So, I have been at Camp Neverwood on my mini since Sunday, and let me just say - I feel like this is how a camp is supposed to be! FSE Start of Summer camp really pales in comparison to Camp Neverwood for me. As I said in previous posts, I really struggled to have a good time at the FSE one. I heard a lot of people had fun there, but meh. It just wasn't for me. Pretty much as soon as I got on the plane to Camp Neverwood, I knew I was going to love it. The arrival experience was completely amazing, I loved every second of it.

This might be a longer post, with more photos than usual. My apologies, but I have a lot to show!

I blogged a little bit about day one of camp in my last post, but after I wrote that, I also went to storytime that night. Let me talk a little bit about how important this photo is. I'm super-shy with people I don't know, and I get really quiet, basically until I feel more comfortable to talk, and that everything I say isn't going to come out wrong. It's not logical, I know, but it's who I am. This photo was day one. I actually felt comfortable, and confident enough to get up in front of everyone, and sit on the counselor's lap. This... just doesn't happen for me, usually. It was really incredible, being able to do that.


Day two was just as amazing as day one. I went to hunt a snipe, we armed outselves with garden tools, and had storytime in the caves when the snipe found us! We battled it, then took it to the doctor to get better. It was so munch fun, I was laughing the whole time. Later, we built lanterns to set out on the water after Tribute night, which I think is on Friday.


There's always so many events that I want to attend on the schedule, and I feel like I don't have enough time to do all of them! There's an event almost every hour, and as much as I'd like to, I can't go to all of them! I go to as many as I can, and try my best. And, believe it or not, I'm still gaining confidence with everyone, and with every minute I spend there, the more comfortable I feel around them.


On day three, we made war face paint! I loved that event, was definitely one of my favorites! In every class, every storytime, every meal, I never feel ignored like I did at FSE. People say hello to me when I say Hi to them, and when I say something, they make me feel like it's important and I'm never a bother to them. I'm never forgotten about or overlooked at this camp. It's fantastic.

And, that was only the first three days! I can't wait to see what else happens for the rest of the camp!

The last day of the Start of Summer Camp was yesterday, and I will be honest... It did not get any better for me, like I was hoping it was. Sadly, I really looked for reasons to not be there, to do other things. The experience was not personal, I was ignored/overlooked by the counselors, and it was just in general, not fun. But, I did get a few photos.

One of the nights was movie night, and I took this photo. The plan was to watch Finding Nemo that night, but I couldn't get the movie to work, got frustrated, sat alone, and in the end, I just logged off and went to bed. I heard it was fun though.


The best time I had though, was during parent's night. I had asked my grandpa, Envi, to come for me, since mom had RL to do that night. So, he came to camp to visit, and I forced him to find a semi-photogenic location at camp and snap a photo with me. It was great to actually have a good time while at camp.

That being said, once this camp ended on Saturday, a new camp started up today! It took a lot of stress at first, but eventually I got into this camp! I was SO happy, when I heard I got taken off the waiting list and added to the camper list, it completely made my week. as soon as the FSE SOS camp ended, I went home and packed for Camp Neverwood. My mom was not avalable to take the packing photo with me this time because of RL, but that's okay, it still turned out adorable by myself!


Already, I am having much more fun that I was at the last camp. I feel like the 'getting to camp' experience was so much fun! We started off at the airport, like normal, then we were shot out of the sky by cannonballs from Captain Hook himself! We swam to the nearest docks, battled Captain Hook's crew to take control of the Jolly Roger, and then Peter Pan piloted the ship and flew us to camp, it was really fantastic!


The sim that camp is on... it's absolutely gorgeous! I was was struggling trying to decide on where to take today's photo, there was so many places that would have been amazing! And to be honest, I didn't even leave the bunk/campfire area. LOL! There is SO many events, And TONS that I actually can't wait to go to! Today was day number 1 at Camp Neverwood, and already I have had more fun than I did at the Start of Summer Camp. The counselors are also wonderful, even including the quiet, shy me, and including me even in RP. It made me smile even in RL, and it meant a lot to me, just the one thing that I was included in.

I am genuinely, completely excited for this week's camp activities! They all look fantastic!

Yesterday, was day number two of the Start of Summer camp! I'm really struggling, having a difficult time there, to be honest. I do not know many people, everyone has their cliques, and it's hard to fit in, especially for me. In RL, I have huge social anxiety, and yes, it applies in SL the same way.

