Day 1210: Countdown to Grand Opening (14 days to go)

Whew! The new Sirena sim is finally up and running with the old store. That old, boxy, mall-style store :(

I have to do something about it!

So, here's my daily adventures in building the new Sirena Hair store sim. I figured that if I blogged about it, I would actually do it. Did you see Julie and Julia? ;P

The goal: Grand Opening with new store on Sat, Jan 30. That's 14 days. There's a few challenges:

1. I have no experience building anything larger than a skirt. Ive made dozens of outfits and 150+ hairstyles, but big builds were never my thing. No building textures, no tools, nothing. :(

2. It has to be a mermaid sim. What's that, you ask? A sim with lots of water, sand, and crystals. You know, mermaidy. But there's not exactly a lot of mermaid sims in SL. No idea what one is supposed to look like. So...going to have to wing it ;P

3. This needs to happen in a running store, without annoying customers.

4. I need to continue making hair for weekly release. That's important. Need to avoid one of those "Never-ending Hairs".

5. Still tons of LM's to update. Whose idea was it to put LM's in notecards? Oh yeah, that was mine ;P

6. My BF wants me to run errands, cause he thinks I sit at home all day. Which...I do. Hey, making hair is serious work, OK?

Basically, with no experience, no design, and lots of busy work, I'll try to squeeze in this build! Here goes :)

First Day
(Getting Started)

Spent it updating all the LM's in the store. Every LM in every notecard in every hair package has been updated. 150 hairs times 17 packages per hair :P Now, customers will have the correct LM when they pick up a demo or hair from anywhere in the store. Yay!

What's left: XStreet boxes, XStreet listings, and this blog. Ugh.

After dinner, I finally have some time to build.



In the old store, I always felt claustrophobic. But it was in a commercial sim, and I needed high walls to keep out the visual spam.

Now, I dont have that problem anymore :)

Bring down those walls!



Next, the floors.

Instead of just using SL land to create a beach, I'd like to let mermaids swim under the store. So, I need to use floor prims.

To save prims in the old store, I used 20 x 20 x 0.5 megaprims. Ive heard megaprims had issues, but didnt really understand why.

When I went shopping for animated water for the new sim, I came across a notecard entitled "About Megaprim Lag" from Antreas Alter of Real Waves (who makes animated water :D). He explained that megaprims causes lag with collisions. Like an avatar running into one. Or walking on top of one.

Yikes.

So, all floor prims need to be replaced with standard 10 x 10 prims.



While Im at it, I can change the floor to a beach sand texture :)

Prims are prepared underwater, in linked sets of 4-10 x 10 prims to replace the 20 x 20 megaprims. Hey, there are advantages to being a mermaid ;)



Then, I push them up to replace the floor tiles.



And bring out the bulldozer to merge the landscape into the floor prims. Love that bulldozer!

Except, well...it's super ugly. Like Mars or something :(

Trees! I need trees.

Too late to get them tonight. I have to fake it.



Back to the ugly white tile texture for now. That way, I can replace all the floors now, then switch later, when I have trees.

Whenever customers arent looking, I sneak a set of linked prims in. Did you see that?

Finally, Im off to Photoshop to make a texture for the Landing Point, then call it a night.



Hey, who put this here?

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