Heels on shoes

[Cheery Meriman]

My beautiful shoes (heels) now look like big black blobs. How to I fix this?



 I've had the shoes since about 2013 or earlier. They come with a base and a shoe object which includes a foot inside the shoe. No alpha.

[Rolig Loon]

It depends on the shoes, and it depends on what you mean by "big, black blobs".  A photo would help.

When you wear shoes in SL, you need three components: (1) the shoes themselves, (2) a foot shaper that raises your own heel and reshapes your calves, and (3) an alpha mask of some kind to hide the ugly parts of your feet that don't fit into the shoes.  If you're not using one of the three components. you'll have ugly feet.  The first two are pretty standard.  Obviously you need shoes. The foot shaper is less obvious, but it's also standard.  There should be one in the folder that your shoes came with (unless you're wearing flats). 

The alpha part is the tricky one.  Until about 2011 or so, we had to rely on a hack -- the "invisiprim" -- that would hide unwanted parts of our feet but not make the shoes disappear. If you still have shoes made during the invisiprim era, they won't work any more. If you don't wear a customized alpha mask instead, your feet will poke through the shoes and look gross. The same thing will happen with modern shoes if you wear an alpha mask that was designed for the wrong shoes.  If you're using shoes that come with built-in mesh feet (which have their own alpha mask), the same could be true. I'm not sure why they would look like "black blobs", but magic happens.

Of course, it's also possible that you could be wearing more than one pair of shoes.  You wouldn't be the first person to add a new pair of shoes without removing the old ones.  Just the other day, in fact, a resident posted a photo in one of the other forums of black shoes poking out from furry mesh feet.

Add a photo to your post and someone here ought to be able to nail down the problem.

[KarenMichelle Lane]

Cherry,

If you chose to test one of the  version 4.0.2 Release Candidate or Project viewers, please revert back to the currently in general release viewer.[ v4.0.1 (310054) ]

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Release/4.0.1.310054

At lease 2 of the current RC Viewer offerings [there are 14 of these] had issues with Alpha Masks which cause the same problem you are describing.

 

[Cheery Meriman]

I've added a photo. I've had these shoes since about 2013 or even earlier. They only came with only a shoe base and the shoe object (which included a foot). I have a full outfit which I use to simply replace all, so I haven't tried to wear another pair of shoes over the top, though shoes with furry feet could be an interesting look

[Theresa Tennyson]

Those are the invisiprims used in older shoes to hide the feet - changes made in the recent "Maintenance" release-candidate viewer cause them to display as black or gray. This may or may not be fixed by the time this viewer goes into general release. Here's a JIRA about it: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-11562

Short term, you can use a different viewer - the current main release viewer won't display them like this, nor will Firestorm, etc.

The long-term solution would be to use a foot alpha to hide your feet and then either unlinking and deleting the invisiprims or using retexturing to make them invisible. Unfortunately that only works on modifiable shoes. Invisiprims already don't work for anyone using advanced lighting; it may be time to try and find an alternative.

[Cheery Meriman]

Tried that and no help. I always just install the latest version when prompted. But the shoes still look like blobs even in 4.0.1. I had trouble viewing other shoes as well (heels look like wedges) though they come with an alpha and these work better in 4.0.1 but not all those shoes. Does this mean that I could be going through life thinking I'm wearing a perfectly good pair of shoes when someone with a different viewer will see something totally different? A recent pair of mesh heels work nicely though in 4.0.2 but can I trust that other people see the same thing?

 

Thanks heaps KarenMichelle for your help.

[Cheery Meriman]

What a pity, I loved those shoes!

[KarenMichelle Lane]

I'm sorry that that option didn't work for you.

[Rolig Loon]

Thanks. That photo did help indeed, and Theresa got it. Invisiprims were fine in their day, and they were all we had. Nowadays, though, they're not only obsolete, they actually cause real problems -- as you discovered.

[Azure Demina]

wow reverting fixed the shoe problem.. big thank you

[KarenMichelle Lane]

Rolig, looks like my whole N-Core foot & heels collection [which i spent a fortune on] is doomed. while the feet are included and an alpha layer mask hides my feet, the heels have very small invisiprims on them to trim [rehide] what the visible heel prim re-exposes of my system feet Darn it!

 

I'm contacted Claire to see if she has a solution.

[KarenMichelle Lane]

It must be time to join the Slink revolution....

 

[Rolig Loon]

Noooo .... Not you!