Time Flies ...

 Tempus Fugit

Somewhere between the center of the universe and the space outside of it and sometime from the moments before time even started and the last tick of the clock, there is a place that for untold ages had been lost to everyone, a myth among the arcane and the learned.  A singular place where all universes touch and all timelines weave, this scant piece of rock in the maelstrom of Everything That Was and Nothing That Shall Be started off as nothing more than that: a floating rock in a fortuitous location.  Eventually, though, as with all secrets, this slice of impossibility was discovered.

The explorers who found it debated what would best be done with a place that connected to everywhere and everywhen.  After much scholarly debate and impassioned arguments, one choice became the victor.  The best thing to do with this infinite place was to build a nightclub.  Why, you might ask?  What could such learned and brave people be thinking?

Those storied adventurers wanted peace.  They wanted a good time, not just for themselves, but for everyone.  If they established a fort there, it would have been the launching port or the ultimate prize of wars the like the multiverse had ever seen.  If they had established as a port of call, again, billions of lives would have been wasted fighting for it.  Instead, it would be a safe haven, a place for anyone from anywhen to hang their hat (or respective article of clothing) and find a respite from whatever storms plagued them back home.  To secure their prize, the explorers harnessed the endless calamity all around them, letting those with the secret knowledge open holes in reality, lock them tight, and banish any traveller back from where they came.

Needless to say, that power proved effective.  Though created in peace, Tempus Fugit has been an object of desire for many over the countless centuries, but those days have faded.  Those who tried such a feat were erased from history, caught in endless time streams and dimensional holes.  In time, wisdom prevailed over most who knew of the place and it's neutrality universally accepted.

If you're a weary adventurer wandering the multiverse, a haggard time traveler who just needs good drink and good music, or just someone who needs it, you will undoubtedly find yourself here eventually.  Welcome and enjoy, stranger!

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Tempus Fugit is a combination of assorted themed rooms for music, dancing, conversation, drinking and even just putting up your feet for a spell and relaxing.  It is an RP-focused venue, but all are welcome, In Character or Out.  You can subscribe to the Club subscriber for updated information, or keep an eye on the event calender, but the subscriber group is the best way to learn of anything impromptu.

 

So, somehow I ended up running a club.  It wasn't the original plan; I'm more the creative type, and Tesla Tempest was more the people person.  Tesla wanted to try doing a club, and we did a fair amount of arguing over things, I didn't think SL needed yet another dance club, for example, and I wanted to keep away from things like the shoutcast boards or contest boards and the like.  We managed to compromise, but then in May Tesla's player passed away.

Tempus Fugit started off life originally as a steampunk/fantasy club on the now defunct Gossamer Gaslight rp sim.  It got resurrected for this project because, well, for a chunk of space outside of time, it seemed a good name.  The outside, the disco-y area and the garden still use Tesla's textured, and I tried to stick to plan on finishing the rest of it up.

So, let's start the tour, shall we?  The first image is right outside of the building.  A chunk of the first floor houses Atomic Faery; when we lost Tesla, I had to par down some of the expenses, and our landlord was really nice about letting me use a bit of the space for this.  But this isn't about the store, so no pics.

To the left, is the entrance to the club and the pub area.  Originally intended mostly for hanging out, there is a bar and comfortable furniture clumps.  But there is also a rug and a dance star, since it's also a good spot for doing jazz type shows and that's danceable stuff.

This is also where I should tell you about the teleport circles.  These things are how you get around.  A tip clock is on the wall above all but the shop one, so if nothing else, it should help spot them.

 

You can be surprised that the place doesn't have more purple, if you'd like.  But somehow, even though it was Tesla's favorite colour, blue ended up the predominant one.  Not sure why, it actually wasn't something I argued on, promise.

Next is the Dance Club area.  Technically, the dance club is only about half of the second floor space, the other half is the monolith themed metal-punk-goth area.  See, the different areas are also supposed to be sort of time themed too.  The Dance club is sort of tech-sci fi, for example, the pub is supposed to be kind of steampunkish, and the third area is supposed to be more primal feeling.

 

 Bird's eye view [get it?] of the dance floor.  The dark squares light up as you walk across the surface, and we made a -lot- of use of emissive masking, as well as other materials.  Eventually we'll add more furniture around the edge, but still trying to find the right pieces.

And yes, there is a throne; the primary metal DJ, since I tend to bounce all over the place musically, specifically asked for a throne.  And I really liked it when I saw it, so I nabbed it.

A little side room with a more gothic feel, and actual places to sit down, again, the main area might get some more furniture eventually, but it has to be the right sort of thing.  A surpringly few creators seem to make massive stone furniture for this sort of thing.

Anyway, after all the showing around and stuff, time to rest up in the garden.  Somehow I managed to miss getting a single picture of any of the dance stars, but they really are worth seeing, and like much of the place, I don't think that the photos capture it well.  Materials and ever changing lighting and such really do look better in person.

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Tempus Fugit is open, and will be having our first event go live sometime in October, if all goes well.  This event will be a game, a mystery, and an insight into the IC history/story around the club and how it came to be.

