I’m finally back to making avatars. I’ve got a new video card, while it’s not the most powerful thing in the world, at least now I can get on SL and work without it crashing constantly.  I’ve still got to finish the critter wolf update, which was the non-mesh with the same level technology as the Wild Wolf.

I’ve also been practicing with Blender in order to make mesh. And this is my first Mesh Head. WolfHeadWIP10

The Jaw is not connected as we didn’t want to make this a rigged mesh avatar.  The reason for that is that rigged mesh cannot be resized. And we know that modders like to mess with all the different parts. The teeth are also mesh, but individual prims.  Once again this was done because we know some modders will want to make the teeth larger or smaller.

We also tend to get the occasional comments from people that the “heads are too small.”  The reality is that most “furry art” and “furry avatar” heads are entirely TOO large. And we like to keep the proportions somewhat realistic.  I guess this offends some people.  But regardless of what size you want the head to have, these are designed so you can edit them to your liking.

I’m hoping to have more free time in the  near future which will allow me to update some of our really old avatars that are in dire need of updates.

Written on March 14th, 2015 , Avatars, In Progress Builds

I think we’ve got a decent working mesh ‘stickman’ that will make the dire wolf the proper shape.  I’m in the process of testing it now.  The Unfortunate news is that with this new mesh ‘deforming’ system, that a lot of the old animations aren’t working properly.  So far they’ve been minor fixes.  But since I was already messing with animations I decided to make two fixes of previous complaints about the dire wolf:  The walk animation has the paws lifting too high in the air, almost like a prancing gait.  We’ve also heard complaints about the dire wolf ‘kicking out’ too much on the run.  Both of these issues have been fixed so far.

Some other changes we’re thinking about doing since we’re already working on the avatar:

  • Facial Expressions – When clicking on an animation such as “growl”, it doesn’t revert when the growl stops playing.  We’re looking into making the facial expressions revert when animations are done.
  • Head Options – I’m looking at giving the head the same options as are available on our Kaerwyn Creations Kaetif avatars.  (Jaw Angle, Eye Lid Position, etc).
  • Leg/Hand Prims – I’ve already changed the rear legs to look at little bit better.  I’ve *thought* about making some actual mesh legs and front paws, but I’m not really sure it would look okay with a mostly sculpted prim avatar.
  • Tail – Really never liked the way the tail looked, might try to rebuild it a little.
  • HUD Updater.

Here’s the run:

And the walk:

Written on October 8th, 2013 , Avatars, Issues and Fixes

With the latest update, Linden Labs seem to have broken something related to avatars that use deformers to increase the size of the base human avatars. This has been observed in the WereHouse Dire Wolf avatar as well as other avatar makers such as the Sea Wolf Ancient dragons. This issue causes avatars to either sink into the ground or hover over it.

Note that this only affects the Dire Wolf currently as the other Dire creatures do not use a deformer.

There is a JIRA on the LL site currently and we are hoping the Lindens will fix this issue as soon as possible.
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SH-2574

Because this is an issue with Second Life itself, there is not much we can do about it, however we have been looking for workarounds for it:

Step 1: Turn off the AO (deformer will also turn off)
Step 2: Goto Develop menu (Ctrl+Alt+Q if hidden), Avatar submenu, Force Params to Default
Step 3: Turn on AO

We are trying to find a more permanent solution to this issue, and we will post and roll out an update if we can find a suitable solution.

We’re sorry for the trouble and doing everything we can to resolve this issue.

Written on September 15th, 2013 , Avatars, Issues and Fixes

Actually I have a few avatars that I’m working on concurrently.  (I guess I have some kind of avatar creation ADD as it’s hard for me to focus on one for very long these days, but I can switch to work on another one just fine somehow).

Anyway, you only get three guesses to figure this one out!

Guess!

Written on April 18th, 2013 , Avatars, In Progress Builds

We found a minor bug in the HUD of the KC Housecat.  Any avatar with the box named KCKaetifV1CatPointed will be affected.  This bug is in regard to the pupils of the cat’s eyes on the HUD do not change in size as you use the slider. The button still changes the eye pupil size on the avatar itself, but not on the HUD.  This was the only part that was changed for this update, so if you have modified your avatar at all, all you need to do is replace your HUD.

