Coby Foden

Here is good tutorial series about rigged clothes. For example there are step by step instructions how to copy vertex weights from avatar body to clothing items. I made a tight miniskirt on which I copied vertex weights from avatar mesh. The skirt follows body movements very well. Some manual weight painting at the front of the skirt was needed, so that it looks nice even when sitting. I exported my actual avatar mesh from SL and used it in Blender as a guide when making the skirt. Thus I don't need even to wear alpha texture under the skirt as the skirt is modelled to fit my shape. I'm quite a newbie in Blender but following the above tutorials I was able to make the rigged skirt and import it to SL.

Finally I got to it and made eyes in Photoshop. For the iris I used RL photo, which I adjusted a bit. Works quite ok.

With mesh it is possible to make more realistic clothes. Finally it is possible to make nice tight miniskirts without the horrible prim or sculpty between the legs, which never worked well. :smileytongue: Here's one quick sample of rigged miniskirt what I made (non textured, just coloured).

Just to clarify a bit: what you set to see in the name tag, either User Name (aka: login name) or Display Name or both, only affects what you see. Anybody else will see what they have set to see in the name tags. So, irrespective of your own setting, other people might see your User Name, your Display Name, or both. So don't be surprised if many people still will call you by your User Name (which is your login name). Therefore the introduction and implementation of Display Names was not so great idea from Linden Lab. I guess a lot of people have set to see only the User Name (aka: login name). Our User Name is our real identity. It is unique to each avatar. Display Names are not unique.

Why to be afraid of mesh? It's just an additional way to create more enhanced objects to Second Life. It will not kill prims, nor sculpties. Even with some of it's limitations, rigged mesh clothes, such as jackets and long pants, look really great. Finally men can have good realistic looking suits for example, instead of those horrendous painted on the skin ones. What I don't understand is that some designers say that they will hold back their mesh designs until the majority of people have upgraded their viewers to see mesh properly. Lots of users will wait until there is enough mesh objects to justify the viewer upgrade. By this route everybody is waiting and waiting. :smileytongue: The best way for all designers is to start selling their mesh designs at once without any further delay, as some have already started to do so. Flood the grid with mesh objects. Then the users who have not yet upgraded their viewers will have a real reason to upgrade theirs too. And so the mesh will start beautifying SL a lot faster than by everybody waiting for the other party to act. :matte-motes-smile:

Camis Lee wrote: [snip] ... but not before I got told off about how us pheonix users are gonna get cut off and unable to log in ... [snip] ... I personally HATE 2.0... never even updated ... [snip] ... and when you ram MESH and all the other junk down our throats ... [snip] To make matters clear: Linden Lab has no plans whatsoever to block Phoenix nor any other V1 based viewer. Anything on the contrary what you might have heard is just misinformed rumour. What will happen is that as V2/V3 will have more and more new features they will be harder and harder to import to V1 viewers. So, those who insist on staying on old viewers just will not see all things right as V2 based viewer users will see them. The choice is yours naturally. If you so much hate the awkward V2 user interface, you are free to use V1 viewer as long as you wish. And by the way, nobody surely is not trying to "ram mesh and all the other junk" down your throat. You have the complete freedom to use old viewer, and not see mesh correctly, if you so wish. Anyway, some TPVs are trying to implement mesh code into V1 viewer. And finally, no need to get heated up due to mesh. It's just one more addition to make Second Life look nicer. :matte-motes-smile:

Ceera Murakami wrote: Keli Kyrie wrote: This is what it looks like to a person on Firestorm. And that is why I won't be purchasing any Mesh clothes or even attempting to create any Mesh items for sale for quite a while. Until the majority of Viewers support Mesh, using it can make you look like a fool to others. The designers should not hold back their mesh designs for some unforeseen future "untill the majority use mesh enabled viewers". If there are only very few mesh items in the grid, lots of users might not see any reason to upgrade their viewers. On the other hand if the grid is flooded with mesh items then the users surely have a good reason to upgrade their viewers. Unless they are satisfied just seeing strange silly objects with their old viewers. :smileytongue:

Why wait when there are "enough" people using mesh enabled viewers? How about that designers start selling their mesh items immediately without any delay and waiting? As more and more mesh items start appearing in the grid, people using old viewers and not knowing about mesh start wondering what is wrong as some things look strange. They will start making questions, they learn that they need to upgrade their viewer if they want to see mesh correctly. I think that not holding back mesh items until there are "enough" people using mesh enabled viewers, would speed up the process of transition from old viewers to new viewers. If there are not much mesh items to see, many might think "why to upgrade my viewer, just to see few random mesh items here and there?". Naturally there are those who abhor anything related to V2 based viewer, and stubbornly stick to V1 based viewer. Well, it's their choice. But I'm sure that majority of people would be willing upgrade in spite of V2 viewer oddities.