Also, people are welcome to come and roleplay when there isn't a live show, or if they want to take some pictures themselves.  The only OOC rules are don't be an asshole.  The IC rules are even simpler - as long as you don't annoy the powers that be [and we're fairly hard to annoy] you're fine.

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Credits

Beth is wearing a combination of Atomic Faery, Magika, Slink, Pale Empress, Pin Me Down, Fallen Gods and NV -I hope I didn't miss anyone there.

The club is possible in large part by Dysfunctional Designs, Trompe Loleil, Kalopsia, Cerridwen's Cauldron, Studio Skye, and of course the Tempus Fugit build team [Tesla Tempus and myself]. [Again, I hope I didn't miss anyone on this list either.]

A big thanks also to the helpful scripty types over on Second Life Universe, who helped me make the dance floor work.

New Beginnings - Roses

To say I'm heavily affected by music, any music, is an understatement.  Lyrics, melodies, even all the little counterpoints and such, constantly play through my head.  When I was very young, I even tried my hand at writing them down, but alas my ability to name things is a bit lacking.  My mother saw 'Homemade Melody' (I was 10 maybe?) and read it as 'Home on the Range'.  Without actually reading the music she jumped to a conclusion that kept me from doing more than write down lyrics since then.  But the love of music is still there, and at least I do understand plagiarism.

And lately, even more than usual for me, its been very hard to keep myself going.  To keep trying to pick myself up and dust myself off, to keep following my dreams, or maybe even pick back up on following them.

So how does this relate to this post?  Well, not only is there this song that I find really inspirational and sort of speaks for me, to me, however you want to put it, but it also goes around my favorite flower.  You know, the ones all over these images.  That I ran across the song is sheer chance, and happened when I really did need it most, with the death of one of my two best friends ever, and business partner in SL on May 15th.

I DJ, you see, among other things.  And when someone requests songs, I'll do my best to find them, and if they are good, I'll grab the album too.  And in this case, it was well worth it, but we'll not digress this post.  Its a Finnish band called Poets of the Fall, and I didn't actually decide to listen to the rest of the album until may, when I heard this song called 'Roses'.  The chorus is what I'll quote here.

         "So when I'm crying alone
          Yeah, when I'm cold as a dying stone

          Grow me a garden of roses
          Paint me the colors of sky and rain
          Teach me to speak with their voices
          Show me the way and I'll try again."

Bare Bones Credits:
Skin - Atomic Faery Dark Fae in Ash
Eyes - Atomic Faery Glitterdust Eyes
Shape - Mine
Hands and Feet - Slink [Casual/Flat]
Hair - Magika Serene
Cosmetics; FCD Colourbox Lips in Blue [tinted], Beautiful Freak Obake in Blue
Top - Pale Empress Lace Chemise in Black
Skirt - Pale Empress Severina in Teal [tinted]
Shoes - Lassitude and Ennui Saltrello in Ink/Silver
Rose in hand - DDD

Background stuff
Poses - Photo 1; Poise Poses GA_2, Photo 2; Desire Free Pose_02
Fountain, most trees, roses, furniture - DDD
Tree clump - Studio Skye's Enchanted Woods

How to UV unwrap in Blender

Alright, hopefully this will be helpful for those new to UV unwrapping in Blender.  This is my first time writing something like this up, so bear with me, and I am only brushing across the top of UV mapping since I'm not an expert myself yet.

As you can see, we're going to be unwrapping this greco column I made for a project of mine.  There are a lot of different ways we can do this, and since Blender is refusing to bake and the 'matcap' I was trying to use isn't going over the model in a way that looks good, we're going to try mapping so that a seamless texture will look good on it.

Let's go into edit mode, and you can see I already subdivided the base [and the crown] of the object, so that it will be easier to mark a seam.  Marking a seam just tells the unwrapper where we want it to split the mesh to spread it flat.  You can do all sorts of seams, or you can do minimal ones -  a lot depends on what you are trying to do.  The one tip I've gotten is that if you have a -face-, like on a lizard or cthulu, you don't want the seam on the face.  Instead put it down the back of the model, whereit is less likely to be seen [or, for a quad type creature, down the belly.

For this, I marked it down the back of the column, which will be against the wall, and so less visible. All you need to do here is switch select line [Hilighted in green], select the lines you want to use as your seam, then click mark seam.

Once you have your seam, just hit A until everything is selected, and we're going to try a few different UV unwrapping methods to see how it comes out.  Each one is useful in different circumstances. Also, with UV unwrapping, you can make a map like SL has for the avie or system clothing, and even combine different mesh materials onto the same map - this is what I did with my mesh wings.

So, we're going to the UV/image window, which I've made bigger for this.  When you first click on add new image, it will default to a 1024, but I try and remember to shrink it down to 512 at this stage, so I don't forget to later.  For this, so we can see how the mapping looks, we're going to select the UV grid.  Usually I use a blank, but this actually is a useful tool.

