April 10, 2008
As part of their “Virtual Spring Break” series, Linden Lab® featured Straylight here: http://secondlife.com/showcase/blog.php?blog_category=3
I’m not sure how long it will last, with all the fantastic places around, but I really appreciate the tip of the virtual hat!
Also you can find a link to the newly opened Visit Mexico 2 & 3, which I helped landscape. http://secondlife.com/showcase/sub_page.php?showcase_category=4
March 21, 2008
Hello All! I took this week to wrap up some old projects that had been around the workspace for a while, and ended up having a lot of fun in the end.
In this release, I’ve included 14 butterfly and moth emitters. The butterflies are temp rez, animated, and have an approximate 10 meter area. Along with some of my favorite species that I wanted to include in Straylight and Wintermute for some time, I’ve added two special species that will have immediate homes: Flame and Liquid Butterflies 
The Flame species has a nasty way of dropping little bits of itself around. When you get a whole group together, things get REALLY hot! The Liquid butterflies are often found around streams and playing in and out of the waterfalls.
March 20, 2008
Sevent Uriza sent me a link to this video she made featuring dramatic fly-through footage of amazing quality! Included in the various sims represented in the video is our very own Straylight ^^ Beautiful soundtrack on this one!
Link: sevenload.com
March 15, 2008
As of yesterday, I have officially released what I’m sure is just a beginning in the Botanical Crystals series.
All sets include beautiful crystals with a prim count ranging from 1 prim to 3. The largest cluster boasts 64 facets and is only 3 prims. Check out the photos below, then come see for yourself at Botanical!
Like what you see? Come see for yourself at Botanical and enjoy nature re-invented!
March 15, 2008
As I had mentioned in the previous post, Sculpted Prims allow us to truly bend the old rules of landscape designing. To this end, I am happy to announce the release of 8 new items to the Botanical catalog, starting with SL’s favorite type of tree, the Palm.
Two Palm tree styles in 4 variations and 3 prims each! Available right now are the Mexican Fan Palm set and the Coastal Palm variety. Extremely low prim and hand detailed with sculpted and normal prim textures.
Even if the world is a beach, you can’t just have trees, however!
That is why I have also introduced one of my favorite creations, the 1 prim plant! Green and Yellow Dune Grass is currently available now at Botanical, and continue the low prim, high detail theme. I have been told from various customers that they have saved upwards of 400 to 1000 (yes, one THOUSAND) prims, just by switching to Botanical’s palm tree and grasses. This is fantastic news. Besides, what use is a tropical getaway, if you don’t have prims left over to really enjoy it?
4 Forest and Tropic Ferns, 1 prim each!
This is just one of the 4 new fern releases that I have made at Botanical. Like the dune grasses, this release boasts a 1 prim sculpted design, and creates an excellent filler for both beach and woodland areas.
These new releases and many more can be found exclusively at the Straylight Botanical store! Come to shop or just to explore, and truly see nature re-imagined!
March 15, 2008
When Sculpted Prims were first introduced to Second Life, I had just started designing prim trees and landscaping. It was easy for me to take advantage of their face value, which allowed for much more organic designs. My first attempts at using this new SL technology produced some of my longest running products for Botanical, and are fast becoming a staple to SL landscaping.
As the technology was explored deeper, ways of making NON organic shapes emerged, and brought into focus another aspect of sculpt prims. Saving Prims. Until sculpted prims, there were 3 standard options in landscaping your home, business or play area with plants. Mesh plants (standard in everyone’s Inventory Library), 3D prim plants (trees and plants constructed out of normal prims), and billboard prim plants (alpha pictures of plants and trees on flat prims set at angles to each other to present a common face to the viewer.)
The mesh plants provided by Linden Lab for landscaping are low polygon 3D models with varying levels of detail for varying distances. This approach is also available with commercial packages like Speedtree, with which LL has had an account since around 2005. Mesh plants count as 1 prim and take advantage of simulator physics effects, like wind. Making our own mesh plants is still out of the common user’s reach, however, and cannot be modified, except for size.
Prim plants and trees are 3 Dimensional items that can (based on the creator’s permission settings) be edited, modified and personalized. Prim levels in these items can be high, however.
Billboard prim plants take advantage of an optical illusion that the game industry has used for quite some time. Take an image of a tree or plant, put it on either side of a prim, and duplicate the prim, setting it at an angle to the original prim. Any way (except for top views) that people see this plant, they will have the original texture facing them. This allows for varying levels of detail (that’s up to the creator) and can make for extremely low prim items. You *do* miss out on the 3D experience, but they make fantastic options for filling in details of your landscaping.
