Vixen Training Set

Hi !

Let me introduce you to a product that you have probably seen a lot in SL : the Vixen Training Set !

This set is a complete set of cuffs for the arms and the legs, four collars, a tight armbinder with a metal bar, a yoke, a spreader, chains and straps for the heels. All in one package.

Please note that this product is not new, it was actually created and released in March 2011, but it got a complete overhaul in May 2017, turning it from sculpties to mesh and from baked lighting to materials. You can find the original blog post here. (*)

This set used to be named "Vixen Leather Training Set" but although it can still do three shines of leather, it can also do latex, rubber, PVC, plastic (transparent or not), fabric and brushed steel so the "leather" part could be dropped. You might notice that the box still contains the name "leather" but don't mind that, it will change over time.

The Collar


For one, the collar is actually 4 collars in 1. The same object has four different appearances : a simple strap collar looking very much like the cuffs but with sequins, a classy version for everyday use with sequins too, a medium posture collar and a high posture collar. See for yourself :

Simple

Classy

Medium posture, the head can still move but not as much

High posture, the head can't move at all

The cuffs also have a few surprises. Beyond the usual bondage (chaining the hands in front, behind the back or along the body), they come with two interesting pieces of equipment : a u-binder and a yoke. The u-binder binds the arms behind the back in a U, very useful for workout and ponyplay, while the yoke locks itself directly on the collar (the "Reshape" plugin allows you to resize the yoke to your shape). Told you this set was meant for training !



The Arms

The chains

The yoke

The U-Binder

Hands to collar

Reverse prayer

The Legs

As for the legs... it gets even better. You have the usual loose chaining of the ankles to slow the sub down, two hogties (the same ones as in the Restrained Elegance Shackles), and not one but three spreader bars. Standing, sitting, laying down and hogtie, all with the legs spread widely apart. Like the yoke, the "Reshape" plugin allows you to resize the spreader bar without having to edit it by hand. Did I tell you this set was meant for training ? Hehe.

Spreader bar, a classic for your eyes only

Sitting on a spreader, try to get out of this one



Moving around in this bondage is fun

Textures and materials

Of course black might not be your color of choice... Fret not, you can customize the cuffs and collars entirely. You can choose whether to use materials, in which case they will look realistic with a dynamic shine that moves with the camera, or not to use materials, meaning you can use any of the static textures (another name for "baked lighting", meaning the light is directly "painted" onto the texture, it was the old way of rendering shine in SL before materials). See for yourself :

Black leather and blood trim, with the local lights shining over its surface

The same from another angle

White leather with gold metal, notice the shadows on the surface making it look more realistic

Clear plastic ! Yay !

Black latex, of course

The collar is not forgotten either, here is an example of the "dirty leather" preset

Locking the shoes

And last but not least, the legs cuffs come with a little plus : the ability to lock high heels on with a small strap that goes under the sole. For long sessions of, uh, training, y'know. Of course since the set uses the RLV, the shoes are really locked on when the strap is applied. More so, since every heel is different, the "LockShoes" plugin embedded in the legs cuffs allows you to actually rotate and stretch the straps as you see fit.

It does add some special look to the heels on top of it !

So if you combine everything, you get a quite devious set of sober but elegant restraints that is guaranteed to keep your little vixen squirming. Or perfectly still, if so is your choice.


This set costs L$1200, is modify, no-copy and transfer, and can be found in any of the RealRestraint vendors in-world, for example in Pak. It is not available on the Marketplace.


The rest of this blog post talks about how to use your Vixen set, how to resize it and how to change the text on the Classy collar. I don't go much into detail because I don't want to bore you, and you will probably want to experiment yourself anyway.



How to see materials

In order to see your cuffs shine, you need to activate Advanced Lighting Model in your viewer's Graphics Preferences, if not already done.

To activate ALM, open your Preferences, go to "Graphics" and tick the "Advanced Lighting Model" checkbox, if not already done :

If doing so cripples your FPS (Frames Per Second, the speed at which your viewer renders your view in SL), just deactivate the dynamic shadows like this :

Of course there need to be local lights around, at the very least some sun. If you are in an area without any local lights, the cuffs won't shine, obviously.

If your viewer is not able to render materials, or if you don't want to activate ALM for whatever reason, you can always make the cuffs and collar show baked lighting instead of materials. The best way to do this is to select one of the presets beginning with "static", which both sets the textures and removes the materials.

