Archive for the ‘pet projects’ Category

I’m calling this a pseudo-update, because I still don’t know if this is going to be relevant to SL at all.

Without going into details, one of my relatives has been hospitalized this weekend, and It is unlikely that they will walk out of it. As a result I’ve been occupying my head with random projects, and for some reason, I couldn’t really get my head into the latex maid uniform project.

There is a couple of other things I don’t feel comfortable to show for now, but well… this is today’s update. I want to get back into the swing of things… but at least it is still modeling, right?

I’m hoping things will improve, but they won’t. So all I can hope is to get over it quickly… or at least enough to focus.

I’ve done more work on the latex maid uniform’s corset and built a fairly decent-looking skirt (on accident, really), I will most likely redo it as it doesn’t look quite right to me… That being said, it helps me to shape the bottom of the corset for the time being.

The corset itself need a few more boning channels, the front of it looks somewhat okay to me, the back? Not so much. It is definitely better than earlier now that I’ve opened it and started shaping the lacing area, something is still a bit off. I had to spend most of the day outside, commuting between appointments, so this is yesterday’s productivity urge.

I also got distracted with a bit of a side project (last picture), I’ll let you ponder on that one and say no more. Some of you might get the reference, but then again, maybe not.

Good start for the week, the corset is actually taking shape!

I also did some tweaking on the chest to accommodate the bikini top (so that it won’t clip through) and added the front zip & zipper pulls. I’ve started fleshing out the corset, but I’m trying to keep it to a minimum for now, because the shape is not 100% final.

So far so good, nice and tight.

I finally managed to get the short sleeves in a state where I’m actually somewhat happy about them.

That’s a sleepless night of sculpting that I’m not getting back, but that’s ok.

I’ve also quickly added some non-final seams to the body, just to get things looking a bit better (the body will get its own sculpting pass once I have more details in).

Now that this (big) hurdle is out of the way, I guess the next step will be to get the corset/waist cincher in place and the skirt of the dress.

The sleeves… I was dreading this part, and I was right. It has been a bit of a pain so far. I’ve included various iterations, the “smooth” ones are a bit of a template for the next versions, kind of a rough “idea” of what those would look like if stuffed with cotton, just to get the volume right.

The next phase, which took a bunch of attempts was to make a version with those little pleats on the edge where the sleeves are glued into the body and into the cuff. That’s the step that took the longest so far, it is horrible, and I hate it. It is a flat sheet with all the pleated edges on it that is wrapped into a cylinder and then shaped in place with a lattice cage. I hate it, but it does the job.

I’m trying to get it as close to where I’d like it to be before I get into the sculpting. Mainly because I’m not very good at it (at all) so the more I can do beforehand, the less I’ll randomly stumble in the dark.

I need more practice, that’s for sure.

Oh yeah, one last thing. Someone was asking if it could be made lock-able like the Hired Help Uniform, so I quickly added a hypothetical lock point 🙂

A promising first modeling draft… and also more reference/sketches.

I realized that I hadn’t tried to put long sleeves on it, I’m very fond of the loose cuff variant, it looks very cute and comfortable. The closed cuff variant is more “formal” I suppose, if you can consider latex formal.

I haven’t made this “type” of model in a really long time, and that’s one of the reasons why I’ve been procrastinating so much about it. There is nothing I hate more than trying to get something right, over and over, only to end up trashing it all up because I’m not satisfied.

But this? So far I’m pretty satisfied.

The next step is either going to be the short sleeves, or starting on the waist & the corset that goes there.

I added a picture of the back, but there isn’t much going on there. Maybe that’s something I should fix at some point.

I wish I had something better to show for the new latex maid project, but this is all I have done since Monday: iterating on simple “sketch” references.

It is loosely based on the latex creations from “Studio C2“, which I am linking here to make it easier to understand what I am actually aiming to produce.

I have a lot of ideas as far as options I want to incorporate, and I really am not sure that I can do it all:

• Corset at the waist, to add more details and slim the waist like I did on the Regina suit.
• Removable dress collar (to accommodate for posture collars and other options).
• Zip front design with an open-able “slit” at chest level.
• Ability to also zip open the skirt in front (and maybe the back too?).
• Short & long sleeve option. (earlier sketches have oversized sleeves, that’s a mistake not intentional)
• BDSM-style ring & “tie” to gently pull the wearer around.
• Removable tea apron (possibly a full apron option too).
• Box pleats… lots.

Ambitious… and that’s probably why I’m dragging my feet instead of getting straight into the modeling…

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.

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.