Mermaids in Second Life

[azaiya]

There used to be a thread about this a while back, but I can't find it anymore. A lot of new people have probably joined the forum, so I thought I'd start a new one!

Any mers here use Second Life? It's kind of like playing with legos and dolls… but inside a 3D virtual world. You can create your own avatars and there's a lot of customization. You can pretty much make anything you want… including mermaids!



There are also a lot of cool places to explore… above and underwater! I hang out there a lot more in the winter than the summer.



Here's an album full of pictures I've taken of mers and some cool underwater areas in Second Life. (NSFW, some topless mers in there), and some more pictures on my flickr.



I also made a mertail for SL avatars recently. The real-life tails people post in the forum are amazing! I'm more of a digital artist, so this is the best I can do when it comes to making tails.

If you use Second Life and you want one, send me a message (Azaiya Aeon), and tell me who you are on MerNetwork! They come in lots of colors. Hopefully I'll make some more complicated designs in the future… mesh is hard to work with!

[Echidna]

Yep, there's quite a few forum mers on SL.
I re-did most of my tails there recently and made several krait tails too (didn't upload them to my album yet because I was too lazy to convert all the shots to jpegs ).

I'll gladly add you, even though I'm rather seldom on SL lately.
(My name is Yinfu Jun)

My stuff is all made with prims, because I lack the software to work with mesh.
Animation-wise, I found the old prim stuff more satisfying than the new mesh tails, even though those look more elegant of course.
In case you ever try your hand on a snake or naga mesh tail, there is only one in-world now iirc,
and the unrealistic animations turned me off, so I'm still using my old bulky prim snake tails

[Mermaid Oshun]

I will b on sl today shut in (snow here )

[Ariel-Starfish]

Omg these are so cool! I had an account on SL once, but nerver understood how it worked etc.
If someone wants to help me out; I would love to start over and make a virtual version of my mer persona!

[azaiya]

Caltuna – I know what you mean! I will let you know if I ever try to make something like that. I'll add you when I'm online next, please show me your mer avs!

Goldenpearl - I might go on today, snow here too! Add me if you like!

Ariel - If we're both online, I'd be happy to help get you started. What's your name?

[Ariel-Starfish]

I have to create a new account I will make one tomorrow and post my username here

[MermaidBrandie]

I go on second life occasionally. There was never anybody online.

[Mermaid Jaffa]

I had a SL account when it was first released. I went into the cannon on tutorial island and couldn't figure out how to land. 15 mins later, I uninstalled the game!

[Echidna]

I had a SL account when it was first released. I went into the cannon on tutorial island and couldn't figure out how to land. 15 mins later, I uninstalled the game!

They made the island easier to leave, because in the beginning, many people failed to go through the process.
My father, who was interested in the programming language, couldn't get past the Hula part

[Mermaid Jaffa]

The tuna is laughing at me!!!

I feel so embarrassed...

[Echidna]

The tuna is laughing at me!!!

if you mean my name with that; it has nothing to do with the fish

it's romanian and actually written călțuna and pronounced kal-tsuna, and it means the flower
sweet violet (which is a variant of my real name).

[Mermaid Jaffa]

oh i thought i meant California Tuna...

My aunt's name is, Violette too.

[Aziara]

Ok, I can't figure out second life at all. Where's all these nice underwater places, and how do I get to them?

[Echidna]

oh i thought i meant California Tuna...

yea, that's what I figured.
I don't live in California though, nor do my tails look anything like tuna

Ok, I can't figure out second life at all. Where's all these nice underwater places, and how do I get to them?

Once you left the rookie island, you can search (with the search function).

keywords ocean, underwater, mermaid usually bring up all the hang-outs.
You can teleport directly there with the address link from search.

[Aziara]

Thanks caltuna! The beaches I had found so far didn't have much underwater space, and they just seemed to be make-out spots anyway (gag). This might seem like a dumb question.... What is there to do in second life? Maybe I'm just used to mmo's where I fight stuff, but I can't seem to figure out if there's anything to do besides talk to people.

[Echidna]

What is there to do in second life? Maybe I'm just used to mmo's where I fight stuff, but I can't seem to figure out if there's anything to do besides talk to people.

SL isn't so much a game as a platform.
There's a million things to do, but you will have to discover them for yourself.
It's not an MMO, or game that tells you what to do or where to look

Some of the things you can do besides meeting and talking to people:

-building.
everything in SL is made from props you can shape yourself with the build tool, and textures you can either find or make and upload yourself.
You can either make your avatar unique outfits (resembling stuff you have iRL, for example), build furniture/houses/landscapes/whatever, or make something completely new and unheard of (like fantasy avatars or such)

-scripting.
when mastering the programming language SL is based on, you will become a wizard.
you will be able to create effects and make gadgets others can only dream of (or buy for many L$)

-animating.
every fancy movement in SL is made possible by animations.
nowadays, most new animations- especially for postures, runs, walks, and dances- are done by motion-capture, but I did some iceskating anims back in my active SL days, because none did exist!
also useful for movements not possible in reality, like mermaid or fairy dances.

-socializing.
only at first glance the same as talking to people. you can do much more than that in a world full of fantastic landscapes, fancy hangouts, and mythological creatures.
you can ride a horse, dance in the deep sea, fly through space, or simply go to a club you like.
It's called Second Life for a reason.

-roleplaying.
while not everyone's cup of tea, of course SL is a great environment to RP anything you like.
you are bound to find some SIM where they do your favourite.
differing to other RP areas in other games, you are free to make yourself look exactly how you envision it, without being reduced to collect some stuff that looks halfway decent :P

that's some general ideas.

mind that to experience SL completely, you might have to rent a space for a while, or at least have some L$ to buy some stuff you can't find for free (but there are loads freebies nowdays that look better than the most expensive stuff back when I started lol)

[Mermaid Jaffa]

Its ok. I got new glasses now... I can see everyone's name perfectly!

[Ariel-Starfish]

I tried loging in again but it refuses. And it makes my Mac slow.

[MermaidBrandie]

Second life is VERY graphic intense. My old mac couldn't do it at all.

[Starfrit]

Ahh, I didn't know there were so many folks from here on SecondLife!

I've been on there for about... Eight years now? XD One of my favorite things is building avatars and frankensteinning outfits together.

Here's a few shots of an outfit I threw together for a Valentine's Day-themed event I went to last month (I just kind of slapped it together from like... Four different outfits.)







I've been trying to piece together a mermaid character the last couple of weeks but haven't been able to settle on anything! I've kind of got an avatar put together, and the AO I have for her is really pretty, but overall I'm not very happy with the look. I'll see if I can get some pretty screencaps of the mermaid avatar tomorrow!

(By the way, my name on SL is Yami Halcali, if anyone wants to add me!)