Review the View: Part Two (GreenLife Emerald)

<3 Emerald Stole My Heart <3

If you haven’t seen Review the View part one, please check it out so you can get a better idea of what I’m doing here. In that post, I said I’d add more viewers as I experiment with them. Well, Emerald turned out to be so great, I thought I’d write a post dedicated just to it.

Some things I noticed about Emerald were:

1. The option to change your draw distance being displayed right on the main tool bar. So you don’t have to go to preferences every time. I also love that you can lower it all the way down to 24 m. If you’ve tried playing Second Life on a connection as slow as mine and with a computer as cruddy as mine, you know why. :-)
2. The fact that Emerald also offers RLV. (Again, I’m not going into what this is, but if you have a need for it, you’ll know.) I was afraid that I would lose RLV features if I stopped using Hippo because I had never heard anyone mention it in relation to Emerald.
3. Temporary upload of textures. You can upload for FREE and do tests to make sure it’s right. If it’s not, just adjust it and do another upload. Don’t worry about wasting L$10 every time you want to test your designs.
4. Channel selector button next to local chat bar. Maybe this was offered with other viewers, but I don’t remember seeing it.
5. Key and group member options in group chat windows. (I realize you can’t see the picture, but in an attempt to save the flow of this list, I made it very small. Just click it to be redirected to a larger version.)
6. A key on every profile page (just above the name), avatar’s age in days (next to birthday), and pop-out profile picture viewer (works on both 1st & 2nd life pictures).
7. A Radar button right on the main toolbar on the bottom of your screen. The radar gives you information about nearby avatars.
8. Double-click/point-to-point teleport. Just double click on the ground somewhere and TP right to that spot.
   
9. Double-click “wear” items from inventory. Again, just double click and they will attach to your avi.
10. Worn tab in inventory. Shows all items your avi is wearing (including attachments and HUDS).
11. Crazy amount of skins options for your viewer. (15!!!)
12. Selection beam particle effects. (Rainbow beam and 19 different particle effect options.) Just go to Edit > Preferences > Emerald > Avatar.
13. Enhanced zooming. Emerald allows you to zoom in on objects and avatars to a much higher degree than other viewers. You can also zoom in much, much, much more on your mini-map. Please see this image. The difference is amazing.
14. More detailed edit menu. Other viewers generally allow you to edit an object’s size, position and rotation up to a thousandth of a meter. (0.000) Emerald lets you edit these up to a ten thousandth of a meter. (0.0000) You can also edit flexible values and textures with more detail. And you even have a larger “shape” list within the object tab, so no more object manipulation just to get a basic shape. :-)

These are just the first things I noticed and I’ve only been using Emerald for two days now. I’m sure there’s more that I’ve yet to discover.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention. I’ve yet to have Emerald crash on me. I liked Hippo, but it disappeared on me often. So if you’re in the market for a stable viewer, give GreenLife Emerald a shot. :-)

*Items in orange are also present on Hippo.

Hot Spot Review – The Shops At Crush Row

A shopper's dream world.

I am extremely happy to present to you…..*drum roll*….the shops at Crush Row. This is an amazing area that I stumbled upon while helping out a new resident/friend of mine. We were browsing through Tuli (which I’ve reviewed and given two thumbs up (-: ) and were approached by a lady named Elysium Eilde. Elysium was kind enough to give my friend a newbie package from her store, Elymode. I followed that to Crush Row and found myself in a virtual shopper’s dream land. Let me say a few words about Elymode specifically, and then I’ll give an overview of Crush Row.

Elymode is a lovely store, offering ladies’ clothing. The thing I love about this store is that you can mix and match the pieces to create several different outfits. The colors and lines of the clothing fit together so well. At the entrance to the store, you will find a box specially for avatars 30 days or younger. This is to help newcomers to Second Life. You can see a picture of this box, as well as its contents, below. If you’re older than 30 days, don’t fret. All items in the newbie box are available to purchase in her store. :-)

Elymode Newcomer Box

Notice how the clothes are form-fitting in the perfect places to show off your shape.

Excuse the image quality. Working on a better one.

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Now let’s get on with the rest of Crush Row. :-D

Crush Row offers some of the top designers of SL, featuring clothing, accessories, poses, and more. Below is a list of some of my favorites in no particular order.

