Tag: Freebies

UPDATED: GET FOUR FEMALE MESH HEADS FOR ONLY L$22! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: the FREE Sofie Bento, Bakes on Mesh-Compatible Mesh Head by Genesis Lab

Yes, yet another free female head! This time the generous store offering this group gift is Genesis Lab. Here’s what the image on the box looks like:

Just join the GenesisLab group (yes, it’s all one word) for free and check the group notices for the attachment:

Click to save the package to your inventory, then find a sandbox to unpack the box. Here’s a look at the contents of the box:

According to the notecard in the package:

Update 3.8.0 – Sofie head supports Omega and Baked On Mesh Project ( BOM ) functionality, added eyes with BOM support and separate texture application, 2 layers for each eye, fixed Omega texture blending settings, optimized scripting.

When using BOM, remove the alpha mask!

If you do not want to use BOM for the eyes, use the Split version of the eyes without BOM.

Here’s what the head looks like, with the Elvira skin in the fudge skin tone from 7 Deadly S[k]ins, paired with the dollarbie Classic mesh body from the Meshbody, using the eyebrow shaper and head/body shape included in the box, with zero adjustments to the sliders. Please note that no skin is included in the package, but this head will work with any regular Bakes on Mesh skin.

You will have to load the Genesis Baker button and click on it to enable Bakes on Mesh on the Sofie head. For some odd reason, the (separate) ears are not Bakes on Mesh, and you have to use the included HUD to tint those to match the rest of your body! Very odd.

After I spent a few minutes fiddling with the head and body sliders, and adding hair, shoes, and a dress, I am quite pleased with the result!

And as much as I hate to complain about a free gift, this is one of those Bento heads with a perpetually open mouth, no matter how you adjust the sliders, just so you know! Also, the animation HUD that comes with the Sofie head is very basic, with hard-to-read light-blue icons on a white background which make it hard to figure out the animation for each button! It would appear that if you click a few buttons, it randomly moves from one animation to the other:

This is just a quick blogpost to spread the word; for further information please read the posts from the Dreamer’s Virtual World and Fabulously Free in SL blogs. Apparently, Genesis Lab is also offering several free group gifts of skins and such at their in-world store location.

UPDATE Jan. 8th, 2022: If you teleport into the Genesis Lab store (SLURL), there are two female Bento mesh heads available for L$1 each, which I have reviewed previously on this blog, when they were first introduced:

No group is needed, just buy the bags indicated by the green arrows below:

There are also three free group gifts if you join the GenesisLab group for free: two skins, and a pot containing a multitude of cheerful, colourful flowers with a hold pose.

Happy freebie shopping!

UPDATE Jan. 9th, 2022: Dreamer tells me that Genesis Lab is offering yet another female mesh head for only L$20 to group members! So for a grand total of L$22 , you fan pick up no less than four female mesh heads at Genesis Lab, which is an insane bargain!

She tells me:

It’s near the body appliers. There are free ears on the shelf where the body appliers are.

So 4 heads, skins, ears and flowers 🌸

Here’s where the free ears are located; just buy the bag for L$0 (no group needed):

And the L$20 Eva head is just on the wall to the right of the skin appliers (you must be a member of the free GenesisLab group to get the discount; otherwise it’s L$2,000):

Here’s Dreamer’s blogpost. Thank you, Dreamer! I can highly recommend visiting her excellent blog as a part of your daily freebie fashionista scouting duties! 😉

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Gifts from the Cosmopolitan Christmas Tree

IMPORTANT EDITORIAL/HOUSEKEEPING NOTE, PLEASE READ:

Many of my regular readers are probably wondering why I have written so much about Second Life this month, instead of all the other metaverse platforms I could cover.

First: My faculty union at the university where I work went through a five-week strike which ended in early December, and we are now in a rapidly worsening Omicron wave of the coronavirus pandemic. I am STRESSED and UTTERLY EXHAUSTED and I need to take a break. Second Life is my happy place, and my preferred way of dealing (or, perhaps more accurately, not dealing) with messy, painful, chaotic, dumpster-fire reality these days. I am therefore taking December as a vacation from this blog (with a few exceptions, such as this blogpost).

Second: As I have often said before, Second Life is the perfect example of a mature, fully-evolved metaverse, which the newer social VR platforms would be wise to study and emulate. Do not be so quick to dismiss Second Life as quaint and outdated! At a time when the concept of the metaverse is suddenly very popular again, you can learn many lessons from studying SL. For example, merchandizing avatar fashion (such as that profiled in this blogpost) is now a very hot topic in the blockchain/crypto/NFT space; Second Life content creators have been earning full or side incomes by creating and selling avatar fashion for over 18 years now!

Thank you for your patience and understanding. I do expect to return full-throttle to blogging about any and all aspects of social VR, virtual worlds and the metaverse in January 2022!

Every December, the Cosmopolitan shopping event (SLURL) has a large Christmas tree placed between the entrance doors, which is a sort of Advent calendar, but in a different form. Every day, more and more stockings are added to the tree as decorations, and each stocking is a free gift from a participating vendor. Join the !!Cosmopolitan Club & Lounge!! group for free to pick up these gifts.