You can even do both, selecting the materials you want and the static texture you want.



How to change texture and shine

To change the appearance of your cuffs and collar, you use the VixenTex plugin. Please be aware that this set is three products in one : arms cuffs, legs cuffs and collars, so you need to do this once per sub-set if you want to make the appearance homogeneous (but then again, you might not want that, it is your choice). Click on a cuff or on the collar, go to "Plugins", then browse until you find "VixenTex", and select it. There will be a full tutorial and explanation on how this plugin works, but for now here are a few pointers, then you'll probably want to experiment yourself.

Firstly, you may want to try out some presets by going to the "Presets" menu. You can customize your cuffs and collar with a lot of control, but that also means to spend time doing it, and you might not want that so presets are a good way to speed things up. Here are how those presets look :

Black leather

 

Black/blood

 

White/gold

 

Black latex

 

Dirty leather

 

Institutional

 

Black ops

 

Battlefield

 

Dirty jeans

 

Trans. plastic

 

Clear plastic

 

Brushed steel

Here are the RGB values of all the colors (or should I say tints) used in the VixenTex plugin :

- Ivory : 247 242 223
- Copper : 120 51 15
- Gold : 252 194 0
- Black : 13 13 13
- Gunmetal : 66 56 51
- Steel : 128 128 128
- Slate : 112 128 143
- Silver : 191 191 191
- White : 255 255 255

- Blood : 117 10 10
- Red : 191 0 0
- Light red : 255 64 64
- Orange : 224 117 33
- Yellow : 252 219 20
- Light yellow : 255 245 176
- Dark green : 5 51 15
- Green : 8 120 38
- Lime : 89 242 128

- Navy : 20 41 66
- Blue : 26 94 217
- Azure : 94 176 255
- Indigo : 112 0 255
- Amethyst : 153 102 204
- Plum : 143 69 133
- Purple : 191 0 128
- Flesh pink : 204 138 128
- Princess pink : 245 194 194

Those colors are the same as the ones used in other RealRestraint products such as the Highbinder, the Deluxe Straps, the Basic Straps, the Deluxe Gag, the Pretty Mummy, the Body Harness and even the products in the Maison De La Marquise line, the latex catsuits, socks & gloves, and bodysuits. That way you can stay assorted.

Some of the colors used in the presets are not in the "Tints" menu, let me write the RGB values below so you can use them yourself with the "Custom" button in that menu if you wish :

- Old leather used in "Dirty Leather" and "Institutional" : 100 71 53
- Gold used in "White gold" : 219 182 134
- Padlock used by the Deluxe Straps : 228 169 85
- Khaki used in "Battlefield" : 66 74 59
- Blue jeans used in "Dirty Jeans" : 28 51 77
- Ivory  : 247 242 223


Once you have selected a preset, you might want to customize further. You can do this through the "Sections", "Surfaces", "Patterns", "Tints" and "Materials" menus. "Sections" are like prims, for example only the wrists, or the wrists and elbows, or only the elbows, or the bars, etc. "Surfaces" are parts of those sections, for example only the main strap, or only the trim, or only the metal, etc. By the way, if you wonder about these bizarre terms, I assure you they make sense. See the "PS" at the very end of this post to get a better explanation.

Once you have selected the sections and surfaces you want to modify, choosing a tint, pattern and material will have an immediate effect. The tint is the color, the pattern is the texture you choose, the material is what it is made of and how it shines in the light.

One word about patterns. They are the very textures applied on the cuffs and collar, but they are not all applied the same way. Some textures such as the "static" ones (the ones with baked shine in them) have a shadow map, which means some grey and black areas to emphasize the relief and shadows, making the cuffs look more realistic, like this :

White "Clean" pattern

One is named "Dirty", which is the same as "Clean" but with some gunk added, giving it a worn and dirty look, ideal for darker play. For example, the "Institutional" and "Dirty leather" presets use it :

White "Dirty" pattern

But if you don't want shadows at all (because let's face it, it is the viewer's responsibility to render Ambient Occlusion, which is the other word for these shadows), you can use the "Plain" pattern, which is nothing else than a plain white texture :

White "Plain" pattern, there are no shadows but the viewer
does generate some faint ones at runtime

Patterns are textures, but they also influence the opacity. The Vixen set has three opacities : completely opaque such as demonstrated above, transparent (called "Transparent", how original) and almost invisible (called "Clear", not to be mistaken with "Clean" which is opaque) :

 

Trans. plastic

 

