A long overdue rave - the Extremely Lazy Coloring Machine

Back when I was a brand spankin' new noob in Second Life, I came across KStarfire Rich in one of the classes I was in. I asked a (probably really stupid noob) question and he was the only one who offered any help. Coming from Star Wars Galaxies, I have this habit of reading profiles. So I read his profile and much to my surprise he was part of a Star Wars Galaxies Refugees group. I'd only been in SL maybe three weeks and was really missing SWG. So I sent him an IM and thanked him for his help. We got to chatting about SWG, and then other things, and he was the first male I ever allowed on my friend's list. (He doesn't know that, it'll probably go to his head.)

He was also fairly new and we spent lots and lots of time in Teazer's classes together. It was so bad that if there were two classes going at the same time that we wanted, one of us would go to each and then we'd swap notes afterwards. KStarfire is one of those people who can script in their sleep. I'd often go to him for help. He helped us figure out how our vendor boxes were going to work, and we're still using the same script we started with over a year ago.

I don't remember how the first one came about, probably because he was tired of me whining how long it took to color hair. He made this completely confusing (to me and Hae) thing that would crank out hair, but we had to script all the pieces, and we had to do all this stuff to the textures and there were all these things that we just had no idea what he was talking about. So I promptly looked at him like he was crazy. Told him I thought he was awesome, but whatever it was he was trying to explain and show me was just way, way over my head and much more work than we needed to do.

Little did I know. Many months later, I asked him if there were some way to make all this hair coloring easier because we now had some 60 colors instead of 25. So he puts together this scripty thing and all we have to do is paste the texture UUIDs, with some commands, and voila hair is colored! Some more commands and the hair is renamed, copy/paste/take copies, blahblah. Yay hair! He even made it so we could do trans textures and the regular textures. He made it so we could have only one side of the prim textured, thus completely eliminating that funky flexi-halo. We were pretty sure we'd died and gone to hair maker's heaven. Haedon dubbed it the "Lazy Coloring Machine" and the LCM was born.

We used that for quite a while until I heard about something called the Toaster by Sol Columbia who is quite the awesome scripter as well. So I went out and got two. And we started messing with it. We had all kinds of funky halo issues which there was no way to get rid of short of coloring each flexi end by hand. I talked to Sol about it a few times and we couldn't come up with any other method of fixing the halo issue. (Disclaimer: I am not knocking the Toaster, I think the toaster is awesome. Pure awesomeness. It just didn't do exactly what it was we needed.)

So, back we went to the LCM which took longer, but at least we had no halos. (Being the perfectionists that we are, halos are not acceptable.) I talked to KStarfire and told him there was this Toaster that spit out the hair but didn't do the multi-sided texture coloring and we had the halo. At that moment I'm pretty sure he thought I was an idiot. He told me about that first thing he made way back in the beginning. My little light bulb came on over my head. All these months later, I was finally able to understand what it was he'd made and was trying to explain to us. And I could have just kicked myself for not getting it then.

He gave it to me, and I made a few changes and "can we do x this way?" and played with the way it named things so that we didn't have to rename all the hair, etc etc. It had easy-peasy pop up boxes that told me what to do, when to do it and saved me hours and hours of coloring time. I told him I would have his little prim babies.

This new, improved ultra awesome version became the "Extremely Lazy Coloring Machine," fondly known as the ELCM.

And then...we decided to add more colors. Which has, of course, more than doubled our previous color selection. We have been able to get out the old styles in new colors considerably faster than we would have been able to months ago. The ELCM is the reason Haedon didn't entirely tear me limb from limb when I said "Let's add more colors!" It has really enabled us to do considerably more for you, our customers. We can now offer a much larger variety of colors and shades to match your every mood. We'll be able to do special Holiday editions considerably easier. I kiss my ELCM every day.

In short, it's made our lives and our jobs a hell of a lot easier. Sachi and Damen of Adam n Eve are using it too. Damen's been using it on his shoes, so this is certainly awesome for much more than just hair. Anything primmy, you can put into it and crank out in multiple textures. Sachi wanted the ability to use a third texture, which he'd already built in. (I only needed two, so he didn't mess with it.) KStarfire added that for her, and now ELCM V2 is out and in my pocket!

He is offering these to the public for sale. It comes with lifetime free updates to new versions, as well as customer support. So if you're a designer and create things with prims and are tired of the frustration and time involved in making oodles of copies to recolor, check this out. I will be happy to provide a live demonstration for you if you want to see how it works before you buy one. It's worth every Linden, and then some, I promise you that. What's worth even more, is having more time to do the things you want to do in SL and in your RL!

I don't know if he's got them up on SLExchange or not yet, but he is going to. He'll also sell them direct to you, just send him an IM.

And no, I'm not getting any commission off of these. I just know there are so many others out there who are spending a lot of time to make wonderful products for everyone in SL. If this enables them to spend more time with their families and friends (both RL and SL) than maybe we designers won't burn out so fast and keep making more fantastic stuff!

A very heartfelt and public thank you is in order. KS, you've always been there whenever I needed you. You've been an amazing friend, without pushing any boundaries or making me feel guilty for not spending enough time with you. You certainly deserve way more than you get. You've always come through for me, no matter what insane thing it was I was trying to do. You were the first to put lights over my head when I was working so I could see. You spent hours upon hours trying to help me figure out the flexi skirt that I just knew I had to figure out. We never did get it, but I'd never have gotten as far as I did without you. You were there in that first tiny little skybox we started in over a year ago. You endured hours of trying to help me figure out how an invisiprim works on shoes. You've given countless critiques, suggestions, and advice. For all the laughs, for the class notes, for the never-ending support and praise, for the patience and concern you've shown me, and for never even once asking for anything in return, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

And now, the rest of you, go buy an ELCM! If you don't need an ELCM, then send KStarfire Rich a little thank you note, for enabling you to have lots and lots more Calla hair!