Clothes Skins Etc

Second Life: Clothing Parameters?

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An idea for having clothes have parameters that are persistent was put forward. The person suggesting the idea was having problems with setting up feet and shoes for an outfit then changing the feet and shoes for another outfit and messing up the first.

I doubt that feature request is going anywhere because of the system changes that would be needed. But, it would be kind of nice.

There is an easy work-around, which is why I don’t see this feature being implemented. I think the problem solution I have is best illustrated with an example:

My Shoe Inventory Arrangement
My Shoe Inventory Arrangement

In inventory I have my shoes and within this pair of N-core shoes folder I have Scripted and Wear folders. In the Wear folder I have my skins. YS&YS is my newer skin. I’ve adjusted the foot to match my skin in each of the shoe color folders to that skin and set the shoe color. I have one Stocking folder in Mocha Skin. I had to adjust the skin color to match the stocking I liked, which was not in the shoe’s included stockings. Kind of a pain.

By doing this the outfit that wears a shoe/foot combination always has the same skin/shoe color. When I need new colors or I change skins, I make a new foot-shoe combination from the shoes/feet in the Scripted folder. Then I don’t mess up my outfits.

I haven’t started buying mesh shoes for the Slink feet I have. But, I will. It looks to be much simpler and require fewer foot-show combinations because I can reuse the feet. And stockings… with mesh feet it looks to be so much easier to wear stockings, especially with patterns.

Slink Updated Update

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Today I got a new update to my recent update. This brings my Slink Hands to version 2.1. When you wear the hands you get an update shipped to you. It lands in the OBJECTS folder. You need to unpack it.

♫
♫ by Lana Quicksand, on Flickr

The hands, Utilities HUD v2, and the OmniHUD v6.1 update. I think the alpha layer remained the same. I can’t see a difference. I have noticed that the hands don’t fit the same as the previous version, at least with my shape. I’ll have to tweak my shape again. Or it may be SL acting up again. I’ll give it a day, may be two, before I start changing my shape. 

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The Loki Avatars

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Body snatchers unit. New mesh bodies are here. Loki Eliot has made new mesh bodies. For now they are free. There are also clothes packs to go with the avatars. These are ‘packs’ not clothes. The point being is they are for designers wanting to make clothes for the Loki avatars.

Loki Avatars
Loki Avatars

These apparently are not Fitted Mesh avatars. Loki says he is still working to figure out Fitted Mesh. That is no easy task. I’ve been through it. There is a lot to learn. The SL Classic Avatar uses morphing for size changing. Plus the scaling of shapes coming out of SL via XML files and later uploaded into SL have scaling issues. (See: Exporting Second Life Shapes) Anyone trying to figure things out has to discover these hidden problems.

I gave up and bought AvaStar, being a Blender user. Maya users can now buy MayaStar. Most of the esoteric  SL problems are solved in those two tools.

See Exploring the future of my Avatars Shape – part 5 – Loki Avatars for more details.

Second Life’s Full Perm Fair

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I had never heard of it. But this is apparently the 6th fair. It’s an interesting event with a ton of Full Perm stuff for sale. I runs from March 1 to 22. You’ll find it in Old Europe Village. It is small but jam packed.

Full Perm Fair - March 2015
Full Perm Fair – March 2015

I am guessing the purpose of the fair is to provide source items for people good at texturing and weak at mesh modeling.

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Slink Updates 2015 Week 10

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Slink hands and feet got a new update. This update changes how various appliers work with the hands and feet. This is the announcement:

-{ZOZ}- IMPORTANT UPDATE

Monday,02 Mar 2015 15:38:00 GMT

As some may know, Slink released a big update to their hands and feet. This also means that designers have also had an update. In order to use the NEW POLISH HUDS you must UPDATE YOUR HANDS AND FEET. If you have hands or feet older then this last weekend, be sure to go in and have them redelivered to you so the new polish appliers for slink hands and feet work. Yes old huds will work with the new hands. But new huds will not work with old hands. ~Zoz

Second Life Fitted Mesh Doesn’t Fit

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Yeah, we know… ‘Fitted’ does not necessarily mean it fits. But, Astrid Kaufmat has an interesting post in the forum about the problem. She is on about figuring out how to work with the SL avatar in 3DMax/Blender/Maya modeling programs without having to have a plugin. Well… good luck with that. I finally gave up, bought AvaStar, and started having fun.

She goes into great detail about the problem. But I’m pretty sure she hasn’t figured it out. She certainly seems to have missed the problem some of us have recognized. Explained here: Second Life Shape Export.

Astrid has been around since 2011. But, she seems to have missed the discussions on the ‘deformer’ and the problems with changing the system avatar. She goes on to recommend a new avatar for SL. I believe that is a losing battle.