Second Life Tutorial: RLV, Mesh, and Folders – How it works, How to Use

Using RLV

This is where RLV can be simple or can start to get complicated. Using basic RLV is easy. You just saw what you need. Get a viewer, get a relay, enable them, and find an RLV area and walk around. The complication comes when you want to have RLV do what you want it to do and that is more than just being trapped. I’ll explain problems and solutions.

Latex and kink...

Latex and kink…

Since I originally wrote this in 2016 SL has changed and RLV enabled products are not keeping up with changes.

The first time you wear your shapely mesh body into an RLV area and have your avatar stripped of its clothes, you may see a major problem. You are likely to be stripped of body, hands, and feet. It is possible that you’ll be reverted all the way back to your classic body. Oops 🙁

One of the problems in the RLV community (2016-2018) is that most RLV areas have not adapted to the new mesh clothes and bodies. Few tutorials discuss the problem. The RLV toys attempt to remove classic clothes and have no programming to handle mesh clothes. It is easy enough to work around those problems but, it can surprise a new RLV user. So, do some experimenting before trying to RP with that sexy mesh body.

My first solution was to use the DEM Relay’s attachment point locking to control what could be removed. When we talk LOCKING in RLV we mean setting attachments or whatever so that RLV scripting/programming commands do not affect the attachment. Think about it. If you are wearing a collar that has the RLV relay built-in, having something strip your collar off effectively turns off your RLV. No good. So, we lock the collar in place and no RLV script can remove it.

I want to keep my body, hands, feet, physics, hair, and genitals attached when stripped. The challenge using DEM was getting all my stuff and clothes on the right attachment points. With a classic body, I only needed to worry about hair and HUD’s. I could lock the Skull and HUD’s and be good. Life seems to always get more complex. Classic is simple… mesh is sexy.

Now I have; physics layer, alpha layers, makeup, lashes, nails, jewelry, hands, feet, genitals, and body. Mesh clothes love to attach to the right hand. And we have Project Bento coming with even more bones and attachment points. Yes, things are increasingly complex. This leads to a need to understand the RLV system so we can make things work as we want.

It would also be nice if RLV programmers would update their toys… maybe they are updating. I don’t buy RLV toys… well… not many… I mean not like I buy SHOES or DRESSES.

A lot of RLV scripts are pretty dumb. Most only deal with the classic avatar. Mesh is beyond them. Those of us using RLV have to figure out what the programmers were expecting and conform to their thinking. It is still possible to use RLV and mesh bodies. It is just a bit more work. In some cases, we just have to handle things manually. If the RP says something was torn away, we remove it rather than having RLV doing it for us. With time and experience, you’ll learn what works where and when.

#RLV Folders

2019: RLV Folders have been an ongoing pain. The newest information and best-explained use are shown in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPr1m_VfrI8

Peanut is a branch of Open Collar. The other well-known branch of Open Collar claims to be the original, which reverted from version 7 to version 3. From there it is advancing in a different direction than Peanuts.

The Video and text manual for Peanut OC RLV Folders is here.

The video makes the rest of this section mostly obsolete.

Keeping bodies, hands, feet, and hair in place and providing a list of what we are wearing or can wear is where #RLV FOLDERS come in. This is also where we control what people see when they click on our collar.

Some relays, most collars, and some other RLV accessories can read the part of your inventory you place in and below a folder named: #RLV. RLV commands/programming can see the #RLV folder.

RLVFolder01 RLV viewers are programmed to only allow RLV commands to look for folders named #RLV or #RLV[something] and the subfolders within those. So, using an RLV capable viewer from a reputable programmer is safe. Using a viewer made by a hacker is dangerous, RLV capable or not.

In some cases, we have to manually add the #RLV folder. It goes here: My Inventory->#RLV.

Some collars and other RLV devices will create the folder for you. So, if you have ever used RLV, there is a chance the folder already exists. Look for it. Because you only want ONE #RLV folder. The #RLV[some-name] folders do not count nor do they fill in for the basic #RLV folder.

We can place 3 levels of folders inside the #RLV folder. Use more and you may have problems. This is one of those problems that will happen or not depending on how the relays, collars, toys, and other devices were programmed. I suggest you NOT push it.

RLV Outfit Folders

RLV Outfit Folders

These folders will be used differently by different collars and systems. OpenCollar has a style. BARE has another style. The two styles are, as best I can tell now, compatible but different. BARE only works as advertised with the BARE style folders. But, the BARE style folders seem to work OK with OpenCollar and other RLV toys. I haven’t extensively tested all the possibilities. But, the few I have tried have worked.

To get started with setting up RLV to not take off my core body I will build an outfit made of things I do NOT want removed ever. I’ll make an OUTFIT from my nude avatar. So, I strip down to my nude mesh self. Then, using the standard SL Outfit panel I create an outfit.
More pages… page links below.

8 thoughts on “Second Life Tutorial: RLV, Mesh, and Folders – How it works, How to Use

  1. Cool VL Viewer, UKanDo Viewer, and Kokua Viewer all use RLV as well, and then Singularity, Black Dragon, and Alchemy Viewers use RLVa (with Singularity adding some home brewed updates to it).
    Cool VL Viewer: http://sldev.free.fr/
    UKanDo Viewer: http://www.ukando.info/
    Kokua Viewer: http://blog.kokuaviewer.org/
    Singularity Viewer: http://www.singularityviewer.org/
    Black Dragon Viewer: http://niranv-sl.blogspot.com/
    Alchemy Viewer: https://alchemyviewer.org/

  2. Pingback: Open Collar – Blue's Fantasy

  3. Since this is pretty high up on google when searching for BARE I thought I’d make an update:

    The best practice since 2015 for BARE is to use the JasX HUD for outfits. It has the benefits of working with all JasX games, being open source, moddable and usable by other non-jasx products for stripping and gender detection.

  4. Hi,

    very nice from you to teach us how to make a folder to keep your mesh avatar together when stripped…

    But you forgot the important part, how to make a folder so your Dom can strip you…

    There are lot of pages where people explain how your Dom can use folders to make you add this or that content of the folder to your nude avatar…

    But no one explain hoew to prepare a folder to get you naked in the first place!!

    And of course there is no button in Open Collar to strip you of everything you are wearing…

    Please, could you update this blog to include how to prepare a naked folder, so your dom can undress you?

    Thanks in advance.

    • You are missing the idea… If you know how to make an RLV outfit you know how to make a nude outfit. Plus generally, you want to make a nude outfit so ‘strip’ commands work without stipping off skin and head.

  5. Hey, complete SL newbie here trying to get to grips with this RLV malarky:
    I’m not sure if anyone still monitors these posts, but here’s a question…
    For RLV to work, do the residents participating have to be in an RLV enabled zone? My partner and I tried to use her RLV collar and attach myself as an owner but it keeps saying that I am not in range – even though I’m standing right next to her. We were in my Linden premium home.

    • The SL servers, or we can say regions, are not involved in RLV. It is strictly a viewer to viewer thing. So it is not the “region” that is the issue.
      Make sure you are using an RLV enabled viewer, whether you wear a collar/relay or not.

      I’m not doing much with the blog. So, I did not see your post until now. You can always IM me in-world.

Leave a Reply to Nalates Urriah Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *