It wasn’t until I was relaxing on my sofa this evening, reading through my Twitter feed, that I came across this tweet and I realized: my blog is three years old today.
I wish the Sansar project well, but I no longer feel very attached to, or engaged by, the platform. Perhaps that’s a good and necessary thing: I learned that it’s not wise to get too emotionally attached to any platform, no matter how much initial promise it shows.
So it’s a very good time for me to take a break, pause, and reflect on my journey of the past three years. I know that I have said that I will be extending my self-imposed vacation from the RyanSchultz.com blog, but this time around, I am firm in my resolve to step away. I am feeling jaded, cynical, a bit overwhelmed, and weary.
And, as I have said before, I will be needing to work extra hours (including evenings and weekends) on various projects at my full-time paying job with my university library system, all of which require my time, attention, and energy. I regret that I will not have any time to devote to blogging over the next month.
So this will be my last blogpost until September 1st, 2020. I am taking the entire month of August completely off: absolutely ZERO blogging about virtual reality, or any virtual world or social VR platform.Nothing.
Of course, I still plan to visit and explore various virtual worlds and social VR platforms in my month off; I just won’t be writing about them.
I apologize if I sound bitter. I’m just tired. I hope that all of you reading this understand that I am dead tired. I desperately need to recharge my batteries. I have written 1,979 blogposts in three years, which is one hell of a lot by any standard, and the circumstances feel right to me to take the next month off—completelyoff, not sorta-kinda-off.
Please note that I am taking the rest of the summer off as a self-imposed vacation from the blog so I can focus on my other work, except for sponsored blogposts, and the occasional exception such as this blogpost. See you in September!
The RuthTooRC3 Bento, Bakes on Mesh-compatible mesh head and body
Another day, another free Bento, Bakes on Mesh-compatible avatar! This time it’s for female avatars: the RuthTooRC3 full-body (i.e. head and body) avatar. As usual, the head and body are separate components, so you should be able to mix and match with other BoM heads and bodies.
I had blogged about the free RuthTooRC3 mesh body before (here, about halfway down this very long blogpost), but I just found out yesterday that there is a new, Bakes on Mesh-compatible version! So a pretty good free mesh body just got even better. You can now use Bakes on Mesh skins and makeup with this head and body (the skin used in these pictures is the Elvira skin in the maple skin tone, an Advent gift from 7 Deadly S[k]ins from last December).
Here’s the exact SLURL of the Heavy Industries store, located in a retro 1950’s diner. Walk into the diner and and click both of the blue panels on the wall directly in front of you (the first one only includes flat mesh feet for some reason, but the second one includes both medium-height and high-heeled mesh feet as well):
While you’re there, click on the three red panels immediately to the left of the blue ones, and you can pick up three outfits that were designed to fit this body perfectly! (Please note that I did test various mesh clothing designed for Maitreya Lara on this particular body, and there are some fitting problems in the lower back and the rear end area on most garments.)
This body comes with a HUD to tint the fingernails and toenails, which are separate attachments. However, there is no HUD with alpha sections provided, so you will have to make use the alphas that come with the clothing you pick up. If you need a set of alphas to use with clothing that does not come with them, you can pick up a free set from Little Black Dress at this SLURL (just click on the bag on the floor).
UPDATE 9:12 p.m.: I forgot to mention that at the same location, you can also pick up the latest edition of the free RothTooRC1 Bento, Bakes on Mesh-compatible male mesh head and body, which I had written about previously (at the very end of this rather long blogpost).
Here’s the panel in the Heavy Industries diner; make sure you click on the one that clearly says “Bakes on Mesh Compatible”, not the one to the right of it:
Now, there is good news and bad news about this particular male mesh body.
The good news is that the alphas included with clothing do finally work with this body (they didn’t the last time I tested it out, which made it of limited usefulness, since there is no included alpha sections HUD). However, the bad news is that you are still going to find that most male mesh clothing does not fit this particular mesh body very well at all, even with the alphas.
I tried everything, including standard-size and fitmesh clothing of various kinds on the RothTooRC1 body, and in every case (even on the large and extra-large standard sizes), there were fit problems across the back of the neck and shoulders and the front of the waist. Clothing created for popular male mesh bodies by Belleza, Signature, and Slink doesn’t work, either.
The only things which worked were when I alpha’ed out the entire body except the hands, as I did with the following tuxedo outfit from the men’s freebie store at the Helping Haven Gateway (and there were still problems at the wrists; the skin is a male Bakes on Mesh skin I picked up from a store called DNA, which is now unfortunately closed).
The fingernails and toenails are (as they were for the RuthTooRC3 body above) separate attachments, which you can tint using an included HUD. (You’ll need to remember to remove the toenails when you alpha out the feet, as I did below!)
Given the many problems I encountered trying to find clothing to fit this body, I really cannot recommend it over the many other free and inexpensive male mesh bodies (unless you want to rely exclusively on system layer/Bakes on Mesh clothing).
