Forgotten City

We started it in december and after a long work, finally finished - even if my works always changing a bit. The Forgotten City seems to be done.

Our first owned and made sim in Second Life. We made a full city, used the whole inches of the basic sim area, and it's even bigger! We expanded with off-sim hills and scenes - like the wrecked ship and several offsim towers - and the result is a huge area, seems like 4 whole sime connected together.

After two weeks of the official opening day, we are in the Second Life Showcase under the "strange" places category. We celebrated it with a Showcase Ball, even if we had no time to prepare it propertly. We opened also a rental area, where our houses, palaces and manors are available to rent. We match our prices to the common SL rental fees, but our limits are way more flexible. You can have more prims if you want, you can rezz anywhere on the sim, etc.

You can live here, and have fun with your friends, we open for you the whole sim area to use the Rowboats, the Slidechair, the Shooting Gallery and later you will be able to use the Steampunk space station as well, where you can hunt down enemy aliens with a real Steampunk Tesla gun. If you want to have a party, we can share the whole sim stream with you, you can even use for this our representative buildings as well.

You can see in the harbor area the incoming boats and ships, the harbor worker automatons opening and closing the bridges to make a free path for them. If you see a strange Cat look like ship, feel free to catch all the imported fishes before the harbor kitties eating them. If the night coming, the sim will not turn into dark: the rest of the freaky automatons still working, lighting up the streeslamps, and as the morning comes, they even turning them off.

Soon you will able to use these ships to reach far islands around the main city - (probably in the high sim level until we have a new residental sim area). You can play soon even more minigames, we are planning some rat-hunt and more challenging funs, like the car or truck races, where you can even win extra rental days as well.

Check in, maybe worth it to spend few hours around! Feel free to see the museum area, where you can see some important pictures from the past of the Forgotten City. Some lythographies and early paintings, memories of the visits of Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon, Queen Victoria, and many others.

If you getting tired, visit the Bar, where you can ask some drink from the bartender automaton, play a poker with your friends - free minigame as well - dance with the dancing automatons and even see some famous paintings were made by great masters like Millet, Manet, Courbet, and more.

New creations after a long summer break

This summer break took maybe a bit too long, but finally here are our newest creations, and more coming soon! We prepared for the mesh building technology, and spared time for the new optimized creations, but unfortunately Second Life mesh import is not released yet.

So what is new? An arch. It's not a simple one, it's a free adaptation of the huge shopping hall in Milan. It's a bit more prims as usually, but the details are superb. The size, 30x10x30m looks huge when you walking around with your avatar, you can fly up in the small rooms upstairs, and watching around the landscape. It's recommended any themed sim, either ancient or new one.

the Arch of Victory

and the details

Two other buildings are released as well: the Ceremony Hall and the Office tower. 

The Ceremony Hall is a multipurpose building, perfect for exhibitions, gallery, museum, game halls, casino. If you choose the copy/mod version, you can even multiple it, and with a little building skill you are able to make a large quality rooms, or change the textures and create an ancient like bath, club or party hall.

entrance of the ceremony hall

back-face of the building

enterier at day...

and at night.

The Office tower coming in two editions: three and five floors version. Both available - as the Ceremony hall - in three permissions pack: -copy, -mod, -copy/mod. You can choose the perfect one for your own needs, and if you choose the copy/mod, you can change any textures, carpets, floors, and even put more floors between the base and the top level. Street lamps with scripted light and glow effect are in the pack, and for the office a stone bench comes as extra.

the entrance with the stone bench

top floor enterier

office floor enterier (two offices per floors)

lobby as the base floor

the entrance from another angle

All of my creations available at the main shop on SOL Solution Island in the factory. Use the teleport board at the landing point, click on the Houses sign. The office building is set up in the sim below, just click a vendor, you receive the info NC, click on the TP and viola, you can see it. Also available on the XstreetSL site.

The mistery of Copperium and other new items

I am really sorry about the lazy blog posting, but not much time for that, since the inworld creations take all my time. Please come to our main place in Second Life, you can find more new items around the main factory, and on the land below as well. Just few examples:

- The house Copperium:

50 prim steampunk building, includes the holder, fences and even the stairs. Really fast loading time and only 3700 at rendering cost.

More pictures on XStreetSL here.

- The Duty cars collection:

Police and Ambulance cars are ready, used the popular main Platonic idea-shape of common cars from the years 1910-1930. After the personal and the sport version roadster we decided to make these cars and trucks to bring more life in your themed world and rpg. The fire-truck version is still under construction, it will come with a mini-game, where you must extinguish the random fire with some really fun tools. Until it will be done, there are the ready ones:

More pictures on XStreetSL here.

More pictures on XStreetSL here.

