Eyana Yohkoh's Blog

Shop News

2010-08-07T20:00:00.001-04:00

There will be no new products or updates almost indefinitely. The shop will remain open, but there might be long delays in answering any questions from customers.

Incense burner

2009-08-05T15:12:00.003-04:00

Simple and quick project that I did for my home:

XStreetSL listing

Painting a Planet

2009-07-22T23:42:00.003-04:00

Here's a video of how I paint a planet. It's a pretty easy process for a basic one like this, and since I was recording I didn't want to spend too much time adding nifty things. There's a chance I'll do another video like this and go a bit more in depth.

Republic of Mew: On Ice!

2009-07-21T02:24:00.001-04:00

Here's another video I completed recently. I actually recorded the footage for this about a year ago and just haven't done anything with it until recently.

Thriller!

2009-07-20T22:44:00.000-04:00

Just posting this because it was fun.

Ninja HUD 2.0 released

2008-12-07T13:19:00.003-05:00

Here is a list of changes in the new version:

* Total running scripts down to 5 from 27 or something crazy like that.
* New button texture theme is easier on the eyes than the previous themes.
* Scripts compiled and running in Mono.
* New distraction objects added to the Escape gadget.
* Sky walking cloud total particle count reduced with the same overall visual effect.
* Shuriken and kunai can now be used at the same time or independently.
* Foot trap now rezzes at the user's feet instead of behind them.
* Caltrops rewritten to slow down any who enter with pushes instead of objects (that were not working in 1.6).
* Sounds added to menu.
* Limitation on how many caltrops that could be active has been removed.
* New option to switch between three menu sizes.
* New gadget "Disappear" added.
* New option to enable/disable automatic Skywalking after using the Escape gadget.
* Entire HUD can now collapse to keep HUD space uncluttered if preferred.

Gold and Diamond Jewelry Set

2008-11-17T23:57:00.002-05:00

I was looking to buy some new jewelry a few weeks ago since my jewelry options are pretty sparse. There are certainly some nice jewelry sets available, but most of them are far more expensive that I would readily pay for something I may or may not wear often at all.

Tonight I finally made a poster and placed a couple of my jewelry set vendors in-world. The jewelry is also available on XStreetSL. All the jewelry is mod/copy and not transferrable. I also made some little jewelry boxes that open and close so the jewelry can be put on display.

The earrings, nose ring, two chokers, and jewelry display boxes are all in the same package for L$200.

Galaxy Generator Released

2008-07-12T10:25:00.003-04:00

The galaxy generator is released. There are quite a number of things I would like to add to it eventually, but I suppose I'm happy with the basic setup for now.

SLExchange
OnRez

On a side note, I've turned off comment moderation but turned on the word completion box to prevent spamming.

Galaxy Generator Example Movie

2008-07-06T00:14:00.004-04:00

I recorded and edited a little bit of the galaxies in motion. I'm wondering if "Galaxy Generator" is a poor name since some of the effects look less like galaxies and more like glowing clouds. Then again I suppose that sort could count as an elliptical galaxy. Perhaps sometime I'll be able to update the generator to generate specific types of galaxies.

Anyway, here's an embedded version of the example movie, and links to alternate sites follow:

Video links (in case the embedded doesn't show or play):

YouTube
Blip.tv
Vimeo
Flickr

Galaxy Generator Coming Soon

2008-07-04T16:34:00.003-04:00

I've made a galaxy generator that cycles through about 40 presets or generates galaxies at random. I have the poster finished, but I don't have the instructions written, so it won't be available until tomorrow.

I think they look much better in motion than they do as still images, but here's a few snapshots of some presets and randomly generated galaxy effects:

Eyana's Ninja Hud version 1.6 >.>

2008-06-17T18:45:00.000-04:00

Ninja Hud 1.6 is now released after having several reports of some weirdness in one of the scripts, basically caused by a typo.

2008-06-17T13:47:00.001-04:00

Ninja HUD version 1.5 released! Here's the changes:

Eyana's Ninja HUD version 1.5
===================
Released: 17 June 2008

Particles:
* By request, a blood particle toggle has been added to projectile options.
* Particle textures should remain preloaded and hopefully prevent the annoying gray blocks of particles that the SL Client will show before the texture rezzes. In high lag situations this may still occur.

Grappling hook tweaked to finally make up for changes applied by the Havok4 release:
* Long distance grapples should now work smoothly again.
* The speed to get to the grappling target has been slightly increased.
* Logging out, crashing, or changing regions while grappling will no longer cause spastic grappling hook behavior.

Smoke bomb escape / Teleport to camera position:
* Long distance movement should now work smoothly again.
* The speed to reach the target has been increased.
* The old platforms that were rezzed after movement have been replaced by sky walking. Using this gadget will automatically turn on sky walking after the movement has completed.

Projectiles:
* Kunai, shuriken, and grappling hooks should now be less "bouncy" after colliding with something. However, if the projectile speed is on Fast or Very Fast this might occur.

Busy!

2008-05-01T16:10:00.002-04:00

I'm posting here to mention that I will be very busy packing and moving and then unpacking now through this weekend and possibly without internet access.

If you are trying to get in touch with me then please send me a notecard in Second Life, or send an IM. I will respond as soon as I can.

