the results of the small poll the other day had hair, skin, and shapes as the top need. breaking that down more might show hair being in highest demand. hair is hard to make, or at least time intensive, plus it’s a highly personal thing. in Second Life i had 26 “go to” outfits that i had built up over a period of a few years and hair and shoes were always the things that took me the longest to find. in Second Life there are people that specialise in each of those and can do so because of the large user base and virtual currency of Second Life
since coming over to OpenSim, i resigned myself to being happy making my own hair in a similar style to my everyday hair i had in Second Life. at first i made it with alpha textures but then decided to embrace my lack of hair design expertise and use non-alpha textures to get what i call my goth/emo wannabe Raggedy Ann hair =)
from the poll survey, comments suggested that animations were needed and i can certainly see that as an OpenSim area needing more content. one thing i loved in Second Life were musical events because dancing always made me laugh. there’s a cuteness to seeing my avatar dance in sync with others – maybe from the animations being a bit quirky, or that i can’t dance like that irl, or maybe because it got my avatar doing something while i gossiped in IM! =p
you can make your own static poses and animations with QAvimator. if you are a long time user of OpenSim (or reader of this blog) you already know about QAvimator
if you don’t know about it and are interested in learning, set aside 30 minutes and download QAvimator (windows, linux, and mac)
here’s an old tutorial i made that still applies since the app hasn’t changed - making a pose – video or flickr slideshow and here’s an old post from Mermaid Diaries which is very thorough
creating a pose, like a sit pose or my parasol pose below, is pretty simple but doing an animation is much more time consuming but might be a nice creative outlet for you (makes me crazy!)
there is another animation tool that DreamWalker likes which is newer but i haven’t tried – bvhacker - they have video tuts linked on their page (awesome belly dance video on his downloads page)
good luck and happy fourth to all you Yanks! =)
what a poser! =D
Here’s a really good and easy tutorial I found to make your own hair textures. After I followed all of the directions, I was so surprised that it looked better than a whole lot of hair textures in SL.
http://cavernaobscura.wordpress.com/2008/09/29/hair-texture-photoshop-tutorial/
Good luck!
Eliza Wrigglesworth
4 Jul 12 at 1:01 pm
bvhacker is supposed to be good at bvh for sl. although i wish there was one standard, and only one for all.
bristle
4 Jul 12 at 4:30 pm
I have used DAZ Studio for animations for OS. It is more powerful than QAvimator (but also more complex).
If someone is just getting into animating/posing for SL/OS, then I would recommend QAvimator for its simplicity, but for the power of DAZ, it is well worth switching to it when you can (the puppeteer tool is great for tweaking poses). Also QAvimator can have problems with importing some animation files (ones without the T-Pose Frame at the start) where as DAZ can handle these better.
Paul
4 Jul 12 at 10:13 pm
i think there is a feature in DAZ 3.0 that take 2 animations and does the inbetweens but i dont think SL does that. that would be nice.
bristle
5 Jul 12 at 12:47 pm
thanks Eliza, i like the way that tutorial is setup (very step-wise) and will give it a try =)
sounds great on DAZ, i grabbed a copy and played with it a little several months back but never tried doing animations, i’ll put that on my list!
hmm, so bristle it sounds like DAZ can “tween” two animations, that’s pretty cool
Ener Hax
7 Jul 12 at 9:34 am
I cant agree with the result of the poll, there are already great skin creators in OSgrid and some great shops with lovely clothes.
hair is another things, but i have some pretty nice ones, that are not copy boot!
What made me, sadly as I love our regions and the users of OSgrid, leave it and return to Sl, even if our adult regions are now open to All, and All we created can be taken on a gift box (Warning very adult content in that 1, animations included, for any to see that Open simsdoes not lack good ones, even if dated compared to Sl ones), is the lack of a physics engine that can allow any to fly a plane, drive a car, sail with wind and so on!
Only recently Sl manage to allow me to cross more then 4 sims without crashing, and now that i can sail or ride my bike all over mainland, doing 100 sim crossing straight, i can’t leave that joy!
ZZ Bottom
9 Jul 12 at 1:44 pm
the physics is a real issue for OpenSim and there is no way to deny that – i miss being able to fly a helicopter in-world – i really enjoyed that inSL
Ener Hax
10 Jul 12 at 8:38 pm