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Blue’s Fantasy Products

PBR

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A new rendering system is coming to Second Life, known as PBR, or physically based rendering.  This is the industry standard these days, and it’s really nice to see LL stepping up and making the major code change needed to support it.

If you have no idea what PBR is, and you want to know all the gory details, you can read about PBR on Wikipedia.

Some of the most eye-catching effects have to do with reflections.  For example, realistic metals are one of the most difficult things to represent with the old rendering system.  And PBR makes it a piece of cake!

The official SL viewer already has PBR enabled, and it’s coming to Firestorm Real Soon Now™.

Which brings me to the reason for writing this post… I’m revisiting some of my products to redo their textures to support PBR, starting with the carbon truss scope, which I textured before PBR became the way to do things, even in Blender.

Here’s a new render with the recommended SL HDRI sky lighting the scope.

Updated render of the BF Carbon Truss Telescope using PBR (physically based rendering)

I’ve redone all the materials using what Blender calls the Principled BSDF shader, which I’ve been using in Blender since it arrived there.  Only now I can take the shader outputs directly into SL and expect the textured object to closely match how the render appears in Blender.

Some noticeable changes in the above image:

  • You can clearly see the resin overlaying the carbon fibre
  • The steel counterweights and support rod look much more realistic (and should provide realistic reflections of what surrounds them in SL)
  • The matte black inside the tube and the optical path now has just the right touch of gloss to make it look believable (nothing in real life is totally matte)
  • I’ve added a finder scope on the OTA, which you can easily remove from the scope if you like the plain look.

I can’t wait for the version of Firestorm with PBR to launch so I can try this out in SL!

Line4

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You know the game, connect four in a line horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, and win!  Now available from Blues Fantasy in Second Life, the game is six land impact, and can be played by one or two players.  As with all Blues Fantasy scripted products, it comes with updates for life.

Japanese Teapot

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I’ve released a new BF product today!  This decorative Japanese styled iron teapot would make a lovely addition to any kitchen, and would obviously be right at home in a Japanese theme.

The item is modify, so you can resize it if you like, but be aware that resizing mesh will change its land impact.  As delivered, the teapot is only 1 land impact, and fits my stove top nicely.

See it at the in-world store, or you can find the teapot on marketplace!

Updated Wind Sculpt

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I’ve been fiddling around with Linden Scripting Language for over nine years now.  It’s an interesting, quirky language, with a huge number of functions in its library (nearly 500).  While I think I know it pretty well, language and library features can always surprise even the most experienced coder.

A week or so ago, I found myself in the position of wanting to be able to rez and derez 64 linked objects.  Previously, I’ve done this by putting a script in the objects to be deleted that listened to the master script and then deleted themselves when told. But…

64 scripts, even though they were very small (about 5 lines of code and less than 6K of memory each), nearly doubled the land impact of my 65 piece object!  There had to be a better way.  And there is.

There are two functions called llSetRemoteScriptAccessPin() and llRemoteLoadScriptPin() that will allow you to load a script to an object on demand and set it to running.  I won’t give you an example here, you can see some at the links to the functions.  All this is leading up to the fact that I have an existing product on MP that also does rez and derez of multiple linked objects, and uses the old method.  Can we use these functions to drop its land impact?  No prize for a correct guess!

This is the BF Wind Sculpt, a kinetic wind sculpture based on Anthony Howe’s Di-Octo.  It rezzes and derezzes its vanes on demand.  With the old system with a script in each vane listening to the support to say “delete yourself”, the object weighs in at 13 LI.  Using the new method, it comes in at 10.  Yay!  If you own a copy, you should now have version V1.3.

BF Walk/Run Pose Stand

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Looking natural and realistic as a woman in SL means having to mess with physics objects to get appropriate breast movement.

However, messing with the physics settings can be difficult as pose stands mostly offer static poses and you need movement to get the girls moving too 🙂

Rez this pose stand and sit on it and you’ll be walking in place. Click on it, and you’re running in place. All the movement you need to then edit the physics you’re currently wearing and get instant feedback!

Free on MarketPlace or the in-world store!

BF Pose HUD update V1.1

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A long time ago, back in 2014, I wrote a pose HUD so I could take posed photographs in regions where I couldn’t rez a pose stand.  I put this on the marketplace, and it seems that this is something that a lot of people want, as I’ve certainly sold a few!

The original was very simple, with a just a “Next”, “Previous”, and “Stop” button.  All you had to do was wear it and you were all set to go.

A few years later, I wrote a better version that allows you to pose yourself, or any other avatar that grants you permissions.  People had seen some of my photographs and asked me if I’d photograph them, and instead of giving them a copy of the HUD, I wrote the improved version to pose other people.  I’m retiring the old original pose HUD and updating it with the new improved version.

As well as allowing you to pose other people, the new HUD fixes the other major restriction to posing.  You find that perfect spot, and the owner has it set so you can’t run a script!  If you find yourself in the situation where you want to use the HUD in a no-script area, simply attach it somewhere you can run a script and teleport to your no-script area, and the HUD will continue to work.

The HUD’s interface has been updated so you don’t have to guess what the buttons do any more (although the old version was pretty self explanatory).  You can see the pose navigation screen in the new ad (my, those system layer jeans look fetching haha):

And the first screen you see allows you to choose to pose yourself or someone else:

 

 

I hope you enjoy the improved functionality!

