Tested By Fire Designs - Downward Spiral

I'm attempting to tell the story of my designs in order so that you can see where I've improved and what I've learned along the way. One, because I think it's always interesting to see how people create. Two, so you can take the lessons I've learned or leave them as you choose.

Around the time I started working on my third build I met a phenomenal designer named Fieame Tatsu. My nickname for Fieame is 'Texture Queen' because what she was doing with textures was incredible to me at the time. I think I bugged her for a week straight with questions. She's a very gracious soul and we work well together. She dosen't feel confident about her layouts, even though they are wonderful, and I still need her help with textures. Together we came up with this, the Downward Spiral. It's a Gothic themed skybox club that is large enough for whatever you want to use it for, has a phantom hallway for performer clothing changes and a wonderful stage, along with amazing textures throughout.

Fieame means Fire and so Fieame's designs are marketed under the sub-brand of Tested By Fire Designs.

The Customer is Always Right, even when they are a Ghost.

OK, so, this is going to be labeled as Building Techniques but what it really should say is, "Things I DON'T like putting in my designs!"

One of the settings you can do to your primitives is set them to phantom. This means that they only 'appear' to be there, your avatar can walk right through them. If you combine this with the touch script you can make it so your wall when touched, becomes a door. Many, many, many designers make a door that then becomes phantom when touched.... a ghost door... which in a sci-fi setting would be pretty cool, but seeing it on a vicotorian modeled townhouse is just wrong. On my builds my doors either slide in like pocket doors should or swing open, this is much more appealing on a visual design perspective.

I have had customers ask me for phantom doors and I'm happy to provide them, but I really dislike them. Just another small rant. O, and to make this a learning opportunity, here's the door script I use, it's free and was developed by the Lindens (Since I haven't mentioned it, that's what the developers and staff of the company who makes Secondlife are called), although it can be a bit tricky it's well documented and if you're careful it works as well as anything I've tried and better then most.

Sapphire Tower

Brchure: This is a medium size castle tower built with all the comforts of home, two bedrooms, gorgeous textures, a glass dance floor and lovely arches for your own stained glass. All packaged in an easy rezzer. I tried to bring in hints of victoria with the glass towers, reminiscent of greenhouses. This was built with layout and ease of use in mind, made with the inspiration of my partner whose name it honors. This castle is 30x30 and fits on a 1024 lot more then perfectly. It takes 93 prims.




Story: Early on I found that I built better if I had a person in mind for who I wanted to give my builds. This held true even though I was building on the same themes I had used before in building DarkRayne this was meant to be a simpler more compact version, still textured and designed in a manner other small prim buildings didn't approach at the time. The person I kept in mind was an amazing artist who eventually became my partner in SecondLife. Sapphire is a wonderful person and actually does all the stained glass in my designs. Our collaboration has been amazing and I couldn't have built IDG to where it's going without her encouragement and support.
This became an experiment in optimizing a large design into a smaller one, I found that the 6 room layout for the DarkRayne became almost pointless in the smaller footprint... it felt cluttered and not like the style I was trying to adopt. I wanted this to have presence just like the DarkRayne, another thing I can't stand in Secondlife is 'cardboard houses'. Walls too thin to look like they can support the roof, no sense of scale.... drives me crazy that these designs are out and bought in such numbers. So, I found that 6 rooms didn't do the sense of scale and openness I wanted, I reduced the rooms down to 2 very large rooms with open entertaining areas as well. I think this turned out very well and it's still one of my favorite builds and I started messing with tints in order to give it it's distinctive blue cieling tiles. It's a great medium sized build that feels much larger then it is.

Prim & Proper? Not Me!

OK, so.... a technical education discussion that many who are in Secondlife probably understand all too well.

What's a prim? According to the Secondlife Wiki a prim is:
In Second Life, virtual physical objects such as cars, houses, jewelry, and even less obvious things like hair are made out of one or more primitive parts called prims. Objects made from prims are usually created in-world using the built in object editing tool. This tool is used for all sorts of 3D modeling in Second Life, playing the same role as 3D Max, Maya, or Blender, but customized for the Second Life way of doing things.

OK, so, a Primitive or Prim is a building block, it's like a Lego block. Everything in Secondlife is built with these things and how you manipulate them is how you design things like castles and gothic buildings. Why pay attention to prims other then just knowing how to build stuff with them? Glad you asked. The concern with prims is this, you only get a certain number of them, and that number is tied to the size of the land you own. I can build a very highly detailed house that's 10x30, which will fit on a small 512 sq. meter lot using 312 prims, but because a 512 lot only allows the owner to use 112 primitives and therefore wouldn't fit on that land. This is why you sometimes see itty bitty houses that are highly detailed sitting on large plots of land. Although that may have as much to do with privacy and the view as anything....