I deselected the mesh here to show how the UV Grid looks flat - rather like the grids found in SL, with colours to show where things are.

Back to the selected, and as you can see, the default it define every quad face of the mesh as the whole texture.  This works sometimes, but for this not so well, since the body of the column is super stretched - maybe this is why the matcap didn't look good.  But I try for minimalism, and we can easily fix this.  LEt's see what out uv options are.

If you hit U, you'll get a list of options.  The first one is Unwrap, so let's see what we get.  Hrm, not very efficient use of the texture - sometimes this will work though, if you're baking the texture, which we're not really covering today, or if you are working with something that doesn't need a lot of detail and you are going to be adding other maps for other objects.

But if you look at the mesh in this next window, the unwrapping is very untidy.  So let's see what the next option is; Smart UV Project.  This one, again, sometimes works wonderfully.  So, we click it and it looks lovely on the flat, very neat and tidy.

Until we look over at our 3d model.  And yes, we could still go with this, but its obvious we'd have to squish up some the texturing we did, and its not optimal for this.  So, I'm going to the next choice I tend to go with; Cube Projection.

At first glance on our texture, this is NOT optimal, the uv map goes off the grid and its all an overlapping mess - but wait, look over at our model, this might not be so bad after all, after we do a few more things.

Under the UV/Image window, you'll see the UVs tab. Let's take a look and see what options we have.

If you look up, you'll see Pack Islands, let's do this and see what happens.

Oh, that's much nicer - no more overlap, and everything is on the texture now.  And look over at our 3d model; its still cleanly wrapping, but with a bigger grid, so it still looks nice.

My next step when mapping is to use several textures that are seamless and just see how it looks.  The wood looks a little odd, but then its green and we're used to expecting it to have a stone look, not wood.

But we can use it to make sure it looks right.  Make a material and then go to texture.  Add a texture, then set it to image or movie, and go down to image [ignore the sudden change in actual texture.]

Now, go down to Mapping and select UV so it will use the unwrapping you've done.  At this point, by the way, you are mapped - you do NOT have to do this part, this just lets you look at it before importng this into SL, and it doesn't matter what texture you use at this point, since this is mapped to be optimal for normal textures.  But, if we were working with textures specifically for the mesh, like a lizard or something, this is a good place to test them, before using local textures in SL.

For my own sanity, I switched to a marble texture I had on my computer from some lamps I'd made.  if you look at our model in object mode, it looks pretty good.

Here is where the Bake area is, but I've been having trouble with it,which is another reason I'm using this method for unwrapping.  It is unreliable for me, it doesn't like me.  But when it -does- work, its wonderful for catching at least some of the qualities of blender's materials, if not all of them.

To my knowledge, the main ones of use for SL are Texture and Ambient Occlusion baking.  But with the new materials coming down the pike, the specular and normals are likely to be useful too.

And let me snag one more image of a UV tool.  When you are doing something where you need a body map, like a shoulder lizard, Export UV Layout.  Do your map, and then you can export it and work on textures in photoshop or gimp, then bring it back in and assign it, like we did with the marble texture.

Other useful UV tools - let's say you have the model mapped and set up, but want to tweak the shape.  The mapping is done, you're happy with that.  If you use Pin, it locks down the points on the map, so that doesn't get messed up.

Also, and I have no images for this, you can move the points around on that 2d map.  If you have an image, like for an eye, and the points aren't where you need them, you can shift them a little until it looks right.  I can do a more detailed tut on that if this one was useful, adjusting the UV map.

Hope this helped!

Experimental 82% Submissive 82% Bondage 71% Switch 64% Degradation 50% Exhibitionist / Voyeur 32% Vanilla 32% Masochist 25% Sadist 11% Dominant 7%

Teaching!

That's right, I'm going to be teaching a class at Builder's Brewery - starting with bangles, but think I'll offer on on how to make belt buckles too - something a bit more useful across the board. And it will switch it around a bit, so its exciting.

Wow - Tired Faerycat

I've been spending the last two days working on marketing stuff. This should say something to those who know me, since I hate that end of things. However, I love designing things, and I love sharing the things I make. So, I took a marketing class at the Builder's Brewery Monday night, was up well past bedtime, and learned alot.

Then I spent the last two days finding land for a shop, building a shop, making a million different textures with the logo, setting up vendors and just....I'm worn out. Tomorrow, I'm designing, and working on my scripting class projects and just having some me time. I've come up with some neat designs and I'm going to see about teaching a class and sharing this knowledge with others. And of course, new items for selling to those brave enough to wander into the shop.

Day 520 - musings

So, realized I've had my shop for over a year. Still not really making much. The switch to marketplace ended up causing me a lot of issues, and I really hate marketplace, but what can I do - I suppose try and find out the alternatives and try them too. Still taking classes, of course, and contemplating what I could teach, but not really sure. My best skills are not the sort that help builder's, but.....well, I'll keep an eye out.

Realized that I've changed my look a lot over the year and a half I've been alive, yay me. I'll need to get a picture up soon.