Then and Now - My Rezzday Post

Today is my 7th Rezzday in Second Life, which means, 7 years in a virtual world! Now with fitted mesh coming our way, we really came a long way.

I can still remember the pre-sculptie, pre-windlight and of course, pre-mesh days. Clothing were painted on textures and were always super tight. So male avies looked like they were always wearing tight leggings, with their butt cracks heavily emphasized.

Hair were huge and looked like helmets and shoes were horrifying, especially the attached invisiprims, which were partly huge and showed up, when standing on alpha textured floor. I couldn't find regular prim made shoes, cuz I think I deleted them all, when sculpties were introduced. So I had to wear sculpted boots in my "then" picture.

Famous designers those days were the ones who could paint textures with more depth and 3D like effect, since that was all they could work with, to make the product look a bit realistic.

I'm still in the process of updating all of my apparel, hair and  to mesh. I have also been updating some of my products to mesh.

Here are a few examples of regular prim made objects:

My first house on my first purchased land on mainland. All objects were made of regular prims

 

This complete look was all made of regular prims (before the introduction of sculpted objects)

There are still people who are quite against mesh, which I can't understand. Don't they have a sense of aethetic? Don't they like realistic looking stuff? I do still use non-mesh, system layer clothing, to combined with mesh clothing, but I have tried to completely eliminate all sculpted made items in my inventory, cuz though they looked better than regular prims, they mostly rezz slowly and often not properly, which looked like balls. 

Remember trying out demo hair at a super crowded store, and all you see is your face full of balls, cuz it wasn't rezzing properly? Man I hated it. Even now when you visit places, where they still have sculpted stuff all over the place and haven't updated yet to mesh, you see balls all over the place, cuz they just take a while to rezz.

Mesh pros:

- Looks more realistic and more 3D than sculpties and regular prims

- Rezzes faster than sculpties

- Lower land impact, mostly, depending on how it was sculpted

- Rigged mesh follows body movement, e.g. hair and clothing

- Easier to wear, which means, you don't need to wear different parts individually. Like with sculpties, attach collar, attach cuffs etc. The adjusting of individual parts, was time consuming and annoying.

Oh My Newbie Days...

Every New Year's Eve, I can't help but reminisce the good ol' wild west days in Second Life, because New Year's Eve is my Rezzday and I'm now 6 years in SL!

It was so exciting and totally new to me, cuz I never tried any MMORPG type of game before, so I was a complete idiot with everything, especially with the confusing User Interface and navigation. My PC back then also used to crash every 10 min. so after a few hours, I didn't want to proceed with SL anymore. I already blogged about my first days in SL when I started, which you can read here.

But since pixel bumping and money making were the most popular things during that time (which I found interesting), I went back to SL after a few days, when my PC performance improved after I upgraded my crappy video card's driver. After that, I totally got hooked and was quite addicted for the next months.

Second Life used to be really like the wild wild west, like anything goes. Everywhere you go, there were always avatars hanging around. I couldn't even change clothes without griefers disturbing me. I used to either go under water or fly up in the sky to change clothes, cuz I didn't have a home yet, during the first weeks of my SL life. I also used to camp for some Linden Dollars, so I could buy better hair.

I didn't want to buy or rent land at first, cuz I wanted to test SL first for a few weeks. I also didn't want to spend my own real money first, that's why I went camping.

During those days, there weren't very much good skins or clothing for free and there were also only few popular skin makers those days. 2006 and early 2007 was before windlight, voice, sculpties, alpha layers, tattoo layers, glow and everybody used to wear lots of bling, that my PC couldn't handle and would crash every half an hour or so.

Well we've come a long way. But I still miss those days and the excitement, feeling like a kid in a toy store. Pure freedom.. everything is possible! A great place for creative minds! Of course there were lots of scams, griefers and issues during those days. Lots of copyright violations and even pedos used to roam the grid. But that was probably the price of freedom.

I luckily still kept my very first avatar when I rezzed inworld which looked like this:

After hunting for freebies this is then what I looked like (I created the dress from the default clothing layer):

I love shopping so much in SL, especially skins. As usual, it's a hit or miss. Here are some of my main avatar's oldie skins that I re-discovered (all before windlight was introduced), a few are horrible, which I realized too late and I don't know what got into me, to even purchase them, in spite of trying out demos:

Although this skin is also already quite dated, it's still the one I'm wearing, since I very rarely log-on with my main avatar. So this is what I look like until this day. This skin is after windlight was introduced.

Approximately a month later, I created my first alt avatar which is now what I mainly use. It is also my avatar for live performances and for business. 

This is me right now, still wearing an old but high quality skin. I just couldn't find a better and newer skin that I like, with great skin detail and shading (especially the butt) and one that doesn't look like a teen:

During the first weeks, I rented an apartment at a skyline building, which was ridiculous cuz you can't set anything like media or music and you were forced to communicate only via IM because everyone can listen to open chat. 

Because I forgot to landmark the place, I had to search for my rented space, cuz I somehow couldn't set it as my home. After attempting to pay the rental box for another week and the box malfunctioning, I finally decided to buy my own land, having live performances in mind. And that's when I created C-Music Lounge. After a week or so, I opened up my store inworld and uploaded my very first product on the X-Street Market, which was a low prim microphone with stand.

My first products inworld were body shapes and t-shirts. I started doing live performances regularly for 2 years and stopped after I got tired of the lag and also because I didn't have much time anymore.

Since I opened up my business 6 years ago, all I do is just work and have basically no more play at all. Throughout this, I still very much enjoy creating stuff, when something inspires me. I create for the love of creating and not what people want. I created the microphone with stand, cuz I couldn't find decent ones to use for my live performances back then. I created my famous vanity sets, cuz I couldn't find anything like them, when I wanted one. I created body shapes, cuz I saw a lot of avatars with malformed shapes. 

I've been improving my products ever since and right now, I'm in the process of updating several Complete Avatars. A lot of people have been asking and requesting to buy some parts of some of my Complete Avatars, like hair or outfit etc. But selling the items individually will destroy the concept of exclusivity, cuz I created the items especially for the particular avatar.

I am also quite lazy to cater to a broader audience, like for e.g. if I sell hair or skins or clothes, it would just be too much more work, which will require time, which I don't have much. Right now, I basically log-on very rarely and if, then only on weekends or if there is urgent customer service required. 

The web-based SL Profile is really quite helpful for communication outside the grid, so I wouldn't need to log-on every time, just to answer a few questions quickly. Unfortunately not everyone set their communication to web-based, which is non-sense IMHO.

Anyways, I would again like to thank all my customers and I wish you all a wonderful and successful New Year! Keep posted for upcoming product updates!