• Atomic
• Crash Couture
• Malt
• adam n eve
• AOHARU
• Exodi
• Punch Drunk
• League
• Sn@tch
• axel

The first time I went shopping here, I didn’t know what way to turn. It was like I was completely surrounded by things saying “Buy me!” Now, the only thing that isn’t a total plus for Crush Row is that the prices are average. They aren’t huge bargains…however, they aren’t sky high either. And if you’re willing to pay a few L$ for quality items, you won’t be disappointed with purchases here. A good thing about this area is that most shops do offer freebies or dollarbies (or gifts if you click their subscrib-o-matics). I took my friend and she made out like a bandit on these items.

Here are a couple outfits I bought at Crush Row.

My newest outfit.

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Top: [Atomic] I <3 Noobs Shoulder Tee Gray (You can get the shirt in several different colors and they also have a regular tee version which suits guys well.)  L$ 100

Bottoms: League Booty Shorts – Dark Blue  L$ 120

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Every girl needs her LBD.

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League Scoop! Dress – Black  L$ 345

Free Profile Pictures

I’m doing a new project to showcase the various avatars throughout Second Life. Basically, if you will let me take your picture and hang it on my wall, I’ll give you free full-permission copies that you can use for profiles, or whatever you want. If interested, just contact me (Kinani Exonar). I would prefer you contact me in-world, since I am online daily. If you must, you can contact me here, but I don’t make it here every day. Be prepared to wait a day or two if you contact me through this blog.

How To: Building Part 2 (Additional Thoughts)

The top of the build menu can become quite useful.

In this post, I’m going to explain a few things that aren’t necessarily within the tabs of the build menu. You may find them useful.

Let’s start with the top of the build menu. On the left, you see position, rotate, stretch and select texture. I touched on these in the object tab post, but I didn’t explain your options located here. You can simply click one of these options instead of holding down a keyboard shortcut.

Position, Rotate, Stretch & Select Texture

In this image, you can see what your screen will look like if you select these options. Rotate and stretch can be done with keyboard shortcuts. Position and Select Texture must be done by clicking the options within your menu.

Let’s touch on select texture for a moment, since I didn’t talk about this with the texture tab. Select texture allows you to place multiple textures on different sides of one prim. To do this, simply select your prim, and click Select Texture. After you’ve done this, click on a side of the prim. When you have changed that texture, choose a different side and continue.

Here you can see multiple textures on one prim.

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Let’s move on to Edit Linked Parts. This is used when you have an object that is composed of 2 or more prims. To link parts, select a prim, press and hold CTRL, and select the rest of the prims you want to link. When you have them all selected, press CTRL+L. (Note that the last prim you selected will the base prim of the object you’re creating.) When you have prims linked and you only want to edit one, click Edit Linked Parts and click the prim you want to edit. To unlink, press CTRL+SHIFT+L. If you have the entire object selected, all prims will be unlinked. If you use edit linked parts and select one (or a couple) prim(s) then only those selected will be unlinked, while the rest stay linked together.

Below this, we have Ruler. These options will show coordinates in a different manner.

Now, let’s go to the right side. Here, we have Stretch Both Sides, Stretch Textures, and Use Grid.

Stretch Both Sides may be a bit difficult to put into words, but if you play with it, you’ll realize what’s going on. Basically, when you manually resize the object, instead of growing in one direction as in ___ it will grow in both directions like ___ .

Stretch Textures is similar in theory. When you resize the object, if Stretch Textures is selected, the texture will remain in the same proportion to the size of the object. If it’s not selected, the texture will change how it repeats on the object’s surface.

Finally, Use Grid is basically….a grid. :-) You can use the grid by, obviously, having it selected and clicking the arrows you see at the corner of your object. See the image for more detail. If you don’t have Use Grid selected, you will see something similar to the second image, and be able to move the object freely.

Using the Grid

Without "Use Grid" Selected

Building Tab Four: Texture

This is the texture tab on your build menu.

If you haven’t already, please see the Building Series Introduction so you have an idea about the organization of this and following posts.