The update is free and you can use your avatar’s update button to get the new version.  You can find the update button on the HUD -> About Tab.

Written on April 10th, 2013 , Avatars, Issues and Fixes

I had just noticed tonight, that the latest Firestorm viewer is displaying the Wild Wolf’s Recolorable Forearm texture improperly, for some reason it’s showing the soft transparent texture for the legs as having very jagged edges.  I was warned about this by one of Firestorm’s staff members a year ago, but I had never seen the bug show up at all.   Oddly enough, this seems to appear only on the forearms.  The other transparent/semi-transparent textures are not doing this.

Either way, I have tried to make a fix for it and I will probably be rolling out updates in the next few days.   The Dire Wolf, Wild Fox and Wild Tiger might need to be looked at as well, if that’s the case I will probably delay releasing the fix until all of them are ready.

I have no idea if this is a problem with any other viewers, or even if it’s just me. But I’ll try to fix it anyway.  This didn’t show up on the old Phoenix viewer.  If anyone notices an issue like this with any of our avatars, please let myself or someone on my staff know. Let them know which avatar, which texture or part, and what viewer you’re using. That’ll help us track it down!

 

Written on January 30th, 2013 , Avatars, Issues and Fixes

And as a special treat, if you’re in the Realmscapes group, you can purchase the avatar for $500L,  but you can only get it at that price if you buy it from our special sale vendor in Therianation near the telehub!  Remember to have your Realmscapes  title on when you try to buy it.  That’s $1000L cheaper than the regular price!

I don’t have it up on the Marketplace yet, as SL’s website was having some issues last night, they might have been doing maintenance.  I’ll try to upload it again today.

Written on October 20th, 2012 , Avatars

It still needs to be scripted for color changing, and currently the right and left legs are perfect mirrors, which I don’t think is appropriate for an undead wolf with random .. meat…showing.   Anyway, just thought this would make a neat pic of it.

Written on October 14th, 2012 , Avatars, In Progress Builds

Though I’m rushing this avatar, I’m worried there might be some issues.  SL is pretty notorious  for doing weird things like undoing stuff you fixed (really really likes to do this with textures, which includes sculpty textures).  But hopefully we’ll work out the bugs before the avatar goes out into the wild.

Currently there are three recolorable areas: Bone, Fur , and Glow.  Unlike the Wilds wolf, this one will only come with one texture set, which is recolorable via the HUD.  It will have the Wild Wolf’s AO.   I’m still thinking about doing a ‘snarl’ but that will only have some muscle textures on it, and actually it might take away from the cool skeletal face so I’m not really sure if I’ll do that.  Because this avatar will not have as many features as the Wild Wolf, it will be selling for less.  We have not decided on a price as of yet, or if this avatar will only be available until Halloween.

I still have to do the left legs, so don’t worry, those won’t come ‘missing’ with the avatar unless we do something extremely incompetent.  … We hope we won’t.

Written on October 12th, 2012 , Avatars, In Progress Builds

So I was working on this one all Sunday night.  I redid the stripes on all the parts except the neck. The neck has some line-up issues  and it was really really hard for me to get it just right on the orange, so I left the same stripe pattern as the orange and recolorable tigers.  However, I didn’t want this to just be a white tiger with black stripes, so I’ve added some grey here and there, such as on the face and on the back.  The stripes themselves aren’t black, but a brown.  The model tigers that I used didn’t have very many stripes at all on the chest around the arms, so I decided to stick with  that just to differentiate it from the other texture packs.  I took a comparison shot of the white and orange side by side so people could see the differences in texture.

Unfortunately I didn’t have time to finish the tail. That’ll be the first thing I do tomorrow, and then I’ll start working on the Golden Tabby tiger.  Still up in the air about the 4th one.  I really think a silver tiger with slightly darker silver stripes might be a good one to consider.

 

Written on October 1st, 2012 , Avatars, In Progress Builds, Uncategorized

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