Ideas for a Real Shop Name

2008-04-11T23:47:00.002-04:00

It's time I come up with a good name for my shop. When I first opened I called the shop "Eyana's" as a temporary solution to being unable to think of a catchy name. At the very least I'd like to come up with a shop logo, but I can't think of anything there either. Anyone out there with suggestions?

Double tap to initiate running

2008-04-10T20:26:00.004-04:00

LL is trying to push for a double tap on the forward key to start running. This conflicts with many, many products across the grid and makes adjusting your avatar's position slightly difficult since a double tap might send you running instead of taking that half-step you wanted to take. Vote on this issue to attempt to keep LL from implementing this change.

Havok 4 Jump Differences

2008-04-08T14:08:00.005-04:00

There is a considerable difference in jumping in Havok 4 compared to Havok 1. If you have noticed this and would like it changed please vote for this Jira issue. Apparently there is a loss of 1 to 1.5 meters. I found a link to this issue at Daikon Forge.

A comparison can be made on the beta grid where there are still some Havok 1 regions available.

On a related note, I will probably be making a free version of the jump assist gadget to help compensate for the difference for those who enjoy jumping.

Eyana's Ninja HUD version 1.4

2008-04-05T01:33:00.004-04:00

I have an update for the Ninja HUD available (finally!). Included in this update are some bug fixes, a new layout and icon style for the HUD to make it more intuitive and take up less screen space, and also a Sky Walking gadget was added.

Unfortunately I cannot get in-world to finish testing the update server and update all my single prim vendors because LL has disabled logins:

"Resident logins have been disabled until our toplevel routing issues have been resolved.

We deeply regret the inconvenience, and we’ll keep you posted."

I'll update this post with a list of bug fixes as soon as I can get in-world and access my notes.

Chain Lightning Staff Released

2008-03-18T14:42:00.005-04:00

The staff is finally released. I had a couple of minor issues to fix with it so instead of releasing at version 1.0 it is released at version 1.01.

Check out the SLExchange page for it or go to my shop in-world.

This staff has a chain lightning attack that can target up to 16 targets at once. The targets can be switched from People to Objects (scripted objects only). There is also a lightning shield that damages those who touch it.

Aside from the attacks, the staff has a left- and right-handed standing pose built-in, custom color options, and some color presets.

Windlight and Particles

2008-02-15T13:28:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I posted something on the JIRA about particles not displaying properly in the current relase of the First Look: Windlight viewer. Basically I'm not seeing enough particles no matter what my max particle count is. In the below snapshot there is a comparison of the same effect in Windlight and on the Release Candidate viewer. My issue was a duplicate (oops--there wasn't one that I could see dealing with that problem when I checked, but apparently I'm not good at using Jira) but I attached the snapshot to the original issue.

That brings me to another point I wanted to mention. Second Life currently has a little bit of a problem keeping particle textures in memory or whatever and ready to be displayed on the effect. This makes short particle effects start off as grey rectangles before the particle texture loads and can be quite annoying for trying to make a short particle effect look nice because even after the texture is loaded once it might need to load again the next time it's used. There is a workaround for this for creators: the particle texture should be put onto a prim. For example, for my chain lightning staff I am working on I put a tiny cube inside the staff. The cube has all the particle textures I'm using and even though it's hidden by the rest of the staff the texture still loads and the particle effect never has any problem with showing grey blobs instead of lightning.

Update: Eyana's Commission Vendors

2008-02-04T01:30:00.001-05:00

Earlier this evening I updated my affiliate/commission vendor script. There won't be too many noticeable changes for those people using the vendor. Most of the changes are back-end things to better manage vendor tracking for auto-updates. The previous version had no way of knowing which vendors were removed or deleted from the grid. That oversight made it difficult for the updating script to work efficiently because people have had the tendency to rez all the sizes of the vendors and then remove the ones they didn't want.

Anyway, the old vendors should have a message saying that there is a new version available. The new vendors can be purchased for L$1 through the old vendors, or just pop by the main shop to grab them, or just ask me to send them to you. The L$1 fee through the old commission vendor to get the new one is another oversight in the original script where it would not allow any L$0 sales.

Simple Jet Flame Tutorial

2008-01-09T14:35:00.002-05:00

This tutorial shows how to make a simple jet flame effect in Photoshop. Just load the images in sequence and follow the text on the images. Hopefully everything makes sense.

Download: Finished Jet Flame Effect (tga zipped)

Windlight Firstlook

2007-11-14T19:41:00.001-05:00

The Windlight Firstlook is available. I'm testing it out currently and I am having mixed feelings which mostly lean towards extremely displeased. The environment looks great. The shading on prims looks fine.

Avatars look awful.

Dreadful.

Ugly.

Any type of shading or shadow on any avatar for me looks awful. It's like the shading is not blending at all. Ugly lines going across the avatar. It's like doing a gradient with only eight colors.

I updated my video card drivers. I tried all kinds of settings. If I turn off all the shaders I have no problem, but then it looks worse than it does in the old client.

Blah.

I was really, really looking forward to Windlight and now that I can't use it without grimacing whenever I see a person while nobody else seems to be having this problem is kind of upsetting. The environments looked really nice. The reflections were nice. Everything was nice and smooth on pretty high settings, but no matter what the avatars looked so poorly shaded.

I posted on the SL forums, so maybe someone can help me.

edit: of course jira is not loading in my browser either.

relaxing

2007-11-11T12:47:00.002-05:00

relaxing
Originally uploaded by eyanayohkoh

This is my first painting that includes some elements straight from Second Life. The tree, terrain, and person (me!) are taken from a high resolution snapshot in my home sim, Mew.

