The details makes the differance

It has been a busy week! First the first round of the Americas cup challenge (that I will write about a bit later), then the opening of the gallery (and the signing up in the big group with 650 galleries... also in a later article)... and then all the ongoing projects. I am such a fanatic for the details that I have a a really tough time to decide when something is good enough and I should decide that it is finished....

Well this story is about buoys... the small stupid insignificant things that you see when you are out sailing in the beautiful oceans in Second Life. I wanted to have some buoys to mark the small canal between our islands so that people dare to sail there. You know if you are sailing in the main direction you shall have the red buoys on the left side and the greens on the right side (yes I have a skippers diploma in real life).

However those up for sale were either so ugly or consisted of a incredible amount of prims. I need 6 buoys for that canal and if each of them is up to 37 prims.... well there we go again... that ads up to 222 prims for some stupid buoys. No way... and even the low prim good looking buoys are like 17 prims = 102 prims.

So what will a handy man do? Right, build my own ones!!! You should say YAY to a challenge.... well a few weeks later I am not so sure....    ;-)

The resulting buoy itself is made in one sculpted prim and the flashing lamp is another prim. So 2 prims/buoy that makes 12 prims instead of 222 for the six buoys... Amazing. The buoy itself took me less then an hour to build and turn into a sculptie. The textures took me forever even though I have great tools. I have 13 green versions and 9 red versions before I am pleased with the worn look of them. They should look like they have been in the salt water for some time and not like they are newborn plastic ones.

Then there are the scripts. One for making the lamps flash in the right way and another one for making the buoys move in the water in a natural looking way. Those took me a few hours too.....

Then a fool never knows when to end..  ;o)

So I decided that it would be handy to be able to use them "out of Sim" as well.. so I added that functionality (2 more prims if you want to use that possibility) and lastly I had to learn how to make nice foam or wave around them (adds 1 prim if you decide to use that)

So the result is a nice looking moving and flashing buoy in 2 prims with foam for another one and "out of Sim" use for yet two more... the choice is yours.

My own joy lies in understanding all the detailed works at hand here and put together an object like this, were all is home made by my self.

Sure... a total waste of time as I can buy them on Xstreet for a few Lindens... ;o)