Astringofcharacters

Here's a link to the tutorial, Peggy. The extra layers (from a skin texture) are used to enhance a clothing texture. http://robin-makingstuff.blogspot.com/2011/04/making-clothes-tank-top-part-1.html

Thanks for the workaround Anaiya; it sounds like it would be efficient in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing. Easily lost plodders like me, though, are probably better off just clicking away at the first file until it's done, rather than going back and forth between files looking for shortcuts.

Hi Robin! Your blog is serving as a helpful tutorial as I wrestle with the mysteries of GIMP. Thanks! One naive question (actually posted in another - wrong - forum before it occurred to me to ask you directly): You instructed us to "... go through the layers, turning off ALL of the layers that are turned on, and turn on the layer at the bottom of the layers list that is the template." There were 121 layers, and I dutifully clicked the eye shut on 120 (minus a few mercifully already closed), one at a time. Was there a way to turn them all off in a batch, rather than one by one?

Hi. A naive question about GIMP here. A clothing tutorial instructed me to "turn off" all the layers in its example template except for the last one - the base. There were 121 layers, and I dutifully clicked the eye shut on 120, one at a time. Surely there must have been a way to turn them all off in a batch, rather than one by one. Could anyone out there tell me how I should have done it?

Oh wow, Leyna, I'd say you really hit the happy medium. You're using SL to be yourself with someone who knows you without ruining anyone else's immersion. Kewl

Well I came into SL a 10, but I've been taken down a few pegs since. It was sensational at the beginning though, when I just blithely became my avatar and answered RL questions with "facts" that fit her character. I just assumed that we were all tens, and understood that this was a wonderful fantasy world where we could be whoever we wanted. Gradually I became aware that some people just had to be told which side of the proscenium you were on. "Let's role play; you start." That's about the saddest thing I've ever heard. I'd thought we'd started when we first met. But ok, I get it. I just can't act. Can't turn it off and on. I'm just a deceptive fantasist, lying to these poor gullible guys who want to know if I really might look just like my avatar and live within driving distance. I guess it was web profiles with their Facebook links that really brought it home to me that I could no longer play the game here. "Don't ask, don't tell" was the way I liked to treat RL in SL. I still never ask. What do I get? 5?

I must be missing the point ... Why not just invite your friends to join next time you're in conversation with them? Or are "relevant friends" people you don't actually talk to but just add to lists and links?

Great post. You're obviously capable of creating some subtle and interesting looks. I've often had a dozen versions of myself taking turns inworld (sometimes two at a time, thanks to multiple viewers). Most of them were more or less straight off the rack, with a few basic adjustments. Once I got a hairstyle and clothes that suited them, they remained unchanged. I have spent hours unsuccessfully tweaking some avatars (mostly male) before discarding them as "just not me." Like most noobs, I was given a lot of glamorous skins by well meaning and generous residents who couldn't understand why I wanted to look so plain, and I had to try them all on out of politeness. Then run away and delete them as soon as I could. Many of them were really nice of course, and I ended up being given one that simply defined me, in spite of myself. Among all my experimental alts, I remained the most comfortable in one that was just handed to me. Tammy, in her "Scarlett skin for beginners," was my main for a year. Her avatar did go through changes, as she grew younger and older according to the whims of her typist, but she was always recognizably the same sweet, rather wholesome beauty. She's gone now (that's another story) and my present avatar is an only child (so to speak) and a work-in-progress. I'm sticking with her/him ... for now, at least.

Thanks Innula - nods to you other guys I've got that animation stand on another grid with a 70 meter chat range; don't know what the whisper range is ... But since the sim is generally sparsely populated, maybe a little spammy whispering wouldn't hurt

Brilliant, Darkie! Thanks

I don't like cluttering the screen with hovering text, so I crudely modified this script by commenting out the llSetText bits. I would like to replace those with llWhisper, though. How do I do it? Here's the part of the script (from Teddy Wishbringer's multipose script) that I think I have to change: new_animation_name = llGetInventoryName(INVENTORY_ANIMATION,inventory_number); // Update the floating text to display new animation, and the number out of total available float_text = base_float_text + new_animation_name + "\n(" + (string)(animation_current + 1) + " of " + (string)animation_qty + ")"; //llSetText(float_text, color_float_text,alpha_float_text);

: A posthumous comment (relevant, I think, to the question of declining concurrency) from a former resident: I owe Second Life an immense debt of gratitude. It gave me first an escape and then, albeit inadvertently, a new direction. The fantasy world it provided took me away from morbid obsessions fed elsewhere on the internet. And when I was eventually banished to other, lesser grids, I was able to use nascent SL skills to actually become a fledgling creator - so busy with my little shops and products that I no longer had time for morbidity. A few things did dampen my SL experience before the curtain fell. Chiefly, they were the introduction of user/display names, which changed the tone drastically, surrounding me with people who liked, apparently, calling themselves things like SexySue19 or Pu$$yforSale (not to mention contrivances like "Astringofcharacters"); the introduction of web profiles, replete with links to other web pages, that obliterated the screen and took me out of Second Life into multi-tasking web surfing - no wonder half the avatars I approached were oblivious: their typists were busy on some other page. "Social networking," presumably. Then there was the tortuous integration of the teens, who had to be shielded from blue and pink balls; amid the moral panic we all had to clean up our thoughts. Every innovation seemed like another attempt to water things down enough to be palatable to the masses. But why protest? If Second Life has receded from its ideal of a libertarian realm of the imagination to entrench itself as the Virtual Empire is that not the way of the world? Every little grid out there speaks its llatin and uses its relics. Let misfits and outcasts be grateful for the legacy.

Thanks Bree, for subtracting a little of my confusion. I have a slightly better, though still tenuous, grasp of the keyframe concept now. If, using the example you gave, I then click on the mark in frame 15 and press delete on the keyboard, the leg returns to the original position and the mark is erased. Is this the same thing that is supposed to happen using the scissor icon/cut tool? Click as I might, I cannot seem to get that scissor icon to do anything.

Be careful with Barbie. Big Brother is still around ...

SL is a revelation that way, isn't it? That little avatar is an imaginary friend and an imaginary you and she lets you discover who you really are. Cherish her.

Thanks, buubbleguum. Kinda suspected that was what the cut tool was for. But how does it work? Nothing happens when I click on it. And can I cut out more than one frame at a time? I do copy and paste one frame at a time, but I'd like to do that with a segment of the animation, not just one frame. P.S. It occurs to me that I probably don't understand what a keyframe actually is and am confusing it with the vertical red line ... you're dealing with somebody really obtuse here ...

"... that 20m radius for chat winds up amounting to a 5m radius for all intents and purposes. This makes it all the more difficult to socialize in SL." I hope you're not really advocating an increased chat range. I have always preferred local chat to IMs, and never found a problem. On the other hand, another grid I frequent has a 70 meter local chat range, and it's disconcerting to hear people talking when there's no one in sight. Some people love it, of course. People who love FB, probably.

I'm struggling to learn my way around Qavimator. It seems like a very good and relatively simple program, and I've managed to make a few haphazard animations, but I can't find a useful instruction manual or tutorial for it. Yes, I've seen Torley's and Rubin's, and a host of others, but nothing comprehensive or covering the basics completely enough for a dunce like me. So I'll just plunge in here and ask naive questions in the hope that someone out there will have the patience and generosity to answer them. Here goes: how does the "cut" (the scissors icon in the toolbar) function work? And how can I insert empty frames into the middle of an animation? Can I somehow copy and paste a chunk of an animation into a new file? TIA!