I'm having trouble finding beautiful places to take photos in, the sim is not photogenic at all. And, the activities really aren't the type of activities I enjoy. I was really hoping for things like building classes, dancing, actual scheduled movies.... but there's nothing really that I find entertaining enough. I think I look more forward to the breakfast/lunch/dinner events, than anything else. Even then, everything is so cliquey that I find it not very fun at all.

The counselors have their favorites, it's easy for me to get overlooked and ignored. I also find one counselor REALLY hard to understand when he is talking on voice. I can never understand a single word he says. Which makes it more difficult. *shrugs*

I was looking forward to this, I will stick it out until the end! But, in the meantime, I'm going to probably continue to do my own thing, by myself. In the meantime, I hope it gets more fun for me!

Ennaline, my mini, is currently at camp! I've been really, really wanting to go to a real camp, and I have been waiting very impatiently for this one! This particular camp is put on by First Step Elementary school, the Start of Summer Camp!

Yesterday, mom and I did our camping photo, which turned out absolutely adorable! I couldn't have planned out a better photo, it turned out just as cute as I envisioned in my head. Well, to be honest, I didn't know what I envisioned when I was prepping this scene. I just started rezzing things out, and it really just came together on it's own. This is without a doubt, my most favorite photo of us right now.


The flight to camp was so much fun! I know and understand it's SecondLife, and to some people, it's just a "game", while on the plane, it really felt real! Our pilot really sounded like a pilot, the airplane had sounds like an real life plane taking off. It was great. We were even greeted by a counselor who showed us to our cabins! It was awesome!


On the first day, we all explored around, decorated our bunks, and at the end of the day, there was a performance by the FSE dance team. And also a luau. It was great! I, however, ended my day by taking a jump from the diving board into the ocean! (But, it's okay! Because I totally was wearing a life vest!)

It's a little over halfway though the RFL Family Fun Fair, and it's occurred to me that I haven't taken as many photos as I have been wanting to! So, I decided to go around and snap a few photos today. I said in my last post that I'm treating the experience like I am at camp, and I've very happy I made that decision because, it really kind of feels that way to me! I'm enjoying so much of it, the building events (we made a pet rock, a candle, and also a bear!), the games (bumper boats, paintball, pushing each other around into lava, yay?), and starting almost every morning with a story time. It's been absolutely amazing.

One of the things I've been having the most fun with is - collecting badges. Some events, and some stores give out badges that you can link up to your lanyard. It's a fantastic idea, and it's really motivating me to do things that I did not think I would try otherwise. I would have typically looked at an event and thought, "that will make me look so stupid", and not even go to it. But, I've been making a point to myself to try everything at least once. And you know what? It's been so worth it, there hasn't been an event that I did not enjoy!


So far, I've got nothing bad to say about the Family Fun Fair, everything has been amazing, fun, and I'm still looking forward to every single day there!

The RFL Family Fun Fair started yesterday! I have been SO excited for this for weeks! Mainly because, I heard that there will be bunk rentals, and it will have fun activities like camp does. OF COURSE I needed to rent a bunk there. As soon as I was able to, I logged in and immediately ran to decorate my bunk! I had no idea what kind of bunk I wanted, and even had no idea where to purchase one. But, I improvised, and while my bunk probably isn't as cool as everyone else's, I think it turned out pretty neat! A lot of the other kids seem to be camp pros, by attending the previous Camp Hardknock, and the Playdate Cruise, but this is my first "bunk decorating experience."

I'm really loving this fair thing! I've been trying to go to as many event things as I can, and really enjoy as much of it as I can! I'm loving being just a kid, wearing weird things, and supporting the RFL charity! Today, I've worn weird glowing goggles, a laser gun, a KFC bucket container on my head, and a balloon headpiece! It's fun, and I'm really trying to make an attempt at coming out of my shell a little bit.


While I know this is not camp, I'm really trying to treat it like it is! And that's okay, because I'm having so much fun, I can't wait to see what the rest of the week will bring for me during this fair!

Hello! It's been a while (again)! I'm still around, loving the life I live in SL! The family that my mini got adopted by in my last post, are still fabulous, I love them more and more every day that goes by! When this round's Arcade opened, I hit every yard sale I could find in search of a particular item. I really, really wanted the "Best Mother" award from the Commoner gacha. I *finally* found one, and made up a little lie to get her to take a photo with me, so that I can add our picture to it. I set up a cute little scene, and it turned out sooo perfect for the award!

