Snapshots and self-shots at Virtual Tangs

Returned to First Meta yesterday evening to take a few snapshots of Virtual Tangs before it ceases to exist. Virtual Tangs is one of the largest Singaporean build in Second Life to date, in terms of scale and realism, built by Joy Lapperiere.

Other notable mega-builds of Singaporean landmarks that used to exist in Second Life are:
1) Moontec City Towers (Suntec City replica) - built by Minky Mousehold.
2) Singapore Flyer - built by Minky Mousehold and Joy Lapperiere.
3) Wisma Atria - built by Joy Lapperiere; still my most favourite.

Anyway, here are some last-minute snapshots that I have taken at Virtual Tangs before it goes down:


My first stop was at the Island Shop at Virtual Tangs, but I practically stayed here for the rest of the time in Virtual Tangs as I felt that the store design is interestingly tropical and refreshing to look at. Kudos to its interior designer!


The overall view of the Island Shop looks almost like the real thing!


"Good evening sir, how may I help you?" - I was trying to picture myself as a counter staff at the Island Shop!


Having some fun posing in front of the pink flowery mural wallpaper at Martini Pink.


This is me bidding farewell to Virtual Tangs. Sigh... Some things have to be taken away for better things to come. Very soon it will be Temasek's turn to undergo a major revamp too.

Like I said earlier, some things in life will have to go for better things to come. Hopefully, this will be so. God be praised!

Several new additions to the Canopy

Finally, after an afternoon of work, I completed a mock up of two conjoining Clarke Quay canopies. I built this mock up and replaced the existing standalone canopy, which is found at the Temasek Masterplan 2010 exhibition area, located in Temasek. I am pretty pleased with the result. I also installed some lamps on each of the canopy supporting structure, so as to have some artificial light at night.

Here are some snapshots of the conjoining canopies at Temasek:


This snapshot was taken right after I finished building it.


Another snap of the canopy at a different angle. The canopy is still quite prim-heavy, weighing in at 149 prims!


An overall view of the Clarke Quay canopy from above, covering almost the whole exhibition site.


A snapshot of the Temasek Masterplan 2010 exhibition at night, I managed to install the lamps before sundown!


Oh! We have a visitor to the exhibition site! This is Virat Leistone, a user from India that popped by Temasek to have a look around. We had some time chatting with one another.

I also tried to reduce prim-count by deploying some of my inworld sculpty tools, but only managed to reduce the prim-count from 283 prims to 229 prims. Some of the sculpts for the structural members on the roof canopy seem to get pretty warped, which looks very weird from far, so I decided to leave the roof section as primitives for now, until I find a better sculpty solution.

Special thanks to Chiling Leandros, Joy Laperriere and Shine Igaly for popping by Temasek during the last two days while I was building and experimenting with the canopy.

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- To engage the building expertise of Derekcsy Cortes in Second Life, drop him a notecard in-world or email him at derekcsy.cortes@gmail.com

- To visit Temasek, owned by Veritas Raymaker, click here.

To God be the Glory forever! Amen!

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Visit - Virtual Tangs of First Meta

I was inworld briefly this morning to visit Virtual Tangs before it disappears from First Meta of Second Life. Note: the name of the sim, First Meta, will change soon so the link provided might be defunct in the coming days. Virtual Tangs is perhaps one of the few remaining real life Singaporean mega landmarks being featured in Second Life in its entirety.

Here are some snapshots that I have taken of virtual C.K. Tang:


An overall perspective view of the virtual Tangs in First Meta, Second Life.


The store front displays of virtual Tangs are all emptied out.


A partially sculpted Marriott Hotel tower mock-up that is standing above the mall area of virtual Tangs.


This is me posing beside one of the lion sculptures featured at the main entrance of virtual Tangs.

I will probably be making a second visit to virtual Tangs again tonight for more snapshots. Goodbye for now!

A lower prim count for the Canopy

Whew! Spent some time tonight reducing the number of prim count for my latest build, the Clarke Quay Canopy, took me around 5 hours to get it just right. I converted some of the structural members of the canopy into sculpties and dramatically reduced the prims in my build by 30%. Still trying to reduce some more, but Second Life's 10m X 10m X 10m cap on primitive size is indeed restricting me. Anyway, I used SculptCrafter to convert some of my primitives into sculpties. Check out 3DBuildEasy - the sim that gives free SculptCrafter demo sets for visitors to try sculpting with the product. It is quite powerful in my opinion, hoping to use it more often in my future builds.

Below is a photo I taken of the part sculpty version of the Clarke Quay Canopy, it looks almost like the original primy build:


Currently, the canopy has been reduced from a prim count of 124 to 86, which is a 30% reduction. The reduction is kinda impressive, but I do wish to hopefully cut more prims though.

Well, that's all for today. Of course, my main wish is for the canopies to be built in Temasek as part of its rejuvenation masterplan - still working on it!

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- To engage the building expertise of Derekcsy Cortes in Second Life, drop him a notecard in-world or email him at derekcsy.cortes@gmail.com

- To visit Temasek, owned by Veritas Raymaker, click here.

- To try SculptCrafter, visit 3DBuildEasy! Click here.

To God be the Glory forever! Amen!

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Preparation of the Temasek Masterplan 2010 Exhibition

Finally! After months of project work in school, it is now time for me to return to my work in Second Life. The first thing I did yesterday was to survey the site of Temasek and see what else can be done to improve further into a more Singapore-themed sim. I continued on with the mini case study today and built a schematic master plan of Temasek in 2010.


This is an overall perspective of Temasek in 2009. Its 2010 Masterplan looks to upgrade the sim with more iconic structures and buildings that effectively depicts the flavours of Singapore to a world audience.