With the advent of Sculpted prims, however, we have the opportunity to break some of the rules. One sculpted prim can LOOK like 4 separate prims. Or 8, or 16. By combining this technology with traditional approaches to landscaping, a whole new prim saving world can be explored, not only giving us more resources to use on our land, but giving us MANY more options in modifying and editing. The next couple posts will cover new Botanical releases that take advantage of sculpted prims to really drive down your landscaping resources and let you do MORE with your Second Life.
March 15, 2008
Apparently if it’s not the sim, It’s me… ladies and gentleman, I introduce you to Homme magazine, “for the finest men in SL”. Published by Arj Friedkin and Davey Hullabaloo, Homme contracted the always funny Catero Revolution to dig into all sorts of interesting details on my store and myself for Issue #3 (requires adobe reader). Be sure to check out the entire issue and pick up their past issues from the website as well. Fantastic read and a really beautiful layout.
March 15, 2008
I was shocked when I found out that that Daphne Abernathy and Tamara Kirshner of Going Broke with Daphne and Tamara fame wanted to interview me for their fantastic podcast series. I was more familiar with their fashion advice and wit, but they had a terrific twist. Now that you are following their advice and looking fantastic, where do you go to photograph your avatar beauty? Their answer is Straylight, and I had a terrific time talking to Daphne and Tamara about Botanical, Straylight, and how it all started. Check it out here!
March 15, 2008
First off, a sincere apology for those who read this blog. RL issues had been making it difficult to keep up with everything in the Botanical/Straylight universe, so let me get started in getting everyone up to date!
A Whole New Sim!
Just when I thought I was getting Straylight wrapped up, I had to go and get a new sim, and now everything is up in the air again!
Since becoming one of the most popular places to visit in Second Life, I’ve been feeling a lot of pressure to on two fronts:
There are a few ways to go about this, in my opinion. I can make individual trees and plants for sale no matter where you are in the sim. I could move the store section up in the air, providing more room to visually browse, and perhaps add teleport points from areas of interest on the ground to the corresponding store in the sky. I can add store sections to each of the major themes in Straylight, perhaps tucked out of the way, but in visually identifiable areas. I’m more likely in my mind to go with the last idea, mainly because I make Straylight as a place of “natural” beauty, and even as people shop, I want that beauty to be evident. I central store level (kind of what I have going on with the center island) IS ideal, but I only have so much space. I’m thinking that specific themed store areas with teleports and paths for moving around might be the best answer for the time being. This lets me also expand my current themes more.
There are only so many things you can pack in one spot, however, and this is where my latest purchase comes in. Wintermute. (For people who are mystified about how I name my sims, I would like to invite you to read the work of William Gibson.) Wintermute will be an expansion of the nature themes that I have started in Straylight, and perhaps break into a little more fantastical bend. Botanical will be spread out across BOTH sims, from a central location to outlying shopping/exploration areas. I wouldn’t expect Wintermute to be opening to the public any time soon, as the addition of more landspace has also forced a revision of some of my ideas for Straylight. Two sims, one store, many different worlds to explore and take home with you. That is my dream and goal for botanical and Straylight/Wintermute.
December 8, 2007
Hello Everyone! Kriss here to let you know about the next releases for Botanical!
BOTANICAL UPDATES!
1. Holiday Fir Trees! These are NOT replacements for last week’s fir tree release, but an addition to the line. This release is 8 trees in the style of the original nonscripted Firs, but with a few additions
The trees come in 4 sizes, as well as the green or snowy versions, and are Mod/Trans or Mod/Copy
2. Copyable Fir Trees. Because of the uproar caused by NOT offering copyable versions of last week’s release, I’ve reversed my decision and am now offering the Green Sculpted Fir and Snowy Sculpted Fir additionally as copyable.
STRAYLIGHT UPDATES!
Rumbling and Steam and Lava, OH MY! In the west of the sim, you’ll see a small pine forest has sprouted up, and running through it all… Lava? I’m testing out a future release here, with hand textured lava, flowing sculpts and botanical only sound effects. Random rumbling and steam bursts are worth turning your speakers up for. Windlight users will also notice that I’ve applies a *slight* glow here as well. I would love to know what you think!
http://www.flickr.com/groups/straylight/
http://www.b-places.com/top_locations.aspx
With love respect and honor,
Kriss Lehmann
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