Clear plastic

The "Static" patterns are the baked lighting ones, you have several colors at your disposal, plus rough leather and black latex :

Static rough (formerly named "Hide" but renamed because of confusion)

Static black

Static blood

Static blue

Static azure

Static pink

Static white

Note : the shadows near the eyelets look a bit blocky on these pictures but that's because of my viewer, there must be a graphics setting somewhere that filters them according to the distance, seen from closer they look more defined :

Full disclosure, the "Static white" texture (or rather textures, there are many of them, two per cuff and collar) is exactly the same as the "Clean" pattern in the "Patterns" menu of the VixenTex plugin. Likewise, the "Static rough" texture is the "Dirty" pattern with two brown tints (one for the base, another for the light). So you can easily reproduce the same effects with materials.


And then you have all the remaining patterns which are the reason why it is called "pattern" in the first place : simple textures that are repeated to give a pattern to the cuffs and collar, such as camo, cow, little hearts and others :

Seams

Skulls ("Yarrrr !")

Lips

Red hearts (notice the shine that is red too because the original texture is white and black, I had to tint it light red, which tints the shine red as well)

Sorry, this section was a lot longer than anticipated, but customization is a big feature in this set so it had to be demonstrated in detail.



How to change the text on the Classy collar

One of the four collars is able to display custom text over up to 32 characters, as a texture, this is the one that shows on the second lock, the "Classy" one. To do this, simply go to the "Text" plugin, which allows you to change the text, the font and color of the classy collar. The text does not display on "Simple", "Post. Med" or "Post. High", only on "Classy".

It is originally showing your own first name in an "ivory" color, but you have several choices on the menu, including a way to enter any text you want. The text will be centered but the Classy collar actually has two sides, since the padlock is in the middle, so you may want to display a short text on each side, rather than a long one that will be cut in the middle. In other words, you may specify to repeat your text twice automatically if it is short enough. To do this, simply add a star ("*") after your text to repeat it twice and center it twice.

For example, if you simply enter "Prisoner" in the "Text" menu of the Text plugin after pressing on "CUSTOM", this is what will happen :

"Pris", then sequins and padlock, then "oner"

But if you enter "Prisoner*", with the trailing star, then you get this :

One prisoner...

... on each side.

The other menus in the Text plugin let you choose the font and color, it's pretty straightforward.

And if you want to go further, having several fonts and/or several colors on the same text, you can specify an interval thanks to the "Interval" menu. This menu lets you specify at which character to start and at which one to end, and whether you move both limits when moving one of them or not ("linked" and "unlinked" modes respectively). When you choose a color or a font, the change is applied only to the characters inside this interval. You can literally set one different color per character like that, if you like.

How to resize

Resizing this set is easier than before, because the main parts are mesh instead of sculpties.

First press Ctrl Alt T to highlight invisible objects in red, then select the part you want to move with the "Edit Linked" checkbox ticked on your Edit window.

Select the object...

Check "Edit linked", select the cuff, and resize it 

as if it were a normal prim

Please be aware of the four 8-letter parts that go with the Classy collar, and that are individual parts, they need to move with the Classy collar or the text won't look good. A good way to do this is to move the whole collar object locked in "Classy" until it fits, then to select all the collars EXCEPT Classy individually, it's much easier. Each collar behaves like an individual prim with regards to resizing and positioning, so that will be much easier than the sculpty version.

Those two parts, as well as the two on the other side,

must be moved along with the Classy collar 

(show but not selected here)

Also please notice the invisible prims that serves as leash and chain points, they need to be moved as well (not necessarily rotated or resized, they're just points) so the particle chains touch the mesh rings more or less well. It's easy but it has to be done.

I'm talking about these prims, the big cross being

the leash target while the two pies are for 

the Lockguard chains.

Have fun !
Marine


(*) I had some fun reproducing the exact same poses for this post as the ones I was using to demonstrate six years ago. I was still using my system shape and body at the time, as well as N-core and Skifija high heels (if I remember well), and that Graves bikini was not lost either. And now, six years later with my still trusty and useful Amacci ponytail but this time with a Maitreya mesh body, hands and feet, a Lelutka Simone Bento head, H@S Miss S heels and of course, new Vixens with materials, you can tell SL has improved a lot over time and now easily competes with the best looking modern video games ! 


