As you can see, I’m shedding my human-ness in SL, and embracing my aquatic side. There’s still a ways to go in the transformation. I need new hair, eyes, and probably a new wardrobe! (Hrmm. I guess that’s what my fortune cookie meant: “You will be doing a lot of shopping soon… in bed!”)

But, the first stage is done: a new skin! My deepest gratitude to Eloh Eliot for her Starlight skin, which I used as a base. Without Eloh’s generosity, my skin would have taken weeks, instead of a few days. Actually, I probably wouldn’t have even attempted it, as it wouldn’t have been worth the time investment.

Here’s a tantalizing close-up of the patterns on the back:

Of course, I am far too lazy to have hand-painted anything as intricate and detailed as that! No, no, this is a job for technology! I relied heavily on Blender for this project, using its procedural textures, nodes system, and baking to create and tweak the patterns. As you can see, the nodes setup for the texture is a bit complex (click to view or Flickr, where you can view notes and a larger version):

Here’s how it works. The skin starts with a blue version of my Starlight mod (which I spent several hours tweaking to resemble my old skin in the face). On top of that are overlaid two layers of patterns, which were created from Blender’s procedural noise textures (specifically, “Clouds”, and “Stucci”), run through several processing nodes. I imported the default female mesh from the Avatar Databank to provide the 3D coordinates for the noise, so that the sizes would bake uniformly all over the body, even though the UV layouts are not proportional to the body part sizes.

The overall density and darkness of the patterns is controlled by a mask (grayscale image), which is close to white in the areas where the patterns are strongest (like the back, top of the arms, and outside of the legs), and close to black where the patterns are weakest (like the face, chest, belly, and inside of the legs), with a smooth gradation in between. The mask was painted by hand, using Blender’s 3D painting tool on the mesh. I created a new UV layer and mirrored the UVs of the left side of the body overlayed the right side, so that the mask would be symmetrical.

The mask acts as a threshold for the noise pattern: wherever the noise is darker than the mask, the pattern is opaque. So, since the mask is very dark on the belly, the noise pattern tends not to show there. I chose this approach for better realism in the way the pattern fades out. Rather than the pattern just becoming less opaque on the belly, the splotches actually becomes smaller and less dense, too. (For example, compare the small of the back with the buttock in the close-up above. The mask was lighter on the buttock, so the pattern is not as tightly packed there.)

There were also several layers of nodes influencing the skin color in more subtle ways, like applying a faint purple hue to the face, chest, belly, and inside of the legs, and slightly darkening the underlying skin in areas where the pattern was particularly dense. I also applied a little bit of baked-in shiny goodness (since, as a mermaid, my skin is slightly slimy!), using a system similar to this technique described by loonsbury.

I think that covers it. I’m quite pleased with how the skin came out, although I’ll likely make adjustments and tweaks in the future, and probably some new colors, as well. But for now, it’s on to the next steps in my transformation: hair, eyes, body additions (fins, gills, etc.), and new outfits!

You can see more pictures of the skin on Flickr to see its evolution, and watch for my future transformations.

Virtual Helping Hands are having a fundraising benefit at Wheelies for continued development of Max the Virtual Guidedog.

I first blogged about the scripted guide dog last August. Since that time, the VHH team has made amazing progress! They’re playing a video at Wheelies of their recent RL presentation about Max, and it’s great to see how many technical obstacles they’ve overcome.

VHH are now trying to raise funds to purchase some needed development software so they can continue enhancing Max Voice, a cross-platform application providing text-to-speech for SL chat, as well as other assorted helpful functionality. The development software costs $550 — but the price is expected to go up drastically in mid-April, so they need to purchase it soon!

When I visited them earlier today, VHH had raised $100 of the needed $550. The benefit runs until midnight PST tonight (March 29).

You can help by donating L$ in SL at Wheelies or via Paypal at VirtualHelpingHands.org. Any amount helps.

An abstract sculpture I created on a whim. It’s 8 prims, created it in Blender in about 1 hour.

You can view it at my friend Skitty’s flower shop in Second Life. The sculpture is not for sale (but the pretty flowers are!).

Some recent posts by Botgirl Questi inspired me to get out my Femme Noir outfit: all-black skin and eyes, fullbright white hair (with signature rainbow strands, naturally) and wings.

Messing around with Windlight sky settings. You can download the preset if you want to try it.

It reminds me of an October twilight I saw as a kid. A low mist / fog was rolling in over the park. I had never seen such a thing before. The sky looked faded and ill, and one could believe that the sun might not rise again.

There are more pics, so check out the rest of the set.

We had a ton of fun at the Squidogram Relaunch Party yesterday! Check out the full set on Flickr!

Want to get your hands/paws/hoofs/tentacles on your own Squidograms? You can buy them inworld at Cuddlefish Junction, or on SLX!

I’ve posted a photo journal of my sister-alt’s visit to Loco Poco’s Island. It was crazy fun!

Check out the full set, and check out the Kids5B event!

The themes this round were Snack Time, Sour, and Liquid!

Participants were Kath Catteneo, BritneyJ Crimson, Chrysocolla Rau, and Jacek Antonelli (that’s me).

We got together on January 13 to show our stuff! Check out the rest of the set!

You can also see them for yourself in Second Life!