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paratracker

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  1. paratracker

    making alpha's

    So far everything has been about coloring over the technical skin, but there has been no mention about how to construct a single alpha for a mid length dress or something like a mesh body alpha - those are single files not obviously derived from a technical skin of upper or lower body. Anyone have a suggestion on how to approach that?
  2. Given those (posing) complications, rotating the emitter prim so it points at the target eliminates most of the messy stuff. The problem is thereby reduced to capturing a desired rotation, so we know how much to rotate the emitter prim. I thought grabbing the LookAt would be better than jumping in and out of mouselook. Alt-click, prim rotate, emitter on. Is there nothing other than dropping into mouselook available for obtaining a direction vector?
  3. If you think for a minute, you'll realize that most of the stuff in-world does not lie along the normal vector roooted at your breast bone, so a Sieg Heil pose doesn't help a great deal. Thanks for trying.
  4. Thanks, I'll try that. If it's possible to point my arm in that direction, can you suggest functions I should look at?
  5. I would like to use the LookAt as the target of an emitter, but I can't find a function that retrieves the LookAt vector. Any suggestions?
  6. In a script, I want to retrieve my LookAt vector, but I can't find an LL function that retireves it, only sets or rotates around it. What should I be using to retrieve my LookAt?
  7. Discovered it's Phoenix-Firestorm specific. Tried Singularity & Exodus, both were fine. P-FS previously showed Post button, but would fail on upload, then Post button never enabled (so no failure to upload possible), now multiple sims are autologging me out. P-FS has gone unstable.
  8. Haven't been able to post an image to profile feed for about an hour. Is there anything I can try to overcome it?
  9. logged out and back in - noticed it working again...
  10. Thanks for the redirect... this is what I found there: <menu_item_check label="Mini-map" name="Mini-Map" shortcut="control|shift|M"> <menu_item_check.on_check function="Floater.Visible" parameter="mini_map" /> <menu_item_check.on_click function="Floater.Toggle" parameter="mini_map" /> </menu_item_check> World Map shortcut (Ctrl-M) works fine and looks functionally identical <menu_item_check label="World map" name="World Map" shortcut="control|M" use_mac_ctrl="true"> <menu_item_check.on_check function="Floater.Visible" parameter="world_map" /> <menu_item_check.on_click function="Floater.Toggle" parameter="world_map" /> </menu_item_check>
  11. I looked at settings.xml, but didn't find ANY key mappings in there, so it doesn't look like deleting settings would fix that.
  12. Right there all the time (for inventory windows). Very handy. Thx Why not provide the same capability on the Appearance window?
  13. I first noticed that Ctrl-Shift-M would not open/close the mini-map in the SL Vieweer. Later tried Singularity & Phoenix-FS, finding it was broken there too. Seems like it would be an app data (I'm on win7) issue. is it fixable w/o throwing away all of my other settings?
  14. I went face by face on something with just five faces and it took a long time to achieve acceptability. Way too much involved in pleated / flounce skirts with a couple dozen faces. Not even thinking about going down that road. Any chance that's in the SL enhancement queue?
  15. The problem isn't resizing an individual face, it'is that there are at least two dozen of them. The odds of getting having them map to an elipse by alering individual prims one at a time are vanishingly small. I was hoping that there would be some way to resize a multi-face skirt as a whole, one dimsnsion at a time (rather than eyeballing each face), while maintaining the elliptical arrangement. If that capability is not available in SL, it should be high on the wish list.
  16. Nevermind - I just found it. Apparently, I had twisted the prim somehow. Took the twist out and everything looks okay, Discovered taper in the process, so I can get good leg tracking on both sides now.
  17. The multi-face pleated attachments used as skirts pose an editing challenge for the initiated. I'm discovering that my avi's hips often don't quite fit the elipse around which skirt faces are arranged. In a perfect world, I could just resize that ellipse, but I suspect that there's nothing in there to select. Is there some high-level means of editing the ellipse around with skirt faces are arranged or maybe a resizer script that gives you that capability? I'd also like to be able to stretch the entire skirt downward (since so many of them are designed around microminis). Are linked prims like skirts resizable as a group?
  18. I screwed up - did something unintended during an edit so the the front face of a skirt prim that was originally a section from a rectangular cylinder is now slanted to one side. That's okay on one leg, where the slant actually improves the prim's ability to stay tangent to the leg, but it made the right side worse. Ideally, I'd like to know how to stretch the bottom extent of the front skirt prim leaving everything else alone. At worst, I need to take the slant out and get back to a rectangular cynlinder section. Any ideas?
  19. FYI, wearing the right boot on the left leg and vice-versa worked great (actually only had to move the upper part of each boot). Had to edit a couple of offsets and angles, but they're now one of my most useful boots. Sadly, rename was not enabled so they'll forever be named the opposite of how they best fit. Thanks to all who volunteered suggestions. Great result.
  20. 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.
  21. 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)?
