One Lucky Elf - Aggi's Blog

 I've never been a big fan of the editing poses and whatnot that go on while I'm editing items in Second Life.  I know I'm building or moving things, and no one else needs to know!  Fortunately, it's easy to turn it off. Turn off Editing Poses In Firestorm, go to: Avatar Menu Preferences Move & View View Find 'Automatically Pose Avatar During (select one or more): Deselect Build/Edit Deselect Show Visual Hints Deselect Appearance (you may want to keep this, especially if you have an AO that moves a lot) In The Second Life Official Viewer, go to: Me Preferences Move & View, Look for 'Automatic Position For:' Deselect 'Built/Edit' We're done with this tab, but not this menu. In the Firestorm Viewer: Click on the Movement Tab. Deselect 'Turn Avatar Towards A Selected Object' Click OK. I could not find this option in the Second Life Viewer. Turn Off The Select Bars This removes the annoying lines that run from your avatar to the item ...

When working on a pose involving multiple avatars, I like to cam in inside their heads (ctrl + alt + mouse-click-and-drag) and make sure everybody's eyes are looking where I want them to look.  It'll end up looking something like this: That's Milo, you can read about him in my  Aggi's Tale series. He's an unintentional work in progress. I swear he looks different every time I try to include him in a photo. He's abnormally tall for an elf, so pretty much everyone sees this view, even other elves. It also makes getting group photos challenging! The scene:   The backstory: Prince Elorhyn is a hot mess. He's taken up with humans and wizards, seems to have some sort of curse on him, and keeps slipping away from his duties and his minders.  He's frightened five Royal Secretaries in eight months, and they're running out of willing candidates. Milo Tillock was a Royal Secretary for one of Elorhyn's brothers, who recently passed. He's rated for comba...

In this post I'm going to show you a way to change your snapshot resolution in Second Life, which can make a huge difference in your photos. Basically, more pixels = clearer, higher quality photo, and that is calculated by the width times the height of the image. We can change that for photos in the Avatar/Snapshot menu. Check out the items under the Disk section at the bottom of the menu.   They offer a few preset aspect ratio sizes in the first dropdown menu. You can use those if you want.  You will be able to see what part of the screen it covers in the preview window at the top. For this example I made a simple custom 1:2 configuration that fit around my avatar: 100 x 200. That covers the area I want to photograph, but the resolution isn't nearly high enough. so I need to scale it up.  My laptop struggles to produce a photo with any numbers over 5000, so I try to keep the larger dimension around that size. Yours may do better. Time for some math! I take those n...

I love how you can customize everything in Second Life.  EVERYTHING.  From the pores on your face to the colors in the sky. Yes, that's right. You can control the sun. You have that power.  It's all in your windlight settings, or environments, or EEPs (environmental enhancement program). I'm calling it all these things because people use them interchangeably. EEP is an upgrade to the original Windlights.  There's so many options, and I don't feel qualified to talk about them at all. I've never made one. I mainly use them for photos. I set up a scene, and then scroll through the options forever until I find one I like, then take the picture. You can read all about the technical aspects and learn how to customize or make your own on the Second Life Wiki , and in the SL Forum Knowledgebase . If you also just want to play around with presets, read on. Setting the Environment in your Viewer You can find some basic environment files in Firestorm by clicking on the Wor...

You've probably seen an object called ' Facelight ' in your evoX heads folder, or sometimes they come with an outfit.  Just what are they, and what do you do with them? Read on to find out! Glowing Objects A facelight is a very basic build - an invisible round ball that gives off light. They're very helpful in creating light effects for photography, or to make shimmer effects on skin or clothing more noticeable. I use them particularly in darker scenes when I want my avatar's face to be more noticeable. Before Facelight (left)            After (right) You can either add them to your avatar or rez them on the ground.  You can add multiple facelights, move them around, and adjust their intensity. Moving Facelights Right click on a facelight in your inventory and select 'add' to wear it. Then right click on it again and select 'edit'. You'll get a Build menu and a bunch of multicolor arrows around an invisible spot in front of your avatar. That'...

What is Gacha? In the real world, gacha comes from the Japanese word for toy vending machines: gachapon. Put in a quarter, get stickers, or a ball, etc.  In Second Life, it's pretty much the same thing.  You pay a vendor display or machine (they vary depending on how the seller sets it up) and get an item from a random selection that the machine has been loaded with. These items are no copy and transfer, meaning you only get one, but you can resell it or give it to others.  A sample gacha key by Raindale Participating vendors tend to make them in themed sets, some of which become limited edition. Some of the items in the set are rarer than others. The items are whatever they want to make: clothing, home decor, houses, polish for your nails, etc. Prices range from 25L to 100L for each 'pull' of the machine. Is it legal? Back in 2021, randomized gacha machines were banned in Second Life due to gambling laws in certain countries, but machines that displayed what you were ...