Mesh fingernails

[Tenly]

I have a ton of design ideas for fingernails but I have two issues. I don't know how to make mesh fingernails and I've searched for an existing HUD that I might use once I learn to make them but I am not seeing very many huds that do all the things I want. Id want to be able to offer three kinds of shapes, myriad colors, add pattern or no pattern.

I want the mesh nails to adjust to the size of the avatar hand. so none of this five sizes in a box like you get with clothing. I have purchased a WONDERFUL rigged mesh nail set just like what I want to create so I know its possible. In fact these wonderful nails are what inspired me to want to create my own and use my own designs.

Ive seen a few basic tutorials on mesh but Im not sure about how to rig either. And Ive been looking for a tutorial on HUDS so that I could at least purchase a customizable one and expand it to my needs but I dont fing any tutorials like that anywhere. Maybe Im looking with the wrong keywords? I might be open to paying for someone to customize a hud if its affordable or maybe some kinda barter arrangement? ditto for the nails though ideally Id really like to learn this myself. a small place to start learning mesh is how I look at it. Ive wanted to learn it for a long time but been too busy with RL and just now getting back to SL.

Any advice is appreciated.

[Rolig Loon]

There's a bit of a learning curve ahead.  You have good ideas, but you don't yet have any of the skills you'll need to create things.  Any HUD you need for a project like this will have to be custom scripted to have the controls you want, and it will need to have a graphic interface that is textured to match it.  That involves learning how to write LSL scripts and how to use GIMP or Photoshop to make your texture.  Creating mesh object and rigging them is the bigger challenge.  You'll need to get 3D modeling software -- Blender is free and is what most people use in SL, but there are other options -- and you'll have to learn to fly it.  If you are just beginning, this will be loads of fun but will take a lot of concentration and practice.  Prepare for a few months of focused work.  There are many tutorials on line to help with each of these challenges, so Google to get started or search these forums for suggestions.  You can certainly hire creators to help too, so you don't have to do it all yourself.  3D modelers often hire scripters to create the control systems that will make their models come alive, for example.  Just build the cost of that work into your business model.

[Sassy Romano]

Well a couple of things:-

Mesh can't adjust to the hand size automatically so you'll have to provide sizes

Rigged mesh finger nails will have no advantage over unrigged.  There are no finger bones to which you can rig thus you can only attach them to the hand.  Since you can only attach to hand, you can already do that with unrigged and with unrigged, the customer can change the size.  Once rigged, size cannot be changed so in fact rigging will penalise with no benefit.

If you want different shapes, that's actually easier to achieve with sculpts by changing the sculpt map via script.  That can't be done with mesh.

You may do better with a custom HUD because any general purpose HUD may end up looking like someone else's HUD.