So when I started building I focused on low prim building techniques, striking a balance between detail and efficiency so that anybody could enjoy my buildings on their land. Why am I mentioning this? Because I have moved away from it a little bit, I've started designing things with more detail and as a result my buildings have increased in prim limit. I realized this and tried to go back to my roots with the last build I did, I think I did a good job, but you'll have to judge when I post it. The other reason I'm explaining this now is that at the time I was building the stuff I'm posting this was a major concern. I've gotten several compliments on the way I handled the balance and I still teach my students how to build this way. It's an important first step to take, to achieve with efficiency before you get lazy and design for the person who can afford it all. After all, Honda Accords are way more popular then Ferrarri's.

That enough metaphor's for today?

SLexchange ~ the non storefront way to sell in Secondlife

Around the time I built DarkRayne I started devouring information about Secondlife looking for ways to improve my building skills and sell what I was beginning to create. I didn't have the money or ability to pay for a full sim display area for these fantastic buildings that were swirling in my head, and I wasn't sure that they would sell from a retail store anyway. It was a problem looking for a solution....

I found my soution at SLexchange (SLX for short) which is a web enabled merchant listing site for items in Secondlife. The neat thing for me was I didn't have to rent space in a mall or find a store location at the time I was just starting out with my products, as I built I could put my products on the web and they could be viewed by people at work (not that I'm guilty of that.... no, not me) or home or wherever. The beauty of listing services like this (SL Boutique is another) is that you don't have to fight the lag or downtime of Secondlife in order to purchase things you want from the favorite designers that are listed there. Just in the year or so that I've been with them I have seen their merchant list explode and they are genuinely good people too.

They do take a fairly small commission if you are considering listing your items with them, though I now have my own store and design center in world I often still list my items on SLX first, or offer them at a discount to gauge reaction. (Just a hint on new items, usually I post them on SLX for a discount for a couple of weeks at least.)

I'm still proud to be an SLX merchant and always will be.

The One That Started it All! ~ DarkRayne Fortress.

Brochure: This is a large castle fortress built with all the comforts of home, secret passages, gorgeous textures, a glass dance floor and lovely arches for your own stained glass. All packaged in an easy rezzer. I tried to bring in hints of victoria with the glass towers, reminiscent of greenhouses.NEW! This has been completely rebuilt from scratch and the textures are even better! If you've looked at it once please look again.This was built with layout and ease of use in mind, made for someone in game who always wanted to be a princess. I hope you enjoy it.This is a rather large castle at 30x50 meters and most likely requires a 4000sm lot, although some have put it on a 2560sm lot and had success. It takes 142 prims and yet looks amazing. You will get complimented if you own this.

Story: I owe a huge debt of thanks to the people who taught me and this is the one I finally learned enough on to build what I thought was sellable. I met Serra Anansi, one of the best Estate Owners I know, by picking up on her advertisement for a sim of Gothic intent. I met her and was blown away by the care and concern she showed someone who wasn't even sure they could afford it. In the process she took me shopping for castles. The sim was called Muninn's Keep and hadn't been provided to Serra yet, so I had plenty of time to really consider what I wanted as a SecondLife home.

Serra (who is an amazing designer, see her stuff here) and I finally decided on a design by Inksky Jedburgh. Inksky is probably the other SecondLife resident who most helped me out in these early days. He had a full display model of his Ivanhoe Keep that I spent much time tweaking and making work for me. As I was working on it he stopped by and gave me textures and tips on how he achieved such a wonderful build. In fact up until I rebuilt and repackaged this I was still using the windows and archways he had given to me and given me permission to use. This is my version of a public apology for any headaches I caused by doing so. Now everything is from scratch Inksky, thanks for the early help. By the way, I price high directly so I don't compete with Inksky, and my design aesthetic is of course different.

So now I had a prefab home, and a plan to change what I wanted. So... the glass dance floor came into play. It has become a hallmark of my castles, so every single one has one. Chunky glass blocks that let you see the people having fun on different levels of the castle. I started throwing parties, making a little money. Life was good.

Then, I needed more space. more room for my stuff. So I expanded, and I didn't want to spend the money on someone else's design, I wanted to build my dreak castle. I did, and this is the result. It's actually quite open for a roomed prefab and I've gotten a ton of compliments on it. Still my best seller it would have never happened without the advice of people who didn't have to give me the time of day. I'll always be thankful to Serra and Inksky, if you don't buy from me, buy from them. I try and live my Second Life sharing knowledge and kindness like these two.

Ooooo, you want to know where the name comes from? Another kind person, who told me she always wanted a castle. But her privacy is way more important to me then letting you know who.... if she wants to be found, you'll find her, if not.... poof, she's a fairytale told to kids....

Welcome to IDG!

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2. This is the place to look for our designs, we sell on both SLexchange.com and SLboutique.com, those links are on the right there. I'll be posting pics of each product and some profiles of our designers soon. But I'm the lead designer and my name is on the headstone so to speak. My name in Secondlife is Noelyci Ingmann and I've been living the metaverse life for 3 years now. I enjoy my work in SL and think that this truly is the wave of the future.
   
   
   
   I build whatever strikes my fancy, as do my co-designers in this group, but I tend toward the gothic and architectual well textured builds rather then furniture or clothing. I'm sure youll get an idea of my style as we progress. I hope you'll check back often.