Male ISO Suit is Released

The Long anticipated Male counterpart to the Female ISO Suit is released!

It has all the features previously blogged about in these posts about the Female version:

https://darisl.wordpress.com/2014/08/04/the-tkiso-released/

https://darisl.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/tkiso-update-released/

As well as all of the updates since (which I never blogged about, tsk, tsk).

Where do I get it?

As with the Female this is a joint project between myself and Think Kink, so it’s being sold through the Think Kink Brand (but don’t worry, I still get paid 😛 ).

So you can buy it here, on the Marketplace:

http://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/tkISOm-BOXED/6691323

or at the Think Kink store inworld:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Pirandello%20Bay/128/156/61

Just look for the display!

(Those Eagle-Eyed among you may notice the price is only 999L. This special dicounted price on the male and female is good for only a limited time, through New Years!)

tkISO Update Released

We had a lot of feedback about the tkISO, most positive, but some constructive criticism as well. Based on that, the team worked to get a new update of the suit out. 🙂 Version 1.5 is now released, a free update to all purchasers. A new copy should be delivered to you, but if not, you can simply access the Redelivery terminal at Think Kink. (located right next to the tkISO display at Pirandello Bay )

Some highlights of what’s new:

– A Facemask.  Yes, now you can show your face. But only behind mask. 🙂 Many color/texture and transparency options abound for this feature.

– Pigtails. Yes, for those who prefer that, it’s available.

– Hidable hands, arms, and boots:  Hide away, in whatever combination you want.

And a bunch of other changes.  Full list here:

1. Assorted bug fixes..

– menu crash when adding privileged operators
– clearing on some touch restrictions
– assorted spelling errors and grammar oopsies

Visual (style) changes

1. upped the number of colors available to 54 in 9 sets of 6 (whites, blacks, reds, pinks, blues, greens, yellows, browns and purples)
Did I miss any? Drop me a notecard!

2. with some trickery using Materials functions… added 5 new ‘shine’ types

— Nylon (think a Zentai look)
— Satin (tight and shiny)
— Leather (fine smooth glove type leather, Mrs Peel would swoon)
— Latex (shiny, but not too shiny, a simple polish)
— Polished (now THAT’S more like it!)

– You DO need a materials enabled viewer and the advanced lighting turned on to see the full effect. So your results may vary.

3. Hair, after many, many requests you now have a ponytail OR PIGTAILS! Big fluffy hair pigtails! (hair from UNDERGROUND).

4. Did I mention that ALL 54 colors can also be also be applied to the hair now? Not just 9?

5. oh and for those that REALLY want a latex/rubber/plastic look for the hair.. you can also use the 9 levels of SHINE.

6. Also due to the cries of anguish, you can now HIDE the boots, arms and/or hands to use your own. or add-on some amputation caps if that’s the RP you’re into. If you apply touch restrictions you don’t get the ball mittens if the hands are hidden. (Style > Special >)

7 Speaking of cries of anguish, people kept saying you could not hear the screaming when the shocks were being applied. Remixed the audio so you can enjoy the agony.

8. And for those people who like to gaze in the eyes of their ISO, watching the hopeless, helpless fear and ter…. er to see their eyes, if you look under (Style > Special >) you see a ‘mask’ option, this will quickly switch in a clear metal framed mask with a support under their chin so you can look at their face. You can also set the transparency level of the face plate-glass from 100% (clear) to 10% (you can almost see the face).

9 Speaking of seeing the face, shocks and screaming.. yes you can see them scream now if the mask is on.

10. and the mask has an optional BREATHER attachment,  so it can function as a gas mask.. with optional breathing sounds and breathing mist.

Menu/Restriction Changes

11. Touch > was renamed Interact >  the various restrictions broken into multiple separate menus.

12. A RUN restriction was added to Move > section

13. The hearing muffle was reworked, easier to follow, still frustrating.

14. Emote and IM block/garble have been broken off from the main ‘Speech Garble’ settings.

15. Emotes may now be ‘smart garbled’… emotes will be left mostly untouched. Try to sneak in something speechy and it will catch them… and you get punished.

16. Vision restrictions have changed. Removed three of windlight settings as they were a bit repetitive, but…

17. The restrictor plate is a little more detailed, slightly transparent (so you can see sorta what you’re not seeing) and has three levels of restriction. Alpha (the default) wider vision, Beta – same as it is now.. and Phi – her fault, her idea, evil evil evil.

18. There is a FOURTH option only accessible to the Current Operator, clicking the setting of the currently active restrictor plate will REMOVE it and leave the vision clear.. well it will still have the windlight effect.