I ended up gifting her the Best Mother award along with the Booger's Mother's Day bears, and she really enjoyed them! It's kind of funny though, every time we get a new house, those two things are the first things she seems to rezz out. She's so much like me, it's almost crazy!

I'm loving being a child so much. I feel like, the more I run around as a child, the more it feels more "me." It's strange. But anyway, the Dragovar family are planning a camping trip, and it sounds like it's going to be so much fun! I can not wait for it! Mom and I still have to get our packing done for the trip!

As for Sai, she's still around! I really want to try to experiment with just taking random photos, not just for the fashion blog. But just for fun! I've been playing with lens flares a little bit, and am quite happy with this one.


I love how photogenic this dress is, it's absolutely gorgeous! I've been checking out quite a few events, lately, and nothing is really catching my eye. I'm in a bit of a fashion slump, I guess you can say. But, as soon as I saw this dress, I matched it with this perfect pose in my mind, and away it went! Love it!

Let us talk families today. As I mentioned in my last post, I was setting up a panel at Heritage for my mini-alt, Ennaline. Well, I've been on trial with a particular family for almost three weeks now! As soon as I met them, I knew they were absolutely fabulous, fun, and the exact family that I was looking for! They immediately brought me out of my safe zone, with me being socially awkward and all. I found myself on Skype with them, talking even on my second day of meeting them. Which is RARE for me, as I've only felt comfortable talking on Skype to people I have known for years before hand! Even more shocking, this family is a really large family, which completely surprised me - I felt so comfortable around all of them, pretty much right away. Very unlike me!

The majority of the family, are also fashion bloggers, and they even run a super-adorable family blog! It was pretty much instantly that I knew the family was my type of "people". They included me in their family photos with no hesitation, they blogged about me on their family blog, I was invited along to all the family events, we played Blade and Soul together, and I definitely was treated just as part of the family. Some days, I found it hard to believe that I was still on trial, just because of how comfortable I was with everyone.


I adore all these people, but Kaysa, in particular - my demo-mom - is truly one of the best people I've ever come across in SL. She's incredibly caring, will sit and listen to whatever issue I had, and will listen intently to even some of the stupidest life stories I tell her. She made me try things I've never tried before, like stealing eggs from dinosaurs, and even something as simple as playing mini-golf! She's completely accepting of my big, Sai, which as I understand, is a difficult thing to come by when it comes to SL families. Sai will always be a huge part of my SL, so I was s incredibly happy to have found someone who is completely okay with it! I share so much in common with her in both SL, and even RL, it is mind-boggling.


I've been hoarding all these photos to myself. I kept telling myself it was because I didn't know when the right time was, but in reality, I think the reason I didn't post them was I kept asking myself "What if she doesn't like me as much as I like her?" I would have been way too heartbroken to post about them, and then the adoption didn't work out. So, I kept them all to myself, all the while hoping she liked me too!


Then, this happened. I took photos, but none turned out as gorgeous as Kaysa's. While I was out running about being silly with Nivaya and Nikki, I get called back to my room.My room was completely filled with balloons, and I was instructed to find the "single pink" balloon. Once I did, it teleported me up to a gorgeous skybox, where she asked if I'd be her daughter, officially! She posted her gorgeous photos of the garden on the family blog - Keeping Up with the Dragovars! I was going to blog it myself here, but her's turned out so much better! I'm not even going to lie - I was so happy, I ended up crying in RL. Yep. I asked her to give me a middle name, so on Monday evening, Ennaline became:

I still live! I had a really terrible December in my RL, but now that is over. My RL is somewhat back to normal a bit. We are still trying to look for jobs in a tiny, tiny, town way up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but we are settled into our new place of residence after our emergency cross-country move.

A lot has happened. Yuna has left our family. It's very sad for us, but perhaps it's the best. That's all I think I'm going to say about it for the time being. Since then, I've been working a little bit on my alt. I've decided that I'm going to put a little work into her, maybe take off her mesh head and try to give her a cute face. Then, put up a panel at Heritage for her to find a family.

