Nu Vibez and Roleplay Guide Magazine - January 2014 | Page 42

Stroker Strikes Back - p3

news and go to bed only to start it all over again the
next day; I did that for half my life. For one thing, I'm a
night person and I like sleeping un l 10am! I did that
grind for 20 years, working un l 7 or 8pm 6 days a week
when I was a contractor. I was very successful with my
business too. We were a mul -million dollar
organiza on with 40 employees but it was slowly
killing me. But contrac ng again just wasn't in the bag
as we're in a down economy and construc on was flat.
I missed SL, the camaraderie, the crea vity, the social
aspects, the adult aspects, the connec ons you can
make and the role play. You really can't explain it to
what I call "Earth People," because they just don't get
it. First of all you really have to have some sort of
ar s c bent, even if you're just there to socialize. It
requires a degree of crea vity just to be able to
communicate so it a racts people with a diverse
background of expression whether it is sexual or not.
That crea vity could be photography, machinima,
ar stry or graphic design; you just don't find this
concentra on of crea ve people anywhere else on the
web. Sure you can work in Maya, Max or Blender,
throw yourself up on TurboSquid and make a living, but
there is no social aspect to it, you're just a checkout
page.
In the end though, the final deciding factor for my
return was Mesh … Mesh was my “downfall.” By the
me LL finally released their mesh client, I'd already
had enough interest in Maya and Blender to make the
decision to return. I was an ok prim builder, average. I
could make anything I wanted, but everything was just
so geometric, boxy and “roundy.” In working with
professional modelers and doing rigging for our
anima on business, I saw the types of designs that
were being created by other companies like Pixar and I
knew that if SL did not take advantage of this modeling
explosion, someone would.
The natural shapes that modeling can do today, with
these huge rendering farms, are just amazing. I firmly
believe that you're going to see produc on done
online within virtual studios one day. One of the
biggest expenses for a