FYI: Temasek is a Singaporean simulator in Second Life that aims to showcase a virtual form of modern Singapore to users worldwide. It is somewhat my vision to see this sim reach its fullest potential. More stuff will be added to the masterplan, so do keep a look-out for the upcoming changes that are about to happen in Temasek! This is going to be very exciting!

Below are some shots of the Temasek Masterplan 2010 Exhibition in Temasek, situated just beside Elgin Bridge:


The Temasek Masterplan 2010 exhibition features several schematic models of the probable upcoming buildings and structures in Temasek. Click here to teleport to the exhibition site. An upcoming structure in Temasek could be the canopies of Clarke Quay Singapore, which is being featured as the shade for exhibition area!


A close-up view of one of the schematic models on display, this model depicts the overall additions and alterations that may be done on the sim.


A first-person view of how the new view may look like from the starting point (entrance) of the Temasek.


Another first-person view of how the sim may look like from the Canopy Broadwalk, looking on to the Temasek Aviation Control Centre (TACC) a.k.a. Changi Airport Control Tower in real life. The concorde with Singapore Airlines livery will greet visitors at a distance, serving as a backdrop to the control tower.


An alternate view of the Temasek Aviation Control Centre and Concorde at a distance.


This is a test-build that I have done, which is a replica of the canopies found at Clarke Quay Singapore. When approved, these canopies will shade a wide broadwalk that will replace the current podium and water fountains of Temasek.


Wanna know more about what Temasek can offer in the upcoming months? Stay tuned to the posts in this blog or go in-world and visit the exhibition at Temasek now!

After viewing the exhibition in Temasek, don't forget to drop me, Derekcsy Cortes, a notecard of how you feel about the exhibition! Thanks in advance!

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- To engage the building expertise of Derekcsy Cortes in Second Life, drop him a notecard in-world or email him at derekcsy.cortes@gmail.com

- To visit Temasek, owned by Veritas Raymaker, click here.

To God be the Glory forever! Amen!

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Project - Dock and Underwater Tubes for a yacht at Farwell

I was back in Second Life yesterday, spent the entire day building a port as well as an underwater tube system at Farwell - the place where Veritas Raymaker's private yacht is docked at. The objective of this project was to build a port and reception area that complements the yacht's overall classy design as well as to build an underwater viewing gallery for visitors to view the undersea marine life off Farwell.

Below are some shots of the port and underwater tubes that I built at Farwell:


This is me having my photo taken inside Farwell's Cruise Centre, built at Farwell, you can see the 'Raymaker V' docked behind me in the background.


Another shot of me taking a break inside the finished Cruise Centre. You can see the docked 'Raymaker V' yacht behind me and the elevator to the docks below.


This is the 'Raymaker V' docked beside Farwell's Cruise Centre. The 'Raymaker V' yacht is owned by Veritas Raymaker.


An aerial shot of both the cruise centre and yacht at Farwell. The elevator in the middle of the photo ferries visitors from the cruise centre to the docks as well as the underwater tubes below.


This is the small island in-between the main island and yacht, within the hut that sits in this small island is an alternative access to the underwater tubes below - the hut is a lift shaft with a working elevator.


This is how it looks like below the small island, it is some sort of disguise to cover the underwater viewing gallery below it. Around the viewing gallery are the underwater tubes that I mentioned earlier, which connects the gallery to the nearby cruise centre and docks.


This is a photo of me walking within the underwater tubes. On my left is the hull of the 'Raymaker V' underwater. On my right is the foot of the main island that is submerged underwater.


The elevator that serves between the cruise centre, docks and the underwater tubes.


An undersea view of the tubes that extends from below the port all the way to the small island at the far end. On your right is the hull of the 'Raymaker V' docked beside the underwater tubes.


A large whale shows up beside the underwater marine gallery.

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- To engage the building expertise of Derekcsy Cortes in Second Life, drop him a notecard in-world or email him at derekcsy.cortes@gmail.com

- To visit the Farwell Cruise Centre, owned by Veritas Raymaker, click here.

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Off-world for some time...

Apparently, I have been very busy recently due to my first life responsibilities that I had to take a break from Second Life for quite some time. Thus, there have been no updates on this blog for over a week now. Don't worry, I'll be back... soon! Take care!

Project - Walkway for Riverside Mansion

As I was checking and clearing my email Inbox yesterday, I found an old SL email message regarding a project that a user, DR Weder, has requested me to do. I went in-world the following day and managed to catch him online. It seemed that a walkway that I previously built in Lily caught his eye and he requested me to build something similar (walkway) for his mansion in Owasco.

This is the walkway that I constructed in Lily:


An overview of the walkway I built in Lily. It has since become a makeshift store for me to sell some of my merchandise - pedestrian traffic lights and neon lights.

Below are some shots of the walkway that I have built on the day itself:


An overview of the walkway that connects to the docks from the top.


The walkway slopes downwards and spirals towards the docks.


View of the walkway and mansion from the docks.


The curved portion linking the walkway to the mansion was also custom-made and built by Derekcsy Cortes.


Another overview of the walkway and docks from afar.


The view of the walkway and docks from the mansion. The walkway is built along the side of the hill so as it to not obstruct the panoramic sea view in which the mansion enjoys.


The concrete texture of the walkway repeats itself neatly along the whole walkway, allowing it to look prim, proper and clean.


The curved ridge beside the mansion was built specially to allow the two building elements (walkway and mansion) to bridge a link with one another. The porch-like shade of the mansion was an additional feature that I added to the building's facade that will help make it look more interesting to the eye.

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- To engage the building expertise of Derekcsy Cortes in Second Life, drop him a notecard in-world or email him at derekcsy.cortes@gmail.com

- To visit my mini-store at Lily, click here.

- To visit the mansion at Owasco, owned by DR Weder, click here.

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