Day 155: Home and the Miss Second Life Finals Gown

Im so glad the Miss Second Life pageant is over! *Whew*

Ive written about sims all over Second Life. Some of you asked about 1 place in particular: my house. So welcome to my workshop :)

This is actually where I spend most of my time in Second Life. This is where all the outfits and other stuff are made.



Its actually a non-descript skybox.

Since I need all the prims I can get my hands on, I had to be extremely prim-wise. My workshop is a hollow 10M by 30M tube made from just 7 prims.



The inside walls of my workshop is transparent. Thats the cool thing about SL: you can make things transparent on just one side :) This helps me feel less claustrophobic about being cooped up in a sealed box all day long :P

Behind me is a white area, where I take pix of my clothes for tutorials and the display boxes.

Even the mermaid art on the wall serve a function: I store backups of my Inventory in these prims.

What, you dont backup your Inventory? You really really should! I have heard many stories of people losing their entire Inventory. Thats everything, including your shape, your skin, all your clothes, and everything youve made. Without your Inventory, you will look like Second Steve or Second Sara straight from Orientation Island! So backup at least your essential items somewhere in a prim!



I also have a few tools in my workshop, including the LoopRez Deluxe, the freebie version of LoopRez script (for making multiprim-section jewelry), a height detector, and an Avatar Radar (if someone comes within 100M, at least I can put some clothes on :P).

To come to my house, click on Search, select the Places tab...hey, wait a minute! Its my house! Cant a girl get some privacy around here? :P



My Miss SL Finals gown is based on the Ascot Dress, with modern updates to make sure that you cant wear it in Caledon. Think of it as Eliza gone bad :P

Want to see the cool features of the gown?

First, notice the glow on my face? No, Im not pregnant! I mean glow, as in a light shining on my face.

Go ahead and Edit a prim. Go to the Features tab. Right next to the Flexible Path (flexi) settings are a number of settings for Light. This controls the Local Lights, and enable prims to give off light (like a light blub).

I put a small glowing sphere several inches in front of my nose. Why did I do this? Take a look:



This is me without the light, at noon.



This is me WITH the light, at the same time. Big difference, isnt it? It guarantees your face will be well lighted no matter what time of day. But this only works if someone's SL client has "Nearby local lights" enabled (under Preferences/Graphics Detail/Lighting Detail).

The inside of my hat (the peach part) has "Full Bright" turned on. This gets rid of the shadow caused by the face lighting.

There were also significant adjustments to both the hat and prim hair to make sure that the hair stays inside the hat. Not an easy thing to do with this big hair! :)

Next, the neckline. The little lacy bumps along the neckline are real prims! They are not drawn in as a texture. They are prim toruses (tori). 50 of them, all the way around. They were generated with LoopRez and hand positioned (please dont try to write a script for this, Ged :P)



The necklace was the same one I wore at the Formal Event. Except it has been reshaped to make it more narrow. Thats a 56 prim necklace, adjusting 1 prim at a time :P



The gown has a single sleeve on the left side. As I learned when making the Clubbing Dress, the SL texture templates do not support a single sleeve. Anything you draw in the arms area will show up on both arms.

So this sleeve is actually a prim attachment, similar to some robot avatars. Instead of steel, this is lace :) It matches the dimensions of my arm, so it doesnt appear too puffy. At the top are 20 more prim torus bumps to simulate the lacy trim. And below is a slightly modified version of the sleeve from the Mina Gown.



The skirt is based on the Formal Event Gown. Because this gown is white, the seams are a lot more noticeable (thats why I made the first gown black :P). Each panel has been carefully positioned to start at the same place at the waist. The pattern and SCALING between the panels also match up to give a nice flow of texture across the panels.



The back of the gown has a 4-panel bustle. This was done to hide the heads of the 4-panel train in the lower portion of the gown. Both the bustle and the train flap about nicely when I walk around.



And finally, the shoes.

The bottom part of these shoes are actually built from the base of the infamous Dino Boots. I reshaped them a bit by adding some sides and opening the front. I also gave them a black and white texture to match the rest of the gown.

And thats why it took over 4 days to make this outfit. And this isnt even the first candidate. Here are some of the other candidate outfits:



This was the leading candidate. It is the Formal Event Gown with a new train, sleeve, and necklace. The Black skirt and red lining is nice, but I couldnt add ribbons and other things without ruining the outfit.



Mermaid texture? Too weird... :P



Here was a good one: use a modified top from the Dark Opera Gown, then make a semi-sheer skirt based on the Chicago Dress. Except this outfit had serious transparency display issues, and would have required a belt (there was no way to flow the texture).

In the end, the Ascot Dress looked best. And Im so glad I went with this design.

Thank you everyone again, for all of you help, support, and encouragement. This has been an incredible experience, one I will never forget :)

BTW, in case you are interested...next year's Miss Second Life 2008 Pageant will start in a month or so. Anyone interested in signing up? :)



Blue Poseball, darling, you'll still look at me the same way, wont you?