Archive for the ‘3D Stuffs’ Category

Another work in progress, I deleted a bunch more “unnecessary” edges on the boot itself and added the LPM horseshoes. I’m sure “someone” will complain that I’ve been cheap on the polygon count, by the look of it, I won’t be able to maintain the boot under 2000 triangles, and 3000 triangles is not far considering I’m still missing the zipper pull, lacing, hooks and eyelets. I have no doubt that it will remain under 10k triangles but beyond that?

The devil is in the details…

Fun fact: a sculpted prim is 1024 triangles.

Now that the high polygon version is ready, it’s time to work on the low polygon version, the one that will be specially optimized for real-time rendering and obviously, secondlife.

I never talked about these things, but when it comes to low polygon modeling, it’s all a balancing act. Triangles take pretty much the same time to render regardless of their size, so if you want your model to be “kind” to the user’s computer, you have to balance between quality and performances.

I could write an article about it, i have a folder full of extremely bad examples of  models that have no place in SL, yet are your typical “top seller” shoes.

As of today, SL doesn’t support normal mapping (yet), so we cannot use fancy tricks. Which means that regardless of your ability to optimize, you have to shoot for a little higher polygon count than you normally would because of the tendency SL residents have to move their camera around and zoom all the way in on everything, down to the smallest piece of jewelry.

But even with normal and specular mapping, I fear that those unreasonable expectations for high fidelity rendering will only get worse.

Sorry for the delay.

I’ve done some work on the boot materials. Now these might be a little dark, I admit it, so I included a fairly high-resolution “sample” of what the texture MIGHT look like once i’m done with it.

The “heel” is made in hardwood, I might offer a little selection for this… or simply make it tintable I guess…

Following suggestions from friends I narrowed down the hoof base so it’s not flaring out as much, resized the horseshoe and narrowed the heel spine a little more. I also added a toe cap to the horseshoe.

I think i like the result.

I reworked the UVmap for the boot and the hoof and did a tighter stitching job, I’m still not sure about the hoof details…

8 hours later, this is probably the most productive day I have had in a long time. I got most of what I wanted to put on the High polygon model, I might add some optional straps and thing like this, but this looks very nice already.

The lacing was a royal pain in the ass and I hope that I got it right the first time.

Some extra modeling work on the chastity belt, I finally settled on cutting it in two pieces, did the textures for it so it wouldn’t leave “shadows” where things should be (it will make it easier to adjust I hope). I also added a little embossed  KDC logo near the center… because why not 🙂

I think I’m done this time, modeling wise. And sorry for the colors, I was testing how it looked with some tinting 🙂

I got tired of looking at those sculpted clothing dummies in my shop and decided to do something about them. I created two mesh based dummies, with single and dual layer (for alpha textures) and even one for system skirts (which nobody use anymore, excepted me).

I’m thinking about making a pack for content creators in order to showcase some of their products.

Here are a few more pictures for those out here who didn’t check the videos. Today I didn’t have much time so I finished and unwrapped the locking posts for the belt and the secondary shield.

Well, almost, I need to pack everything and there is a couple of parts I still need to finish and unwrap. I’m keeping this for tomorrow.

Something different today: I’ve actually recorded it all, you can watch it on YouTube if you want to. Be aware that it is more than 4 hours long 🙂