The moon and stars are from scratch in Photoshop, and there are some touch-ups on the SL snapshot done in Photoshop as well.

I'm not sure I have the lighting done properly. Something seems a little off, but I'm not sure what it is.

edit: The stars look oddly blurred in the lower resolution versions of this image. I painted everything at 4000x3000 and it looks fine there. I'll have to figure out a way to make it look better in a regular resolution or just paint a new star field.

Rolling Restart Bug Fixes

2007-11-06T00:20:00.001-05:00

I just read about the rolling restart Linden Labs plans for the 6th and this bug fix made me smile.

SVC-912: Sky Eclipse’s avatar crashes regions EVERYTIME she logs in, regardless of where she logs in

Poor Sky Eclipse!

Eyana's Ninja Hud 1.3 released

2007-11-03T16:41:00.001-04:00

Version 1.3 is released to address a few bugs and add a new button.

------

New to the HUD:

Options button added to projectiles menu to allow varying the speed of kunai, shuriken, and hook. (The projectile speed was too slow to be registered by a few combat systems.)

Bug Fixes & Revisions:

Some scripts combined to eliminate unecessary extra scripts.
Dust cloud no longer automatically active when first rezzed.
Permissions inefficiency and weirdness with jump assist and projectiles addressed.
Jump assist calculations now take avatar mass into account properly.
Shurikens should successfully collide more consistently.

Eyana playing a song on DJ Max

2007-10-31T02:14:00.002-04:00

Click to Play

I recorded myself playing DJ Max Online. Yeah, I mess up a few times. I hadn't played in a long time.

Land-and-Water-Planet

2007-10-15T21:22:00.002-04:00

Land-and-Water-Planet
Originally uploaded by eyanayohkoh

The second planet I painted. I finished just a few moments ago. I think I'm getting the hang of it. My next scene will probably tell a story.

Eyana's-Planet

2007-10-08T14:37:00.002-04:00

Eyana's-Planet
Originally uploaded by eyanayohkoh

I'm not sure what I am going to do with this in regards to SL (besides maybe wall art). I wanted to paint some noticeable debris around the planet, but my attempts looked awful so I just turned off those layers.

This was painted from scratch in Photoshop.

Havok4 Beta Grid

2007-09-29T12:08:00.004-04:00

After reading a post on the Second Life Blog about the upcoming physics update I decided to go check it out on the Beta Grid. I don't know much about the technicalities about what they are changing but it was mainly this blurb that made me curious:

"Some slight dynamic changes - avatar movements have changed slightly"

Firstly, the spacebar does not work quite like it did before. Previously, you could achieve a bit of a slide across the ground by using the spacebar or in the air. This—although technically a bug—has been used but quite a number of people as part of their fighting style for C:SI and other similar combat systems. The debate over whether or not it is an acceptable action should come to a grinding halt when the Havok4 physics stuff is on the main grid. Spacebar works only to stop the avatar's momentum. It will not give any sort of speed increase whatsoever.

Sliding along the ground does not appear to happen anymore. This was always an annoyance: tripping over a prim and going sliding across half a sim was just annoying. I have not tested this to my satisfaction yet, but a number of perfectly level floors with a prim added that would have normally caused a slide has yet to cause any sort of sliding.

This is good and bad. I'll just have to rewrite a couple of scripts (probably minor changes) to make them work as intended since they were designed with the sliding problem in mind.

There also appears to be a new llMoveToTarget bug introduced. If the avatar is standing still then a llMoveToTarget simply will not work until the avatar starts moving. I need to do more testing for this, but I think applying a small push will help.

Anyway, I'll post more if I figure anything out.

Havok4 Beta Grid

2007-09-29T12:08:00.003-04:00

After reading a post on the Second Life Blog about the upcoming physics update I decided to go check it out on the Beta Grid. I don't know much about the technicalities about what they are changing,

Ice Cave

2007-09-24T21:01:00.001-04:00

I just uploaded some snapshots of the ice cave I've been working on as a sculptie learning project. Here is a link. The sun is set to midnight and I have the RenderGlow option in Debug settings enabled.

Let me know what you think!

Sculpties

2007-09-24T12:07:00.001-04:00

I still have several projects up in the air, but mostly they have been pushed aside for the moment while I try to learn some more about making and texturing sculpties. When I get home today I think I am going to try to make a mannequin sculptie. Last night I figured out lighting and shadows to an extent. I would post a snapshot but I'm at work and cannot get on Second Life to get any. Besides, the snapshot would be rather boring anyway.

Couple of Links added

2007-09-03T11:40:00.002-04:00

I just added a couple of links under the Tutorial section on the left side of the page. The basic script examples page has several scripts that were written with the intention of teaching some basics about scripting in Second Life. The double tap detection script is an example of how a script can detect a double tap on the keyboard (useful for dash/dodge type things). I'm sure there are ways in which it can be more efficient or accurate, so it might get updated from time to time.

Eyana's Evasion HUD released

2007-08-23T23:30:00.002-04:00

The Evasion HUD is ready and for sale in-world and at SLExchange. Click the vendor in-world for a notecard or visit the SLExchange item listing for details.

Also, join the group "Eyana's" for product announcements and freebies and stuff!

