Adding Inventory Photos to an object

I love it when vendors include images of their product with your purchase, because it means I don't have to rez or wear an item to figure out what it looks like later.  If they don't, then there is an easy, free fix!  Some vendors are already doing this for you, so hover your mouse over the object beforehand.

In the Firestorm browser:

First, position your camera so you have a clear view of the object you wish you had an inventory photo of. 

(You can take control of your camera by holding down ctrl + alt, and click-and-drag with your mouse button.) 

1. Right Click the desired object (or folder) 

2.Select 'image' from the menu that pops up. You'll get a new window with a preview image called 'Change Item Image.' 

3. Click on the camera button in the bottom row.  In this window, you get the opportunity to reposition your camera as needed and take a new photo, 

4. Click Save. 

Now, when you're in your inventory, HOVER your mouse pointer over the object you wanted a picture of. Your preview image will pop up! It does not add to your inventory total, and you can't share it or use it for other things, but it's very handy. It works on everything that is an Object (that yellow cube), including BOM clothing and skins. 

 Now, go get organizing! 

Unexpected book update

Since I felt like I had the blog properly set up, I decided to tackle my dream of adding an ereader display to oneluckyelf.com for my novels.

This go-round of research turned up a little drop-in app called Bibi. It couldn't be easier - upload the files, upload the ebooks, make some links.  So. Simple.

Except for one problem.  Aggi's Tale was illustrated, and the photos and super-short chapters were wreaking havoc on the layout. I was absolutely determined to get this done, so I had to make a difficult decision, and 'kill my darlings.' (That's a writing term - just because you love it doesn't mean it will work, so take it out.) 

I went through and pulled out the images.  Then I went through again and made some other changes that I had never been happy with.  I combined some of the early chapters, added some descriptive details, corrected a date error, and removed the nonsense about Aggi's last name change.  

Why was it there in the first place? When I created my Second Life account, 18 years ago, 'Wycliffe' just happened to be the name of one of the main characters in the novel I had recently started writing.  When I saw it was a last name option, I didn't even bother to look at the rest, and selected it. I didn't realize it would come back to bite me when I started writing this series, because there was no way she'd be even related to that human character. Since I am still writing that novel, I changed it there.

One more thing I did - I began extracting references to Second Life and Linden, since I was still concerned about copyright issues. It will obviously be a virtual world to some readers, especially Second Life players, but it's now got its own name (Antares - after a giant red star) and a more generic feel.  This means I will have to update all the other stories as well, but I'll have to anyway, to get it in the right format.  

So what does that mean for the blog?  I will eventually take down the chapter posts altogether and redirect you to the ereader links.  That will clean up the blog even more and I can take out the ridiculous reformatting I did to hide them from the main page.

Enjoy the photos while you can.  I'll probably make a photo album for them later.

Character Creation

You're still ready to play after my kinda negative post back there?  Great!  Let's go!  

You don't have to pay to play, designers are very generous, and there are lots of free things available in world.  That will be another series of posts, or better yet, go to Fab Free, or Ryan Schultz's amazing blog.  There are so many resources available for shops that specialize in particulars, so I'm not going to cover those details. This post is more about general game dynamics and getting over that 'what am I supposed to do first?' wall that can bog so many people down.  

This post is about avatars. That's you, in the game.  Your character, your body, the most important thing to deal with, and one of the most complicated.  

The Name Game

Your account name will be your name in the game, so don't put in your email. 
Your first name will be whatever you put in, your last name will be Resident.  If you want, you can pay to change your last name, but you have to pick it from a list.  The list changes periodically.

There's a difference between account names and screen names, so don't feel sad if you end up being BettyBoop11126, you can still change your screen name in the game so it shows as Betty Boop.  Other players will see that above your head, but system items may still call you the account name.

The last time I made an avatar, I had to pick a body, with complete outfit, from a standard selection.  Don't think too hard about this, you can change it once you get in the game. Switch from male to female, get new clothes, get new skins, etc. You don't even have to be human. Everything you can think of, you can be, but you need something on to get into the game first.  Then you can change it.

Avatar Customization

I've been around a long time.  Left photo (2008) is an all-system avatar,
right photo (2024) has a mesh head and body.