The texture tab allows us to manipulate the textures on prims and objects. The first things we see here are “texture” and “color” so we’ll cover those and then move on through the rest of the tab.  I won’t cover every single detail, in the interest of keeping with the “beginner” level of this blog. If you want more information on something, try checking out the Second Life wikis. Now, the texture of a prim is basically an image that you want to display on its surface. To change this, simply click on the square that looks like a piece of wood. You’ll get a pop out menu that looks like:

Texture Menu

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This is basically a copy of everything in your inventory that can be used as a texture. (I’ve crossed out some folder names to protect the privacy of myself and friends.) If you want your object to be without a texture, select blank, underneath the texture preview. To select a texture from your inventory, just open a folder and click on the one you want. You’ll see a preview within the menu where the wood texture is showing now. After you get the texture you want, just click select. If at any time you wish the change back to the default texture, just open this menu again and click Default underneath the texture preview.

The color is simply the color you want the texture to be. Simply click on the box where it says “color” and you’ll get a menu that looks like:

Color Menu

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You can select a color from the presets at the bottom of the menu. Or, you can use the palette you see, along with the shade selector on the right side. You can also play with the numbers on the left. If you create a new color that you don’t have in your presets, and want to keep it for future use, simply drag it from the larger preview box (on the left) down to one of the preset boxes. Doing this will replace the preset color with the color you just created. When you have the color you want, just hit select.

Now let’s move to the right on the texture menu and look at Transparency, Glow and Full Bright. These names are really pretty straightforward.  Transparency can be set from 0 to 100 and you can see these two extremes in the following image.

Transparency from 0 (left) to 100 (right).

These views are from the build menu, so you’ll be able to see where the box is when it’s totally transparent. Otherwise, you won’t see it at all.

Now, let’s move on to Glow. This can be set from 0.0 to 1.0. It simply makes your object glow. :-) If you’d like more info, please see http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Glow.

Next, we have Full Bright. This simply means that there will be no shading on your build. if you look closely at the transparency image, you’ll see the 0 transparency box has a darker side than top. If full bright were on, all sides would be the same shade as the top.

Let’s move on to Repeats Per Face. This simply tells the program how many times you want the same image to show up on each side of the prim.

1X1 (left) and 3X3 (right)

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To manipulate the texture more, you can use the rest of the options. Rotate the image, move it left, right, up, down, whatever. (Do this by playing with offset.) Have fun! :-)

**I will not be creating a post for the content tab for two reasons. The first is that content generally involves scripts and that is a bit more advanced than I’d like to go with this tutorial. The second is because there isn’t really a lot to say about the content tab. It’s just where you place things you wish to put inside the prim.

Building Tab Three: Features

This is the "Features" tab on your build menu.

If you haven’t already, please see the Building Series Introduction so you have an idea about the organization of this and following posts.

The features tab has two basic features that you can edit. The first is “flexible path” and that will make it a flexible (flexi) prim. Common places to see flexi prims are hair and skirts. Flexi hair is a huge business within Second Life. Flexibility allows the hair to look much more realistic.

Now that you have an idea of what flexible path means, let’s explore your options. As in a previous post, I will play with some settings and post images to show you the effects. I’ll provide a brief explanation with the pictures. However, I’m not going to go through every single option because flexi prims are something that you need to experiment with. Just play around until you get the idea.

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Softness is, in some ways, how flexible your prim will be. It's how smoothly the prim will flow.

Graivity dictates how the prims weight will respond. This image shows a prim with a higher gravity value.

Wind will set the prim to respond to wind in the environment. Wind changes speeds and directions, which will make the prim flow differently at different times.

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Now we have the Light option. This one is very simple. It allows you to turn a prim into a light source. (If you cannot see light sources, try changing the time of day to midnight. [World>Environment Settings>Midnight] If you still can’t see them then you probably need to change your graphics settings. [Edit>Preferences>Graphics])

This is what the menu and prim look like once you have added light.

The light feature options are pretty simple and straight-forward. You have light color, which is what color you want the light to emit. You have light intensity which ranges from 0.0 to 1.0. Next is radius. This basically determines how far the light will reach. This can range from 0.0 to 20.0. Last, you have falloff. This is basically how sharp the light edge will be. It’s kind of like

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Now, that’s about all there is to the Features tab. Tab four coming soon. :-)

Building Tab Two: Object

This is the object tab of your build menu.

If you haven’t already, please see the Building Series Introduction so you have an idea about the organization of this and following posts.

OK. The Object tab. For this tab, we’re going to go down the left side and then we’ll go down the right side instead of trying to jump back and forth, doing the entire thing from top to bottom.

