altering a skirt prim; angle between sides, then taper

[paratracker]

Can someone please explain (or refer me to a source) how to change the angle between a skirt's front and back prim?  I also find that some skirt prims are too heavily tapered, so I'd like to reduce taper a bit too.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Before doing any of the following make a copy of the skirt for backup.  If it is not copyable and you've never altered a prim skirt before, I suggest you get a friend who has experience to help you with it the first time.  If a friend helps just rez it on the ground for them to modify.  But if you want to give it a try do the following:

• Stand on a pose stand while wearing the skirt, which I assume is modifiable. 
• Click the skirt and choose Edit. 
• When the box opens click the box next to Edit Linked Parts. 
• Click one of the skirt prims you wish to change.  Only the one prim should be highlighted. 
• You will see arrow keys which you can use to move it in, out, left, right, up or down.. 
• Click the box next to rotate to rotate the prim. 
• Click the move box if it needs to be moved a bit after you rotate and move it using the arrows

If you've never done this before be patient and go slowly moving the prim or rotating it until you have it positioned as you want.  When the first prim is satisfactory, click the next prim you want to change and repeat.  You may have to also move or rotate the prims next to the ones you change if a gap develops.

 

[paratracker]

You're flying too high.  I know how to edit a skirt prim as a whole (slowly getting better at it)..  What I don't know is how to change the angle between the front and back prims.  I'm trying to 'repair' freebie & dollarbee dresses so the prims don't stick out at odd angles or fail to bridge the butt.  Is it something like ungroup, modify the individual pieces, and regroup or is there some way to operate directly on the relatinoship between the individual prims that make up the composite skirt prim.

[Bree Giffen]

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 Is it something like ungroup, modify the individual pieces, and regroup or is there some way to operate directly on the relationship between the individual prims that make up the composite skirt prim.

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You pretty much have to modify the individual pieces. The only modification you can do to the entire skirt group is to resize or rotate the entire skirt but you can't change the taper or angle between skirt panels as a group. For modifying individual pieces, you should use Edit Linked Parts as Amethyst said.

This is for flexi-prims skirts I presume. I've modified a few and it's pretty tedious. Amethyst's steps are how it's done. I would also add that Ctrl-Z is good for undoing multiple times. Also, make a copy of the skirt before you do stuff since you are modifying something worn.

[Coby Foden]

Just wear the skirt.  No need to unlink anything.

Edit the skirt.  Select "Edit linked" in the editor.
Click invidual prim what you want to adjust.
It gets selected.
Now you can edit that prim alone (move, rotate, resize).
Do this prim by prim what you want to adjust.
Done!

[paratracker]

I just discovered something that no one has mentioned so far... Edit Linked Objects is definitely the first step to editng an individual prim in the skirt prim set (thanks for that), but right after that you need to Select Face. THEN you can pick a face and modify that prim in isolation - size, position, and rotation are usually available.  I don't know if this is always the case, but it seems like X is usually across the body with Y going front to back.  Size on the dimension that runs front to back is the length of an arc radius.

Getting smarter (slowly), but still don't understand why front and back elemental prims in some dresses display as pie shaped (from the top or bottom) in edit mode, while others only display surface patches from a cylinder or cone.  If they're alternate views of the same prim, how do you switch between modes?  If they're completely different elements, what's the tradeoff of using one vs the other?  If a prim is tapered toward the top, is it possible to reduce the taper angle (making it more rectangular)?

[Coby Foden]

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paratracker wrote:

I just discovered something that no one has mentioned so far... Edit Linked Objects is definitely the first step to editng an individual prim in the skirt prim set (thanks for that), but right after that you need to Select Face. THEN you can pick a face and modify that prim in isolation - size, position, and rotation are usually available.

...

If a prim is tapered toward the top, is it possible to reduce the taper angle (making it more rectangular)?

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You definitely need not to select the face of an individual prim in a link set to be able to edit the prim.

Selecting just "Edit linked" is enough for editing the prims shape (including resizing, rotating, moving).

 

So, why there is "Select face" then?  Ok, with this you can select the faces individually in the prim, and you can apply different textures/colours on those faces.  Select face has nothing to do with resizing, rotating, and moving the prim, it's only purpose is to enable different texturing on prim's faces.

As for the different shapes what you see: a prim skirt may well contain prims with different shapes, and often does.  For example there could be full cylinders and there could be partial cylinders.  These can be tapered, the tapering can be changed.  Just look in the edit window for different settings, play with them a bit and you see how they affect the shape of the prim.

