Got absolutely nothing done in SL, of course Although I did make a kinda sculpted headwrap thing in Blender & Sculptie paint that i’m still playing around with. Spent most of the weekend between OLG and homework D: Took a break from working on the pier to start on a new build that i have simply named “Curvy walls” for now. Pictures down below (you can also see bigger versions in my flickr stream)

Day 2: Sunrise preset in WL

Day 2: Workin on the main living/entrance/recieving area and a roof to go with it, no ReX access so i can’t stretch that roof just yet *sigh* one day…over the rainbow

Day 2: Love Love Love the Sunset Preset in WL Viewer

Day 2: Railings Done, Sculpted Thatched Roofs, Piecing together and scripting water for animation

Day 1: Top View-Floor Plan/Footprint

Day 1: Working on the walls, stairs, and general layout

Pretty exciting, i’ve been asked if i’m going to bring this structure into SL and I don’t really know yet, we’ll see when it’s finished, lol. the curvy walls are inspired by Antoni Gaudi and the general colour scheme by a picture of a resort i saw in google, the layout and everything else is composed by me with references to cultural building structures. It’s massive in terms of the footprint, it takes up an entire 4096 m2 parcel, but the actual living space is modest there’s going to be a 2-storey main living area composed of a 20×20m disc and 4 10×10 gazebo/huts overlooking the water. I’m also going to be coming up with furniture ideas with a little help from Jada, we’re thinking some traditional ethnic pieces mixed with modern: modern-ethnic if there is such a term, the floor is going to have mosaic tile, main living area is going to have “arabic arches” also known as horseshoe arches can’t wait for next weekend so i can build some more, but for now RL homework/sketches are calling

Fundu Lagoon – Celeste Region

Originally uploaded by Rubina Stanwell

We changed our minds about what we want to build on Celeste, while googling one day we can across Fundu Lagoon, it was so gorgeous we wanted to try to recreate it or something similar in OLG. I know the “island” theme has been butchered and done to death on SL, but I think our little splashes of style and expertise will make it look different, set it apart from your regular run of the mill tacky tiki, lol. Managed to stay on log enough after multiple crashes and lock ups, lock outs, lol, to get the pier along the coast of celeste done, and one hut/gathering point the grid is having multiple issues with rezzing and textures which certainly makes this process longer than it usually would be, but ehn,what can you do,lol. We’ve been playing around with the idea of setting the celeste region to open build, so that the construction could be a team process but being so close to the welcome area we decided against it, not that we’re greedy about the sim, actually yeah we kinda are, we don’t want anyone else building on it, and since we can’t deed land to groups yet, ouronly other option of setting the entire sim to open build is not the best one. anyway….here’s a picture

As of now the build contains no huge prims, we are mac users so no ReX for us The circular floors of the huts are tubes that have been prim tortured to make a 20 m disc, the thatched roofs are composed of hollowed cylinders and a demi-sphere, the pier and stilts are just regular cubes.

Still not able to log my main account into the OL Grid :S all of my other avatars connect though which is strange, also said my region was down but i was able to get to it when I flew kitty corner to it then teleported using the map. I had the opportunity to meet Sakai OpenLife though and talk to him as well as some other Foundation residents in the chatroom which was fun.

Sakai said my avatar: Rubina Stanwell seems to have an inventory issue which is blocking login, eek! he also said he plans to do a gridwide update today so i’m crossing my fingers that i’ll be able to get a little build time in when i get back from school. 

I’ve also done some work on my OpenLife section of my blog, just a little FAQ if you will of my experiences so far in OLG, what works for me and what doesn’t etc, hopefully it will be of some use to someone: http://rubinastanwell.wordpress.com/ol/, to be used in conjunction with the OpenLife Wiki. I’ll be sure to update it frequently.

