Archive for the ‘pet projects’ Category

Sorry for the lack of updates over the past few days, I worked a lot and didn’t feel like posting every changes.

I thought that I had nailed it friday texture wise but by sunday I had decided to rearrange my UVmap to squeeze a little more detail on the straps. As a result, I had to redo all the textures. I finished them sometimes last night (right before I had to go on a (RL) appointment). Following this, a quick snooze and I was back at it…

It’s almost done, I should be able to release in the next couple of days, so in the meantime, here are a few vanity shots, from SL this time 🙂

2303 triangles for the whole model! That’s not bad at all, it’s in the same range as the shock collar, and the shock collar has some rather intricate little parts. I guess I’m getting better at judging those things now.

Next step for tomorrow: The unwrapping. A few things to consider then, I need to put the outside and the inside on separate texture maps to maximize texture efficiency, I will probably do some UV space sharing on all the metal parts, like I did on the blindfold. It is a little tricky to achieve in blender, but it led to good results last time.

What do you think?

I organized a little informal vote on the 4 possible front ring designs I made yesterday, and here is the winner. All the straps have been rebuilt so they are nice and clean. Modeling wise, this is the “final” version of the high polygon mesh (UNLESS something comes up obviously).

1-2 hour break and then it’s time (finally) for texturing.

I had promised to do a collar for the OpenCollar project so I used tonight’s caffeine induced insomnia to produce quickly (9 hours still…) something simple and elegant following Wendy Starfall’s specifications.

Here is the result. 🙂

I’ve rebuilt the lower and upper edge so they are identical in thickness and along their whole length, the originals ended up a little mangled by the time I was done shaping the collar. I straightened the back, removed some kinks in the shape and also finished the buckle/strap assembly in the back. Now I’m trying to decide about the best way to attach the rings to the main strap.

Passing the D-rings directly on the strap and riveting it is the “classic” method I’ve been using on almost all my leather products. The other option is to use a small leather loop riveted under the main strap. The advantage of this method is that the ring falls lower which… looks more interesting on the front of the collar and make use of some of the space we have there. The major drawback is that I’m gonna have to greatly minimize this ugly “bulge” that the 3 layers of strap create if I want to use this style.

Alternatively I could add an extra ring to bring the anchor point lower but… I don’t know about that.

I spent the day refining the shape of the collar, bringing the sides and the back higher so that the position of the chin rest makes more sense. I also did some strap sculpting, it appears that, in order to fit two on the back, they have to be a little narrower than my usual “standard” strap width, which means that putting two “standard” rivets into it is not going to be possible… This can still change obviously, I could TRY to make the collar even taller to accommodate two full height straps… I don’t know.

I mean this is nice, but maybe a bit too different and I do not want things to be too different otherwise it won’t match with the rest of the serie.

Some excellent progress today, I managed to get out of the design issue I had with mending the collar to the chin rest in a way that did not feel “tacked on”. Now the padding of the chin rest extends all the way into the collar and I think it looks just right.

I think I’m gonna have to go for a heavy “dual strap” setup on the back because I cannot bend the strap that goes all the way around to make it land in the middle of the back in any way that would look natural, or elegant. I need to import my other collars and cuffs to double-check the scale of the rolled edges and straps width.

I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to thread the collar rings directly on that strap or if I’m gonna go for something different this time.

I should have posted this yesterday but I’m doing this quickly as I have a train to catch in about 30 minutes.

The first picture was my initial attempt at getting the shape I wanted, making the chin rest fully integrated with the collar stem. Not as interesting as I had hoped. Picture 2 and 3 show the chin rest as a separate piece, and in the 3rd picture I also got rid of the down curve at the base of the neck that was initially in the first picture. The base is also much wide, which allows me to make it ride down on the clavicles at the cost of a slightly pronounced “cone shape”. I’m probably gonna have to get the top edge to “cup” the base of the skull more if I want the effect to look right.

It is progressing a LOT slower than I had hoped but it seems that I spend most of my time poking semi randomly at the base shape to try to make it better.

As i mentioned before I think, I’ve been dragging my feet and dreading to actually start working on this new collar project. I’m not sure what it will or should look like in the end, and i spent a little while brainstorming how to accommodate the built-in chin rest that I want to have on it, and the number two attachment after collars: Gags.

Gags all (almost) use the express_open_mouth face morph, so at least it will be standard. I know that KaS’s approach is to have two versions of the collar, but I didn’t want to do this. I pondered about a mobile chin cup that could rotate, but I hate this idea too because I’d prefer it to be an integral part of the collar structure. It struck me today that all I really had to do was to use two neck poses, one for closed and one for open mouths (looking a few degrees up basically). Simple, yet I was oblivious to the solution the entire time.

Now to the design itself, I will probably go for tapered sides and IF possible a vertical front, in my head, this needs to be a fairly imposing piece, more than the Classic posture collar (altho I’m not sure how much more) with the chin cup jutting out horizontally in a slight, half-pipe shape (open at the end) with some generous padding everywhere. A very restrictive, yet comfortable looking piece basically.

EDIT: Why do I always forget to spellcheck myself?