19. We added a new timer restriction… LOCKDOWN.

ONLY the WEARER or PRIVILEGED OPERATOR may set a LOCKDOWN timer.

When the timer is placed in LOCKDOWN.

– it can’t be stopped
– it can’t be paused
– it can’t be modified
– restrictions can not be changed
– access to the menus are denied to everyone
– if the ISO tried to get to the menu, they have a 40% chance of being shocked.. and they will get a random timer penalty that is *REDACTED*

all until the timer finishes. so if you set it for 6 months SL time, you BETTER MEAN IT!

 

Enjoy!

 

– Dari

 

The tkISO Released

As those who’ve been keeping track know, I’ve been working on a Latex ‘Drone’ Avatar, and that project has completed with the release of the tkISO.

Working in cooperation with the folks at Think Kink (Ilana Debevec, Sejourn Daxter and Chloe1982 Constantine), the project has reached fruition. You’re already familar with my part, The lovely lines of the Fitted Mesh Latex, and the sleek, shiny look that only an Advanced Materials mesh can achieve. But today I’ll tell you about all the hard work that’s gone into the tkISO on the scripting side, and some tips for best usage.

Features

First the rundown:

• Fitted Mesh – No bunch of sizes that don’t fit. No needing a custom fitting. It will take on your shape, as set by the Default Avatar shape Sliders.
• Advanced Materials – Beautiful Detail, amazing realtime reflections and shine,  Nothing in SL comes close!
• Appearance configuration – Change the color of all of the various zones on the avatar (Head, Faceplate, Neck, shoulders, Torso, arms, hands, legs, and boots)
• Seamed/Seamless mode  – Seamed Mode is the Advanced Materials setting, which has the advanced shine and normal mapping for added realism. For those who want a more sleek look, Seamless gives a smooth, flat surface with the standard SL shine (shine configurable).
• Hair  – A stylish ponytail can be shown or hidden. And of course the color can be set as you like.
• 3 Locking modes – Self locking, Public Mode, or “Privileged” mode is available. Privileged mode means only your “Privileged” operator (or owner(s)) can access controls.
• Full owner configuration, with a ban-list. You can not only add the people you want to your suit, but ban the people you don’t want.
• Timer – Fully configurable in 15 minute increments, with a Timer Pause, SL time or RL time setting, and more.
• Restrictions – A full gamut of restrictions, including the standard no touch, no see no talk type. But also some clever new ones, such Intelligent garbling Chat Name override, and my favorite “Blink Mode” which only allows you to talk in a sort of sign language by blinking your visor different colors. 🙂
• Freeze Mode – An additional restriction that requires the ISO to stay a certain distance away, or near other people. If the distance isn’t maintained, they unit ‘shuts down’ until such time as the proper distance is re-established. You’re given a warning, so heed it! 🙂
• Punish – There’s also some handy punishment buttons for unruly ISOs. I won’t go into details, but I will say the animations are very well done.

Now that i’ve outlined the features, let me give some of my own tips. (and some pictures!)

When you first open the box, the ISO will look like this:

This is in “Un-Seamed” appearance mode with no color. A fresh slate ready for your customization.

But I know you want that Beautiful Advanced Materials look, and it’s just a click away.  Clicking your head brings up a menu.  Go to “Style” and there is what you seek, the “Seamed” button.

Clicking it will instantly transform your ISO into Advanced Materials goodness. But Never fear, if you ever want to go back to “Seamless”, there’s a button for that too.

Now the Coloring menu has 32 lovely colors to choose from, but if you want to set your own, you can, by just editing the suit. editing the head is the place to start, since the clicky prim makes it easy to select.

You can choose “Select Face” and carefully click on the various areas to set a color on an individual section. Or just color the whole thing. But usually the preset colors are just fine, and the built-in appearance menus break every section out individually.

Pro-Tip: you can also hide the hands/boots/head this way by setting the “Transparency %” to 100  if you want to mix and match with other items.

Where do I get it?

As this is a joint project between myself and Think Kink, it was decided for this project it would be sold through the Think Kink Brand (but don’t worry, I still get paid 😛 ).

So you can buy it here, on the Marketplace:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/tkISOf-BOXED/6359358

or at the Think Kink store inworld:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Pirandello%20Bay/128/156/61

Just look for the display!