So first, we have the options

• Locked: This locks the object in place, keeping anyone with modify permissions from moving or editing.
• Physical: This subjects the object to gravity. This is great for objects such as balls, or anything you want to be able to move without editing. Beware though, you don’t have total control over where the object will go. When physical is turned on on an object, you can walk into it and “kick” it, you can click and drag it around (be very careful doing this because the faster you drag, the farther it will roll when the mouse is released).
• Temporary: If you set an object to temporary, after you rez it again, it will disappear within approximately a minute. One use I’ve seen for this is volcano lava. The volcano shoots out lava and rock. The rocks disappear after a short period of time. (Go to http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ichelus/161/134/73 to check out the volcano.)
• Phantom: This sets the object so that avatars and other objects may pass through it. For example, you may wish to make water phantom so it doesn’t look like you’re walking on it instead of in it. (If you’re linking phantom prims with non-phantom prims, the entire object will take on the property of the base prim. This means if you want the object to be phantom, link the prims in such a way that the base is phantom. If not, link them so that the base is not phantom.)

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Now let’s move on to position. This (as nearly everything within Second Life) is measured in meters. You can dictate position up to 1/1000th of a meter. Position tells you where the objects will sit. You can use the arrows on the object to move it (click and drag them), you can use the arrows on your build menu that are located beside the numbers, or you can type in a number. I do not recommend typing numbers when you’re first starting out building. Wait until you have a better grasp on the size of your building area and the size of your objects or you may send them out into space and never find them again. Also, if you use the arrows that are on the objects, never use an arrow that is facing directly toward or away from your camera. If you do, your camera becomes very unstable, making it easy for the arrow to slip and for you to lose control. Again, the object might get lost, never to be found again. An easy way around this is to simply rotate your camera.

Next, we have size. Prims start out at 0.500 m on all axes. The smallest they can go is 0.010 m. Again, you can use the numbers, the arrows beside the numbers in the menu, or you can press and hold CTRL + SHIFT and click & drag one of the points that pop up around your prim.

Then comes rotation. You can rotate your prims on any or all of the three axes (X, Y, Z). You can use the numbers or the arrows on the menu with this too. You can also press and hold CTRL and click & drag one of the circles that pop up around your prim.

For any of the three of these, I suggest using your mouse if you’re building based on how you see it. For more precise builds, I suggest using the numbers.

At the bottom, we have material options. These options are wood (default), stone, metal, glass, flesh, plastic and rubber. Different materials have different properties in collisions. I find the best way to “see” these differences is to create a physical ball and play with the material. Try them all and you should see differences in how the ball reacts.

Now we move to the right side. First up is building block type. This is the basic shape of the prim. I’ll show you your options in the pictures below.

With the exception of trees and plants (which you won't be able to create unless you own the land) here are all the building block types.

When you first click create or build, you get this pop up. Here you can also select different building blocks.

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After you’ve selected and made sure of the shape you want, we move on to Path Cut. Basically, this cuts a small chunk out of the prim. Where exactly this will come from depends on the shape of the prim. I would suggest playing with the up and down arrows (slowly) instead of punching in numbers. Just play around with them a bit and watch how your prim changes.

Next, we have Hollow. This simply makes your prim hollow. You can decide how thick you want the “walls” of your prim to be. The smaller the hollow value, the thicker the prim.

You can also set hollow shapes. Basically, this is the shape of the hole. Have a look:

Hollow Shape Options

We also have more options listed below this. Depending upon which building block type you have selected you may have more or less options than are in my image. I’m only going to work with the ones that show on the “box” for now. Don’t be afraid to play with them to see what they do. A word to the wise however. If you’re seriously working on something, create a copy of it before you do any experimenting. A quick way to do this is press and hold SHIFT while you click and drag an arrow. You’ll see a brand new copy next to the old one. Also, instead of trying to explain to you what the options here do, I’m going to play with them a bit and give you pictures. It seems the easiest way for all of us because I’m sure no one would be able to understand my gibberish if I tried to explain these options.

Twisted to 180 degrees.

Tapered to approx. 0.75

Top Shear to 0.50

Sliced to approx. 0.7. You could just as easily change the size of your prim. This keeps its size, but it appears smaller. This is useful for doors.

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Building Tab Two: Features coming up next! :-)

Building Tab One: General

This is the "General" tab on your Build Menu

If you haven’t already, please see the Building Series Introduction so you have an idea about the organization of this and following posts.

The General tab is just that. It contains the general information for the object you are working on. After you have rezzed an object, this is what you should see. If you don’t see this entire menu, just click on the More>> button. (It will be in the same place where the <<Less button is on this image.