PS : You might wonder why VixenTex uses the terms "sections", "surfaces", "tints" and "patterns" instead of "prims", "submeshes", "colors" and "textures" respectively, but this is because the terms I chose make more sense. Let me explain. The cuffs are partly mesh and a single mesh is not a prim, even though it is often called that way in the context of a complex object, so "section" works better than "prims". As mesh objects, they have several "submeshes" but come on, who uses that word except 3D designers ? In SL they would be called "faces" and behave the same way, but a "face" in 3D design is a triangle, so that doesn't work either, "surface" is better. "Tint" is more exact than "color" because you actually tint a texture that might not be white in the first place, so what you get is a mix, not necessarily the "color" you selected. It is the color you selected only if the underlying texture is white. And "pattern" is better than "texture" because it may be repeated on the surface, that depends on the pattern you choose.

PPS : I normally make the metal shine with materials by using 100 for the shine, 30 for the environment, a white specular color and a steel grey diffuse color. But in the case of the Vixens I cannot do this, since they predate materials by years. Switching from Medium or High shine to materials would mean some users would not see their metal shine at all anymore, breaking the product for them. Probably I will switch the metal to materials over time but not yet.

Hotfix for the Vixen legs cuffs

Hello there,

I was told that the "Taut_w" animation that I remade as a priority 5 for the legs and 3 for the arms (that animation plays when you walk while in "Taut" lock) deformed the shoulders. I wasn't aware of it because I made it with my own shape years ago, and I still have the same shoulder width so it slipped unnoticed through the tests.

There was no issue with the running animation ("TArun") but I remade it with the same two different priorities because it too moves the arms an could potentially break non-RR restraints, so to err on the same side, I updated it as well.

If you have updated your Vixen legs cuffs to v1.30 and notice your shoulders looking wrong after walking in chains, you might want to update them again, but this time no need to replace them. Simply go to Dark Wishes, click on the updater there while wearing your Vixen legs cuff, rez the orb you are given (don't use an older one) and start a soft update, meaning click on "UPDATE" instead of "REPLACE", wait a little and your two animations will be fixed. Please do not do this at any of the other three updaters, otherwise your Vixen cuffs would revert back to v1.29 (while staying mesh, hm, there's no magic involved) and your anims would not be fixed anyway.

Please note : For this hotfix, it is important to rez your cuff on the ground to update it, do NOT do this while wearing it, the no-copy animations will be rejected by SL and the original animations will vanish, which will screw up the update since they won't be replaced afterwards and you'll have to contact me.

By the way, if you had to relog to fix your shoulder width after it has been deformed by the cuffs, know that you do not have to anymore, there's a "Reset Skeleton" option in the context menu when your right-click on your avatar.




Have fun and sorry for the inconvenience,

Marine


PS : Thank you Lana (Ashlana20) for reporting this and for later confirming the fix worked.

Update to the Vixen set

Hi !

I am proud to release the update to the Vixen Leather Training Set, turning them into mesh and giving them materials !

Black leather and blood trim, with the local lights shining over its surface

The same from another angle

White leather with gold metal, notice the shadows on the surface making it look more realistic

Clear plastic ! Yay !

Black latex, of course

The collar is not forgotten either, here is an example of the "dirty leather" preset

This was a very popular request, and I had been wanting to do this for a while but the amount of work was staggering. More on that at the end of this post if you're interested in what it took to make this update.

Please note that the new features will be only demonstrated here, but I won't explain in detail how to use them in this post. There will be another blog post explaining all there is to know about the Vixen set, including the new features.


Here is a list of all the highlights of this update, I will develop on them one by one below :

1. Entirely redone to become mesh

2. The style and look are identical to what they were, so your Vixens remain Vixens

3. Materials-enabled with several interesting presets

4. Ability to use standard textures like in the Deluxe Straps, including clear plastic and realistic clean and dirty shadow maps

5. Baked lighting textures like before if you want (but you don't have to use them)

6. Colors are the same as the catsuits, bodysuits and other restraints from RealRestraints, but of course you can use a custom one (baked lighting textures use a subset of 9 predefined colors among the 27 available ones)

7. Improved the Text plugins, merged the three into one (text, color, font), added the fonts of the Restrained Elegance collar

8. Added several poses for the arms in "Hands back"

9. Replaced the Hogtie Tight poses and crawl with the smoother ones of the Siren Ropes

10. The collar can finally be worn on the "Neck" attachment point

11. Contains the upcoming RR v1.30 improvements



Let me detail these changes one by one.


