Hard work ain't enough anymore...

open the texture

Go to File

"Save as"



Definitely call around about saving your data - it definitely can be done by the pros. For the music especially - you RL job is important.

Even 200$ is too much if you don't have any...

Thx for the advice, but I don't think I'll try it just yet, cause if it doesn't work, it might ruin the chances of a proper recovering method. I have a friend who had a similar problem a year ago, maybe he knows what to do, I'll call him in the morning. I don't think there's a really saturated market of data recovering here in Hungary, and the companies I've checked are more closer to the 500-1000$ fee.

Nika, thx to you too - I really love this thread, 10 minutes ago I was thinking about starting smoking again (I quit smoking a few months ago), but now I have so many things to do, I don't have time to smoke, a lot of work needs to be done if I want my stuff back.

(But if by chance my motherboard or CPU dies today, I'll definitely have a nervous breakdown...)

Maybe post another thread in the technical section fo the forum - is a lot of seriously talented computer pros on this forum.

They might have some Ideas that you can try with your limited budget.

I THINK Colette may be referring to something very simple, correct me if wrong Colette. Everything in your SL inventory is in fact saved on SL's servers, not on your local hard drive. So, with respect to things you have actually uploaded to SL, it's all still there ... log in from any other computer, and you can download your textures there and save them. The photoshop and other work, of course, resides on your drive and must be recovered.

Please excuse me if this simple explanation is not at all what was meant.

Yes the textures are Savable as TGA files.


He was refering to the Fridge hard drive thing that I relayed to him. An old co worker of mine told me it helps with hard drives that have mechanically failed.

What happens when you try to boot up the drive that crashed? Talk to your friend first, but once upon a time I reformatted my computer's C: drive....I was tired and made the stupid mistake of deleting the partition of my external drive which had around 8 gigs of music, and lesser amounts of memory containing pictures, important documents..... It was all backed up, but I was not about to upload that much music back on to the drive. I did some searching and found out about free program called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TestDisk]TestDisk which I was able to restore my drive's partition with. I believe it uses DOS and searches for former partitions (which may be corrupted in your case) and can even repair them. (turned out they were still there, or at least enough to recompile them) Also, if you hook up the drive as the main C: drive, you can boot from an operating system and enter the recovery console and try some of the fixes in there.

Of course the best course of action would probably be to save up the money slowly if necessary and pay to have it restored professionally.


P.S. Why wont my links show up so people can click on them? It's driving me crazy!

The BBC code got turned off "temporaily" about 100 days ago.

Thanks. Knowing that makes it better. 100 days for real? how vile...

Turn it back on!

They turned it off 5/22/07 in preparation for a forum upgrade LOL



(hint if you use [img]tags you can get the URLs to work or not =/ lol they were working.

And bla it was a website upgrade ...

Oh well ..

Its never going back on I dont think.

I'd love to boot the HD up, but the computer doesn't see it, like it's not existing at all. If I unplug all other HDs, and leave only the broken one plugged in, it looks as if I have no HD at all.

So imho it's either a mechanical failure (might be, but I think there should've been some weird warning sounds), or an electronic failure (data can only be saved by professionals)

The good news is that I also uploaded the latest version of my skin with no make up a few hours ago, it'd have been really tough to get rid of the make up in PS. I found it, and downloaded it, so at least I'll be able to work with the skin, and I can rebuild everything related to the skin in about 2 days.

It's also good, that I sent some of my early music demos to a friend a few weeks ago, and although it will be a really tough job to make a new mock up based on my ears, i might be able to recover it, "only" the last 2-3 weeks have been totally lost. Still won't solve my financial problems, but at least some of the music will be saved.

Excellent. From what you described, it is possible that it might also be a failure in the power connector on the drive. Should be fairly easy to test for that, so worth considering.

One more thing before I forget it, how does these face light thingies work? I have a few different versions, but simply wearing any of those won't change a thing. Do I have to turn these on somehow?

Hmmm it should make a difference. On edit/preferences/graphics detail tab, do you have "nearby local lights" checked? Check it, and set the world to midnite, you should see a BIG difference with a face light on.

Different face lights are set at different intensities. You can make lights yourself just by rezzing objects and turning "Light" on in the Features tab. You can set the color and intensity of these artificial lights. This is a good way to get away from direct outdoor lighting ... make your own.

yay, thx, it works, nearby local lights was turned off.

I think I've found out what killed my HD. It has a small burned black spot near the slot of the power cable, and I can smell it too, so it definitely not getting any power now. That might be good news, it means that the data might be saved, cause that part of the HD is intact. On the other hand I'm a bit scared too, hopefully my main power supply is not faulty (it can cause burns like that), as it can kill everything in there.

How much did you actually expect in your first week? Maybe taking a trip to the economy stats page will give you a little bit of perspective on how few of people actually do make money here. To give an idea, you made L6500 in the first week.... say it stays that way all month = 26,000 / 266 (current market rate) = 97.74 USD. Out of 42,691 total "in world businesses" (excluding land sales and paypal payments) only 5,296 people made more then $100 USD in Aug.

As many have said most of actual advertising in SL is from word of mouth. L6500 is better than my first month so complaining about that will get you no where with me.

