the only thing that needed blackening was the sky. Then, select all, and copy, paste into an alpha channel. Simple.

You'll see other things in the pictures above, like lighting, ambience, effects, reflective techiniques. Things you cant see or hear are alot of sound effects and animated textures for the rain. Such as, walking closer to the windows, you'll notice streams and splashes of rain running down the panes of glass. The closer you get to the glass, you'll hear the rain hitting the surface of the pane.

Walking closer to the edge of the balcony makes winds rush past you as the rain pours down around you. As the wind subsides, you'll hear noises of the city below, honking cars, sirens, crickets and so on. As you walk inside, the wind and rain quieten, leaving you with the soothing sounds of the rain pattering on the roof.

Below you'll see the transitions between the times of day and how it effects the city and the shading around the apartment building...

I need to add a few other things like raindrop animations on the balcony floor and finish off the interior with some more modern furniture, but overall I think its looking nice, I hope you find it interesting too :P. Some last pictures taken by the notorious Zephyrin Raymaker, featuring Summer Axon, Velvet Beebe, Zephyrin Raymaker, Acid Zenith and myself.