Avatar customization is a BIG DEAL.  Everybody has to have a body and clothes (unless you go around invisible all the time, which is an option!)  Creators shunned the system provided avatar as technology picked up, and began making wearable mesh objects to replace the very basic bodies.  Annoyingly, they are split up into categories, and vendors tend to focus on only one type of item, so there is no good all-in-one option. (I may be wrong) 

Avatar parts that are sold separately:

• Mesh heads (includes eyes, ears, teeth)
• Mesh bodies (this comes with hands and feet)
• Skin for the face
• Skin for the body
• Overlayer skins for things like freckles and scars, makeup, and tattoos. - optional
• Hair 
• Nails (most bodies also have nail color and length options) - optional
• Shape - (one file for both head and body) - optional
• Genitalia (particularly for males) - optional
• Clothing - optional, but places will kick you out if you're not dressed
• Jewelry - optional
• AO (Animation Override, it controls how your body moves, sits, stands, etc)
• Physics (it can make various body parts jiggle and bounce,) - optional

Technically it's all optional, you don't NEEEEED to buy anything. But just like real life, you are judged on your appearance, and if you want to socialize, I don't recommend showing up in the bare basics.

Don't worry, Second Life does give you some inventory items to get started. If you look in your Inventory, there's a folder called Library.  In that folder are many things, but there are two options for bodies and clothes:  Senra (there are two bodies, and lots of clothes in here), and the Avatar Welcome Pack, where you will find 3 male and 3 female bodies with hair and clothing that can be mixed and matched.  Go through and try stuff on - just try not to do it in a public place.

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Eventually you'll want to spend a little money, but if you don't have much, what should you focus on?

I suggest body skins. Many generous vendors give away clothing, faces, hair, and even heads in their group gifts, or at shopping events.  These will work on the free heads and bodies in the Library.  Bodies and body skins are a bit more difficult to find at a discount. Put your money there.  

After that, mesh bodies. There are cheaper mesh body alternatives in the game (Roth/Ruth and Lucybody, for example) but most mesh clothing will not fit them very well, and you will spend more time than you want attempting to find clothes that will work.  The Legacy Basic bodies in the Welcome Pack will get you by in the meantime. These are fairly new, so I'm excited for all the newcomers that have that option.

And if you don't want to get into that level of detail? You can find whole mesh avatars in the shape of  cartoon characters, or animals, robots, and more.  I've seen tiny chipmunks and trees.  These can't be customized, and the clothing is usually molded on, but they are still fun, can look great, and you can still get around and interact the same way.  

Here's an example of what I always have on:

Mesh body parts:

Maitreya Mesh Body - Lara V5.3

Maitreya Mesh Body - Lara HUD V5.3 (this is a controller that lets me customize the body)

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HEAD / lel EvoX AVALON 3.1 (The mesh head, which comes with the following)

/ EARS / Avalon ELF (add) 3.1 

/ HUD / lel EvoX (f) 3.1 (this is a controller that lets me customize the head, will also add makeup, eyebrows, lashes, and eye color)

/ TEETH / LeLUTKA 3.1 

--

Mesh Eye (L) 

Mesh Eye (R) (These are from Avi-Glam, I use them so I can have different color eyes)

Technical items

Aggi's custom sweet and shy AO (This controls my walk, stand, sit movements)

#Firestorm LSL Bridge v2.29 (I . . . honestly have no idea, it's a game thing)

Things I wear on my Face:

Traditional Face -  GRACIELE  VELOUR SKIN DUNE  [LELUTKA EVO X] (the face skin)

Traditional Face - EAR DUNE EVOX (the ears get a separate skin, they come with the face skin)

Eyes: Avi-Glam - Essential Eyes (this is applied via a HUD)

LOGO Eyes Alpha (this makes system eyes 'invisible' so they don't show through the mesh eyes)

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Note: EvoX refers to the skin format, it is drawn in a very specific way due to the way the mesh is built. think of it like a car, a cover designed for a sports car won't fit right on a limo. A system skin won't work on an EvoX mesh head. You will see this often!)

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Head other 'Natural' details:

Fontaine Cosmetics x LelEvoX - Nose Tip Blush  [Red] (a tattoo, adds extra coloring to my nose)

[theSkinnery] Ears (LeLutkaEvoX) rose (a tattoo, adds some coloring to my ears)

Makeup:

WarPaint* Everyday Glam eyeshadow [LeL EvoX] - desert rose (a 'tattoo')

DeeTaleZ MU *Glowblush* for LELUTKA EVOX (a tattoo)

Shapes:

Aggi shape avalon 1125 (custom made by me using available sliders)

Gloom. - Finlay Skin - Raven Shape (This controls just the eyebrows)

Things I have on my Body

Picasso Babe Skin for Lara X (SLIM/DUNE) S 1 (the main body skin)

VELOUR - NECK BLENDERS - DUNE (helps the face skin and the body skin to blend properly)

Izzie's - Body Veins (medium) 70% (an overlay)

Izzie's - Body Pores 50% (an overlay)

Izzie's - Body Redness (light) (an overlay)

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PRO TIP, I generated a list of everything I was wearing by doing the following in the Firestorm viewer:

Avatar Menu -> Now Wearing -> Settings icon -> Copy Outfit List to Clipboard 

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I rearranged it all so I could explain it here.  Clothes and hair change frequently, and I usually use a hairbase, which goes on my head, and makes the hair blend more naturally into my skin.