1. Entirely redone to become mesh

When the original Vixens were released in 2011, more than 6 years ago at the time of this writing, mesh didn't exist in SL so they were made of sculpties. A sculpted prim is a special kind of prim that has an additional texture, called "sculpt texture", serving to define its shape, but the number of vertices are fixed in advance and you do not have as much freedom to design the structure, let alone UV map (the way to wrap a square or rectangular texture around the object topology), as you do with mesh.

This meant they couldn't resize very easily since the metal was made of regular prims (you can't have several textures and shines on a sculpted prim), they would be slow to rez and would be penalized by the Avatar Rendering Cost formula, especially when invisible (that formula punishes sculpties and invisible surfaces really hard). And sculpts being an approximation of a shape crammed into an RGB texture, they can get jagged edges so making them shine with materials later would not look perfect.

Now that they are mesh, the cuffs and collars can be stretched in all directions the way you want, each cuff and collar is like one prim (except the Classy collar which text writing is made of 4 additional "prims", which allows for up to 32 characters). And they are now smoother so they accept materials with no problem. But if you can't see materials on your viewer (by choice or because your video card doesn't handle them), you still have the option to use baked textures like before.

Like before, the bar is part of the cuff (it would require its own attachment point otherwise, and I'm trying to spare those)

 

... but this time the cuff part is one prim instead of several

Attention though, the metal bars are still made of prims and not mesh, there are several technical reasons for that, one of them being that they can be resized independently thanks to the Reshape plugin. Likewise, there are several invisible Lockmeister and leash points on the cuffs and collars that will need to be moved along with the cuffs, but their positioning needs not be very precise anyway since they're there to spawn particles.


2. The style and look do not change

This was a very important requirement for me. The Vixen set is one of my best sellers and I know people love them for the way they look, simple and classic. Changing them to mesh meant almost redoing them from scratch, with the additional constraint of getting the exact same design as before. There are a few minor changes, for example the padlocks look more like those of the Deluxe Straps now, and the bar above the U-binder is now directly linked to the plates on the straps, instead of going through cylinders first, but that's pretty much it, the rest is the same as before. So your Vixens remain Vixens.

On the left, the original vixen cuff (top) and collar (bottom), on the right the new mesh version with materials, trying to get the shine coming from the local lights roughly at the same place on the surface. Full disclosure, I used the "Rubber" material on the mesh set instead of "Leather", because the latter is much rougher, with a leather skin bump pattern, and shines more. So "Rubber" is what is closest to what the baked textures on the old set are, it seems.

Notice the metal becoming grey (but you can turn it white yourself if you prefer), and the padlocks changing style, the rest is pretty much the same as before.


3. Materials-enabled

Switching to mesh just for the sake of switching would make little sense, considering the amount of work it involves, and to be honest, I don't like baked lighting since it doesn't move with the camera. I like materials a lot more, so sure enough they are materials-enabled now. This means the texture plugins, called VixenTex on all three subsets, have been created to handle both materials and baked lighting, and you can even use both at the same time if you like.

There are many presets, most with materials, others marked "static" (i.e. baked) lighting with predefined colors. Look for yourself :

"Static blood" preset. The texture is rougher than before, not because of resolution but because the material I used in Blender is rougher.

Here are the presets included in the VixenTex plugins, those use materials (the others are for the baked textures) :

Black leather

 

Black/blood

 

White/gold

 

Black latex

 

Dirty leather

 

Institutional

 

Black ops

 

Battlefield

 

Dirty jeans

 

Trans. plastic

 

Clear plastic

 

Brushed steel

Of course, materials means you need to have some light(s) around you, and to activate Advanced Lighting Model on your Graphics Preferences in your viewer. If your computer is slowed down too much after enabling ALM, turn the dynamic shadows off, that's what brings the frame rate down.

Some of the colors used in the presets are not in the "Tints" menu, let me write the RGB values below so you can use them yourself with the "Custom" button if you wish :

 Old leather used in "Dirty Leather" and "Institutional" : 100 71 53
 Gold used in "White gold" : 219 182 134
 Padlock used by the Deluxe Straps : 228 169 85
 Khaki used in "Battlefield" : 66 74 59
 Blue jeans used in "Dirty Jeans" : 28 51 77


There is a little graphical experiment I'm doing with the Vixens, something I haven't done before, and I'd like you to know about it. You might have noticed that when you add a white shine over a colored texture, the surface shines white (or whatever color the light is), regardless of its underlying tint. This may or may not look good depending on the circumstances, sometimes it looks washed or even fake. In the real world, part of the tint of the light becomes mixed with the tint of the surface.