I think I have succeeded in making her cute! Don't mind the partially un-rezzed bench texture. I totally did not realize it at first. I should have went back and redid the photo, but EH. Laziness at it's finest. But anyway, I've also enrolled her in school as well as ballet classes! This blog will likely become a mix of Ennaline's life as well as Sai's life, because I really enjoy playing on both!


Also, a little bit ago, when Yuna left us, I decided to put up a panel at Heritage. Jeffry logged in with me so that I could make a pose for us and we could take an updated photo for our panel. It turned out really cute, and really adorable. I was REALLY happy with how it came out. We had the panel up for a little while... but then I suddenly wasn't sure if that's what I wanted at this point. I don't think I'm ready to try again just yet. I haven't clicked it in a few days, so I'm pretty sure that it has expired. And that's perfectly okay. We will take our time on this, when we are ready again, we'll know, right? However, I'm not sure if we will every be ready again. For now, I'm completely happy playing on my child alt!

It's getting closer and closer to Halloween! I've been working quite a bit on my store things, as I have a couple of events to participate in. A hunt, and I'm donating a prize to the Carver's End thing! So, I've been really working on those, and a release as well. I've been working on a couple of other things, as well!

I entered our home into the House to House Trick or Treating, and we've been decorating like crazy! It's a constant work in progress, as more and more things come out the closer we get to Halloween. I keep adding stuff! I'm wondering what is too much and where the line is between awesome and tacky. Haha!

This is about where our trick or treater families will land! I love it, it's so adorable! Gives a good view of the house, I think! And it reminds me just how much I love having a driveway! I am not a fan of Halloween, really, so I never really bought anything for decorating before. I tend to buy pumpkins that are uncarved, or hay bales, things that can also be used for Thanksgiving decor as well. I'm much more into Thanksgiving than I am into Halloween! But anyway, I hope I'm doing this holiday right!


And the entrance, all fancy decorated! I've been way from SL for a long time, mesh was really just beginning to come out when I left. So, coming back, I had *nothing* mesh to decorate with! I had to buy everything new to decorate this year with, and quite frankly, I have so many decorations now that I know what to do with! I'd be happy if I never see another pumpkin again at this point. LOL!

I've been really trying to learn how to learn mesh! I started with clothing and Blender, and I decided that I'm terrible at it. However, I still really want to learn. I've tried clothing, and while I love it - I'm really terrible at weight painting. I get frustrated and can never get a product I am happy with. I've given up on clothing, but I still want to learn other things, as well.

I've been really working in ZBrush as of late, trying to learn it, and get comfortable with the Wacom tablet I got for my RL birthday last month. I'm even looking into taking more 'professional' classes on this program at this point, in addition to the wonderful YouTube tutorials I've been following. I spent several days literally JUST working on some form of a plush toy that I can be happy with. The original thought was that I wanted to make a cat plushie. However, it didn't turn out like that. I got this... creature.

I saved the file as "demonic bear thing" originally, then someone on plurk said it looked like a cow. He kind of does, but I'm not really going to put a label on him. He is what he is, a little creation of my own. I'm calling him Herman. I have uploaded him, and different color versions of him. I had Jeffry script a hold animation that also switches between a child and adult hold animation, and a resize script as well! He will be put into a gacha for my store, .ennaline. in the next week or so!

As I was making the different colors for him, Jeffry says to me: "You're not really going to name him Herman, are you?" Of course I am! I like his name!


After Herman, I decided that I wanted to try my hand at making a pumpkin! I am SO happy with this pumpkin, it's gorgeous! I absolutely adore how the texture of this pumpkin came out, it's so pimple-y. And, only 1 land impact for it! I made a couple poses with this pumpkin, which will be a hunt gift for the store! Pumpkin will be included, of course!

I am really enjoying learning Zbrush, and already the things I've made from it are gorgeous, and fun! I hope that I can get better and better with things as I get more comfortable with it, and experiment around with it!

As I get more comfortable with our trial daughter, Yuna, I've been trying to use her Yuus/Nuuu HUD a little more. I love being able to pick her up and carry her around, it also makes for better photos, too.

Well, last night, we planned to all watch a movie, and I wanted to hold her a during the movie. We tried by using the HUD, but it was a huge fail. I tried holding her before and after sitting, but well.... it didn't work well. Eventually, we just used the HUD to sit, and although we were hovering probably 2-3 meters in the air off of the ottoman, I rezzed some books and we sat on them just so that we could watch a movie together. Even then, it looked absolutely ridiculous. LOL! However, the experience made me want to make my own pose for watching movies, and just general parent/child cuddles.

As I was thinking about doing a pose last night, I also decided to try my hand at an actual animation. Sure, I didn't want or need it to be fancy, just a tiny bit of leg movement so that it's not completely static.

It turned out really well, I really like it! It's subtle, not static, and does exactly what I envisioned in my mind. I've got my alt, Ennaline, with me in the gif, but I'm hoping it will be just as perfect with Yuna, as well! I've raved about Anypose several times on my blog, but this animation, is yet another reason why I LOVE (!) it!

Remember me saying, "Oh, I'll never blog fashion again"? Me either. LOL! No, but seriously... the more I shop and play in SL, the more I miss it. I miss playing around with clothing, seeing how many fun attachments I can wear and all of them looking okay. I also miss wearing weird, random things on my head, and calling it fashion. I really think that fashion blogging is in the blood, and there's certain things I miss about it. I decided to take it up again. I'm going to blog the way I want to blog, and that's it. Because, I do it for myself, and no one else. That's how it should be, right? Interested? Check it out at Sai the Fabulous!

That being said, I've been working on several pose sets at a time. Currently, I have about three family poses, and three pose sets that's ready. I just need to dress up, make vendor photos for them, and bag them up to be released. It's a lot of work, and I hate this part of having a store. So, I procrastinate. And, how do I procrastinate? By making more poses, of course! It's a never ending cycle.

I saw a photo of a horse on Lolita's blog the other day, and instantly wanted them. She gave me a marketplace link, where to buy the horses, and I had to get them. Cheap, full permission horses (of course, I also found that a pack of deer and a golden retriever also hopped into my cart from them as well, I suddenly needed ALL THE THINGS). A light bulb went off in my head. Poses!

So, I've also finished a couple poses to use with this horse. Once all the minor tweaks are taken care of, and I mirror all the poses, I'll put the poses I made for sale, with the horse included! I think it will be awesome. AnyPose has really taken a lot of the guesswork out of working with complicated props like this, and made props fun. Of course, the poses that come out of AnyPose still need to have minor issues tweaked in an external program, but it still makes it so much easier. It really keeps the fun in making poses (for me, anyway).

It's been a little while, hasn't it? I haven't been online much at all the past two weeks, as Jeffry and I had some RL to take care of. Well, it's all good, and we are back again! I have been working quite a bit on my alt's little store, now that I've decided to start making poses again. I have made a bunch of them, and am in the process of testing them out now! When I had [ImpEle], I did all my poses in Qavimator. It's a very ugly program (and sadly, it has not changed at all these past several years), but it gets the job done. I have made it my personal mission to really learn more "professional" programs. So I've been playing quite a bit in DAZ Studio, and Poser Pro.

As if I needed something else to do, I've been playing with nail appliers! I feel like I want to try everything at least once. I've tried mesh clothing, clothing appliers, furniture and mesh prefabs by now, and hated all of it. I think everything I make lately is terrible. I really struggle with finding my "niche", I guess. I found myself the other day, halfway through making a nail applier. I don't know what spurred the thought on that I wanted to do it, I just did it. And oddly, I was quite pleased with the result! Nails are my "thing" in RL, as I am very proud of my RL nails, it took me many years to get my nails healthy after biting them for as long as I can remember. I think I'll do these as well as poses. Not to mention - they make great group gifts!


A extremely fun little outing Jeffry and I took last night - Alicia's birthday party! It has been SO LONG since we actually spent time with SL friends. There was once a whole band of us Ch'know friends who would just get together randomly and hang out... just because. I really enjoyed those days, and I wish to make them happen again! A whole bunch of awesome people gathered together for her birthday party in SL, We all danced and played laser tag. It was a really fun couple of hours! However, I now really, really want my own laser tag area... and I can't find one for myself!

So, with my alt's store, I have been dabbling a bit in mesh. It's been a process of learning several different programs, and I've come to to conclusion: I suck at it. I have decided I spend too may hours a week cursing and fighting with Blender, and the stupid weighting of mesh. Not to mention, everyone is making for different mesh bodies, and I am completely left in the dust, because I am not capable enough in Blender to know how to do these things. So, unfortunately, I think I'm giving up mesh.

