Is “vortex” even a good name?
I guess it sort of fit for a vacuum cleaner…
I discovered a little trick that allowed me to be a little faster today, i carved out the canister cover and came up with some kind of tilt mechanism, this is just for a quick animation really, so I don’t think i needed to go THAT much in detail.
I’m still torn about the color scheme for the body. Black and red are my favourite colors, and they make everything look great, but maybe a little too aggressive…
Detailing and other goodies
It’s funny how a couple of basic materials and a few trims here and there turn an undefined “blob” into something that actually look man-made. I did a bunch of “cuts” and the side vents today. As usual, it took longer than I would have liked, but what can I do.
I initially wanted to make the body black, like the head, which would fit nicely with my “dark” KDC theme, but maybe I will go for a lighter tone instead, I’m not decided on this yet. It still need “something” to hook it up on it’s charging station, a control panel for the charge level and a storage tank need to be cut out of the body and modeled.
Things of the week
I thought that I would break the silence and post more pictures. It’s actually a difficult project for me because the shapes have to stay very sleek, even after I’ve cut all the panels and parts into it.
This is sort of a return of my chore system, or at least a more modest iteration of it.
Second gasmask patch
I waited long enough for this one, I was expecting another bug to come up, but it has been long enough.
I’ took a breather the past few weeks, it was too hot to do anything good anyway. I started a new project, but there isn’t much to show yet.
And this is our first gasmask bugfix.
Two bugs fixed on this one, the first one is mine, improper colors on some of the HUD buttons.
The second one we have to thank linden labs for! apparently you cannot change the shape of a prim with a script placed inside of a mesh, SL thinks you are trying to change the shape of the mesh, and silently discards it. Instead of… you know, checking which object you are actually trying to change.
So I made a new root prim to the mask, fixed the lock scaling and updated the code that set the mask textures and it’s all good now, I hope.
You should receive the update sometime during the next 24 hours, enjoy 🙂
EDIT: I actually updated the sl wiki with the issue, feel free to make a jira, I’m not touching it anymore. https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/PRIM_TYPE
HUD sneak peek
I spent the past 10 days coding the gas mask, uploading textures, making sound effects… all those things i still have to do before release. If everything goes well, I should be able to do the release this weekend, or even today; who knows.
I now have a functional HUD, it is based on the format I’ve been using on most of my products and will allow to customize the following elements:
- The main body (face and straps).
- The plastic elements (filter mount, strap clips, exhaust valve).
- The filter.
- Tinting the glass.
- Enabling/Disabling the breathing sounds as well as adjusting it’s volume.
I’m not going to offer “one way mirror” glass for the lenses at this time, you are free to do it yourself should you want to, since the mask will be fully modifiable. The reason for this is that I want to set advanced material settings on the mask and there isn’t, a way to set and reset specularity parameters using a script, shiny has been packed into the specularity material parameters so I cannot set it without risking to overwrite the settings.
For this same reason there will be a “matte” version and a “glossy/latex” version for you to choose from.
Filter and textures done.
All the textures are done, now all that is left is scripting.
And here are the obligatory pictures 🙂
Where are we at?
I’m finally done with the textures, everything has been rendered, I have working normal maps, I accented the mask by adding a metal finish to the sort of metal … strips that are used to hold it together. It has all my standard colors, in latex-like polish and in matte rubber, plus a “military” olive rubber.
What next:
- Finishing up the filter and texturing it.
- Making sounds.
- Making scripts.
It’s getting there, I’ve worked on it on it everyday this week, good progress. It’s still feels excruciatingly slow ( Nearly a month on this project ) but that’s as fast as it will go :/
I have more pictures!
I spent two entire days fighting with bad normal maps and texture UVs, I must have packed the gas mask’s textures in a different configuration at least a dozen times over the past couple of days. I THINK this is the final iteration and the texture space should be used much more efficiently.
So yeah, I do have normal maps that work, somewhat, I also have my ambient occlusion maps done and started looking around for proper materials fit for a gas mask ( beyond the obvious latex). I kinda like the army style “olive” color.
Closeup on the filter port filet, just because it’s a nice texture detail 🙂
