In the Vixens, I have added a simple algorithm to tint the shine as well, according to the tint you chose for the surface. For example, if you choose a blood tint with a leather shine, the shine will be a reddish grey. I find this looks much better and closer to the baked lighting counterpart (which is computed in Blender and uploaded as a single texture, instead of being rendered in real-time), but that may be just me. The effect is subtle and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't told you about it, but it's there. I find it should be the job of the viewer to mix the shine on a per-pixel basis (after mixing the tint and the texture), but it doesn't.

Here is an example of what I am talking about, with two blood leather collars side by side in front of a white light. The left one has tinted shine, the right one has white shine. I think the left one looks better but your mileage may vary :

All this to say, if I get too many complaints about the result of this experiment, I will back up to a white shine like on the other RR products. But if I get positive feedback, I will extend this little trick to the other restraints as well. So take a look at it, and if you like it, please let me know !


One last thing, when choosing a tint in the "Tints" menu of the VixenTex plugin, I strongly suggest using the "Clean" or "Dirty" pattern in the "Patterns" menu, because they have shadows, which the other patterns do not have (in particular "Plain" which is just plain white). This looks much more realistic like this. Of course it wouldn't make sense to have shadows on the "Transparent" and "Clear" patterns since they are transparent. As for the other patterns, I didn't add shadows to them because this would mean making variations of them for every single part. Way too much work, but it works pretty well like this already anyway.

Clean white, notice the shadows

Dirty white, with shadows and some gunk

Plain white, there are no shadows

"Slave" written over the cuff, it's plain too but at least there's some writing

4. Ability to use standard textures

By "standard textures" I mean textures that are not baked, but that are not plain either. You may already know the textures used in the Deluxe Straps, Highbinder, Body Harness and other restraints in RR, now the Vixens can use them as well. This was also a big requirement for me and easily doubled my workload, but it was worth it. You can now make your Vixen cuffs and collars show "Slave", "Owned" and the like printed on their fabric, as well as several other textures such as camo, cow, hearts...

Seams

Skulls ("Yarrrr !")

Lips

Red hearts (notice the shine that is red too because the original texture is white and black, I had to tint it light red, which tints the shine as well)

5 & 6. Baked lighting textures like before if you want

Some people just won't see materials. Either by choice or because their computers are too old, but these people bought the Vixens with baked lighting, and if I didn't add baked lighting into the new mesh version, that would mean breaking the product for them, which is unacceptable. This is why baked lighting is still featured in the Vixens, even though the colors are slightly different now, they are chosen to match their materials counterparts. Plus the old pink was too bright, don't you think ?

The baked lighting textures are labeled "static" on the VixenTex plugin, because "baked" is a technical term, while "static lighting" is the opposite of "dynamic lighting", i.e. materials. Please note that selecting a preset is the right way to go with baked textures, since they will automatically turn the shine off. But nothing keeps you from adding shine later on with the "Materials" menu on the VixenTex plugin.

Static rough (formerly named "Hide" but renamed because of confusion)

Static black

Static blood

Static blue

Static azure

Static pink

Static white

Note : the shadows near the eyelets look a bit blocky on these pictures but that's because of my viewer, there must be a graphics setting somewhere that filters them according to the distance, seen from closer they look more defined :

Full disclosure, the "Static white" texture (or rather textures, there are many of them, two per cuff and collar) is exactly the same as the "Clean" pattern in the "Patterns" menu of the VixenTex plugin. Likewise, the "Static rough" texture is the "Dirty" pattern with two brown tints (one for the base, another for the light). So you can easily reproduce the same effects with materials.


7. Improved the Text plugin

In the old Vixens, there were three different Text plugins. One for the text, one for the color and one for the font. The reason was that I couldn't get them all three into one plugin with the limitations of LSO (16 kB memory max, including the code, that was not enough). This was pretty cumbersome and counter-intuitive so I have now merged them all into one plugin. And by merging I mean creating the new plugin from scratch. This plugin lets you enter the text you want, choose the color you want or even a custom one, and the font among 18 fonts (the original 9 of the Vixens, plus the 9 of the Restrained Elegance). Or even specify your own font, but I'll need to write a blog post on how to create one.

