SL Designer Notes

Aha, so you sell "original mesh" creations? What, exactly, does that mean—"original mesh"? (This one is going to be a little longer than usual. Please bear with me!) I'm not sure I've ever encountered such an undefined mess as the so-called original mesh phenomenon in Second Life. It's something that means the world to some and nothing at all to many others.  On the face of it, it seems (at least to me) to be a pretty straightforward concept: if you claim that something is "original mesh" then you mean that you created it from scratch. You may have followed a tutorial to make some or all of it, and/or you may have based your idea on something else that you saw somewhere else. But when it came to making the mesh for the object you've made—be it clothing, furniture, decor, a fashion accessory, or even a whole avatar—you did the hard work of modeling the object using 3D software like Blender or Maya.  Some designers have a much broader definit...

 Salacity History, Part 13... The more events you are in, the more designers you meet and become friends—or at least professional acquaintances—with. And my list of fellow designer-friends was growing steadily. As it grew, I found more and more of my social experiences in SL were focused on talking shop.  One of the things that happens when you talk shop with other designers is you begin to feel insignificant, unaccomplished, and inept. At least, that was MY experience, quite regularly. When my friends would talk about the events they were in, or the amount of lindens they were bringing in from new releases, I often questioned whether what I was doing was worth the time I put into it. It was tempting to feel jealous or even envious of them. Yet, through those conversations there were hints of encouragement too. The same friends wouldn't let me compare myself to them unfavorably, but would respond with hope. "You'll get there," they often said.  I began to wonder wheth...

 Every builder, no matter what their skill level or experience, runs into problems they have trouble solving. There's no shame in asking for help when you need it. Fortunately, SL's home and garden building community is full of helpful people! It's my understanding that some groups of designers are far more cut-throat and competitive (I'm looking at you, fashion world), but that's not been my experience in the home and garden segment of designers at all. There are some strong communities that are active and filled with people willing to help. Here's a few that I've found and appreciate, and hope that you might as well. In-World Groups Builder's Brewery: a singular institution, this is far more than just a group. They have an entire sim devoted to resourcing builders. They offer classes, free sandbox areas for building, and, of course, a number of helpful groups. The main group almost always has active group chat going where people ask questions (and rece...

Just as with mesh and animations, it can sometimes be overwhelming to try to find good textures for use in your creations in SL. There are a LOT of sources in-world, and sometimes you can find great textures for a bargain. On the other hand, some of these will look great on display but not work out well when tiled or used on UVs.  Finding good textures for manual texturing approaches can be very difficult at times. Some of the sources in-world and on the Marketplace are better than others. Ditto with websites and off-world sources. Below is my list of recommended sources for textures, both in-world and across the interwebs, for those who work directly with AO maps and aren't using a tool like Substance Painter. Naturally, this is not an exhaustive list of every texture source; these are the ones I've used and can recommend personally. In-World Sources Aethis Creations : GullyRivers is a very talented creator, and he offers a nice (if small-ish) selection of textures with full p...

 Salacity History part 12... As I had hoped, I saw some important changes due to my efforts to learn to make my own mesh. Slowly but surely things were improving. For one thing, revenues increased while costs dropped. I no longer had to pay substantial prices to buy mesh from others; I only had to pay the upload fees for my own mesh—so the cost of production for each project dropped, sometimes substantially. At the same time, the perception that "original mesh" is more valuable (because, theoretically, it cannot be bought from any other store) allowed for a slight increase in prices. Another improvement was that one more obstacle was removed from my path, on the way to the events I aspired to be part of. In a few cases, this paid off quickly; my applications for some events were accepted and I was invited to participate. In other cases, there were other (unknown) obstacles preventing me from grasping those brass rings. Nevertheless, I was grateful to become part of the group ...

If you are creating textures for objects in SL (whether they are pre-fab mesh models you've purchased or your own mesh creations), you will need GOOD textures or your creations will look amateurish regardless of how good the mesh is. There are basically two ways to do textures for SL: Manually created textures—these are done basically "by hand" (i.e., in Photoshop or some similar texture editing application) using UV and AO maps to place elements specifically where you want them "Procedurally" created textures—where you use a tool like Substance Painter to generate textures for your objects (If you aren't making your own mesh, the second option is unavailable to you.) I used the manual approach for YEARS in SL, and I'd like to think I got pretty good at it. Even after I started making my own mesh, I continued with this method for a long time. There are a some advantages to this method, mostly related to the limits of faces that SL imposes and the effici...

 Learning to make your own mesh is hard. There's no shortcut to getting the knack for what will inevitably be a very complex piece of software (Blender, Maya, etc.), or for learning how to get cubes, planes, and cylinders to become what you want them to be. There are many steps involved in making shapes easy to work with and able to accept textures in-world.  I highly recommend starting with Blender, for a number of reasons. First of all, it's free—and yet unlike some other free options, the price doesn't reflect the quality or caliber of the software at hand. Second, Blender can literally do everything that the other options can, at least in some form, and it will be all that you need for SL. And third, there's a huge user base for it, both in-world and in general, which means there are TONS of tutorials for learning how to use Blender. Some people prefer Maya, and while I've never even seen Maya in person, I understand that it is a bit easier to learn and a more i...

Salacity History Part 11... From the earliest days of Salacity's existence, one thing was clear: the brands that could claim to make their own mesh models outranked those who used prefabricated "templates" for their creations. I understand why this higher status for genuinely original mesh makers has arisen, and it makes sense in some ways. But it has also created problems (which I will address in a future post) and, in most cases, the customers don't really care. Nevertheless, this was another glass ceiling demanding to be broken through—not least because it was the deciding factor for the next level up in events that I wanted to participate in. When an event has said they only accept original mesh makers, full-stop, then there's not really much choice to it. I had been dabbling with Blender for a while, then once I got over my initial discomfort with simply opening the application and staring at all of the many menus and buttons I took on some very simple projec...

I was asked to write a guest piece for this wonderful designer resource blog and decided to cover customer service as I think it is a very important part of being a designer selling your products. It can be a big part of how your brand is perceived and also in my experience a great advertising tool to build up a rapport with a customer, and they are likely to return, tell friends and word will spread. One story that always sticks with me is checking my phone in the at 3am and seeing an offline from someone with a query about a product. I tried to go back to sleep but as we advertised we would answer all queries within 8 hours, I decided to get up and deal with it instead. This led to a very lucrative deal with a customer to provide thousands of L$ worth of furniture for a club they were building and had I not followed it through so fast they may have approached someone else.    Sometimes it can be something as small as teaching someone how to actually rez something and sometim...

Salacity History Part 10... As I mentioned before, I began to have bloggers approaching me about working directly with Salacity to promote my creations. I was familiar with the idea of have a team of bloggers, but I knew nothing about how to do it. I started off with a small in-world group to manage them, using it for distribution of new releases as well as communications. Soon, though, it became clear that I needed help with it—at very least because I had no idea what "managing bloggers" was supposed to entail. I decided to advertise for a blogger manager, and my friend Scotty, who (in addition to being a patron of sorts, and a silent partner) functioned as something of a business advisor to me, and we interviewed the applicants together. Two of them stood out, for very different reasons, and in the end we hired both! But for very different jobs. Lawrence D. Pryce, who has gone on to do great things in the world of SL, was my very first blogger manager for Salacity. Unfortun...