Day 76: Construction Contractor

Tomorrow is the New Citizen's Fashion Show. With the deadline looming, I have no choice but to become a construction contractor and build the Sirena store in a hurry!

The Sirena store will sit on a 512M (16M X 32M) plot of land. According to the design, the store will sit on top of a pool of water. There will be 2 water towers extending into the store. These towers will enable mermaids and other sea creatures to swim in and out of the store from a mermaid pool in the adjacent plot. The mermaid pool will be built at a future date. Both humans and mermaids can then shop next to one another, not to mention adding a bit of fun to the store design. :)

So first things first: bulldoze the ground. If you own some land in Second Life, one of the things you can do is right-click on your plot of land and say, "Edit Terrain". This enables you to Flatten, Raise, Lower, Smooth or Roughen Land.

In my case, I want to Lower the land to create a hole for the pool under the store. I was able to create a hole about 4-5M below the "normal" surface (see the area behind me on the picture above). Be careful when changing the land near your neighbor: If you raise or lower significantly, it affects your neighbor's plot as well. If you neighbor built too close to the boundary, you may be throwing dirt into your neighbor's living room!



Once the hole is in place, I laid down the flooring about 5-7M above the bottom of the hole (the ground is uneven below). I left 2 holes in the center of the floor for the water towers.



This is what it looks like inside the pool below the floor of the store. The sides of the pool will be covered by the walls of the store, making it water-tight.



With the flooring in place, I installed the 2 water towers. These are 2 long glass columns with water inside. Humans can shop in the store in the open. Mermaids and sea creatures can come through underneath and into the store via the water towers.

Note that "water" is an interesting thing in Second Life. It doesnt *REALLY* exist. Or, more accurately, it exists in many different forms. It can be a solid prim with water texture, as is used in many waterfalls. Unfortunately, you cannot walk (or swim) into a solid prim. So water also comes in form of Phantom prims with water texture. An AV can walk through a Phantom prim.

For large bodies of water (like pools, lakes, or oceans), there are only prims representing the surface and sides of the water. The only time you actually see water texture is when you break the surface of the water. Once you are "in" the water, it is no different than being in the air outside the water. Of course, you often see the underwater areas decorated with underwater decor (sea creatures, coral, and bubbles). These things give you the impression that you are indeed underwater.

In the case of the Sirena store, there is an animated water texture on the inside of the water towers. This gives the impression that there is water in the towers. The towers are in fact empty (at least for now). I plan on adding bubbles and fishes in the future.



So here I am, testing access to the water towers. Also, I put the walls up as well.

Since I have a very limited number of prims (234 between the 2 plots), I opted to leave out the ceiling.



And finally, I have a place to put tomorrow's show outfits on sale.



Also, I now have a place to give you the scripts, textures, and other tools I refer to in this blog! I provide these items for free (just buy them for $0L). Currently, I have the Invisi-Prim script, Franimation FLIP MOD script, Necklace Generator script, and Gemstone Textures. Also, I am giving out the Yellow Bikini (which includes a bunch of accessories) for free.

The main goal of the Sirena store is to provide a link between this blog and Second Life inworld. So if you click on any of the outfits, they will bring up the corresponding entry in this blog.

Please let me know if there is anything else I should put in the Freebie area. I dont want to turn it into a Freebie store (there are many excellent ones already). I just want to have a place to put the few free items that are hard to find anywhere else.

To come to the Sirena store, click the Search button at the bottom of you screen, select the Places tab, and enter "sirena" as the keyword.

***Update: The Sirena store has moved to a bigger location :) To teleport directly, click here:West Sunset (160,50,22).

Today's outfit is meant to be what a contractor would wear to the jobsite. A hard hat is a must, of course. This is a prim attachment, with a half-sphere on top, a rim made of a flattened and hollowed cylinder, and a little tapered box up front just to make it interesting.

The shirt is a blue button down freebie shirt. I wanted to make a Dockers-style kaki skirt. I started making the skirt with a fancy texture and a flexi-prim skirt. But the more I looked at it, the more it didnt look right. A kaki skirt would be smooth, with no pleats. And it would be pretty stiff. Then I realized that SL has a perfectly good skirt! So I dropped all the fancy prims, and just made a standard SL skirt with a solid tan color.

Please feel free to drop by the Sirena store to grab the scripts or textures mentioned in this blog. As for the outfits, they are available now, but the belts would only fit very precise measurements: Me! A skinny average girl (but short for SL) with no butt :P) I provide the 4 critical measurements along with the outfits. However, I dont like to tell people to change their shapes just to wear a piece of clothing.

Unfortunately, the belts are tricky to resize properly. So I cant just put instructions with the outfits and ask people to resize the belts themselves. I plan on including 3 belts per outfit: one in my original size, one medium size, and one large size. Where applicable, I will also include a single prim belt, which makes custom sizing a whole lot easier.

So give me a couple days to work out the belt sizing issue. Meanwhile, if you bought an outfit but need a different size belt, give me the 4 measurements from the notecard and I will resize it for you free of charge. :)

Regarding costs, I have no idea what to charge. I am not trying to make a lot of money from this. I care more about people getting access to these outfits and enjoying them. These are flexi-prim outfits, so I set the price to $195L. Hope this is in the ballpark :)