You can also specify an interval for the color and font changes so you can mix and match on the collar, setting different colors on different parts of the text. It takes time, but the effect is good. For example you can make the text on the left side red and the text on the right side green, you then set the tint of the metal white, and you look like a plane.

And you can tell the plugin to mirror your text so you don't have to enter it twice, by terminating your custom text with a star ("*"). For example if you enter "Vixen*" in the text box after pressing "Custom", it will display "Vixen" twice, once on the left side and once on the right side.

Lastly, this plugin uses four prims to display the letters, instead of 24 like before. This means that if you need to resize the Classy collar, you need to select the collar itself as well as the four curved prims that show the letters.


8. Added several poses for the arms in "Hands back"

The original Vixens have six crossed "Hands back" poses (meaning the wrists are crossed like in the Siren Ropes, in fact the poses come from them). Three with the hands on the butt, three more with the hands on the small of the back. Only, when bent over forward there was no way to make the hands touch the back with these poses, so I have added 12 more to do that. It's simply variations of the ones you know, but it gives you more control.


9. Replaced the Hogtie Tight poses, added simple Hogtie poses

The old "Hogtie tight" poses and crawl were too fast, and the crawl too twitchy. I have replaced them with the ones from the Deluxe Straps, which are smoother, and that lock became lock nbr 7 because lock nbr 5 becomes a normal hogtie (so the Vixens now have three hogties : spread, normal and tight).


That normal hogtie comes with the Siren ropes' "Hogtie poses", plus its "Hogtie Open" poses as well, because in a rope hogtie you can't open your thighs, but in cuffs it makes sense that you can. I will in time do the same with the other legs cuffs in the RR line, such as Police, Serious and Elegance, if I can.


10. The collar can finally be worn on the "Neck" attachment point

It's a small thing and it it could be done before, but it would be problematic with the "Yoke" arms lock, which needs the collar to be fixed with regards to the chest. Now that lock freezes the lower part of the neck to keep the collar in place just like in one of the two "Posture" collar locks, but when you are not in "Yoke" (or "Post med" or "Post high" for that matter) your collar will move better around your neck instead of clipping stupidly.


11. Contains the upcoming RR v1.30 improvements

As I mentioned in this post, I am in the process of updating the whole RR line to v1.30. This update is pretty big as it impacts everything but don't worry, it doesn't change anything fundamental, it is mostly about bug fixes and small enhancements for comfort. Here is a short list of what changes, that concerns the Vixen set :

- When "/77" is off and the wearer does not have full access, accessing the restraint by touching it or by calling it with "/77 restraint_name" will lead to the plugins browser instead of being ignored, this way the wearer can still customize their restraint even if they cannot struggle. Likewise, clicking on "Main..." on any plugin (including third-party ones) will lead back to the plugins browser instead of the main page.

- We can now do suspension with the leash without bouncing ! This has been a popular request for years and I have always postponed it but this time it's done.

- When the leash holder is too far (beyond 96 m or beyond length*2, whichever is closer), the sub will not be yanked to them anymore, to avoid being flung in the air when TPing from one place to another in the same sim. This effectively makes leashes longer than 100 m useless but hey, 100 m is no leash, this is a tractor beam.

- When locking the cuffs on the Vixens, the Autolock plugin now stops losing its anims.

- Anim plugin : The sub does not remain frozen anymore when the captor is not around. "Freezing" the sub's pose is equivalent to holding her steady (with the arms or with a foot), but once away the sub must be able to move again.

- The force mouselook feature should not spam the user with "Go to mouselook or stay blind" messages anymore.

- Struggling when locked in just "Lock" should not trigger error messages anymore.

- When Autoref was off before unlocking a restraint, we couldn't turn it back on with the Anim HUD after relocking that restraint.

- When moving or turning, if Autoref is on the restraint will force an animation refresh immediately. This is to fight against couple animators that use priority 6 animations (I'm looking at you Abranimations).

- In the legs restraints, "Taut_w" was priority 5 for the whole body, which would break non-RR arms restraints. That animation has been changed now, arms are priority 3, legs are still priority 5.




Since the new Vixens are entirely new objects, if you want to update you have to replace your current ones.

To do this, go to one of these locations :

My Little Shop
Chorazin's Shop
Roper's Dark Playground
Dark Wishes

Attention, only the Vixens and gags are available in v1.30 yet, and if you do a soft update you will notice your restraints will remain v1.29.

