Good morning everyone. I'm being a little lazy today, since sleep is coming easy this morning. I skipped doing a clay critter this morning and worked on the nativity some. Setting up a low poly traditional nativity scene first to give the dynamic clothing a test run. Trying to run the sims inside a cave was asking for trouble
I'm still recalling I think it was Gadget Girl's tips about dynamic clothing and how the zero position is not necessarily the x-y-z position...that advice has saved me a lot of headaches with avoiding one character getting tangled up in another during the sims. Here's another sneak peek...so you'll get an idea how it's coming along...Dusk is wearing Gadget's Girl's Biblical Robe, and Dawn has on Lully's dynamic gown #18. Luna just has a diaper with the pins hidden...he needs a blanket or something. Hopefully I'll be able to at least add a couple of shepherds to the scene, and import the cave into the final render.
The wise men came much later, even though their visit is always included during Christmas plays....it was more like a year or more later when they brought the gifts, which supplied the money for the family's fleeing to Egypt in order to avoid Herod's attack on children two years and younger, and supported their needs while in Egypt. The area near Bethlehem where the birth took place was known as
Migdal Eder, or tower of the flock, which was where lambs for sacrifice in the Jerusalem temple were kept. Shepherds cared for those flocks, so it made sense for Mary's Lamb to be born in a stable in that region, and for the shepherds to be the first visitors to witness the birth. They were told that it would be a sign when they'd find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloth, lying in a manger. The middle eastern custom of wrapping an infant was not unusual...but finding one in a manger, the animal's feeding trough, was quite unusual, and there is indication that it was a practice of the temple shepherds, when a new lamb was born, they would wrap it in swaddling cloths and place it for awhile in the manger so that it would not injure itself or get blemished, making it fit for sacrifice. Tradition has focused so much on there being "no room in the inn", that the significance of the details of the actual story have nearly been lost.