Cape May Teahouse

Originally uploaded by Rubina Stanwell

…how i love thee I’m digging this period style so muchy <3 as some people may or may not know or care, I’m currently an interior design student. My first venture in SL was an home and garden store store, I made furniture, decor and misc prefabs then that got pushed to the side when i started Adimu, but i’m thinking of getting back into it again. Learning about all these different time periods and building styles certainly gets the creative juices going. As you can see i’m more of a prim based builder than a texture based one. I think some really nice work can be done with those fancy smanshy textures but i’m a person who likes detail and 3d, yes the textures can be made to show detail, but they are flat, they have no perspective to the eye when you move around and that’s one of my pet peeves, plus plus people use textures so inappropriately SL at times it’s like sensory overload. I believe in letting the features of the home speak for itself, in SL this means showing details in your construction…yes this ups the prim count considerably, but I think details and quailty can be lost when you let prim limits dictate how a piece should be built as opposed to your own creativity, for those who prim limits are an issue my stuff obviously isn’t for you, lol. The Teahouse shown above (reference picture on the bottom, because yes…I see nothing wrong with using RL inspiration for prefabs and if you do kindly close the browser and get on with your life, lol) is totalling in at about 600 prims as it stands and it’s not complete so as a general guide line i wouldn’t recommend using my builds on anything smaller than a 4096 parcel. this will allow you room for some necessary furniture of which i’ll probably make matching sets for. I’m going to be releasing some furniture and prefabs under the new label RiCoCo Designs (a name i’ve been using for all of my I.D. projects so i figured why not bring it to SL) I’m just playing around with sculpties some more and letting the ideas marinate some more in my head, should be fun I’m still doing Adimu stuff, just no new hair at the moment, have to admit i’m feeling a little uninspired at the moment so I’m just heading down another path of creativity for me.

  

Home Sweet Home

Originally uploaded by Rubina Stanwell

So….we purchased an OpenLife Region on Saturday. We’re the owners of Celeste which is the second square in from the top left, pretty exciting no? well not really, lol. So far the OL Grid has been down more than it’s been functional but I guess it’s to be expected, even SL breaks down on the weekends OpenLife Grid is a new grid that’s based on the SL opensource code. It’s been around for about 5 months but residents have recently been given the opportunity to purchase mainland regions as part of the “Foundation Resident Event” it’s $90 USD to purchase a sim (this includes your first month’s tier and the $15 one time set up fee), tier thereafter is $75 USD as of now there is no inworld currency, if you pay a resident nothing happens, lol, transferring items is dodgy so right now wouldn’t be a good idea for purchase if you’re wanting to build a store and start raking in the millions. We purchased the sim basically as a get away from SL, we’re just going to build on it, develop it and decide what to do it with it after, lol, it’s kinda nice to not have to worry about merchant responsiblities, we can just build for fun. The way Sim ownership works is that basically you own the sim to build on, if you want to be able to parcel transfer you have to pay your tier two months in advance and then you become a “Region Holder” and you must pay $5 per parcel you want to transfer. this isn’t a process that I agree fully with as it doesn’t exist in SecondLife but what can you do. One thing i do agree with is the fact that the smallest possible sim size you can transfer is 4096 sq m (1/16th of a region) keeps those ad farm so-and-so’s out of view, or hopefully it will :S One of the main reasons that we chose OL over CG (Central Grid) was well……CG doesn’t have anything, lol. My first time in CG i ran into an avatar that is assumably used by many of the CG staff so i had no idea who i was actually talking to, but it was like getting the once over from a used car salesman, lots of emphasis on buying a sim, and buying a sim now, getting in early on this new grid, but i’m looking around and it’s like “ther’es nothing here” I have yet to see a sim that’s been developed by a CG resident or even one that’s in progress, but there’s lots of empty sims for sale, everyone wants to the revival of Anshe Chung, lol. At least with OL there seems to be a community of foundation residents who are creativity driven, I met a resident today who was building a temple o.0 and the work was pretty extensive, he enjoyed being in OL and working on his sim so much that he was downgrading from a paid SL account to basic. I’m not sure if that’s where I want to head just yet, as everything with these OpenSims is still so very new, but as it stands at the moment i’m happy to have our sim to play around in