I lost count of how many attempts I did for these chain links. And it turns out that most of them were useless:

• Having a visible weld/closure point was too distracting.
• Turns out that rounded links look worse because it makes it more obvious which link is which when they overlap.
• A dark background is normally a big no-no for alpha textures, but here it actually looks better when you zoom out.

So here we are, I’ve put the two textures side-by side, so you can see the difference. I wanted an improvement, but not to the point that it became too distracting, and I think that’s it.

Some minor changes to the cigarette case after a friend started showing me some really nice engraved guns.

I’ve also done a lot of writing in the past 3 days, nearly 2000 words. And much more since the year started. The Froznovia manuscript is growing, but it is more a spider web than anything resembling a story. I really wish I could release more of it, but I have no idea how.

It has a bit of everything, mostly lore building and chronological data, but also a bunch of new elements and characters: Erika getting the Von Kraul arm from her father Leupold, a visit of the Von Kroenen family vault in the Wurmingstein imperial fortress, an interrogation scene with the daughter of a diplomat… Hell, I even wrote a mini scene involving a social media influencer being forced to Vlog her own arrival in the Froznovia penal colony (this is absolutely not canon, but it was funny, in a way that a corpse is funny).

It helps me cope, it serves as a conduit for some really dark thoughts.

I have to say that from the previous post to this one, the cigarette case is looking quite epic. The clamp on the cigarette side it cool, if a little weird, and the one on the memorabilia side is functional, without hiding too much. I could put the crest on both halves of the case to save on texture space by making both halves identical…

I also included two really terrible pictures of the chain texture upgrade I’m trying to make, the color is too dark and wrong, the little weld spot is distracting and will be removed, but the shape is what I’m trying to go for.

So please, I’d like some opinion on the look of those chain links if you don’t mind, because I really want to be done with that update!

As far as the big TouchBound update goes, all the primary locks are now up-to-date and ready for release, all that is missing is the accessories & the heavy-duty locks. The accessories use a lot of the regular lock code, so I’m not worried of breaking anything when I update them later. As far as the heavy locks go, I do want to make sure that the cuffs don’t require an update for them later, so I still need to do that.

I have not abandoned the little smoking kit project, but I’m probably not going to make a softpack, it turns out that a nice little metal case gives me some space to store the lighter too.

Nothing quite new here, just more PBR locks. I’m done debugging the new optional data block for locks and applying it to all the core locks. And this morning I’ve made a PBR refresh of the lock tray. I tried to go for something that looks like silver with a little bit of patina, and it turned out like that.

It certainly beats the original…

I think I’m mostly out of it. I did a little more work on the round locks, further tweaking to hide the artifacts in the normal map & occlusion map (I kinda had to do this by hand).

Still updating the lock code, that’s the main issue there, now that it works well on the time-release lock, getting the keyed locks to support everything. I won’t replace every lock at once, but once I’m confident with the protocol extension, I’ll roll out a full PBR update of the lined chrome set.

I also want to try making an improved chain texture, something that still has the qualities of the current one (doesn’t look like it doesn’t belong), but looks simply… better. We’ll see about that I suppose. Looks like I’m not going to make it before Mars with this.

There have been a lot of heavy things to deal with IRL & SL & VR, I won’t elaborate, but I figured I would still post a status update. Feeling quite energized today… Even if it’s bedtime heh!

Addendum, because I’ve seen this and I can’t unsee it:

Yes, you can use my items in your pictures, (even store pictures so long as you’re not implying that you are selling my work, credits would be nice but not required), as long as the picture hasn’t been touched by an AI generation/assist/inpainting tool, I will press the funny DMCA button if you do.

In true KDC tradition of getting completely scatterbrained, I’ve started more things that I don’t know if or how to finish!

On the good news side, we have a somewhat decent looking round lock material set. I’m not 100% sure, but I might have mitigated the texture warping issues of the original pre-PBR textures.

The bad news is that I got my head in yet another anime/manga series (kakegurui), and I had to get the “housepet tag” design out of my system. I like the concept, but I’d rather make it mine and use it for something at some point.

More lockstuff: A first attempt at spicing up the valentine locks. The sculpted prim on these is exceptionally messed up, making things quite difficult. On the 3 other lock sets it feels like the normal mapping helps, here nearly everything makes it all worse I feel…

I did not mention this in the previous post but the gold & stainless steel colors match the PBR database for those metals, so there are some differences in appearance. I intend on sticking to those reference values whenever I can.

It would be nice if I could kick an update on most of the base locks & the lined chrome set before February is over…

PS: I’ve done some DNS migration shenanigans, do tell me if things start failing.

Today’s post includes a few of the system’s padlocks side by side with their PBR version.

PBR materials outshine the original material system especially with metallic surfaces; and so gold is extremely “gold-like” here. I had to reverse engineer my own sculpted prims for the fingerprint & keyless locks as I’ve lost the original files a long time ago. As a result, those new normal maps are approximate at best. The normal maps actually help a lot, it still looks scuffed, but the sculpted prim geometry looks far worse without than it does with.

Thankfully, the locks are pretty small, and You are not supposed to rub your eyeballs against them anyway~

The PBR upgrade for the lined chrome set has been “in progress” for a long time now, the main reason I haven’t released it, is that locks & accessories do not currently support PBR, and that annoys me. I’m currently hard at work to solve that problem, and I’m using the time-release padlock as my guinea pig. Oh yeah, and we’re getting emissions on locks for the same cost.

I’ll probably make the fingerprint/keyless locks print plate emissive: it looks cool.

PBR doesn’t look right on HUDs, so I’m going to have to make locks… effectively swap texture when you attach them/rez them.

I’ve decided to run a little poll for some potential changes on the time-release padlocks, since I’m already working on that. I am considering increasing the max allowed time for the current time locks, since I STILL haven’t made a longer variant and people are telling me 6 hours is really short.

Don’t forget that you can pick more than one option → https://strawpoll.com/jVyG26Vb1Z7 poll closes in a week!

I’m slowly but surely filling my little “cellar” scene project with unfinished props, it is starting to look like something.

The sawhorse is more or less in its final form. The rest is still in flux. The workbench is going to need so many tools it feels like it is going to take a while…