I know nothing about skins but I know about ads:

1. That dark of backgrounds makes the entire image look too dark.
2. The text is too squished and difficult to read. Find a font that's clear cause you want people to actually be able to read it correct?
3. Get some poses that fit the avatar (hand doesn't go into the hip) and doesn't have broken bones or stretches the skin mesh. You want to present your work in the best possible way and the wrong poses distract from that. Many people who look at the ad will just notice that something is off and will probably assume it is the skin and not the pose.
4. Pay special attention to arm bends and thighs with a twist or too far away from the body which stretches the skin. Best to go pose shopping with that shape, skin and a bikini.
5. Use a face light like someone else said before.
6. Give 1 close up, 1 full body frontal and 1 from behind full body.
7. For the close up shot get a pose with a small head turn and/or tilt but be mindful of the stretches in the neck - it's a big problem area.

I sent the OP a free voucher to get in our show the last Saturday of the month along with some print ads and retail. Cheer up, bud.

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e298/bladyblue/d2kfashionadtexture.jpg

Luth, I've been pretty much part of the over 100 US$ category ever since I started in January. (Actually I even had an over 2000 US$ month back in May). By the way the second week only had 1 sale for 1000, but it's ok, I admit that I overpriced the skin, I'm working on fixing the errors and finding the right price. (Talking about skins now, the shapes were going as normal, for example, I sold 3 yesterday.)

Since about February I always used SL to earn a little extra, and sometimes it was actually a bit more than that. Recently it really slowed down, but I can live with that.

I know there are about 50 competitive skinmakers, and I'm only one of them. I also know that the biggest 4-5 share about 90% of the market, and I know that I won't be able to catch up to them soon. Still, I thought that I can earn about 200US$ every month 'til the end of 2007. It seems that I overestimated it by a mile, but I think in 2 months I'll be able to work my way up to that 200$. By the way, 200$ is about 1/3 of the average full time salary/month in Hungary.

Thanks for the tips, I'll use them.

Bladyblue, thanks for the opportunity.

Currently in SL most of the major markets for pretty much everything is filled with content from multiple quality designers. I'm sorry to say this, but I must be honest: the skin is very undifferentiated and pretty much like any random skin on the grid. If you want to break out, you need to either invent an entirely new market or reinvent an existing one. This is no easy task, because SL is filled with brilliant people who strive to reinvent and create. Also, new technologies introduced to SL can be sources of reinvention. For example, you could collaborate with a sculpted prim designer to create entire sculpted avatars; the sculptor sculpts, and you texture. This could allow for a range of shapes and detail impossible to make using the standard avatar mesh.

Sculpted Avatars is not the way to go, imho.

1. hard to modify by the buyer
2 even harder to properly animate.

I don't think that to be successful, you have to make something extremely new and original all the time. Sure, it helps, but it's not necessary.

In the meantime, I think I have finished the upper body and the knees, also I've finally been able to kill all seams around the waistline (one of the toughest parts), and I tried to create a new ad based on Luth's suggestions.

I have a small problem with face and body lights though, lighting the whole body is not that easy and I'm not satisfied with the results. I'll check other ads in SL to find a solution for that, but first, here's how it looks now. (Beware! Nudity!)



I think there's only 3 things to do now, eliminate all seams left on the lower body, improve the hands and feet, and finally, put it in the store.

I really hope some of you will check it again and tell me what needs improvement. (Don't do it now, it's not out yet!)

If you're going to put up naked pictures, please let us know. I'm at work and your picture just flashed all over my screen; I'm lucky no one was nearby. I know I'm not supposed to be on here anyway, but all the same....

I think that vendor pic was the most attractive one of the lot.

The overall feel is the best. Good luck with your product.

Just saw this thread now, even though it's been around a while. Pelthar, you can fix your seams and shading all you want, but no one's going to buy your skins if they don't even know they exist. I haven't read every post in this thread, so I don't know if you've pursued these options, but get some mall space, contact some fashion bloggers, give skins to your friends to make them living ads for your work, put your stuff on SLX and SLB and pay for 'featured item' status on your best stuff, buy some banner ads on the bigger SL-related sites.

Also, the people who encourage you to differentiate know what they're talking about. You're looking for a way into a saturated market, and you need something that people will find more easily in keyword searches. Maybe you get people in the store because of your awesome demon skin or whatever, then people see the more traditional products you've got on offer. I have found several skin designers in exactly this manner.

But as you've experienced, someone who just makes traditional female skins is going to have a hell of a time ending up in any classifieds or places searches when people just type in "skin." Get your foot in the door. It may cost you some lindens up front, but that's just the cost of starting up a business in an established market.

And please pick a different file host (ImageShack, Snapzilla). That putfile place tosses up random flash ads.

Oh, sorry, I haven't thought about that. I will edit my post, thanks for noticing.

Actually, I think I have done all these already, before I even posted here. Really, I did all this, I'm on SLX and SLB, I have rented shops in malls, like Skin City for example, I contacted a fashion blogger (will get back to a few of them after the modifications, I'm making right now), etc, etc.

About the specializing, my plans were to specialize in exotic faces. Before SL I already made female avatars for different games, mods, etc, and people always told me that my best skill is to create beautiful faces. I might be wrong, but I don't think that SL is saturated with beautiful faces.

Anyway, thx for trying to help, I appreciate it. But it really seems that the only thing letting me down was actually the quality and the price of the product. It was simply too expensive for what it offered. That (both quality and price) will change next week. The number of demo sales incresed a lot since the first week, so I get the attention I was looking for.

About putfile, I only used it because of this thread, but to be honest, I've never seen a single flash ad caused by putfile, so I don't really know what you're talking about (I logged out to see how it goes, but I still only see the pictures, no ads at all). Long term I'll think about changing it, but at the moment that would take too much time.