However, because the stockings all look alike and are attached to all sides of a three-dimensional, cone-shaped object, and therefore it can be very hard to keep track of what you have already taken and what you haven’t! Here’s a useful tip, from a previous year’s blogpost, on how to tackle the tree:

If you insist on visiting every day, the layout of the stockings around the tree can be somewhat confusing compared to traditional Advent calendars, and you might land up collecting the same gifts multiple times. You might want to use this tip provided by SL blogger Chic Aeon: once you have clicked on a stocking and received its gift, right click on it, Select More from the pie menu, select More again, then select Derender, then Blacklist. You will no longer be able to see that stocking on return visits! (These are the instructions for the Firestorm viewer; I do not know what the equivalent is for the standard Second Life viewer.) This is a genius tip! Thanks, Chic!

Another tip: derender the Christmas tree first; then the stockings will appear to be floating in mid-air, and they are much easier to find and click on! 😉

Today my avatar Moesha Heartsong (the Naomi Campbell supermodel of Second Life!) models some of my favourite gifts from the Cosmopolitan stockings. I do apologize for using a pose stand for these images; I can work much faster this way, and therefore get this blogpost out to you more quickly! I do not know how long the Christmas tree will be up at the Cosmopolitan event, so don’t delay in picking up these fabulous freebies!

First up is the Mei jewelry set from Supernatural, a choker and two necklaces (three separate pieces which you can wear together as shown, or separately as you wish). The Mei set comes in gold and silver versions, and each version comes in four different colours: black, red, pink, and white.

From AVALE comes the Gorra party dress with a dark silver skirt and a colour-changeable top (the included HUD gives you 11 colours). Sizes: Maitreya, Legacy, Freya, Isis, Hourglass, and Kupra.

ZVI’s gift is this cropped top with a choice of 20 colours via a HUD (sizes: Maitreya Lara, Meshbody Legacy, INITHIUM Kupra, eBody Reborn, Kalhene Erika).

Blossom&Seeds offers you this Costa Rica dress in sizes to fit Maitreya Lara, Belleza Freya, and Meshbody Legacy bodies:

From Shybird comes the Mina party dress, which comes in a fatpack with a whopping 64 options (32 colours in silk and 32 colours in suede!). This dress comes in sizes to fit Maitreya, Legacy, Kupra, and eBody Reborn.

The Eliza outfit (in the stocking from Meva) consists of a red dress and a white jacket with a belt. The dress and jacket can be worn together as shown, or you can mix and match with other items from your avatar’s wardrobe.

Off-Line’s present is this Nali dress in salmon, which comes in opaque and sheer versions (sizes: Maitreya, Legacy, Freya, Hourglass, and Kupra).

The present from Amias is this delightful grey Deer Sweater! There are versions for both male and female avatars: Maitreya Lara & Petite and Legacy & Perky for the women; and Belleza Jake, Signature Gianni, and Legacy for the men.

Seniha very generously gives you a complete fatpack of the Rosse outfit, consisting of a bodysuit and boa/fur stole, each of which comes with a HUD with a dizzying array of colours and textures to choose from! You can tint the top, belt, and bottom of the bodysuit separately via the HUD, for even more options!

From Little Fox comes the Darling set of top and matching panties in cherry red (Maitreya, Legacy, Freya, Kupra sizes).

The gift from Masoom is this pink Minerva gown (which comes in both regular and windblown versions). The gown comes with a gems HUD and a separate package of tintable panties to wear underneath. The Minerva gown comes in sizes to fit Maitreya Lara, Belleza Freya, and Slink Hourglass mesh bodies.

The stocking from Poison Rouge contains this haute couture Alma de Rosa hat in coral pink:

This is the Makina pigtail hairstyle from Ayashi, which comes with the HUD as shown, with eight different anime colours and a tinting feature to make your hair any colour under the sun!

Petite Maison offers a lovely selection of home decor (seven separate objects):

And finally, for something completely different, we have this set of unisex Bakes on Mesh cosmetics from Poema, the Editorial makeup pack! You’re all set for your next Vogue fashion shoot!

Again, I don’t know how long the Christmas tree will be up, so go TODAY.

Happy freebie shopping!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: The 2021 Holiday Shop and Hop Is On Until January 2nd, 2022!

Second Life’s annual Holiday Shop and Hop event runs until January 2nd, 2022, and now that the Advent calendars have completed for the season, it’s time to pick up some fabulous freebies!

This year, instead of writing up a blogpost, and posting pictures of what I think are the best gifts, I have decided to post a detailed notecard of Ryan’s picks of the best menswear, womenswear, and home decor from the Shop and Hop. More information on how to join the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group can be found here (the group join fee is only L$50, and you will find it money well spent, as I often share many bargains and freebies which never make it to this blog!).

Once you join the group (search for “ryanschultz”, all one word, under Groups in Search; it’s the only one that matches), just look for the notice titled “HOLIDAY SHOP AND HOP December 2021”, which contains a comprehensive list of gifts organized by sim name, with the exact SLURLs to each of the gifts so you can teleport in and out! I made it very easy for you!

Happy freebie shopping!

photo of christmas presents
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