 

Perhaps the best way to learn what the different settings do for prim is to rez some different prim shapes on ground and play with those for a while.  When the prims are in isolation this way, you can easily see how the different settings affect the prim.  After you have grasped the idea of prim editing then it's easier for you to edit the prims in the full skirt.

[paratracker]

Select Face saved my bacon.  If I hadn't bumped into it, I'd never have been able to repair some of the wayward skirt prims I've encountered.  Select Face is invaluable for more than texture mapping.  WIthout Select Face, I'd never have been able to fix 4 prim bows buried on each of avi's hips, all linked together; as a single prim, you pull one bow out of the interior and the other disappears inside; try resizing the dimension across the body, increase the size of the prims, not the distance between them.  Ditto for linked bows between breasts and behind neck.

Same thing happened with skirt prims, you get the front face looking just right and the back face has disappeared in the interior.  When you're resizing the entire linked prim ... on a good day (probably depends on original prim design) X and Y size afect the angular width and radiis of the pie shaped slices front and back (can't remember which was which).  On a bad day, you can only modify the 'Y angle' which elbow-bends the faces at the compound prim's origin. That's not enough control to fix the messes I've run across.  Since discovering Select Face, I've been able to make skirt prims look like they should look, no longer forced to accept an as good as it gets compromise between front and back.  Before Select Face, I found a lot of mini (really micro) dresses that wouldn't ever look like a dress, prims sticking out at 30% angles (in one case a 90 degree angle, like a knife protruding between cheeks) and those with no prayer of rear coverage once you get the front fixed.  I had been reclassifying them as tops or lingerie to wear with pants, now I'm fixing them.

Most prims I've seen have been patches from a cylinder (relatively rarely tapered or patches from a cone) bridging legs in the front and cheeks in the back, but I was recently very impressed by the appearance achieved when the rear face was a partial ellipsoid - I was able to resize and rotate to bridge the entire rear gap.  Extremely cool stuff.  If I knew how to swap a cylindrical patch for an ellipsoidal section, I'd definitely be doing that to dysfunctional rear faces.

[Coby Foden]

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paratracker wrote:

 

Select Face is invaluable for more than texture mapping.  WIthout Select Face, I'd never have been able to fix 4 prim bows buried on each of avi's hips, all linked together; as a single prim, you pull one bow out of the interior and the other disappears inside; try resizing the dimension across the body, increase the size of the prims, not the distance between them.

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Definition:

Prims linked together = Link set (it's not like a single prim)

Your bows is a link set.

Now, if you select this link set, move it, naturally all prims in this link set will move.  You resize this link set, all prims in it will get resized.  You rotate the link set, all prims in the link set will get rotated.

 

How does one edit single prim in that link set?  Just like has been told earlier.  Edit the link set, turn on "Edit linked", click individual prim, it gets selected and now you can edit that prim.  You don't need to turn on "Select Face".  It has absolutely nothing to do with moving, resizing and rotating.  It is just for texturing purpose.

You say that you have four prim bows.  I guess that there four of those bows, each of them having many prims.  Then you say that when you pull one bow out, others will get hidden inside the body.  That clearly shows that you are not pulling one prim, but you are pulling the whole link set instead.  So what you described indeed happens then.

So, how does one pull one bow (having many prims) out?

You turn on "Edit linked", then select all prims in that bow what you want to move (hold "Shift" key down when selecting).  Then you move.  And voila, only the selected prims making that one bow moved.  The other bows stayed where they were.  And there was no need to turn on "Select Face".

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paratracker wrote:

 

Same thing happened with skirt prims, you get the front face looking just right and the back face has disappeared in the interior.

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It is obvious again that you are trying to adjust the whole skirt link set, not the individual prims in it one by one.  You are not actually talking about indivual prim's different faces at all here.  You are are talking about the whole skirt's front prims and back prims.  Right?

Surely you can edit the individual prims in the skirt.  The same way as in the bow.

Again "Select linked".  Select the prim or prims you want edit.  Move.  Done.  No need for "Select Face".

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paratracker wrote:

 

Since discovering Select Face, I've been able to make skirt prims look like they should look

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I must say that I still fail to understand how discovering "Select Face" has enabled you make the skirts look better?  Select face is only used when we want to texture individual prim's faces with different textures.

 

It cannot be used for editing the size, location, or rotation of a prim.   In fact when "Select Face" is turned on one cannot do those actions, one can only apply texture on the selected faces.  At least in all the viewers what I'm using it has always been like this.

 

 

 

PS.

One can use "Select Face" to reveal faces with transparency (for example to see better the shape of a prim).  But there is also Ctrl-Alt-T which reveal all faces wich have transparency in them.