Dashing and Double Taps

2007-08-22T13:46:00.001-04:00

Projects have been coming along the past few weeks until yesterday when I started and finished the basic working bits of a new project. I made a dashing system. It is somewhat similar to dashing and dodging found on SL already in other combat systems, so it's not an original idea.

I started doing this to finally figure out how to detect double taps without needing to use complicated timers. Currently, I have the double tap detection function with a maximum of a half second delay between button pushes. Originally I had it at two-tenths of a second, but after handing a test version to someone it was apparent that would be a bit too fast for some people. I may, or may not add a customizable option for the delay speed so people can set their own preference.

The only thing it truly needs right now is a limit. Right now it can be used infinitely which—although it's really fun!—is not exactly fair and balanced for use in certain combat systems.

It works in mouselook mode and the default third person camera mode, but it is designed with the mouselook mode user in mind. Dashes are done on a horizontal plane while on the ground, but if the person using it is in the air then they can dash at any angle. This seems like it could be a lot of fun for sword- and gun-play.

Not only do I plan to include this with my swords (when I finally finish making animations—ugh!), but I am going to package it with any guns I make. There is a chance it will be added to the Ninja HUD, but I'm somewhat worried about including it in something that does not attach to a standard weapon spot such as the Right Hand attachment spot for most swords and guns. The reason behind this is that it could be misused as a sort of cheat while sparring with any combat system that has a similar dash or dodge capability. I tested with one of my C:SI swords and sometimes would get a C:SI dash and sometimes my own and sometimes both. It would be pretty obvious if someone was using this in combat: the sound is different and the movement speed is different, as well as the distance traveled (I think).

I have a few more ideas that I may try to get working if I can figure out the mathematics involved. Math is by no means my area of expertise. I'm more into classical rhetoric than crazy math. The ideas I have that I want to do are definitely beyond my current understanding and I don't know if there will be an easy way to cheat through it by guesswork. Then again, while I worked on the dash script I was nearly pulling my hair out from attempting something so overly-complicated and unnecessary when there was a much, much simpler way to approach the whole thing.

Actually, now that I've typed all that mess about not being able to figure out how to do what I want I think I have a half-baked idea on how to do it. I'll have to try later tonight.

On a side note, some of the gadgets from the Ninja HUD will be available for sale singly, possibly with more features and options. Namely, the Water Walking gadget and Smoke Bomb Escape will be made separately.

I think I will make a double tap detection template script for my LSLWiki page.

Lightning Effects Tutorial Part One: Painting the Particle

2007-08-03T17:05:00.002-04:00

Recently I've been working on something that required some electricity/lightning type particle effects and I decided to make a tutorial on it. I thought it would be a quick and short tutorial, but it ended up being a lot of snapshots of the progress in Photoshop 7.0 for the step by step instructions.

I use Photoshop CS2 at home now, but since I'm working and all I have available is 7.0 this tutorial is related to 7.0, but it should work in most versions of Photoshop as well as similar image editing software (the menus and layout might appear different).

Anyway, on to the tutorial.

This lightning effect is intended to be used in a particle script (tutorial part two will be written whenever I get home, have time, and have access to Second Life and my scripts).

The format of this tutorial will be like this: picture first and then text describing the above picture. Click any of the pictures for a full size version if it's difficult to read in the small version.

Create a new image:

512 by 512 pixels
transparent background
Note that the final image might need to be resized to a lower resolution depending on the intended size of the particle effect and the consequences of lag from needlessly large textures.

----------

Select the Gradient Tool:

The gradient tool is on the same button as the Paint Bucket. If only the paint bucket is visible just left click and hold the mouse button down until a little side menu opens up (as in the screenshot).
The foreground and background paint colors should be white and black respectively.

An easy way to do this is push the D key on the keyboard to set the colors to default (black foreground and white background) and then push the X key on the keyboard to swap foreground and background colors.

The type of gradient we want is the very basic style (left icon at the top of the screen just underneath the Filter menu).

----------

Paint the Gradient:

At the top left of the image, click and drag to the bottom right of the image.

To keep this at a perfect angle hold down Shift while dragging.

Result of the Gradient:

The image should now look similar to the one above.

----------

Apply a Difference Clouds Filter:

Find the Difference Clouds Filter in the Render menu (pictured above for Photoshop 7.0) and apply it.

----------

Difference Clouds Result:

Above is the result of applying the Difference Clouds filter.
Results will vary! If you do not like your initial result then undo (Ctrl Z) and reapply the Difference Clouds filter.

----------

Invert the image:

Find the Invert option in the menu (as shown above) or simply press Ctrl I on the keyboard.

----------

Result of inverting the image:

Above is the result of inverting the image.
Look carefully at the brightest spots on the image and it might be starting to look a little bit like lightning!

----------

Bringing out the Lightning Effect:

Okay, so there is a bit of a lightning zap in there, but it's surrounded by a bunch of stuff that is not needed. Thankfully, there is a way to make it easier to work with.
Go to Image, then Adjustments, and then Levels (or push Ctrl L).

----------

The Levels adjustment window:

This is what the adjustment window will look like before touching anything.
What will be adjust are the three triangles just below the graph.

----------

Middle triangle first:

Drag the triangle that is in the middle of the line all the way to the right.
The changes will appear on the image as they are done if the Preview box is checked.