  22. Okay, here's what worked... The Shoe Base in the delivered apparel folder was locked, so unavailable for editing, but I discovered a Create New Shoes menu option in the Appearance Dialog and tried that. Then I experimented platform height, finding 30 worked best for these shoes. The New Shoes don't get saved to the original apparel folder, so you have to find it. I forget where I found it, but if you search for New Shoes while they're attached it will be easier to pick it out among other New Shoes that might be in your inventory. Then detach so you can move it into the folder with the other componentsof the shoes. Once they're detached, you can rename the file; I named mine after the shoes they were designed to fix. If you had a whole outfit that included those shoes, just add the (renamed) New Shoes to the current outfit and save. Thanks to Ariel for tossing out suggestions; making me think, ... but the real credit goes to Mandrakke Dagger (of Drakke Designs). I didn't know how to resize promo shoes I bought from his shop so he invited me over. While there, I asked him for suggestions on the float issue and he suggested editing the shoe base. Although the shoe base tuened out to be locked, he put me on a path where I could discover "Create New Shoes". ---------- Epilogue FYI, ... I first noticed ankle gaps, floating above or sinking into the floor on freebies (so can't really ask the designer), but I later bought "Nani Boots By:Wilay Stylez" finding that they floated above the floor. Wrote to laylani.dover asking what I should do and never got a response. Bought "Genny Black" shoes, finding transparent ankle gaps, that they sunk into the floor, and skin tone sync was impossibly inadequate. Wrote to diabolika.sibilant asking what I could do to remedy those issues and never heard back. Bought "Urban Wrap Boots", finding that they produced graphical artifacts (maybe needed an alpha?). Wrote to dd.jameson and never heard back. Bought Esther Shoes that were not delivered. Wrote to jessii2010warrhol and never heard back. Earlier (before learning not to get too enthusiastic about promo shoes), I bought "Mayden couture" in five colors and joined the Mayden Couture main group (adding L$20 on top of the shoes), finding alphas missing from all five pairs. Wrote to mayden.ushimawa to get the alphas (one alpha would cover all pairs) and never heard back. That degree of customer disregard stands in stark contrast to Mandrakke Dagger's cordial help on issues his shoes didn't exhibit. IMO, that puts him in a particularly good light relative to his competition.
  23. Taking Innula's advice, I adjusted the Z of the shoe to eliminate the leg gap, but found avi floating more than that distance above the floor. I couldn't figure out how to edit the shoe base per Theresa's suggestion. [ How do you select it? Selecting the shoe doesn't yield the base (unless there's a second step that's required). I also tried selecting edit from inventory. ] Experimenting (so I'm not exactly sure what hapened) with detaching the shoe base and trying to edit it unattached, I noticed avi sunk into the floor. Later after reattaching the shoe base, avi was walking directly on the ground. Maybe detach/attach causes 'elevation' to be recalculated? Oops, I wasn't watching closely enough, still floating. but there's already a thread open on that subject, so probably best to figure it out there. I appreciate the help you have all provided ... getting there (slowly).
  24. Only a couple weeks old in SL terms, but already discovering how difficult it can be to put together an outfit once you have more than a few necessities in the closet. Incoming packages sometimes include just a top or pants; sometimes several articles of the same type (e.g. stockings, nails, lingerie, ...); other times a complete outfit that might include redundant but equivalent elements like short & long pants and/or short & long skirts; sometimes several outfits get bundled together - usually related but not always. If it's a complete outfit, you're still probably going to be adding one or more items in a folder to a baseline 'naked avi' outfi't including body shape, skin, eyes, jewelry, AOs, HUDs, hair, etc. If you like it, save it as an outfit; if not, take off what you don't, save that, and look for pieces to replace them. Say you like a top but not the torn jeans that came as an outfit, now you're searching for jeans that will texture and color coordinate with the top, and shoes that coordinate with both. Sounds simple but it's actually a nightmare because the only metadata you have access to about jeans and shoes are the names of the files they’re stored in (object class is captured but not available as a search criterion) and it’s quite common to see torn mid-rise flare-leg faded blue jeans named ‘jeans’ or knee high black suede stiletto boot with chrome heel and silver buckles as ‘boot’. Full-length black leather pants might be stored as leather pants or long pants or just pants. If you invested the massive effort it would take to edit the name of every file in every folder, adding descriptors that you might find useful in subsequent searches, you still wouldn’t be able to search for exactly what you want because inventory search is a simple string match without wildcards or grep-like capabilities, and even if you had full grep you would still have to develop & adopt standard names for color, texture, ideal venue (i.e. beach, casual, business casual, professional, formal, etc.) AND a standard order for arranging the adjectives (e.g. the lead adjective being one of { shoes, underwear, pants, skirts, tops, jackets, etc.} preceded by the next most useful descriptors. Just choosing the next most useful key is already a tough call since color, fit, fabric, formality, etc. are often near equally important when putting coordinated separates together. Inventory search could be made significantly more effective by adding grep capabilities, but it wouldn’t solve the problem because what you really want is a combination of conditions that doesn’t depend on their order of appearance, e.g. pants AND long AND denim AND faded AND (NOT torn) AND (dark blue OR mid blue), perhaps in the too distant future the ability to replace the last clause with an SQLism like LOOKS NICE WITH <this top> where LOOKS NICE WITH translates to a radius in a normalized n-dimensional space in which red, green, and blue (normalized by human visual sensitivity in each receptor) are three key dimensions, possibly augmented by saturation, brightness, texture, formality, etc.. Any way you slice it, getting to that point requires having the metadata in the first place and that probably means extending the classes that objects (not just apparel) derive from, so we'll have a place to keep the metadata. Once you have someplace to store it, you’re still going to need a standard taxonomy, which imputes a community project to develop that. It’s no wonder that we don’t have that capability already, but that conundrum doesn’t keep me from pining for it. A cheaper (in terms of engineering effort) short term improvement would be the inclusion of pictures of each item and the ability to scan through images of apparel you remember seeing and/or previously unopened freebies that might coordinate with the item of interest, thereby leveraging the visual cortex’ massive capabilities, but you really still need limiting filters so you're not scanning through corsets, bustiers, and camisoles when you want leggings or jeans.
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