Lovecraft Forest

Kerwin’s Musings And Other Discoveries

Archive for category SL Gadgets

Better Than A Swiss Army Kinfe

Mar 17

Posted by Kerwin in SL Gadgets | No Comments

MystiTool.jpgHUDs are fun, but they can quickly become clutter. To cut down on the clutter, combining a tracker, flight booster, landmark history, etc. into a single tool has been the goal of many SL product designers. There are a lot of good ones out there, but so far I’ve settled on Mystitool by Mystical Cookie.

Why?

Well, for starters it has a great kit. It includes:

  • a tracker
  • flight assistance
  • landmark management
  • object rezzer
  • stationary camera (helpful in those large builds)
  • a builders work area and elevator when you need to get away from it all
  • instant table and chairs
  • URL catcher
  • and other handy tricks and devices (3 menus worth!)

Next it has a backup and restore system which makes keeping those setting and easy upgrades. And by easy upgrades, I mean easy! The server automatically hands you a fresh copy when an update is available. At your convenience swap tools, load settings again, and away you go.

This basic tool is a handy kit and I wear mine all the time. It’s available for $423 lindens (less than USD $2) through the usual places including SL Exchange.

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Organizing Textures

Mar 7

Posted by Kerwin in SL Gadgets | No Comments

I like textures . . . lots of them. For me, the simplicity of forms afforded by the range of prims available in Second Life are offset by the beauty and creativity of the textures you can add to prim surfaces. The problem is being able to easily store, organize, and work with them in SL. If only there was a HUD or something that could make the task a little easier. Even better, a HUD that could easily get out of your way while your working on an object without detaching it . . .

Well, there is a little engineering miracle. It’s called “Texture Master” and is developed by K.R. Engineering. This little tool lets you browse textures 16 at a time and put them into 16 categories.  It easily lets you zoom in and tile a selected texture before unpacking the texture back to your inventory. This great little gadget is easy to operate and puts your textures right were you need them.  With the categories you can keep all your stone, wood, and metal textures nicely organized.   Texture Master is available in a copyable version, so you can even organize by project into separate HUDs.  With access control, you can even share texture master with members of your group.

You can visit K.R. Enggineering’s store at: secondlife://Puea/99/104/25

TextureMaster.jpg

Flower Power

Feb 26

Posted by Kerwin in Forest Admin, SL Gadgets | No Comments

Spring is almost here and time for more plantings in and around Lovecraft Forest. Outy Banjo has put out a nice system for flowers and grass called “Ground Cover Flowers V2.4“. The big news is that its now available in a copy/no-transfer version for L$1350 (a little more than $5 USD). Like all of Outy’s particle wonders, this one is well built and easy to set up. Here’s Kerwin with some of the flowers now at the south forest gate:

FlowerPower.jpg

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Making Waves . . .

Feb 19

Posted by Kerwin in Forest Admin, SL Gadgets | No Comments

Shore waves really add to the look of a seaside sim. Lovecraft Forest has been employing a nice little kit from Ante Flan, aptly named Waves V2. The kit is pretty much is dummy proof, just place and drop along your shore. It comes with both simple “washing” waves and well as classic rolling waves. Different spray particle generators can touch up piers and docks for a realistic splashing action against solid in-water objects. Well worth the L$700, available both at SLExchange and Ante’s in-world store. Ante includes complete instructions as well as sound files.

WaveAction.jpg

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Need Work Up High? Skywalk!

Feb 14

Posted by Kerwin in SL Gadgets | No Comments

SkywalkHUD.jpegAnother of my favorite gadgets in SL is the Skywalk HUD from aubreTEC Labs. It let’s you work up high by automatically rezzing round plates under your feet as you go. It sits quietly in your HUD, and when it detects that you might fall, it instantly puts a plate under your feet. It works in mouselook too, making it easy to move about as you work without even thinking about it. Up and down are handled easily, so its like having a magic carpet for your personal use on demand. Even more clever, if you find you’ve locked yourself inside our outside a large build, just “sit” on one of the plates–”poof” it’s like sitting inside a non-physical vehicle, enabling you to quickly pass through solid objects!

I’ve used this little gem ever since I started on SL, and I can heartily recommend it for sky builders. It looks cool, it’s automatic, it’s pretty, and highly configurable to your tastes.

Here’s Harold at 530 meters above Lovecraft Forest using his Skywalk to keep aloft:

HaroldSkyWalk.jpg

The Skywalk HUD is available from aubreTEC Labs for L$450, or about $2 USD.

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