I’m almost done, so here is a quick little update on the hood and what everything looks like in-world. I had to write a script to customize the ears a little, it grabs the colors & shine settings from the default Avara hood, but has a few more options, like setting sections black, hiding the seam at the bottom, things like that. Nothing major really.

I’ve also uploaded each ear separately, with custom LODs, and in two variants: one is uploaded with its original blender orientation, and the other one the orientation is “aligned” with the ear base. Both deform differently when you fit them to a given head, so I figured that including both options would be helpful.

I’ve pulled two very productive days so far this week and made 30something final textures for the new hood.

I’ve maximized options as much as I could:

• Masked/unmasked.
• Open eyes/pepper holes.
• Plain/seamed (tintable+black).
• Normal & inverted colors where applicable.
• The teal/pink color scheme that Argrim uses (check their work, they draw cute latex stuff!).

All I have to do now is to complete the models & textures for the cat and pig ears.

I’m still searching for a name, I have a few terrible ideas like butaneko, nekobuta, butabana, … (please give me a better idea, or I’m gonna end up rolling with it)

I initially wanted to go for stylized cat & pig ears made from simple pieces of cut and glued latex sheeting, the first version of the cat ears looked pretty good like that. Then I made those pig ears in a more…”molded” style and while I initially wanted to make the pig ears fold down, this attempt is growing on me.

I’ve remade the cat ears to match the pig ears style… but is it good enough?

I also don’t know if I want to have a “base” on each ear. Sure, It looks good, but it is much harder to place on the hood.

I started working a bit late today and had some progress from last week that I did not have the time to post so here is a larger than usual pig hood picture dump before midnight 😛

I had a cool idea of normal mapping a sort of facemask on the covered area, with a center spine and a few creases, I might have to tweak the creases a bit to get them to look better, and also decide whether to use a single or double spine, they are both nice, but the single spine create some odd shading due to the sharper left/right divide it creates on a mesh that really is just flat.

Still tempted to use “almond” eyes on the closed version to make it more feline-like (that would make it a pig/cat pack I suppose), I COULD add both versions, but I already have a ton to make…

Give me your thoughts!

“Two hood projects in a row Kyrah? Really?”

Yes really!

I wasn’t 100% sure about it initially, but it has been growing on me.

So what is this about? I’m not sure about what the final name is going to be, but the idea is to make a “pig” hood. By that I don’t mean a mask with a snout and everything, I mean one of those hoods that have one single, large opening for the nose and mouth. I guess it’s a bit of a cat burglar style too… worth keeping that in mind.

Also, the variant with the mouth covered but nose exposed is just too cute to pass.

I’ve done a few attempts at the eye shape, the almond-type looked good, but it is a bit overdone, so I’m trying something else instead.

The Syntex hood add-on for the KDC Avara Hood is complete!

It took me a bit longer than I’d like to finalize everything (let’s blame the heatwave and definitely not my procrastination tendencies), but I think I really nailed the hybrid “hard plastic mask/soft latex hood” vibe. (It is heavy inspired by Shodan from System Shock 1-2)

It comes with the following options:

• Original, plain and seamed style.
• Normal & Inverted colors.
• Open, pepper hole and closed (blind under RLV) eyeholes.

18 different options in total.

I’m not sure if it is just me, but I get the impression that textures are compressed more on upload lately? I get a lot more artifacts in my normal maps than I normally would. Nothing I can do about it, obviously…

As usual, you can get it from the two usual places: At the KDC Main Store (10% off), or on the Second Life Marketplace. Enjoy~

Here is another hood progress update! There was another delay.

I’ve finished the geometry for good! Now comes the painful, task of combining all the textures into one he-he. I don’t remember how I dealt with ambient occlusion errors on the Malefica hood, but I made it on a previous Blender version and things have changed a bit since.

The second image is to help me draw some of the masking areas I need, but also to add some burned in details in the base texture, still working on that. It will be really subtle tho.

I wasn’t entirely sure about those connector “points” on the temples, but they don’t look too bad crunched down into a normal map. It fill the space.

You can also see the new forehead piece, it has some “vent” looking things too.

Not a lot to show for on the new hood, again. I’m sorry, it’s hot and there are a bunch of things going on.

I’ve reshaped the lips on my normal source to get something a bit more feminine (looks less like some retro/cybermen mask, which is good).

Ended up with lens-style eyepieces, that also look okay in open mode. Could be a bit bigger maybe?

I want to reshape the forehead bit to look more like an independent panel rather than something continuous. Not sure what to put on the temples themselves, however…

I’m in the middle of a server upgrade, so things are going to be a bit iffy on the website until I’m finished with this huge waste of time.

I’ve started some a new cyber hood project. It is heavily inspired by a Shodan cosplay that I liked a lot.

It appears to have some potential, I’m just not sure about the eye area yet. Having eye openings seem like it would make the most sense, and would also look a bit more lively than if I make it fully enclosed.

No mouth opening tho, and that is fine.

Most of the details are currently using floating geometry (even the MOUTH!). I need to practice and get better at this, it makes normal map detailing so much quicker.

The forehead need a lot of work, it would look a lot better with visible “plate” seams, but I have to keep it a latex hood. The uncovered “sides” also need to be fleshed out with surface details.

It is me again, with yet another Avara Hood update! (please don’t hate me…)

This update is part of the bigger push I’ve done to modernize and unify my blindfold effect, you’ve seen it with the classic leather blindfold, well it’s now the same effect with the Avara Hood.

The other big improvement is that I’ve finally implemented a change in how style cards work that makes the styling menu a lot easier to navigate, and a lot faster too.

Hood styles are now stored in pairs, as about 2/3rd of them have a matching inverted pair, you now have a dedicated button that inverts the currently active style. And for styles that don’t have an inverted version? Well it doesn’t do anything.

I’ve also changed menu traversal, so it requires fewer clicks to go around between categories and sub-categories.

All of this also means there is about 1/3 less style cards the script has to parse, which speeds up rebuilding the menu, and leave room for… More styles to come, I have a few ideas.

Because the new style card format is not compatible with the new hood, the new updated cards start with “skin2” and the old ones with “skin”. The new hood ignores the old cards, and the old hood one ignores the new cards… perfect, right?

Only those aren’t served by the updater… right, because I did not anticipate that it would ever be needed. I’ve already issued an automatic re-delivery for the marketplace purchases of the Malefica and Halloween Ghoul add-ons (If you got it from Patreon, you should go get the update from the gift terminal). For the in-world store on the other hand, I’m going to have to do this manually, so please IM me if I somehow forget to send them to you!