Saturday, October 1, 2011

I think it's funny that in 2007, when I first did my Egyptian God masks, it was right before sculpted prims hit the main grid. Now, with mesh having finally been implemented, I've completed my Egyptian God masks all over again. At that time I felt they were the best I could possibly do with regular prims, and now the same again with sculpts. I feel like the Gods are some sort of term project, like the test to take at the end of a semester to show what I've learned.

For the past month I've been working on developing a work flow for mesh, as it's not as simple as just making something that's not a sculpt. Since mesh was in beta, I've been learning how to make a clean base mesh, how to texture it, work with new programs and generally get out of my comfort zone. But, I admit, I let it slide for a while. Now that it's on the main grid, I had do to some crunch time to get everything perfect.

I got a bit excited at first, and tried to jump into the deep end (weighted cloth! multiple texture faces!) and got overwhelmed. I didn't make anything worthwhile. So, going back to basics I set simple goals for myself: neat geometry, nice UV's, low polygon count.

I'm starting off simple.


This mask is just one prim. At the level of detail shown, it's only 446 polygons which makes it less than half of the number of a single sculpt! This is just be beginning, too. I'm very excited to start playing with weight painting (items that will move when the avatar does) and with different shapes and forms of masks. I think I'll be a lot more adventurous now that I no longer have to treat a mask like a puzzle where the pieces must fit together perfectly. And, with more available detail in the textures, I might even do more interesting and detailed things with surfaces.

But for now, the Farafallina Puro is available to all with mesh enabled viewers. This includes the main viewer 3 and the latest Firestorm.


Oh! I'd also like to specify that this mask is not weighted to the avatar skeleton. This means that the mask is able to be stretched, moved and deformed just like a sculpt. If you've had a bad experience with not being able to modify a mesh item to fit on your avatar, you won't have it with this one.

You'll need a mesh enabled viewer, such as the most recent official LL release or the most recent Firestorm. Try the demo if you're not sure!


Out now at the store: 125L

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