Day 67: Chaos in the Jungle

Im in the ruins of Lauks Nest today, a beautiful and lush jungley rainforest in the middle of Second Life. And since I have my crazy skirt on today, I decided to try out all of my other modeling poses as well :)

Lauks Nest is a magical place of waterfalls, pyramids (the Mayan-type), wildlife, and plantlife. Greenery surrounds you everywhere you look.



Find the hidden entrance to the big pyramid! OK, its right behind me, right through the spiders web....Eeeewwww...Ick! Ick! Hope I didnt get any spiders on me!



Heres just part of the giant beautiful waterfall. Theres a wooden walkway that follows the waterfall and all the way around the back of Lauks Nest. If you follow the path, it feels just like you were out hiking!



And dont forget to check out the starry skies at night! You can Force Sun to Midnight if you cant wait. However, if you wait for the natural night at the sim, you can see bats flying about...Eeeekkkk!



And dont forget to check out the wonderful treehouse! Theres a set of elven drums there, so bring some friends and bang away! :)

If you have not seen Lauks Nest, then its worth a trip to see what imagination can make happen in Second Life. To come here, click on the Search button at the bottom of your screen, select the Places tab, and enter "lauks" as the keyword. The SLURL is Alviso (162,152,64).



You may have been wondering, what is that thing Nat's wearing? OK, I admit its not a traditional outfit you wear to a rainforest (did the hooker heels give it away? :P) Actually, its not a traditional outfit you wear anywhere, except in those New Age dance festivals. Yep, thats what I modeled it after. It is an experiment with semi-transparent flexi-prims on skirt panels (that and I need to blow some steam, cause the Miss SL thing next week is stressing me!). I named the skirt: Chaos :)

Until now, I have avoided using transparent and translucent flexi-prims panels because they cause weird display issues. The panels bounce back and forth on their own, even if there is no movement. So I wanted to see what causes it and if there is anyway to avoid it.

So I broke out the Necklace Generator once again. OK, it wasnt very bad this time: I just used an old set of 8 panels, so I knew they would come out. :) When you create skirts with the Necklace Generator, I would recommend that you save the panel and the script in a folder, so you can reuse the settings later (at least as a base to build other skirts).

I created 2 textures for the skirt panels that are 20% transparent (there is a 20% grey in the Alpha Channel). One had several "fabric" patches on it. The second had some lines that matches the top of the outfit.

When I applied it to the skirt, it looked OK. Nothing weird happened. Then I started moving the panels around and discovered that the bouncing tends to occur when there are serious overlaps between 2 or more panels. The transparent panels are fine as long as their do not run into another panel (its ok even if it is just a little bit). All it takes is a lot of shuffling to make sure the panels provide the need coverage without overlapping one another.

Then I started tweaking the panels to see what effects I can create. If you set the "Softness" to 3 under "Flexible Path", you can Twist the flexi-prim to your heart's content (I suggest you stop at 180 before you hurt someone :P). Those are the crazy panels sticking out the side of my skirt! :)

So I *think* I understand how flexi-prim skirts behave when transparent. Now I can try making skirts with lace like I have been dying to do! :)



Just sitting on a giant mushroom in my Chaos skirt, admiring the sunset :)








P.S. Yep, you guessed it...another video! Enjoy :)