-  ~JD~ MTF physical (!) swing on a Tree

You must try it... nothing to say about, the physical feature makes it real, not like the scripted set-pose dashed movements. It is next to the shooting gallery, just sit on, and use the arrow keys to swing! and not only forward and back, even to the sides!

You will find it on XStreetSL here.

- The steampunk Hot air Balloon

Are you bored of SL balloons can be driven like a spaceship? Need more real behaviors? Our balloon works with SL-winds! You must use the wind to move the balloon around, we made it as real as possible. You must change the hight of the flight, the movement direction can be changed only this way. And certainly we put in a little cheat as well, an auto-pilot, if you would like just look around from the sky, and don't take any attention to the drive.

More on XStreetSL here.

Finally some steampunk and cyberpunk mix will coming soon, a real size shooting game on alien Space Station, fight game with Tesla-guns against fearful monsters, even with more players! ... coming in this weekend!

Baba Yaga hut and the old Hunter's house

Do you know Baba Yaga? no? well... she is like the Blair Witch... or even more fearsome evil misterious witch of south siberia. Baba Yaga lives in the far russian lands, in the Taiga, huge forests and fearsome wild. Baba Yaga lives in a strange hut: it stands on chicken legs. It can walk, turn around, and change it's location, but nobody can see how. It appears one day here... and tomorrow over there.

Our factory offers you this masterpiece of the wonderful legend. The hut fits even the 512qm parcells, it is incredible low (58) prim, includes fireplace with smoking chimney, and the chain-climb animations to reach the ground and floor levels.

Certainly here really can not walk as well, bec. all your extra items would stay where they are rezzed! (the house would move, and all unlinked furnitures would stay up in the sky)

High quality sculpt parts makes the house so real still keep the prim count low!

Maybe you find the chicken legs and the skulls too extreme, you need more moderate style, you will like the old Hunter's house for sure. This is basically the same house, without the skull frieze and the chicken legs. This version has less prims, 49 is pretty fine even for the smallest standard spots in Second Life.

As you see, there are some grass, trees and wood fences for a nice country look. This is not only for the pictures, a common eye-candy trick. You can buy the basic elements, and create the garden around the houses. Really low prim with the highest quality and LOD safe - looks cool even from distance - self-made sculpt parts.

~JD~ MTF old Hunter's garden building set contains:

- Green Grass field (mod/copy) 4 prim
- Green Grass bush (mod/copy) 1 prim
- Canopy Tree (copy) 3 prim
- Curly Tree (copy) 3 prim
- Wood Ladder (copy/mod) 1 prim
- Log Wall (copy/mod) 1 prim
- Wood Fence (copy) 1 prim
- Straw-stack (copy) 5 prim
- Shadow prim 1 prim

If you are ready with your garden and house, you step in the building, the only thing you find inside an old fireplace. If you would like to have more furniture in the same quality, there might be something for you here.

~JD~ MTF Baba Yaga furniture set contains:

- Wood Table (mod/copy) 1 prim
- Baba Yaga throne (copy) 7 prim
- warehouse sitting Corner (copy) 6 prim (includes 2 scripted sitplaces)
- room fence (copy) 5 prim
- copper cauldron (copy) 11 prim
- log chair (copy) 3 prim (male/female sit version)
- animal Skull (copy) 3 prim
- vial (copy/mod) 3 prim
- bottle (copy/mod) 2 prim
- copper lamp (copy) 2 prim
- Shadow prim 1 prim

Tese items are planned for the ~JD~ MTF Baba Yaga hut, to give a full datail and nice quality. The hut and all of these items even fit on a standard 512qm 117 prim plot! 

If you would like to see them in Second Life, please visit our Factory!

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!

Chateau d' Arusu

Miss Arusu asked me to build some nice building. Something, like the Taj Mahal in RL, but not the same. She gave me 5000 prims limit to the building and the basic furniture. As i started the construction, she asked me one little thing: a sculpture of an angel... like a little putto with horn.



I used for the whole structure around 2000 prims, including the really prim-eater stairways on the front and the rear side. I used also a prim fences, normal prims for the base levels on the 100x100m footprint and a detailed roof decoration. There were used only 64x64 pixel sculptmaps, and 512x512, 256x256 textures for the optimal load of the huge building.


The construction is really.. big. The footprint is ratherly imposant with the 10000qm, the lobby hight is 20m, just exactly like the first floor, where a small exchibition hall located. (small... 60x60x20m) In the attic located the bar with dance places and a soft steampunk-pseudo planetarium with animated copper balls, gears and mechanism.


I also added some physical elevators -Arusu asked for them- in the side towers and from the first floor to the second one. I hope lot of people will have fun in this nice building, and have a good business in the mall area.
Thanks for the great idea, and the correct cooperation to Arusu Apfelbaum, chiko Reina, bark Aabye and Shoji Kumaki.

More pictures HERE.