Vintage Vehicles project

We are working on another complex system this time after created some avatars and custom works right before Halloween. First we created some vintage truck for custom, but we decided finally make more versions of them.

The truck will be able transport physical items in short distances, but unfortunately sim crosses make the load falling out of the vehicle. The basic version built of 28 prims, the driver and

passenger has nice comfy seats in the cockpit, and if necessary, one person might be transported in the back on the bench.

There will be a simple personal version as well, with shorter wheelbase, and able to carry 4 avatars around SL. In the future we are planning a website based system, where all cars data will be collected and transferred to Mechanical Repair stations, where the damaged vehicles might be repaired if necessary.

This repair station will be on the market soon, with additional repair tools like compressor for wheels, and wrenches and spare parts to make right the damaged parts. Damage and petrol/steam consumption will be calculated via scripts.

In the final state we are planning to create fire car, emergency car and tow car for any possible traffic and accident circumstances. Please visit our shop in the next few weeks about the basic versions of the truck and car, and if you like them, check back frequently about the system versions, or join our support group to get information about the newest releases of our products!

New releases in July

The most important new vehicle is our first aeroplane, actually a SeaPlane. The hard prim limitaion for vehicles inspires the creators cheat a bit: use a simple frame vehicle with scripts and the driver must wear a hundreds-of-prims attachment as extra. It looks pretty fancy, but there are a lot of disadvantages. If you already have one, you might know:) We never make this kind of things. We keep the prim limits, and use sculpts for details, and offer you a wehicle without any difficult tricks or cheats complicated over with laggy scripts.

In our Seaplane - like usually in all of our vehicles - you can drive, and take 3 of your friend with yourself for a wonderful flight wit

hout any trick or treat: just jump in and fly with the 27 prim physical vehi

cle. The attributes are close to RL flight, and the speed is set for SL sizes. The

sims are pretty small, and we lowered the cruise speeds as much as possible. You can drive it with- or without the fancy HUD, that shows flying informations in realtime, you can handle most important things from there, but the most important function: it detects the ba

nlines if you fly over mainland, avoids you from those ugly crashes.

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New building is a pretty big Windmill. If you are familiar with ourLighhouse,

this one seems about double sized, however in footprint is only 10-10m bigger. The whole atmosphere is a bit brighter, and more complex in the room arrangement. Fits perfect almost into any enviroment, except the hi-tech or space designs. Can be used for small home, shop, hideout or even skybox, just use your imagination.

The 20x40 meter footprint - about 40 m high- and the 117 prims fits perfectly on 1024qm plot, or bigger. The building contains basic scripts, so it's a bit more than a normal prefab: the door is lockable and contains access list, the sculpt curtains change their size on touch, the ladder is scripted with a climb up/down animation and certainly the fan is controllable with a large lever down in the basement at the stones. All machinery scripted, rotating and make some noise under the pressure of wind.

Alhough the primcount for that house is pretty low, the details are really high, thanks to the detailed, optimised and shadow-imitated textures, and the LOD safe high quality sculpt parts. Let me explain that a bit.

(if you are familiar with sculpts, please jump over the next lines)

SL sculpts are based on textures, that contains coordinates of the shape. All textures in SL are pretty huge, -except the good sculptmap, that contains 1024 points. SL has a feature, that helps your PC easier show the world, it reduces the quality of the texture from distance. Unfortunatly it will reduce the sculptmap as well, and the sculpt will loose the shape. You can set these settings in the Preferences, but most of the sculpts even then losing their shape. The secret is simple and not a secret at all: how can you make a LOD safe sculpt? Put more points in the corners. It is pretty tricky, and can not be made in all editors. But fortunatly, we can:)

If you would like to see the building, you will find it at our main shop on SOL Solution Island. It is available in 2 versions: first comes in easy rez-box, and it's copiable, the second one is delivered without the rez-box, and it is moddable, but no copy.

And many more creations since the Taj project

Yes, the Taj project is done. Built both sims, the touring Zeppeli, the rawboat, and many more little features in the beautiful land, owned by Arusu Apfelbaum. The sims were in the Secondlife Showcase, and has excellent traffic and sales, nice and quality events not only for indian and japanese nations : ) It was also in the hall of fame of on the Koinup photo site, and posted on several SL blogs and news. I am really happy:)

I constructed the flying garden for the White Taj meanwhile, and made several custom works as well.

We produced a little bit less items in the few months as we used to do, and the reason: we learned a lot of new tricks, how can make things more effective and beautiful in Second Life. I worked on a new pipeline for texture baked sculpts into SL. Most exporters make really noisy sculpts, some of them make a never-load feeling. You can stay and see the abstract triangles for hours... I really dont like it.

Finally -and accidentally like one of those things- i realised a new 

way to create some detailed-cutted sculpts, while the shape keeps its smooth lookout even from more distance. (if you set the object details to maximum, the sculpt will not "crash 

and messy" even if you zoom far out) And i can create it relative fast.

I never experimenting without completion of products. New steampunk things realised from the mouse emitter mousehole, across some clothes and goggles to the newest odd buildings. Check my shop, you will see what i mean:) I could create much more things, but learning and experimenting takes a lot of time, just like my RealLife.. or first life.. in summertime.

New ships are under construction, some new "shooting game" and much more items in my pocket in beta version. I hope you will check in my store frequently, or join in Second Life the ~JD~ Mechanical Toy Factory group for infos and updates.

Ciao:)

The Taj project expansion

A few weeks after finished the Withe palace, Arusu IM-ed me. She asked me a favour, to place the whole palace into a brand new sim, she just bought. And asked me something more: continue the building with a black palace in another sim, she will buy soon, and attach to the White one. She asked me for sketches in 2D and in 3D as well.

I made a requested plans, and pre-renders and she let me do, what i just imagined about. She asked me only few things, more inspirations than regulations: must be different of the White palace as in structure as in color, atmosphere and spirit.

They needed some modifications and minor changes during the work, but everithing was smooth and fine. I planned the textures, sculptmaps and the megaprims optimised, and the result is fast load with maximum details. (the loading time will slightly increase in the future, after the shops realising with a lot of vendor-advertisment around)

They ordered from us a touring Zeppelin and rowboats as well, to increase the spectacles of the Taj-sims. Mandy scripted, and I built them as usually. You can try the result soon, and we hope you will like it!

Most of the rental shops are reserved, even before the opening of the sim! (it was the same at the OZ sim, which I built last year)

Finally I place a detail picture of the Lion fountain of the sim, just reveal some realisation of my visions:) ( the photo was made in SL without any Photoshop modification)

Please visit the Taj-world after firsd week of March, and try the Zeppelin tour, rowing the boat or play with Mandy's mouce race.

Oh... and if you have a sim, and some idea, and like what you see in Taj, you can hire us any time to realise your dreams in SL!