So, I was working on the Texture Tutorial in Second Life, as I’ve been doing for the last few weeks. I was finishing up the Shininess (specular) station. As part of it, I was explaining a whole lot of stuff that hadn’t gotten into the Shininess course I taught for a while at Builder’s Brewery (and hopefully will teach again) because I hadn’t known about it at the time.
In fact, it was CubeRepublic who asked me why I had left out the stuff, and so alerted me to the fact that there was a whole ‘nother channel that the Lindens had apparently added when I wasn’t looking.
It seems that you can now have different glossiness levels, on a per-pixel basis, by using the alpha channel of the Normal Map. Which… we won’t talk about how I feel about the Lindens putting it there. But there it is, so I need to let people know.
As part of that, I had to make some example objects, and so for no particular reason, I made a crystal ball, using the specular levels from the Normal Map.
I liked it so much that I decided to script it and sell it. Since it’s going to be Halloween soon, this seemed like the perfect time.
All of which is a very long winded way of saying, “Hey, new gizmo for sale!”
You can find it, along with all its ad copy and so on, in the SL Marketplace.
Besides that, I’ve been doing a lot of work on the Texture Tutorial, and some on the other things I do for a living. The fever that’s been plaguing me for the last month seems to be abating (finally) and I’ve been thinking a whole lot about non-work stuff that I want to put in this blog!
Maybe someday, I’ll have time to write some of it up. Lots of stuff about accepting people for who they are, believing what they tell you when they talk about their experiences, and honoring them even if you don’t understand or agree with them. Lots about speaking up for people, but not speaking for them.
But all of that takes more time to write than this, so… later. I hope. (Let me know in the comments if you would like me to take the time to write about all of that.)
And now.. back to work!