What's a cross between a street light and a bug that people actually enjoy? It's the firefly! And what's better then a normal fireflies? Trailing Fireflies! These lovely little garden pests soar around in endless circles, flapping their little wings, and leaving a small light trail in their wake. Put a few in the darker corner of any garden or outdoor night scene to add a little magic.

Wish the Fireflies were Green? Red? Regular old gross flies? And how about some sound effects?? Well then, buddy, start Deriving! Make your own version, and even sell it the catalog for a small markup over my original, and keep the extra profits for yourself! You can express yourself AND earn credits at the same time. How's that for a sweet deal? You'll need a full account on IMVU, as well as a copy of Previewer. You can find out more about Deriving on the IMVU's Education Center. Below is the template you'll need to get started (Right Click and Save As to your computer):

There is an actual Texture map for the Trailing Fireflies, but I haven't included it here because it's all white. If you wish to change the color of the Trailing Fireflies, simply make a 16 pixel wide, by 512 pixel high, solid color image in whatever color you want them to appear as. The real magic with this item is all in the Opacity Layer.

This is the Opacity layer for the Trailing Fireflies. An Opacity image is like a Black and White silhouette, which tells the computer which parts of the image should be visible, and which should not. Basically, the darker the image becomes, the less of the model is visible. You can use gray to make things glass-like, but due to errors in IMVU's handing of transparency, you might see other strange graphic glitches. It's best to stick to solid white and black:

The Trailing Fireflies use "Scrolling" animation to give the illusion of flight. You can change the speed of the flies in Mesh Tab -> Select Material -> Texture Animation (at the bottom). If you wish to have more flies, you can add an addition fly or two to the Opacity image, but keep in mind that if you add too many elements and don't leave enough blank space, it'll ruin the illusion. Each element you add will be doubled, as the object is really two strips joined together.

To add sound, I highly recommend you download and use Audacity. It's a free sound editing tool that can export out OGG sound files. OGG sound files compress down to less then 1/10th the file size of WAV files. SO USE OGG FILES!!! You can download it here:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Also avoid looping sounds, as they tend to get annoying to listen to very quickly. Try to keep your volume levels low as well, as IMVU tends to over-amplify all audio playback to near ear-bleeding levels.