Paul Anka - Diana Tom Jones - Delilah

JamesKarr wrote: Please help w/o making new account. Thanks Courtney The account creation page is really stupid now! Linden Lab made it so "easy, fast and fun" that they even don't state there anymore that one cannot change the User Name. Well, anyway now as there are no family names anymore one really cannot create sensible nice User Name. Only option for new users is to use Display Name if they want to have a better name. So JamesKarr, we cannot change our User Names. That's our real avatar identity for ever. Your only option is to create a Display Name (I like to call it "Fake Name" because that's what it really is :matte-motes-wink-tongue: But remember, even if you use Display Name, your login User Name is your real indentity.

You might want to check also MyAnimation. Plenty of various very well done dance animations there.

Dana Hickman wrote: Standing straight up with hands at sides, a line from wristbone to wristbone should cross halfway between naval and genitals. Fingertips should reach to "bottom of pants pocket" length In normal human the wristbones are about the level of the crotch. And the fingertips reach down to mid thigh. Easy to verify by standing in front of a mirror... At first this normal human proportion may look a bit strange in avatar as our eyes have been "ruined" in seeing lots of avies with too short arms. I made my arms long like this and I can say that it looks beautiful and natural. Not anything like orangutan :matte-motes-big-grin-wink:

Astringofcharacters wrote: You people who were named before the username/display name era are fortunate. Just try (like the OP apparently did) to find a coherent username! Taken, taken, taken ... How do you think I ended up calling myself "Astringofcharacters?" After an hour of rejections I gave up and just googled username. Heheheh... one of the reasons Linden Lab stated for abandoning the First Name, Last Last in user names was that they wanted to make the account creation faster, easier and fun :matte-motes-agape: for new users, as there would be no need to select the last name from a predetermined list. They failed miserably in that that point. Now with single user names new users have no choice for a nice user name as all the good ones have been taken. And now it takes forever to find a a user name which is not taken. There are tens of thousands of totally absurd, silly, hard to remember user names, as the users have no other choice... Sure, we can use Display Names where one has a lot more freedom to make a name. But Linden Lab failed to understand that we want nice easy to remember User Name. And a lot of us do not like the Display Name thing at all. Again, Linden Lab failed to listen to the users... :matte-motes-confused:

Most excellent Vania. This is great! :matte-motes-smile: This is exactly what I did finally as couldn't get my proportions satisfactory. I put a frontal photo of nice female on a prim. Then I adjusted its height to the height I wanted my avie to be. I wore the prim, adjusted location and started to tweak my shape. Now I'm very pleased with my avie shape. To have a proportion picture as a reference is really the only way to get the proportions right. Unless one is an artist specialized in drawing or sculpting human shape. And very few of us are, I guess. :smileywink: I can heartily recommend Vania's proportion aid to anybody who has difficulties in making the shape natural looking. There are too many avies with way out proportions walking around.:matte-motes-agape:

Josh Susanto wrote: There's already some disagreement about avatar height on another thread. I acknowledge that. What I was given for building reference when I first came to SL was a tape measure created by a LInden. It told me that a ceiling height is 3.8 meters, doors are 2.8 meters by 1.45 meters, and (an?) avatar is 2.1 meters, which is roughly consistent with the height of an avatar set to numbers in the middle range. I was not provided with anything by Lindens to contradict this, and it was very consistent with what I observed practically everywhere I went. Even the architecture around telehubs seems to be designed for people larger than their metric equivalents. None of this makes sense unless A) everything in SL is supposed to be bigger than in RL, OR B) the Linden meter is substantially smaller than the RL meter. So which is it? This thread makes no sense. You are trying to "prove" that SL meter is not a meter by observing how much taller avatars and builds in SL are against SL meter, and how tall humans and builds in RL are against RL meter. Then you come the conclusion that SL meter is longer than RL meter by this observation. It's like pygmies going to America would make a conclusion that there must be something wrong in a meter in America as everything looks so big. The Linden "builders tape measure" has nothing to do with SL meter being different from RL meter. It is just a suggestion how to make oversized things in SL, nothing more or less. Meter is a meter, is a meter... If everybody made avatars to same "normal" sizes as humans are in RL and also all builds to "normal" sizes as they are in RL there would be problem at all. SL has a scale, The scale is the meter. We don't even need to think is SL meter the same as RL meter. We just make things to normal RL sizes by using SL meter. The oversizing problems we see in SL has many reasons: 1. Linden Lab made the default avatar too big to begin with (I have my suspisions about why they did so...) 2. The default camera height in viewer is too high, which enhances the urge to make things tall because the high camera position gives false indication of vertical scale. 3. Short persons in RL might well prefer to have taller avatar in SL. Perfectly understandable. The problem is that there are already very tall avatars in SL. So, this person has to stretch the sliders to the maximum to be among the tallest in SL. Then the possible girlfriend must also stretch herself... they need very large house with very large furniture... and so the circle goes on and on. Which brings me back to "why Linden Lab made default avatar too big"? My theory is that they had dollar signs in their eyes when making that decision. **Hey guys, with oversized avatars we could sell more land as they need oversized houses and thus bigger land area too...** Linden Lab has made a mistake in that they have not educated people to make avatars and builds to reasonable scale. They even themselves have not made things to reasonable scale. The problem will not be solved by some declaration that from this day on "1 SL meter = 1.xx RL meters". The problem is solved by educating people about the importance of proper scale of things. So if a table in RL is 1 RL meter high, then in SL make the table 1 SL meter high. And so on...

Maybe some day in unforeseeable future the software will be able to read our minds, and we can save few mouse clicks when wanting to wear something. :smileyvery-happy:

Show us your most fantastic "out of the ordinary" outfit. Here is mine and my friend's :smileyvery-happy: Very often, actually most of the time, I like to wear something not so common. After all, this is a fantasy world, where we can express ourselves in many ways, not possible in RL. I would like to see more variety in SL dressing styles. Get wild :smileytongue:

Cerise Sorbet wrote: community.secondlife.com - No stinking badges Wow, thank you Cerise! No badges anymore to lure my eyes on them. Now I can concentrate on the content of the lovely and interesting posts people make here. Thank you very much. :smileyhappy: Now next question, how to reduce the unnecessary excessive white space from the posts? :smileysurprised:

I find the badges in posts very distracting. In most of the badges people use the user's name for example is very difficult to read. Badges just add unnecessary clutter and distraction to the screen with their varying layouts and difficult to read texts. What is more important, the text content of your post or "nice" badge on your post? I come here to read posts, not to "admire" how cool somebody's badge might be. All those badges make the posts look like some advertisment magazine. Very distracting as they steal the foxus. (Sorry badge lovers... but this is how I feel). So, is there a way to turn them off totally? I know I can turn off mine, but I want to turn them off from other posts too.

Posted by Amanda Linden on Feb 9, 2011 11:34:08 PM Check out the SL Blogs to Get Second Life and Linden Lab News: The SL Blogs are always the best place to go for news and information about Second Life. Follow Us on Twitter: Twitter is a great way to get the latest and greatest information about Linden Lab and Second Life. Like Us on Facebook: Facebook is the best place to find out about cool things going on in Second Life Feb 10, 2011 2:05 AM Amanda Linden says: One point that's come up several times that I would like to clarify is regarding Facebook to find out the cool stuff going on in Second Life. Of course, there are lots of ways to find out about happenings in Second Life including through groups, the Destination Guide, Events, etc. But, Facebook is where we share some of the ones that we're excited about. Feb 10, 2011 9:57 AM Amanda Linden says: Ossian/Rauol/Jilla and the rest of folks who commented on Facebook.--We do not depend on Facebook/Twitter to communicate with you, but since so many of our Residents are using these social platforms, it makes sense for us to be where you are... Hmmm... after reading those comments, I must say that I'm still rather confused what actually is the very best place to find information about Second Life Do we miss out something if we do not use Twitter and Facebook? It really would make sense that all information is provided where we are ---> Second Life and Linden Lab's own web pages. Twitter and Facebook should only be secondary means, maybe just to fish and lure new customers, nothing more. Those are not places to share ideas about Second Life because we all do not use them.