Then click on the updater there, rez the update orb it gives you (do not use an old one as it might not identify your set and reject the update), start an update on your Vixens and request a replacement (choose "REPLACE" on the menu instead of "UPDATE"). The old set will be deactivated, i.e. emptied from its contents, and you will be given a new box. Do NOT decline it as it would destroy it instead of sending it to your Trash folder and you would have lost everything. And I wouldn't redeliver since it is no-copy/trans. So please go easy on that "decline" button.

Since the Vixens are actually three products in one (collar, arms, legs), you have to update each set separately. In other words, you'll have to do the above procedure for the collar, then once again for the arms, then once more for the legs.



Have fun !

Marine



PS : If you are interested in knowing more about the kind of work it took to upgrade those Vixens (hence why it wasn't done sooner), read on :

The original Vixens were made with sculpties, which I created in Blender. Although the objects are mesh in Blender, they had their own static topologies and UV maps, which were not very appropriate for mesh design. They were not optimized, their UV maps were rotated by 90° and were unfit for the use of more regular textures. So I had to optimize them, removing all the vertices I could, and redo the UV maps (that takes a while).

Since sculpties have only one "face" (you can set only one texture on a sculpty, unlike regular prims that have up to 10 faces), the trims were made by using shrunk versions of the same sculpties on each edge of each cuff. This was not looking too bad but not acceptable for nowaday's mesh, so I removed those trims and created faces on the bodies of the straps directly instead. The problem is that it completely changes the design : in the past the texture plugin would texture each prim independently, now it has to account for each face (one face is the main part, another is the front strap, another is the trim, another is the metal, etc) on the same prim. Problem is, you are limited to 8 faces per mesh, which may sound a lot but the Vixens need 9 or 10. Because of this, the "unlocked metal" parts show only when unlocked, not when simply locked without a pose. Those parts are the secondary rings on the cuffs, as well as the padlock u-shaped hooks and their cylinders. I wish I could show those flat rings when locked without a pose but I simply do not have enough faces for this.

The metal parts were not in Blender (to be exact they were, since the shadow map had to take them into account, but they were not uploaded as sculpts, I used prims instead), so I had to redo them entirely, in particular the buckles which were only halfway defined. It was ok at the time since the cuffs were opaque but now they can be made transparent so I could not "cheat" anymore, I had to design everything. Yes, 3D design is a lot of cheating until you deal with transparency >.>

The original padlocks were simply lost, I could not find them anywhere in my files, so I reused the Deluxe Gag ones, which look better especially with their "double circle" bump texture.

Since I wanted to provide baked lighting AND regular texture support, that meant I needed UV maps that were made for these straps, not the default ones that come with the sculpty templates. A lot of care has been brought to creating those UV maps and I must say, I'm pretty happy with the result. But this meant re-baking all of the textures since the original ones were not compatible with the new UV maps anymore. And that also meant keeping the exact same lights I used 6 years ago when desining the original Vixens. Except... that didn't work so well. For some reason, the edges appeared grey after baking (they didn't use to) so more lights were added, more testing was done... it took several days before I had textures that looked good.

The old texture plugin was absolutely not capable of handling materials so I started afresh from a copy of the StrapTex plugin of the Deluxe Straps to get the same layout, and  redid the slave scripts almost entirely to handle baked textures, mirroring (a baked texture is naturally mirrored on a left wrist/elbow/ankle cuff, but regular textures have to be kept non-mirrored since some of them have writings), trim (luckily the "trim" surface uses the same textures as the "main" one... except on the collars), materials (not all surfaces use the same repeats and offsets)... there are a lot of special cases and that took quite a while to get it right.

The Text plugin could not work with the new curved mesh surfaces I use for the printing. In the past it would use 24 "pie-like" prims to display letters, each prim having a script in it (at the time of the design, 6 years ago, a script could not modify the texture of another prim in the same object without relying on a script inside that other prim, and I never bothered to redo this until now). Now it uses 4 curved prims with 8 faces each, very much like the ones I made for the Treadmill and Bubblizer, except curved.

All in all, this whole update took much longer than expected. But I feel this product, which is one of my best sellers, deserves that much attention.

PPS : They used to be called "Vixen Leather Training Set" but... now that they can display a lot more materials than just leather, it isn't very fitting anymore, right ? However, don't be surprised if the box is still named "Vixen Leather BOXED", this is just a precaution I'm taking with my sales server and updaters, not wanting to screw up with the update of the vendors. In time, that box will change name too.

PPPS : A big Thank You to all of you who tested the set before its release, it really helped !