Fitted Mesh and Foot Size: A Primer

If there’s one thing that always remains the same, it’s that times change. And in SL, multiply that by 100. 🙂

In the long annals of SL History, the lowly foot has had an interesting history. In the beginning, There were no prims, so shoes were simply textures applied to the feet, with the feet being ‘morphed’ into shoe-like shapes, via the slider system. So Maintaining a realistic foot size in relation to your body was of course important for this.

No prim shoes

Prims Arrive

Then with the coming of prims, people would construct shoes out of those prims, and using them to hide the ‘real’ feet in the process. This brought about a shift, people tended to make the feet as small as possible, so there wouldn’t be any original foot parts sticking out from the prims. It wasn’t unusual to receive a notecard with a shoe stating “This shoe requires a foot size of zero!” Of course fitting was still an issue, even with  zero foot size. That was what prompted the next phase.

notecard from 2006

Enter the Invisiprim

Eventually some clever people discovered a special texture used for Terrain generation which had an unusual property when placed on the avatar. It made the avatar turn invisible! This was completely unheard of up until that time. A prim with this special texture was dubbed an “Invisiprim” and quickly found use in all areas of avatar construction, but nowhere as common as on the shoe. Being able to hide the original foot made for a cleaner look and less fitting issues. Having a size Zero foot was really not a requirement anymore, but that tradition remained because it was so prevalent, after years of teaching people that was the ‘required’ foot size.

Invisiprim Halo

But Invisiprims were not without their own problems. When worn and viewed against a background that had any transparency in the texture, a white ‘halo’ would appear around the invisiprim shape. This created it’s own problems as it often could look worse than a few bits of foot poking through. Many tried tricks to minimize this, such as creating their invisiprims from sculpts to more closely hug the contours of the body, but there was really no way to eliminate the issue.

That was the Status Quo until Linden Lab finally introduced Alpha Layers. This wearable allowed selective removal of avatar body parts with a very high degree of precision and suffered from none of the problems of Invisiprims. It did however limit the ability to partially hide mirrored body parts (like the arms or hand); you couldn’t just hide one arm or hand, you had to hide both or neither.

Not long after Alpha Layers became the norm, Support for Invisiprims was dropped from the viewer. Note too that, with Alpha Layers Size Zero feet were still not a requirement, but persisted through tradition.

Fitted Mesh and Today

Now with the coming of Fitted Mesh to SL, there’s a lot of exciting possibilities. One can create a shoe or body part that not only replaces the original SL counterpart, but effectively take on the shape of that part it’s replacing, as defined by the sliders.

But the legacy of times past still haunts. Size Zero feet, which have not been necessary for a long time, still abound. And with FitMesh rigged feet/shoes, this is a problem. A size zero foot is going to look disproportionately small on the body.

Size Zero Feet on me

Why not just scale things so a Size Zero foot looks right? Well, that could be done, but then that means if someone legitimately needs the foot/shoe to be smaller than what *I* may deem ‘normal’, there is no room to go any smaller. They lose the ability to adjust. On my avatar, for instance, a foot size of 35 looks just about ‘right’. But on someone else, 25 might be the magic number.  If I adjusted it so my 35 was ‘zero’, they would need to set the slider to -10 to get the size they need. And that’s not possible.

Size 35 feet on me

Conclusion

The days of needing a size zero foot have long since passed, but the legacy of those days continue on. It’s time for people to put some thought into their foot size again. They matter now more than ever.  Just some ‘foot’ for thought.  😛

 

New Tools…

New Tools means new possibilities. I got a new tool recently and I’m putting it to use on this Latex Drone project. Part of the avatar is a pair of built in boots, and that’s where I started, as it has the most materials in it. After working awhile in my new tool, I produced this:

Now you may notice the texture is in Greyscale tones. That’s on purpose. We want to be able to tint this inworld And so we can:

The cool part is, all the details have their own specular qualities, despite the fact none of the are actually modeled in Mesh or prim. They are all tricks of light produced by what is called a “Normal Map”.  Not only is this more efficient, but better on your framerates too.

After finishing tweaking everything, some closeups:

Oh and did I mention all the reflections are generated by the viewer, they aren’t baked on. So they change as the viewing angle changes, just like in Real Life. 🙂

So this is happening….

Project W.I.P. (Click pics for larger, Gasmask courtesy KDC)

– Dari

 

The Sexpo is Here

I will be participating in Stroker Serpentine’s Sexpo, which runs from Dec 21st, through January 15th. Expect to see a wide array of items offered by a motley group of merchants as you’d likely ever find in Second Life. All of the details about Hunts, Events, and other details can be found on their site.

Location here:   Stroker’s SeXpo (129,128,32)