It's always good to pay attention to the effect of adjustments before applying them.

----------

The leftmost triangle:

Now slowly drag the leftmost triangle (the fully black one) and the image's background should get darker and darker and the lightning effect more prominent.
Leave the triangle in a spot where it looks like a decent lightning effect.

For reference, the black triangle corresponds to the number 162 in the input levels boxes.

----------

Result of adjusting Levels:

The above image is the result of levels adjustments.
There are still bits and pieces of the image that will not do for a lightning effect, so the next few steps will deal with eliminating the unnecessary bits.

----------

Selecting the Lightning:

Firstly, the lightning needs to be separated from the black background and put onto a new layer.
Make certain the layer is selected and use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl Alt Shift ` (` is the key to the left of the one key on US keyboards).

This keyboard shortcut automatically generates a selection mask based on the lightest parts of the image—perfect for quickly grabbing the lightning.
Alternatively, using the Select menu and choosing Color Range for either white or black (invert the selection afterwards if selecting from black) with a tolerance of about 20 or so might get a similar selection.

----------

Create a New Layer via Copy:

Open the Layer menu, expand the New sub-menu, and choose "New Layer via Copy" at the bottom.

This will create a new layer based on what is in the selection mask. If the mask was created using the keyboard shortcut described in the previous steps then a good portion of the faded parts of the image will be copied as well with some transparency to it.
Alternatively, push Ctrl J to create a new layer via copy.

----------

New layer result:

This is the resulting layer from the copy.
The original layer is hidden to show the transparent background.

Click the little eye next to a layer to hide it. Hidden layers will stay hidden when you save the final image.

The selection mask is automatically removed after making a copy via selection.

----------

Renamed the main lightning layer:

At this point I decided it was time to rename the lightning layer so I could keep track of it later on as I add and remove more layers.
Right click on the layer in the layers list and pick Properties and then rename it to something you can remember.

----------

Creating a temporary solid layer:

Next I created a new layer.

----------

Rearrange the layer order:

The purpose of the new layer is to be a solid color behind the lightning effect to make things easier on the eyes while editing so the new layer needs to be dragged beneath the Lightning layer.

----------

Paint Bucket to fill the new layer:

Use the paint bucket and fill the newly created layer with black paint.
This looks similar to what we had a few steps ago after adjusting the Levels, but the difference is that now the lightning is separated from the black background.
Doing this allows us to see what parts need to be erased or edited.

----------

Time to start Erasing!

Select the eraser tool as shown here.

----------

Erase away:

As you can see in the above image compared to previous images there has been a bit of extra white paint erased away.
At this stage I was mainly removing the bits that were not connected to the main lightning effect. Do this to your own satisfaction and don't worry if erasing leaves some of the faded white looking bad with an edge to it. Later steps will help to fix that sort of thing.

----------

Messiness test:

Here I've filled the middle layer with blue paint to see the tiny bits of transparent paint on the main lightning layer that need to be removed. The parts on the image that look darker than the rest of the blue and are not close to the lightning effect need to be removed.
More erasing!
In retrospect, I should have made the layer blue to begin with instead of black.

----------

Resulting image thus far:

This is what it looks like after erasing the extra bits.

----------

It still needs cleaning:

As you can tell, this still needs a bit of work before it will work well as a transparent texture.
Ctrl Click on the name of the lightning layer in the Layer window on the right to create a selection mask for all paint on that particular layer.

----------

Feather the selection:

Open the Select menu and choose the Feather option.

Ctrl Alt D is the keyboard shortcut.

----------

Feather away:

I picked a 2 pixel radius to feather the selection.

----------

Invert the Selection Mask:

Go to the Select menu and pick Inverse or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl Shift I.
The result is that everything except for the lightning effect will be selected.

----------

Pull out the eraser again:

Using a large size eraser (to speed up the process), erase all over the image, especially around the lightning effect.
From the feathered selection, the transparent bits that have hard edges or lines should now blend away a bit better.

----------

Increasing the Lightning Effect:

Duplicate the Lightning layer.

----------

Select the new layer:

Select the new layer by holding Ctrl and left clicking on the layer in the layer list.

----------

Feathering time again:

Feather the selection on the new layer just the same way it was done on the previous layer.

----------

Invert the Selection:

Invert the selection (Select menu, Invert, or Ctrl Shift I)

----------

Erase around on the new layer:

Just as before, erase around the image.
The reason for doing this process again on a second layer is to increase the effect of the light fading away and to hopefully make things look smoother.

----------

Link the two layers:

With the main lightning layer selected, click the little square to the left of the lightning copy layer. They are linked when there is a little paper clip in that box.

----------

Merge the lightning layers:

In the Layer menu, choose the Merge Linked Layers option or simply push Ctrl E on the keyboard.
The layers have now been smooshed into a single layer.

----------

Progress check:

I find it much easier to see how things are going by viewing the effect on a black background, so I have change the blue layer back to black.

----------

Adjusting the position of the layer:

Choose the Move tool (the V key on the keyboard) and move the Lightning layer until it does not collide with any of the image's edges.

If having difficulties with this then resize the layer by doing a Free Transform (push Ctrl T).

To resize while Free Transforming, move your cursor to the top left of the rectangular shape that appears around the layer until you see the cursor turn into two opposing diagonal arrows. Hold down shift, click and drag to scale the layer without changing it's aspect ratio.

----------

Result of Layer movement:

Above is what mine looked like after nudging it around a little.

----------

Adding some glow effects:

There are probably multiple ways to add a bit of a glow to the lightning effect. I like to make the glow effect on a new layer so my current effect isn't changed in case I need it again.
Start by duplicating the Lightning layer.

----------

Applying a Blur filter:

A blur will do nicely to make a glow effect for my lightning.
Under the Filter menu and in the Blur sub-menu, choose Guassian Blur.

----------

Decide on a blur radius:

Choose a blur radius that works well for the lightning bolt. For this one in particular, a 15 pixel radius seemed to do nicely.

----------

Result after Guassian Blur:

Above is the resulting image after applying the Guassian Blur Filter.

----------

Hard Lines:

As you can see, where the Lightning originally rested against the edge of the picture there is a hard line, so it's time to eliminate that.

----------

Select the Blur tool:

Push B or select the Blur tool from the toolbar.

----------

Blur it!

On any of the hard edges, just hold the blur tool there until it fades and blends in with the rest of the image.
It's recommended to use a small blur brush for this, for you don't want to blur more of the lightning effect than is necessary.

----------

Final result!

Here is the final result! It's hard to see with all the layers turned off. In Photoshop 7.0 if I save as a TGA file I can upload the image to Second Life without any transparency problems.

If using PSCS2 then saving the image as a PNG file will automatically save properly for use in Second Life with transparencies.

Download and extract this file to get the final particle texture from this tutorial.

Part Two Coming Soon:

I'll make the next part of this tutorial soon. It will show how to use the particle effect painted in Second Life by using a standard particle script template.

Dealing with Alpha Textures in SL

2007-07-24T17:26:00.002-04:00

Felidae and I worked on a Shinto shrine together recently, and during that time I came across the problem Second Life has with showing a prim with an alpha texture on it in front of another prim with an alpha texture on it. After some searching around and testing and scratching of heads we figured out that if the textures on the object in front of the background object is 1024x1024 it does not disappear as easily. The same placement and same exact camera angle with a 512x512 texture made it disappear entirely.

I really had a good time work on this project. It is very satisfying when working with someone else and all the pieces fit together perfectly.

We do plan on offering the shrine as a free item sometime soon, but currently we don't quite have it packaged for that.

UPDATE: Here is a SLURL to the shrine.

from the hip blog

2007-07-22T01:16:00.001-04:00

I'm glad to see people enjoying the grappling hook! Thank you for the blog mentioning, Elusyve!

If you haven't seen Elusyve's blog go ahead and check it out!

Eyana's Ninja HUD Released

2007-07-20T01:10:00.001-04:00

The ninja hud is finally finished and for sale.

Click this link to view the SLExchange listing.

Here's a brief list of things it has:

Jump assist (variable assist levels)
Landing cloud
Teleport poofer (cloud of smoke)
Smoke bomb escape (teleports to camera position)
Smoke bomb poof
Kunai
Shuriken
Caltrops
Foot trap
Water walking
Free updates!

Eyana's Quick Shading Tutorial

2007-07-20T00:20:00.001-04:00

Below is a quick tutorial on a method of shading. I did this somewhat in haste so things aren't exactly the way I would leave it in the end, but the method shows through hopefully.

There is no text describing the images, but I tried to take snaps of the important steps with the menus open so it could be seen. I will update this thread at some point and make it more tutorial-ish.

swept hilt rapier - work in progress

2007-06-08T22:36:00.001-04:00

This is one of the things I've been working on:

New Stuff on the Way

2007-05-25T12:34:00.001-04:00

I haven't updated in a bit, but I want to post saying that there are a couple new things on the way. Expect to see more sci-fi type guns and blasters soon, as well as a few new avatars and gadget toys.

Also, the store underwent serious remodeling, so check it out if you haven't seen the new building.

C:SI Politics and Policies Rant

2007-05-02T18:27:00.002-04:00

Recently, someone opened a new sim for C:SI combat. They aren't selling their own weapon system. The sim is just there for dueling, mainly because another sim was closed for a while and the person opening wanted another alternate spot for sparring.

Apparently this is a big deal to the owner(s) of Samurai Island and Samurai Edo. The person who opened the new sim was banned from all of the C:SI owners' sims. Gasp! If they don't want their stuff working in other sims then they should restrict the scripts to work only in certain regions (which subsequently would cut their business in half or more).

What in the world is wrong with someone spending their own money to open a sim for C:SI combat? Do they really expect people to be content going to Edo? It's *always* laggy, and sometimes the people there can be very annoying.

Another note about Edo is they are hiring security, and so far the person hired I would not trust at all with any amount of responsibility.

And what of Shrouded Isle? Are Alyssa and Jed going to get banned from Edo and related places for owning a sim initially based around the C:SI combat system?

There has to be more behind this. I really would think they would welcome another sim simply for the free advertising.

More on this later I guess.

Poofy Color Cloud

2007-04-29T14:17:00.001-04:00

The poofy cloud thing is released. It turns on a cloud when you fly and turns it off when you land.

Poofy Color Cloud on SLExchange

Grappling Hook Price Cut

2007-04-28T23:44:00.002-04:00

I decided 650 was just too high, so I dropped it to 450.

Grappling Hook Gun Released!

2007-04-28T10:07:00.000-04:00

Finally, finally, finally! I pulled a kind of all-nighter to get this thing ready for the weekend. My goal yesterday was to have it ready by Monday, but I managed to get ahead of myself.

The grappling hook gun is fun. Yes. Very fun. I'm really hoping that it gets a few sales and people choose it over the other couple grappling hook options because of the increased range on this one. Earlier tonight I managed to have an 832 meter grapple successfully. I shot at a raised angle from one corner of a sim and managed to hit a sky box out of sheer luck. ^^

I put the gun at L$650. I think it's a fair price considering the amount of headaches I got from working on it. For more information, IM me (Eyana Yohkoh) or check out the notecard that comes with it that I posted in the description on SLExchange.

<3

grappling hook controls

2007-04-25T01:25:00.001-04:00

Okay, so the passthrough thing was something I was overlooking. I figured it out. The gun works. Now all that is left to do is make a hud to switch between short and long range modes (short range mode is 100m, but moves the avatar to the target a bit quicker because of the less steps taken), make some animations and/or poses, and do a little re-texturing.

Grappling Hook Update Update (whee redundant)

2007-04-24T21:02:00.001-04:00

I searched the SL forums and apparently there's a problem with multiple attachments taking controls or releasing controls (thread). A fix was to allow it to be passthrough controls or something which of course I've never done nor do I know what it means. A quick wiki search returned zero help as well. Meh. Guess I'll do some more searching.

Grappling Hook Update

2007-04-24T18:38:00.001-04:00

The basic grappling hook is a fairly simple script up until a certain point. If you want your grappling hook to move the avatar more than about 65 meters you have to add a bunch of frustrating math and loops to the script. The limit of using llMoveToTarget was my first hurdle to overcome. It took several tries to get it right and I kind of got it right by mistake. Whee!

So getting around the llMoveToTarget limit raised my grappling hook range to 100m, the range of a shout. More bits and pieces were added and now I have it not relying on shout, but the actual grappling takes a slightly longer amount of time to start moving the avatar, so I think I'll add a short range bullet and long range bullet version to it.

Anyway, it definitely works. I grappled successfully to a distance of over 400 meters so far. Of course, it won't work across sims, but it is definitely sim-wide.

Another problem I have is with permissions—I think. If I start flying with my flight assist enabled it completely overrides the grappling hook permissions or something. Basically the problem is the gun loses functionality after flight assist is activated. I tried having it request permissions again after holstering and unholstering again, but that doesn't seem to work. I guess it's going to take some more guesswork and testing different options to see what will make it keep working.

Calendar Woes

2007-04-20T04:24:00.001-04:00

I'm trying to get the feed to my new google calendar working, but it only wants to show one event even though I've told it to show a maximum of five. Of course, there are only two events scheduled so far, but it should be showing both.

Maybe I'm missing something simple. I'll leave it for now and hope it magically fixes itself, but it's more likely tomorrow I will need to figure it out.

o.O

2007-04-19T22:29:00.001-04:00

I'm sorry for the awful writing in that last post. Meh.

Guns and Gadgets

2007-04-19T20:49:00.001-04:00

I finished a neat, poofy cloud that activates when the avatar is in flight and it has a very neat way to change the start color and end color of the particle effect--at least I thought it was neat. The color changing part of the script took less time than the particles and was so much easier than making a huge list of menus and colors. It also doesn't require any typing of vectors or RGB values or whatever, so it's really easy to get exactly the shade you want.

Also, today I figured out a grappling hook script. After a slight bit of frustration--mostly me typing things incorrectly or skipping steps--it works perfectly. I may tweak the actual numbers in the script a little more after I get a prim gun and hook built. Right now it's just a cube firing a sphere out and then the avatar goes shooting across to where the sphere "hooks" to. I think I'm going to make the weapon a multi-function gun, so not only will it be a grappling hook, but it will be able to launch smoke grenades, flares, and.. hmm. I don't know what else really. I don't want it to have annoying griefing-like settings. I should put some silly things in there too.

New Items, New Store Location

2007-04-19T03:19:00.001-04:00

I bought a larger piece of land to place my main store finally. It's up and advertised in Places search now (search Eyana's or follow this slurl). I also added a new kimono in different color styles that's just kind of been sitting around in my inventory for a while.

Image spam:

Also I made a neato fishing boat (at least I think it's neato) several days ago:

I've a lot of stuff going on in RL, and my brain is just frazzled lately. Raar.

Slacker Days

2007-04-10T15:46:00.001-04:00

I stayed up very late last night and somewhere around 6am I decided to have some wine. It was very nice and relaxing, but I did get a little tipsy and I skipped classes today because of it. That's definitely something I shouldn't do very often.

A dream I had was centered around Second Life. I had some kind of vague conversation with Felidae in the dream and then I went on a sort of adventure to try to gather new players to Felidae's Aztec temple so they could be sacrificed in her name. It was very, very odd and I'm certain a shrink would have some interesting things to say about it.

New Items and SLExchange!

2007-04-06T23:50:00.001-04:00

I finally took snapshots and made vendors for my jumpsuits. I'm not sure why I'm calling them jumpsuits instead of catsuits. Oh well. I suppose it doesn't matter. They're sold individually or in a special E-Pack that contains all of them at a discounted price.

I've also put my items for sale on SLExchange. I'm glad I finally did it. It was relatively easy to set up, but it did take a bit longer than I expected it would to add images for them all. I don't shop on SLExchange very often since it's difficult to find something unless it's a very specific item and having to browse through so many things is very, very bad for my pocketbook.

On a side note, SheOfTheSourSnailsSuckers Sellery released her Moonlit Pond katana for the Shunrai Combat System. It is a very well-crafted weapon and just looks fantastic!

If I can find a link to it then I'll update the post so everyone can go get it.

Obstacle Course Obstacles (awful title)

2007-04-05T14:44:00.001-04:00

Yesterday evening and night I spent most of my time on Second Life working on an obstacle course. I doubt it'll end up being useful for any sort of training, but it is kind of fun. It's mostly finished, apart from texturing. By "mostly finished" I mean that the basic course is almost ready for use. I'm going to add some checkpoints and time tracker scripts so it'll report your time. Eventually I'll have a time tracker for each of my courses and a top ten list and... ugh. There's too much stuff I want to do.

The most annoying part thus far has been getting the falling bridges to work properly. In theory it seemed a great idea, but it's really quite a pain to acheive any sort of consistency with it. The prims used for the bridge become physical when an avatar runs over them. That sounds easy enough, right? The prims can't be flush against each other though or Second Life counts them as 'interpenetrating' which essentially means it won't enable physics. Okay, so I thought the easy solution for the bridge was to simply put a very small gap between the prims. That works insofar as enabling physics goes. If the bridge is a perfectly horizontal bridge the one millimeter gaps cause the running avatar to trip and go hurtling forward uncontrollably.

Argh.

I ended setting the bridges at a ramped angle. The sliding issue doesn't seem to occur quite as frequently, but it still happens often enough to be an annoyance. Another thing that occurs is sometimes when the avatar jumps off of one of the falling prims, for some reason, the jumper flies very far up into the air gaining at least an extra fifty meters or so higher than a normal jump. I suppose that's just a quirk of Second Life physics and nothing can be done about it.

I could change the falling bridges to just change positions after collision and not enable physics at all, but where's the fun in that? In the earlier tests of the script I had something like that and discarded the idea.

How badly broken will the the falling bridges be when I log on to Second Life today? There are a couple kinks in the resetting script (I think—I couldn't see why it wasn't working completely last night). Sometimes the prims reset to the incorrect positions. Oh well. Another thing to figure out.

The rest of the obstacle course functions fairly well. It's fun being smooshed by the chompers and flying off the course. I need to add some particle effects and squishy sounds for that.

That will come later. I had enough stress today that I don't want to look at scripts yet. I think I'm going to go see if I can find something to chop.

Chop chop.

Second Life Videos

2007-04-04T12:26:00.001-04:00

About a month or so ago I recorded a few duels, put them to music, and uploaded them (link). There are three videos—two of the them are videos of my good friend Surfer Ryder and me sparring with Combat: Samurai Island katanas, and the third video is just me operating a camera (somewhat clumsily) while watching two other friends practice. The latter video was my first attempt at recording movies in Second Life.

About a week ago I began to try to get the videos to work on my television in Second Life. This was very frustrating for me because I used Windows Movie Maker to create the movies but Second Life needed a different format hosted somewhere online. The hosting part was easy to do: I just searched the Second Life forums and found a place called blip.tv that allows videos to be uploaded in a wide variety of formats, allows the use of the files that are uploaded directly instead of forcing users to go to their website to view them, and the website's services are free.

The difficulty I ran into was converting the .wmv file to an acceptable Second Life format. The machanima forums for Second Life did have a little bit of information so I tested different software to convert. My first attempts, and of these there were several, I tried converting to the mp4 format. This sort of worked, but not well enough. Every attempt to convert from wmv straight to mp4 had audio syncing issues in Second Life: the audio was either behind or ahead of the video by a considerable amount.

This was an annoying and lengthy testing process and I should have asked for help sooner—I can be a stubborn girl sometimes and I really wanted to figure it out by myself—but the process of converting, uploading, and then dashing off to the Second Life television set was lengthy and lagging my computer badly. It probably didn't help that I was trying to actually do things in Second Life while the files were converting and uploading. Oopsie. Anyway, I finally posted a topic at the Second Life forums requesting help (my very first post on any of the Second Life forums) and gave up for the night.

So essentially I use two bits of software to get it working in Second Life. The first is Videora iPod Converter to convert from wmv to the Quicktime MOV format. After that I use 3GP Converter to get it into this weird format I've never heard of before but is useable by Second Life and a much smaller file size than the Quicktime MOV format. There is a loss of quality, but I still think it looks just fine on my Second Life television.

So I didn't figure it out all by myself, but I did give it a worthy try. I'm very glad to have it working.

I am definitely going to make more movies. I thought about making a C:SI and SCS training video series. That might be fun.

Blogness!

2007-04-04T12:15:00.000-04:00

Okay, I decided to start my own blog to keep track of things and Second Life and to hopefully become a useful tool for when (not if, but when!) my store takes off a bit more successfully. I'm not sure how exactly I go about advertising a blog. I'll probably just put the link in my profile and possibly make a group for my store (finally).

Mostly I'm doing this right now because I've nothing better to do and Second Life is currently down for maintenance.

I only have a few things in my store so far: nine or so scripted umbrellas or parasols, three kimono, four screens, and my C:SI and SCS training tools.

I think I'll end this post now and maybe make a couple more about particular topics to keep things slighlty more organized for archiving.