I had gotten a Wacom tablet as an early birthday gift from my husband. I decided to use it and try my hand at creating appliers. Well, that went downhill quick as well. I am coming to the conclusion that... well, I suck at anything SL related. Then, suddenly... I found myself about to upload a pose.

I had a HUGE moment of "WTH am I doing right now?" I had told myself - no poses when I came back. However, there were a few things that got me somewhat excited for poses again. The mesh bodies now, make poses beautiful, and not as ugly with the standard SL avatar. I battled a lot with the lumpiness of the SL avatar for years when I made poses for [ImpEle].

There's also a variety of poses that I want to make. As my readers (and friends on plurk) know, Jeffry and I have been looking for a child avatar to adopt - I now want to make poses for our future family. I hate buying couple's/family poses, because of the differences in everyone's shapes, I can never edit them to look like they are supposed to. So, I like to make my own - that way, I have full control over how the pose fits.


I logged in my alt to make poses with me, who, ironically, started out her existence as a child avatar. I had all the Toddledoo stuff from ages ago, it was just a matter of dressing her in it again.So, yes - preview of a pose that will soon make it's way into .ennaline.!


Another reason why I'm so excited to make poses: AnyPose! While AnyPose isn't that great for single poses, I much prefer to do them manually in another program - this is FANTASTIC for couple's poses! And also family poses! I really wish I had known about this waaay back when I had [ImpEle] open. It would have cut down soooo much irritation and stress while working with two avatars. No longer will I have to have Jeffry and I log on the beta grid and me telling him to sit on the poseball, nope, stand back up, tweak an arm, and on and on and on. I can edit up to 9 avatars IN WORLD. The concept is incredible.

I'm also finding it really nice to use for more difficult-to-pose-for things. Like, making perfect poses for gowns, poses for toddledoo's, and mesh clothing. Things that aren't as standard as the normal SL shape is. Because, with AnyPose, really - what you see is what you get. I like making a pose for a toddledoo with this HUD, then taking it into my posing program and just perfecting a few things that you can't do with AnyPose (stuff like making the feet parallel to the ground and minor things like that)

I've mentioned my alt's little store on my blog already. I have also mentioned that Sai will not be creating anything anymore, all my work will be done on my alt. Sai retired from creating, and her job now is to simply enjoy SL. It's been a fun little outlet for me, without any pressure, and I can be as creative as I want, without worrying about deadlines. I like it, it's fun to play with mesh, and everyday I learn new things in Blender! I have picked up a few things here and there while working with mesh, and since my alt first set up her store, I've gotten better with it!

Now that we have our own homestead sim, the huge majority of it is our home, but I set up a little corner off of our sim to set up my alt's store. I've been quickly running out of prims on the land it is housed at now, so it's great that I can put it on my homestead and expand it as I need to. I definitely to not expect it to grow popular enough to worry about lag on my sim - I just really want to be able to have extra prims when needed. Because, I do this for fun, it's not really a "business" like [ImpEle] turned out to be. However, isn't this the exact same thing I said about [ImpEle] when I first started? Haha!

Anyway, I have been working on setting it all up. I purchased a new store build, one that has just a little bit less wall space, so the store doesn't look too empty. And, I've been really re-vamping everything. I've changed all the mesh text I had around the store, added a whole new "informational bar" as I'm calling it - has a join group script, has all the links to the blog, marketplace, flickr.... all that kind of stuff. Another big thing I did was I switched all the vendors over to the CasperVend system, which seems to be ever popular with stores lately. I set all that up, got the redelivery options working... It's been an adventure, frustrating at times, and extremely expensive in upload fees to do all that - but in the end, I feel like it is worth it. The store reflects more of my mesh skills now, and doesn't look so bad anymore. It actually looks like a store I, myself, might shop at. Whew!

I snapped this photo last night before officially calling it a night. Since then, I added the soon-to-be new group gift, updated the remaining vendor display photos, finished listing everything on CasperVend, set up the new release (also got the demo ready), and foldered all the stuffs to be sent to bloggers. All I have left is to update my alt's picks, classified, write the notecards about the newest releases for my dear bloggers, and drop them off to who needs them! I'm excited to be at the home stretch with this, and even more excited that I won't have to deal with any more upload fees for right now! Now, I can get back to Blender and work on the shorts I have started.