The first things under the General tab are Name and Description. This is where you can type the name of your object and a description. For example, say you’re building an elephant statue. The name might be “Elephant” with a description like “With moving trunk and elephant sound”… This, of course, would be an advanced build, but it’s just the first thing that popped in my head as an example.

Under these, you will see Creator, Owner and Group. Creator and Owner are not changeable from this menu. The only way to change creator is to link your build to a prim created by someone else with the other prim as the base. Don’t worry about this yet. The owner will automatically change when/if you give someone a copy of your build. Your copy will still have you as the owner and their copy will list them as the owner. Group can be set, as you can see. Just click “Set…” and you will get a list of all the groups that you belong to. Simply select a group and there you go.

Under these, as you can see on the image, you have the number of objects selected and how many primitives are in said objects. To select multiple objects, press and hold CTRL while you click on the objects you want to select. This information is useful if you are on a prim limit and want your object to be under a set amount of prims. (To link prims as one object, select all the prims you want in the object and press CTRL + L. The last prim you select will become the base.)

Below this, you have your permissions. This will say either you can modify this object or you cannot modify this object. If you can modify the object (if you built it, you will always be able to modify it), then you will see all the options that are shown in the image. If you can’t, you will be more limited. Let’s look into your options.

• Share with group. This will let you deed the object to one of your groups. To do this, just check the box and then click “Deed…” and choose a group.
• Allow anyone to move. This means that any person who comes in contact with your object will be able to open the edit menu and move the object wherever they want. Use this cautiously.
• Allow anyone to copy. This will set the object so that anyone can take a copy by right clicking and selecting “Take Copy” from their pie menu. If you want to give this object out free of charge, this is one way to do so. If you plan to charge others for this object, do not use this feature.
• Show in search. This one’s pretty simple. This will set the object to show up when others search for it or use keywords related to it.
• For Sale. If you want to sell this object, check the box and then type in a price. Select if you want to sell only the original object, copies of the object, or only its contents.

Below this you see “Next Owner Can:…” This is simply asking you what you want other people to be able to do with this object in the even that you give or sell them a copy. Select if you want them to be able to modify, copy or resell/transfer the object to someone else. Be careful with this. If you set it to allow them to do all three, they will have the power to do some dirty business.

Last but not least, we have what the object should do when people left-click on it. The default is “touch” and this will do nothing unless you have a script in it to react to touching. Other options from this drop-down are:

• Sit on object (Which is good for chairs, etc.)
• Buy Object
• Pay object (Which is similar to buy, but can be used for donation boxes, etc. where the person paying will not receive anything for their $L)
• Open (Which will bring up a menu allowing people to see what is inside the object and copy its contents to their inventory. This is good for selling things in boxes.)
• Play and Open Parcel Media (These are used on areas that have media set to play, like music and videos.)

If you’re ready to move onto the next tab, please follow me. :-)

How To: Building (Let’s Make Something)

Here you can see what the building menu looks like, along with a very basic prim.

The following will (hopefully) give you a quick start on building. This is the first step in my building how to’s. I’ll do more in-depth things as we go on and maybe even one day get up to scripting, if I ever figure out how to script. :P But for now, this post assumes you have no prior knowledge (or very little) of building.

First thing, you need to know where your building menu is and what a primitive (prim) is. To access your build menu, simply click “Build” on the row of buttons at the bottom of your screen. You can also right-click on the ground and select “Create” from the pie menu that pops up. Make sure you are in an area that allows rezzing of objects. You cannot create objects in an area if you see a box at the top of your screen with a…

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A Primitive is a basic building block. It’s one piece of the puzzle that will become your final build. The box you see in the picture is a prim. Here are all the basic prims you can use to build. These may be twisted, stretched, turned, pulled, pushed….basically altered any way that you can think of. I’ve changed the color on some of them. The dark ones are objects, like a cylinder, that have holes through them.

OK, let’s get started. After you build your first prim, you should see a menu that looks a little something like the one below.

It's intimidating at first, but it's really very simple.

Let’s work our way through these tabs, shall we? In the interest of readability, I’m going to create a post for each tab where I will explain the content. I’ll link all those posts back to this one for easy navigation.

• Building Tab One: General
• Building Tab Two: Object
• Building Tab Three: Features
• Building Tab Four: Texture