I hope you find this helpful in your planning! 

Men, I'm going to warn you now, your options are very limited when compared to women's shops. Since I make male and female characters of all varieties, I know how hard it is to find things.  I'll try to focus a few future posts on what's available for you guys.  (I like making lists.)  

What's Second Life Like? A review from the casual player

Linden Lab's Second Life isn't a traditional online game. There's no standard storyline, there's no set places, there's no finishing or winning.  It's a virtual world, where the users create most of the content, which means Second Life can be anything.  ANYTHING.

Do you want to actually play a game with other people? there's lots to choose from, or you can make your own.  Do you want to hang out at a club, attend the theater, visit a virtual recreation of a famous city? We've got you.  Do you want to create your own fantasy world, building by building, from the blades of grass to the butterflies in the sky? Jump right in. Perhaps you want to open up a 3D store? Some people make their real life living this way.  If you don't find something you want, you can make it.

And there's one thing I can tell you for certain: THE GAME CHANGES.  Don't let that scare you. I left for a few years, came back, and floundered a bit because some things were so different, but I was able to catch up, thanks to the generosity of many other players.

Overall, the changes are small improvements in technology and visuals, but sometimes there's something big. And, because I'm a very introverted player, and pretty oblivious in general, I don't always know about features, only partly because when I first learned how to do something, other options weren't available, and I just kept doing it that way because it worked.  There are resources I don't know about, and I do hope you share the ones you know in the comments below.  I am not an expert, and my posts are fallible.  In a few years, they will probably also be irrelevant because . . . the game changes.

That's both the good and the bad of the virtual world. There's a huge, continuous learning curve, and the hardest part is figuring out where to go to learn more, because it probably won't be found in the game itself.

For starters, there isn't one program to download.  You have multiple options, not just the standard one offered on Second Life's website. I use the Firestorm viewer, for example, but there's also one called Alchemy, and another called Black Dragon.  These were approved by Linden Labs, but not made by them.

Finding places to go can be a frustrating experience, and usually you have to go outside the viewer itself to look for things.  There's a search engine within the game, but places aren't automatically registered in that system - the users must pay a weekly fee to appear there, and a lot of them don't.  So how do you find them?  I usually go to Google and do a search starting with 'Second Life.'

There is an online marketplace, but again, sellers have to make their own shops and list their own items, and a lot of them don't.  It's a poorly organized mess, and I spend entirely too much time daydreaming about how to fix it.

There are a lot of big, non-Linden-related communities you can turn to for help. Seraphim, Bellatech, and FabFree are great resources. There is Primfeed, a picture-focused social media site.  Discord is full of Second Life related communities.  There's are several active subs on Reddit, like this one, and a lot of groups on Facebook.  Poke around your favorite sites and see what you can find.

There's treasure everywhere.

What am I doing here, anyway?

First off - what can you expect from me and this blog? Randomness.

We'll start with a bit about me. 

I joined Second Life in 2007, and have been playing off and on ever since.  Much more 'on' since 2020, as I decided it would be a great way to help me visually in regards to my novel writing.  (Mostly it's been a distraction from writing, but oh, do I feel good about my world building and character creation.)

I spend most of my time shopping, building and decorating, and creating different avatars. I feel like I've gotten a pretty good handle on those things, so I will be writing posts about those. 

 I've learned more complicated things, like how to fix texture issues, how to optimize your money, where to go to learn how to write scripts for furniture, how to purchase land, and so forth. You'll read about that, too. 

Sometimes I rant.  Sometimes I get silly.  Sometimes I forget this blog exists and don't post for a long time. Often I will post about writing, my characters, and plot points. It may be confusing about whether or not I'm posting as a real life person or as my characters. 

So keep checking back.  Ask questions. I'll try to help you find an answer.

PS, I'm supposed to be writing.  This counts, right?

oneluckyelf.com

 I did a thing!

I've decided a blog really isn't the best format for a novel, so I made a website.  

Check it out! oneluckyelf.com  

The novels still link to Archive of Our Own until I work out the best way to put them on the website itself.  I'd love to have an onsite browser e-reader someday.

This blog will hopefully get used as a blog now. There's tips and tricks I want to post to a bigger audience than the people who follow me on primfeed.  

At the same time, I am also slowly going through and attempting to ease the Second Life out of the stories. I have concerns about copyright, and while I'm not making any money off of these stories, eventually I want to post stories that I do sell, and it might get confusing.

We shall see.  Wish me luck!