Straylight / Botanical

Hello everyone! I’m back again! 10 days after I said I would lock myself in my room and make new trees, I return bearing gifts! Well… at least the kinds of trees that you may find gifts UNDER.

BOTANICAL UPDATES!
1. Fir Trees! After a lot of cursing, uploading, additional cursing and the occassional binge on a certain energy drink that “gives you wings”, I am proud to present a line of green fir trees that I am happy to call Botanical’s. I think you will find these very singular looking and beautiful. That might actually be “quadingular” (grammar students, please do not lynch me!) as they come in 4 sizes: Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large! Sold as Mod/Trans, you can purchase singles or a pack of all 4. Prices start at L$95… yea!

2. Ok… make that “octingular”, re-read the 1st announcement and replace “Green” with “Snowy”. Yep! The same fir trees I just released have snow frosted brothers and sisters!

You can find the fir trees front and center in the Botanical store (on the middle island of the Straylight sim) or, if you explore, you’ll see their new home in the snowy north eastern section of the sim. Sorry, you’ll have to fly there for right now. We have construction workers (points at self) working on paths to the new areas.

In case you haven’t noticed, the center island store is getting pretty tight (as in “crowded”) As I keep making things to bring Straylight closer to my vision, and make those items available to *everyone* that wants to take a little bit of Straylight home with them, I have to keep pushing out the boundries of the island store. It doesn’t take a scientist (and heck… I’m not even a botanist!) to realise that something has to happen, and soon. You’ve all seen the massive tree in the dead center of the sim, and some of you may have wondered at it’s name… the “Telehub Tree”. That tree was planted a while back when I realized that I would have to have a new way to let people shop, while still enjoying the beauty of Straylight.

Very soon, the TP area of Straylight will be remapped to the middle of the Sim, and you’ll REALLY get a shopping adventure. The main map of Straylight is set up for various “themes” (I’m a theme builder, sorry… it’s just how I roll) Each theme is mapped to a particular section of the Straylight sim, and very soon, there will be a vendor board in each section, selling the items you find in that particular section. I am starting this with the Winter theme, by making the new firs available at the top of the mountain, as well as (for the time being) the center of the island.

Teleports will be made available (via the Telehub tree) for those who know exactly where they want to go, or you can explore the island and pick out things you like. The vendors will only be in one area of each theme, so as not to clutter up the beauty of Straylight, and make things a little more convenient for everyone.

STRAYLIGHT UPDATES!
It’s time to skate! If you’ve been up to the snowy peaks of Straylight, you’ll have seen our own little ice pond! I’ve added a Moopf skate vendor to get the fun started Now that I’m back in world again, look for some more nice diversions in that section of the sim.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/straylight/
11 new members and 83 new photos in 10 days for the Straylight Flickr group, bringing us to 184 members and 1246 photos. The re-release of Windlight on the First Look SL client has spawned an amazing array of gorgeous new additions to the family. Thanks everyone and join me in saying “Welcome!” to our new members!

http://www.b-places.com/top_locations.aspx
The SL community at large is still voting and still pushing Straylight towards the top of all the places to be in Second Life!
10 days has brought 60 more votes, for a total of 1306, placing us at #5!
There is a lot more coming to Straylight and I really hope I keep up with everyone’s expectations!

Straylight Botanical Update Group
614 Members! We’ll have our own Straylight Army before too long!

As you all know, the Straylight Botanical update group is NOT an SL group, and will not eat up your precious group slots. What you may *NOT* know is that this awesome piece of technology is called the “Subscribe-O-Matic”, created by MSo Lambert. A LOT of merchants have found out that you can get your word out a lot easier if you make it easier for people to hear that word. One click sign-ups, web administration, RSS feeds, the list goes on! Mistah Lambert has even made it easy for you to take the Subscribe-O-Matic for a test drive with a free 14 day trial. I believe in this system so much, I not only purchased it immediately after my own trial was up, I’m setting up an affiliate vendor to make it easy for you to start. Look for it right beside the Botanical Straylight update group sign.

That’s all for now! I have to go catch up on all my friends and shake off this energy drink buzz!

Are you already in Second Life? You can Visit Straylight now!

I was turned on to this beautiful video by Orpheus Kurosawa, who produced a video within Second Life for a german non profit organization that tries to save the real world. I love the sound effects and movement, and of course… the message.

If you like it, be sure to send them an IM inworld!

A small collection of releases for Botanical before I go into Winter mode for a while… I hope everyone enjoys!

Ancient Stands (Deep Forest)

The Mega Trees 1 and 2 that originally were at Straylight were there for one reason only: to visually balance the sim. I DID sell quite a few by customer request, but since the trees were mainly for aesthetic purposes in my sim, I didn’t really pay attention to prim levels, resulting in a 66 and 99 prim tree. Today I have pulled the final tree from Straylight to offer *for sale by vendor* an official Botanical Mega Prim tree called “Ancient Stands – Deep Forest”.

This tree also includes what I’m hoping to expand on very soon: Twisted Roots. The roots are optional, and shave an additional 7 prims off the total prim count, if not used.

I do plan on making this a series, some with single tree releases and others with multiple trees, as the theme requires. Please do not ask WHEN these additional trees will be made, though… I’m very busy, and my answer will always be “Soon, I hope!”

Realistic Fireflies

One of the issues I have with “firefly” particle emitters is that the particles are placed in the dome pattern that emitters are almost always forced to use.

I don’t know about many people, but the fireflies that I used to spend so much time watching as a child rose up from the grass at dusk, turning the fields where I grew up into twinkling starry light shows.

So I created an effect that generates a user controlled level of particles that rise up from a horizontal (ie: ground) level.

The emitter uses a dialog menu and offers 10 particle levels with ranges of 5×5 meters to 20×20 meters with (customer requested) an interactive visual range option.

Rainbeams

I directly attribute this release to a customer request, and I instantly fell in love with it. Rainbeams! A rainbow… just without the “bow”. These look amazing layered on each other or just by themselves. These share a few characteristics of the Botanical Sunbeams which have been so well received: Sun Tracking and fae particles.

Prim Fog Emitter

An answer to my own abundant use of particles on Straylight, Botanical Prim fog uses temp rez prims in two sizes, normal 10×10 prim and 20×20 mega prim size in random X, Y, Z locations and random rotation for a very natural low lying fog effect. Transfer and Copy versions available!