Archive for October, 2015

Well, almost, I still need to put my logo somewhere…

I did another quick attempt with this glossy “patent leather” matcap idea, it didn’t work at all, so back to the drawing board with this aspect.

I’m getting better at this, it’s taking less and less time. However there is something new. I’m experimenting with a normal based method to make metal and other highly reflective surfaces, and so far I like what I’m seeing. The real test will begin once I bake it to a static texture, I’m curious to see what will be left of it then.

I did some preliminary tests for an eventual patent leather version, but don’t hold your breath just yet. Without a model to bake to, it is pointless to do more material testing so I’ll resume on that part once I’m done with the low polygon model.

This is another knee-high ballet boot themed one. This time with a sleek wedge design and a zip front. I wasn’t sure about getting rid of the lacing initially, but I have to admit that it’s growing on me.

As much as I hate doing this, I’ve done a cleanup pass on my friend list. And while I removed a lot of inactive people, it looks just as full. I hope no one will take it personally and will simply IM me back if they got caught in the purge.

Finally!

Well… It only took two weeks so it’s not like it was a “long” wait right? This project was victim of a fair bit of “feature creep” where I essentially piled more and more little features, day after day.

But I’m pretty happy with it now! So it’s release time!

Do read the manual on this one, seriously.

As usual, if you like to shop inworld, you can find it at the KDC Main Shop (It’s near the stairs! In a small box!), on the SecondLife Marketplace if you prefer that, and lastly, on PrimBay.

I reverted back to the “fine” avatar proximity check, that means that now each avatar in a 5 meter range is evaluated for receiving the radio messages and if they where close to a radio that already spoke, they are excluded from receiving a message again. This “should” make the double message prevention more robust.

There is also a hidden menu for the owner when you click and hold for 3 seconds, which allows you to set the radio controls to public. I figured that this could be useful in some cases.

I rewrote the morse transducer to be timer friendly so it wouldn’t lock up the broadcasting script from receiving other messages.

I also re-labeled the knobs to be more in line with the content of the menu.

I should do the release on monday? I’m giving myself the weekend to find more potential issues.

Don’t you just love spending your entire weekend supporting a radio communication system that doesn’t exist anymore? I do.

Summary of the radio functions so far:

• Power on/off.
• Chat speaker on/off.
• Morse audio transducer on/off.
• 4 selectable memory slots.
• Selectable frequency (duh).
• Message encoding can be shifted two bytes for fancy radio scrambling (not real encryption, but still cool).
• LEDs.
• LCD display.
• Sounds!

I’ve ended up instantiating the knobs and added two indicator LEDs for them. I’m still getting used to setting the shinyness amount using the alpha channel of the specularity map, so it tend to be a little hit and miss, I also added labels on all the buttons. The entire body (minus the screen letters and LEDs) is now a single material.

And this isn’t a bad thing really, considering I will be away tomorrow and back at some point during friday.

From left to right: The high polygon model, the low polygon model (which might not be low enough) and finally, a quick attempt at some heavy weathering of the case (it might be a little too much)

I am not entirely sure of what I’d like to go for from here, it probably shouldn’t look too grungy right?

Because I like my “small” little projects that don’t take an entire month to create. Today, I present you… this.