Images & seamless textures that I generated with AI
A few months ago, I blogged about MidJourney art in Second Life. Second Life designers are now using AI to create more than just pretty pictures for sale. AI can also create seamless textures, help with logo creations, and other graphic design elements. It can be used as a tool to help with the creative process if used wisely.
SL snapshot vs Stable Diffusion edit
I’ve been playing around with Stable Diffusion to give my Second Life avatar more realism, but not so realistic that it looks like a morph. I try not to stray too far from the original Second Life image, and that requires trying a lot of different settings. You can view my AI Glow Up album on Flickr for all of the images.
Black Dragon has just released an update that includes a revolutionary new feature – the ability to create and export poses from the viewer! The pose edit menu was already a great way to adjust poses, but now you can also make poses from scratch and save them as .anim files to your computer. These poses can then be uploaded back to Second Life, making it much easier to create custom poses.
I wrote about how to sell Lindens almost ten years ago, but do you know how to buy Lindens? If you still click the Buy L$ button in the viewer to get money to spend, you should read this blog post to find out how to get the most Linden dollars for your money.
First, go to the L$ Exchange Settings in your SecondLife.com dashboard and change the Interface Mode from Basic -> to Advanced.
Have you ever wished that you could select your Linden Home? Many people have asked me how I was able to select my stilt home using the Premium Plus choose your Linden Home concierge service, so I’m here to show you exactly how to do it.
Is your dream home available?
Before you upgrade your account to Premium Plus in order to use this service, make sure you map Bellisseria and create SLurls to available homes. Keep in mind that popular Bellisseria themes are frequently sold out and the homes are instantly available on the Land Page, you won’t be able to file tickets for those homes with any success. Newly released themes are more abundant, so you will have much better luck filing a ticket for a home.
Flickr sent me an email recently, reminding me that my Flickr Pro subscription is up for renewal. I’ve subscribed to Flickr Pro for many years, dating back to 2007. The price was reasonable at first, at around $25 a year, then crept up to $50, now it’s $71.99! I’ve been paying for the subscription 2 years at a time, to get a slight discount. I did not know that Flickr raised the price so much, and wanted $139.99 from me for 2 years (this already includes savings). Before they could auto-renew my subscription, I went to cancel it to see if they would offer me any discounts to stay, and they did!
It’s time to get a Flickr Pro account if you are a fan of the photo hosting service/social media platform. The Flickr commercial use policy has been in effect for years, so even though they have not enforced it in the past, they are now. It’s time to pay up or risk having your account terminated. According to this blog post on NWN, many Second Life residents with FREE accounts are in violation of the commercial use policy.
If you are a designer in SL and make money, consider Flickr Pro the cost of doing business, if you actually want to do business and not call it a “hobby”. As my friend says, even hobbies cost money. I’m surprised at the pushback from some SL designers and bloggers since Flickr is the photo social platform of choice for SL residents, and not even prohibitively expensive. It’s only $50/year! I’ve been a Flickr Pro member since November 2007 (proof below) and an SL snapshot addict with over 19,660 photos. I definitely see value in Flickr from the moment I started using it to cross-post my blog photos and saw that I could multi-task by promoting my blog and follow my favorite brands at the same time!
There are so many reasons that Flickr is superior to other photo hosting services, that it would be a huge loss for designers and Second Life residents if it shuts down. Would you support a service that you use for pleasure or for profit, for $50/year? Many brands in SL don’t even update their blog nowadays, so they rely on the social power of Flickr to share their new releases. And what will become of “flickr bloggers”, if they can no longer credit brands and post links? If you find value in Flickr, it’s time to go pro before it bites the dust.
If you want to remain a FREE Flickr account, here’s what you need to do to not have your account terminated:
Hello from Enchanted Alice! Be prepared to fall through a few rabbit holes, but you will be rewarded with the most beautiful waterfall ever built in Second Life. I’m amazed it was built inside a skybox! You have to come see the waterfall, it’s breathtaking.
Offlines is my favorite ways to chat with my SL friends when I’m offline. Anytime someone IMs you when you’re offline, the message gets sent to your email if you have it checked in your settings. Go to your SL Change Email Settings page, and make sure it is checked!
Sasy Scarborough goes into depth about Offlines to Email on her blog post, read all about it and never miss a message again. I often see creators or customer service reps. write in their profiles that their offline IMs get capped as a reason for missing messages, and I wonder why they’re not using Offlines to Email? Even basic users with only 15 offline IMs available, should be able to receive the rest of their offlines sent to email without missing a single message.
Didn’t I warn that Bakes On Mesh was coming? I did. I said this was going to force mesh head makers to revert their UV maps back to standard SLUV, too, because everyone is going to start using standard skins more and more now. If you are a mesh head developer and your heads don’t adhere to standard SLUV, get on it. You will lose money eventually because customers are going to want to wear whatever skin they want with whatever head they buy.
So, what the hell is Bakes On Mesh?
Bakes on Mesh (yes, plural, according to this SL wiki page) is a new feature in Second Life that automatically “bakes” your standard skins and tattoo layers to your mesh bodies and heads. Whenever you switch skins or wear different layers of tattoos on your body, your mesh will automatically update your look without you having to do anything.
Over time, there will be less and less dependency on applier routers like Omega, because now Second Life’s system is the applier. However, you’ll want to check with your mesh body maker to be sure their body is BoM ready. If it isn’t, they should be updating soon.
Shout out to Kirsten Corleone for making a fabulous rigged mesh tutorial video! I thought I knew everything about editing mesh (and prims) to fit myself, but even I learned something new! Check out the video and her blog, for more information.
Do you already know everything mentioned in this video? If you found it helpful, let me know in the comments!
I updated my Second Life Official viewer today, and noticed that filters are now available for SL pics!! How long has this been a feature? All of the filters are pretty basic, and can easily be done with a single click using any online image editor, if you’re not savvy with Photoshop. I’m impressed that SL has this feature, especially for my friends that don’t like to edit their photos, or don’t know how.
What do you think about the new SL filters? Let me know in the comments!
Select filters from the drop down menuRaw image from SL (Autocontrast filter)
What I’m Wearing:
Pink Fuel Skin
Truth – Grande 2
Truth – Lilith Headband
Katat0nik – (Sheen/Average) Heart Playgirl Dress