BF Bird Box update V3.0

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During the course of updating all my scripted products, I decided to chase down a report that I received about the bird box stopping for no apparent reason.  I run copies of the boxes at my house and Eden, the club that I co-manage, and I’ve never experienced this problem, but apparently one of my customers has, a number of times.  This was not a major issue for them, they just restarted the box and everything was fine, but things like this bug me (pardon the pun).

Although the script for the box employs some very sophisticated programming techniques, I was obviously still learning the quirks of LSL when I wrote it, because I found a newbie mistake with the code that under very certain circumstances could cause the script to halt when it lost track of a player.

Having found the bug in the code, I was able to create the scenario that caused the bug to trigger, and could then reproduce the bug.  So I refactored that part of the script to use “proper” LSL techniques to squish it 🙂

While I was in the code, I added a few new features.

Some people, including me, have multiple parcels on a region.  Previously, if the box detected that this was so, and that it could move objects into a parcel that it wasn’t on, it would do this.  I’ve now added a new configuration parameter called “push_to_others” that enables or disables this.

If you set the parameter to 1, it will send players to all parcels it discovers owned by the same owner of the parcel it’s on, and if you set it to 0, it won’t.

I also decided to also make the “circle” function of the box much more versatile.

The original box allowed you to specify a minimum and maximum radius for a circle that was centered on the box.  This allowed you to create a circle or “torus” that would constrain the sounds to that area.

The drawback with the original design was that the circle applied to all levels, which was usually not what you wanted.  I’ve fixed this in the new version too.  You can now specify a circle (not torus any more) per level by setting a center and a radius.  Note the circle no longer needs to be centered on the box.

If you’re using the old max_radius and min_radius parameters to set a circle, you will need to update your configuration for this version.  The documentation explains how the new parameters work, but to summarize, it’s just a matter of specifying a center and radius in the level description.  So a level with a circle might look like:


level=(height:22, max:3, chance:60, notecard:birds, center:<190,45,0>, radius:10)

Using both these new parameters in tandem is a great way to get certain sounds on one parcel and not on another without having to use two boxes, one for each parcel.

The documentation has been updated for these new features, but if you have any questions or something is unclear to you, contact me and I’ll do my best to help you out!

BF Telescope Dome

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This year at the Sci Fi Con, I’ve finally released the clam shell telescope dome I’ve promised for so long.  I originally modeled this over four years ago, and while the model worked and I have it in SL, I was never happy with its look, the pivot plates for the shells were far too clunky.

So, about two years ago, I remodeled it and I was much happier with its look, so I went to upload it on the beta grid… and I couldn’t log in!  A little research found that the beta grid had not worked since the AWS uplift project.  So, I shelved the project waiting for the beta grid be fixed…

Only a couple of weeks ago, I remembered that I still hadn’t uploaded this, and I wanted it for this Con… and couldn’t find the Blender model!  A mad search ensued, including searching my backup archives and after about an hour, I realized that it might be on an old USB stick I’d replaced.  After another 10 minutes of searching drawers (I never throw out USBs, they end up in the bit bucket drawer) I found the file!

Here’s the closed dome in my garden at home.

The dome is 100% mesh and weighs in at 8 land impact, sized to hold either of the BF telescopes.  It has a hatch, purely for decorative purposes (although I might make it avatar-usable at some stage) which will open on touch, and the shells will open on the second touch.

The shells will also open and close on telescope start and stop, which is appropriate for the carbon truss scope.  However, if you open the dome manually, the dome will ignore telescope start and stop, which makes sense for the Newtonian.  Like other components of the telescope systems, it contains a modifiable notecard to set a channel if you wish to group a number of telescopes and domes together.  Just make sure the channel notecards in each group agrees.

You can see and test the dome at my in-world store, at my booth at the 14th Sci Fi Con, or on the marketplace.

Now for the sugar 🙂  If you purchased either the BF Telescope of the BF Carbon Truss Telescope before the start of the Sci Fi Con (before midnight the 17th of May 2022) and you decide to purchase a dome, send me a notecard with your login name and the transaction detail of your dome purchase, and I’ll give send you a 50% refund!

As with all my products, there’s a lifetime FREE update promise, and be certain to contact me via any of the support methods if you have an issue.

Electric

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Hello furry friends 🙂

Most clothing you buy for Kemono is modify, and nearly all of it comes with UV maps and AO textures, so you can create your own designs for them and apply them to the clothing.  The top I’m wearing in these photos is by Wretch.  Wretch also sells a set of panties for Kemono, and they have a really pretty lace pattern available via the HUD.  But the top doesn’t have a lace option.  So I made one.

The top is tintable via the HUD, so of course I made it in white, that way you have all the colors available.  I’ll shortly have put the texture applier on marketplace so you can grab it if you like it (see link below).

I tinted the top to match one of the colors in this awesome FREE outfit from Apricot Paws.  This was a hunt item back in the Quest Fur Cover Hunt last year, and as I didn’t have Kemono at the time, I didn’t pick it up, not realizing that it also includes sizes for Lara as well.  Fortunately, it’s available for FREE in Apricot Paws in-world store, so run and pick a set up!

The set comes with a HUD where you can select from two base colors, this purple one, and an olive.  There is a universal color picker to tint the highlights any color you like, and you can save off your favorites to one of twelve save slots. I have the color set at dark purple here, but if you switch to the white highlight version, select a color, and add some glow (also controllable via the HUD), you’ll see why this outfit is called “Electric” 🙂

Additionally, there is footwear included for Maitreya, Belleza, and Slink feet, which I’m not wearing here as I love the animal legs for Kemono.  And speaking of that, there are versions of the leggings for human legs too, so everyone is covered, yay!

Thanks, Apricot Paws!