Let's talk about creating for a little bit. I run a little tiny store on my alt, and sometimes I consider giving it up because I seem to always run into one problem or another. Learning mesh is a difficult process! It's a complete nightmare, and there isn't very many tutorials, or information about how creators create. I've said it before... creating in SL is a VERY closely guarded secret. And that makes me sad. I've picked up the bits of programs that I know from various random tutorials and guides out there. I would really love to start doing informational posts on how to create things, but I really feel like I don't know enough to do it. One day, right?

Anyway, for my alt's little store, I have been working on a gacha item - a pouf. I struggled for days with this thing, got so upset with it at times that I found myself unable to sleep. I've decided to write this post, to kind of give insight into the creative process that is mesh. If you guys like these "creating" posts, please let me know in the comments! I will try to do more of them!

First, I start off designing in Marvelous Designer. It gives me the basic shapes I need to work with, a very solid foundation for the mesh. This step is usually one of the easiest, but this time it gave me so many fits, I don't know why! Every single change I made to this design, it took up to 45 minutes to sync the pattern, it was so frustrating! Anyway, the above photo is what my final design looked like in Marvelous Designer. It wasn't really how I envisioned it in my head, but it was okay.


Next step, I take it into ZBrush. This is how it looks before anything else happens to it. I originally started the ZBrush stage because I like the ZRemesher tool in it. Marvelous Designer exports as triangle mesh, and I want quadrangles. ZRemesher turns the tris into quads. Now I have Marvelous Designer 4, which has quads now, I still find that I like how ZRemesher lowers the amount of faces on the mesh. So I still use it.


After running ZRemesher, this is where I lose a lot of the Marvelous Designer folds and such. It's disappointing sometimes because they are very beautiful - but the geometry numbers on them is HUGE. Anyway! We lost a bit of detail here - but I'll still take it!


Next - Blender. My husband went to RL schooling to learn 3ds Max. He tried to teach me what he knew, but I was intimidated, and couldn't find many other tutorials on it. I got frustrated and gave up. Blender, however is a free resource, and I found has MUCH more information on it. Getting off track now... Blender is where the majority of the rest of the work is done. In here, I added the button in the middle, I clean the meshes up in here. Also, if I'm doing clothing, I'll size them and rig them, fit them to the Slink mesh body, and try to do my best at weighting. I'll also delete some faces that you won't see, like the bottom of the pouf, or the inside of clothing. To save on geometry.

After I took the above screenshot, I uploaded it to SL, the land impact of that was 26! No thanks! I used the "decimate" modifier to bring the geometry down a bit, uploaded it again to SL, it was down to 2.


Next, I upload to SL, see how it looks, check land impact. If I'm making clothing, I'll wear it, see what weights or modifications I need to do. Then take it back into Blender, fix things, and re-upload. The Beta grid is wonderful for this - you get to see exactly how it looks on the avatar, but not get broke by the cost of upload fees. Also, I check the ambient occlusion map, see if it looks okay!

After everything looks great, I go to Photoshop to texture the ambient  occlusion map,and smooth out any part of it that needs smoothing. In the pouf's case, there was some jagged looking edges on the map that needed a little blur. Finish texturing and upload to SL.


And here we have our finished pouf. It looks quite a bit different than when I started, but it still looks great!

So, as I mentioned before, I have a little alt that I run a very small mesh clothing store with. Mesh has been a huge learning experience that I still battle with on a daily basis. My items are not perfect, but I'm learning more each day. I feel like creating in SL is some closely guarded secret, and everything I have learned is a little bit picked from here, more bits picked from there, and the majority of it being trial and error on my part. It is a struggle. Releases are few and far between, because I'm always trying to fix an issue or two that has popped up. But when I have some kind of progress, I feel like it's worth celebrating.

Last night, I got closer to releasing my new micro mini skirt. I finally got the Physique mesh to be somewhat how I liked it, and this afternoon, I took it out to take vendor photos! I "hired" my husband to do some scripting for me, so he created a texture change HUD, so customers will have many choices of colors to choose from. It will be a new feature, one that I'll see how it works out.

I am kind of bummed though, I applied to create for the Maitreya Lara body mesh, and did not hear back from them in time. I was hoping to have both the Slink body and Maitreya in this release. I'm going to try to hold off on it a few more days, to see if I hear back from Maitreya, but it's not looking good. If I was declined, they would tell me, right?