Author Archive

Over the past couple days I’ve moved fairly quickly through both the low-poly modeling of the Halloween claws, but also UV unwrapping, and made all the LOD sub-models for the left & right-hand variant (that’s right, all by hand because I’m such a glutton for punishment). There was a few failed attempts due to fingers clipping through (on my avatar at least) and some weird shading oddities that, I believe, are all fixed now.

I’ve separated each claw and its respective retainer ring so that you can show/hide whatever you want to use or not (I don’t use the retainer rings when I’m wearing gloves for instance).

The current texture is really, really basic with a tiny bit of shading (tin-table texture) and a smooth normal map. I want to make a few variants next week, (as long as time allows for it). Something metallic, maybe some engraving? I don’t really want to make them too similar to last year’s.

That being said, suggestions are welcome.

The new Halloween claw project started well!

This is another claw set that I wanted to make, and it felt like too small of a project for the store “proper” so I’m making it this year’s Halloween project. These have a bit of an upward curve, which I think looks really feminine.

I’m probably going to make the finger ring hide-able because personally I will probably wear these over gloves, and that’s where those would be attached.

But the option of a ring to hold them in place is still nice.

Like the other ones, they attach to the middle of the finger, I was initially going to make an anchor point for the fingertip, or a full finger sleeve, but it would cause issues with finger posing.

It turns out that I couldn’t sleep last night and ended up adding an extra feature to the nose hook right before release hehe.

So where do I start… It follows the same “style” as the KDC Raider Harness Gag, it in fact comes with instructions, meshs and script add-on to add a mini nose hook to it. But it is really designed as a standalone piece.

The standalone is lockable, support tag plates, is made of a bunch of separate unrigged pieces to make it as convenient as possible to adjust to a given head (do not that I did not say “easy”…). It has its one styling HUD, and a little animation system to decide how much you want your nose “upturned” by the hook. (how much you can get away with is going to depend on the mesh head you are using)

It comes with 3 hook variations, just because I couldn’t decide which one to settle on.

So what did I add in last minute? Well there is a clickable element on top of the head that you can click and “drag” forward to pitch the wearer’s head down or back to pitch it up. I also recorded suitable sounds for it :3

As usual, you can find it at the KDC Main Store (with the usual 10% reduction) or from the SecondLife Marketplace.

Enjoy~

Here is some in-world tests for the nose hook project!

Two days making LOD meshes, fixing stupid mistakes and re-doing more LODs. This is going to be just as difficult to adjust as the raider harness gag I fear, and I couldn’t find a haircut that allowed to see the locking buckle, so I’m probably going to make the clickable section extra large…

~2100 Display weight for the entire assembly. As I had planned, the square rings can easily be stretched or squashed to add/remove a little bit of slack here and there and get it to look nice and tight.

I’ve also quickly made a handful of upturned nose poses from 5 to 20 degrees in +5 increments.

I will be out of town tomorrow, so it is unlikely that I will be able to work on this.

I dislike LOD making so much, sometimes. I don’t usually have to do “all” of them on objects that have no cavities, but on fiddly little things like that, it is preferable if I do “most” of them by hand.

There is still like… 3-4 hooks to do (nose & rear/neck), (these are pretty quick tho) and 2-3 strap sections.

It looks good, I can’t really complain, but that’s so many individual parts to prepare for upload.

I’ve also finalized

I have spent an incredibly long amount of time getting just those nose hook strap textures assembled, I ended up having to redo them a bunch of time, mainly because I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing. That and some RL appointments, are my excuses for the lack of updates last week.

I really, really need to make myself a set of reusable textures for strap work, but once again… that’s not going to be for this project. Maybe the next one, if there is long enough piece of strap on it?

I still have to make LOD models for those and put together all the colors.

Nearly done, I swear!

I’ve finished up the different hooks (I’ll just put them in the “extra” box I guess), I’ve also made a “short” hook and connector strap to make it easier to fit it to the Raider Harness Gag it is incredibly short. It should give more options for adjustment too.

Sometimes I wish I did not need this much padding on textures, but that’s just how it is with SL: 4 additional pixels per island is what’s safe.

Texture resolution wise, it is on part with the gag straps and should end up looking about the same. The metal parts should be able to use the existing hardware textures but if it doesn’t cut it I’ll make a new one.

I hope this is still somewhat of an interesting update ^^.

I’ve sort of finished the high poly straps for the nose hook and & unwrapped them. Started putting the little details in too, stitches & grommets. I’ve also added rounded tips to the hook ends and a d-ring to act as a retainer for the adjustment strap.

The last picture is just a quick test for a method to model an inflatable ball hood. I just thought I’d post it since it looked neat. Maybe a project for later.

I started working on a nose hook! I swear this isn’t related to the previous project but something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while now. The marketplace doesn’t appear to have hardly any competition in that regard, so why not?

The way I’m making it, is as an “add on” that can be “hooked” to existing collars (classic leather collar added to the scene as a reference).

Right now the strap uses a total of 9 separate parts to maximize its ability to fit heads:

• Nose hook.
• Connection rings.
• A 45/60/75 curvature straps.
• A straight strap.
• Rear/collar hook.

I haven’t thought yet how to make it lockable, chain-able, or if it even should be. I also should probably make a mini strap & hook setup that fits the Raider Harness Gag.

Thoughts on the variants I’ve tried to come up for the hook? So far the simplest one appears to be the best, but I’m open to suggestions!

The weather is back to being unbearably hot unfortunately, so expect a bit of a slower pace.

I’m relocating the documentation for KDC products from kdc.ethernia.net/docs/  to: kdc-docs.ethernia.net. You shouldn’t have to do anything special as the old location will redirect to the new one automatically.

I’m currently doing some server updates and separating the two makes things a little easier on me.