I would really like to see multiple attachment points supported. I thought V2 was supposedly going to do that. Viewer 2 has multiple attachments. Linden Lab chose not to create additional attachment points. Instead they made it so that you can attach many things on the same spot. Like for example on chest you can attach bra, necklace, collar.. etc. Phoenix and Emerald (maybe some others) used a hack to create secondary attachment points. If you put anything on those points all who are not using viewer which has this secondary point hack will indeed see your attachment hanging in the air. Third party viewers will eventually go to the route how it's done in Viewer 2. They will implement it because it is the standard Linden Lab way of doing it. No hack needed. In the end, everybody will be seeing attachments correctly. Phoenix team has already stated that they take the secondary point hack away and do it in the way it's done in Viewer 2. Most likely it will be in the next Phoenix release (about to be launched "within few weeks" as they say). Ah, I must comment again: Fake Names was really a major mistake from the Lab. The grid is full of silly meaningless single names now. Grrrr..... There is even DramaLlama And multitude of totally crazy names like flamingbob101909090

Hello Jack, and the rest of Linden Lab. Congratulations for totally destroying the User Names. You really managed to do it with great success! Now there are already hundreds, if not even thousands, of silly, meaningless, senseless, absurd and incomprehensible hard to remember User Names in the grid. Did you tell the new users in the account creation page: "Please take some time, carefully create sensible and nice User Name, because that will be your true identity in Second Life"? Of course you didn't! You were so excited and enthusiastic about Display Names that you forgot such important detail. Well here is a small sample of the silly User Names what have been recently created: 100615 1234567891234567891234567891234 3R3NTKIK3R 5araMA7SOOD 7xXRAMXx4 9810455569 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa AATerraformingGardenCenter Abracadabrahocuspocusalakazamie acatcalledanarchy AchmedTheDeadTerrorist stridschoonhovenTemptedtattoos caiomaximoherdeiro Call911YoureAboutToBeBurnt coolchicblondchic2016iluvu DramaLlama flamingbob101909090 IAmBoningYourGF IAmTheDoctor ImNotMichaelJackson intentionallyblank iuseyoubecauseiwanto IwantAlastName <--- Look, somebody wants last name what the Lab did away with! How are we supposed to remember those names if we have to deal with any of those people? Do we need to create a notecard, and put some details there to aid our memory perhaps? Or what were you thinking about? I guess you forgot to think this matter at all! Well, I think I try to avoid people with incomprehensible User Names totally. Maybe they are not interesting after all. Not caring about their true indentity a bit already tells something about them. It is really sad that the Lab invented this absurd Fake Name thing. Aaarrgghh... eagerly waiting for the next great invention to surface.

Viewer 2 search is painfully slow compared to 1.x viewer search. And it resets after every TP. Start search again from the very beginning. Not user friendly at all. Wait, wait, wait .... yawn. If I need to quickly find for example live music events, I rather use 1.x viewer. Or search people, again 1.x viewer search is more usable. Search must be fast. It's not fun waiting, waiting and still waiting for the search results.

Posted by Jack Linden on Nov 17, 2010 9:40:24 PM "... and many additional performance and usability enhancements." Why the search is not even yet fixed? It's a pain to use as it is now. It's slow to load in the first place, it's slow to search, and what's idea behind it that it resets itself after every TP? Then open it again, wait for it load, search again from the very start. Arrgghh...! Could you guys in the Lab compare how it worked in the 1.x viewer and how it works in Viewer 2? Search for example live events, TP somewhere, search again for the next interesting live event, TP, search, TP.... There is a huge difference. The old search was a joy to use. This new one, for whom did the Lab make it I wonder? FIX THE SEARCH. Don't toy with useless features such as the Fake Names thing. Thank you.

You can choose to hide/ignore Display Names by ticking the box in Preferences->General if you don't like them. Jack said: "... This release includes the full launch of Display Names allowing greater self-expression" "Allowing greater self-expression"... hmmm.. (why I always burst into laughter when I see this? ). Well, now if lots of people will hide the display names from their viewer, for whom those who use display names will express their "greater self-expression" with Fake Names? To themselves? This Fake Name thing should have been thrown to garbage, instead of being implemented to our nuisance. In Second Life the true identity is very important. Now we need to remember the permanent User Name, and the Display Name which the person can change over and over again. Grrrr...!