This is the fourth in our 'Adjusting to a New World' series of articles for beginners - although some intermediate and advanced Second Lifers are also finding little tidbits that they didn't know in them. In the last two columns we talked about communication. This time, we're going to talk about clothing as we move towards avatar appearance settings.Clothing actually covers a bit more territory than just clothes. There's skin and hair there too. Subtleties, you might say. Let's take a look.
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." -- Mark Twain
Second Life uses two terms. Avatar and Agent. The Agent is the part you don't see, and is mostly only of interest to scripts and scripters. The avatar is the part you see, and it's composed of a number of different pieces. Clothing, Body Parts and Attachments. It's the avatar that we're interested in.
Next week we'll be looking at the appearance editor for how to customize clothing and body parts. This week we'll be looking at how to use them.
Clothing and body parts exist in your inventory, and are applied to your avatar. They can be put on and taken off, but remain in your inventory either way. There's a couple of catches though. Avatar minimums and clothing layers.
Avatar Minimums
Avatar minimums are things your avatar cannot do without. A standard avatar must have one shape, one skin, one set of hair and one set of eyes at all times (PG avatars like those on the teen grid may additionally have underwear as an avatar minimum). They cannot be removed, but you can replace them by putting another one on. Having one of each of these is not a major limitation, as they are all highly adjustable. You can be bald by wearing a set of hair that has the length and volume dialed all the way down to zero, which makes it appear that you have no hair, but you're still wearing a set. Think of it like a 'bald wig'.
You can try to remove one of these, but the system won't let you. You can wear another one in it's place, however. We'll talk about that in a moment.
Clothing LayersAn avatar has a number of what are called clothing layers. Each piece of clothing is designed to fit into one specific layer, and only one piece of clothing can occupy a layer at a time. You'll hear some residents refer to clothing layers as clothing slots. Just a small variation in terms, and nothing to worry about.
The clothing layers are: Shirt, Pants, Shoes, Socks, Jacket, Gloves, Undershirt, Underpants and Skirt.
Putting a new item on in one layer takes off any item that is already worn in that layer. You can only wear one skirt at a time, one pair of socks, one jacket, and so on.
Likewise you can remove all your clothing. This is not advisable in PG areas or on other people's land without their permission. When you add or remove clothing, or change an item, there will be a short delay before the change becomes properly visible to everyone else. The process is called Texture Baking, the details of which are primarily of interest to the technically inclined.
How to do it
Open up your Inventory, by either clicking on the Inventory button (bottom of the screen on the right) or by pressing CONTROL I. Locate the item you want to wear. Right click on it, and select WEAR from the context menu that pops up. The item will appear on your avatar, replacing any other item already in the same clothing layer.An alternative method is to drag the item from your inventory onto your avatar: Move the mouse pointer over it, press and hold the left mouse button. While holding the left mouse button down, move the mouse pointer so that it is over your avatar, then release the left mouse button.
If you would like to take it off again, right click on the item again, and select TAKE OFF. Alternatively, you can pull down the Edit menu and use the TAKE OFF CLOTHING sub-menu. Yet another option is to right click on your avatar, select TAKE OFF > then CLOTHES > and navigate the menu to select the particular item you want to remove.
A removed clothing item remains in the same place in your inventory where it always was. Wearing it and taking it off doesn't affect its location in your inventory.
Faster changes
You can drag an entire folder and drop it on your avatar at once. Make sure the contents are relatively complete, however, as all previous clothing items are removed as a part of the process. If the folder contains nothing but a blouse, then that's all you'll be wearing afterwards.
There are three other ways to use folders. Right clicking on a folder will give you three clothing-specific options. Add to Outfit, Replace Outfit, and Take Off Items.Replace Outfit works just like dragging a folder onto yourself.
Add to Outfit keeps everything you're wearing on, and adds the items contained in the folder. As each item is put on your avatar, it will remove any item already in the same clothing layer. At least you don't end up accidentally half naked.
Take Off Items removes only those items that are contained within the folder that you are wearing at the time.
Between these three options, you can manage some fast and deft changes of your avatar shape, skin and appearance as well as outfits. It just requires a little planning and preparation to get everything into folders.
What can go wrong?
You might try to wear an object rather than a clothing item. If you do, the odds are it will wind up on your right hand (they used to wind up on your head – you'll hear older residents telling jokes about that now and again). Right click on the object and select DETACH from the menu, to take it off.
You might put on a complete outfit, including shape, skin, hair, and eyes then decide you don't like it and want to go back, but not be sure where all the pieces are. This happens a lot. Maybe nine out of ten new people have this happen to them. Don't let this happen to you!
Familiarize yourself with the items you are wearing. Open your inventory and search for (worn) to show you all the items you are currently wearing. Rename them to something you know to look for. Drag them into a single folder or folders where you will remember to look for them. There's another way to partially automate this, and we'll talk about that in a future column. In the meantime, don't get caught out; Make sure you know where to find the aspects of your avatar's appearance. You'll need that sooner, rather than later.
1. I recently took up skin painting because of secound life, and the fact it jives well with going to school for 3d animation... Its comming along I guess, but I still don't feel ready to sell anything I make... In any case, I have some venting, questions, and tribulations to share...
First off, who do we kill about these UV rips? As far as I can tell, these by far are the most unprofessional, and uncaringly riped UVs I seen... The models they are based off of, deform the texture horribly when you put the charicter into poses that are preatty avrage as far as human bendablity goes... for exsample find something that lifts up your AV's arm, and then put a striped shirt on... the shirt should not deform as much as it does in the armpit when you do that. Yea, that bit of uglyness you seeing would not fly at they typical Video game company... infact, if someone tried to pull it... they would never work in that market again...
Secound, there is so much wasted space on the skin tiles upper and lower body section! Im affraid to show my teacher what I have to work with because how much wasted space there is... I know that is done to give less professional people that don't have any experince in texture painting a more easyer pallet to work off of... but i think I could gotten so much more nicer skin and clothing textures if the UVs where riped with edge flow in mind...
Finaly, Im not sure I like the fact that you have three seperate UV rips that you paint on for skins... It really sence to break down the models this way for some of the clothing we have to deal with... but it makes it terrible to figure out how to match colors on all three at the same time... Not impossible, just a big pain.... Could they have made a diffrent set of tiles for skin texture, and clothing texture? It sure be easyer to paint a trenchcoat that way...
There are some great things though about SL skin system... I am finding I could potentialy paint a decent skin for a varity of lighting situation and the AV could look preatty good through most situations... (not perfectly perfect, but well enough.) Plus, SL does a fairly good job distorting the skin layer over a varity of diffrent shapes... Thats preatty impressive how well clothing can look in SL considering there is only two models to cover all the needs people have in SL...
Complaining, venting, and tribulating asside... I am doing my best to learn how to do this. After all, if you can paint a nice skin texture in SL, a professional skin texture for a video game UV that ripped properly will be no problem... Althought, there are some things I really like to see applied to SL simple to make selling skins easyer..
First up, they don't have a texture baking feature in SL... (its a term I made up, so please fallow allong with me...) When you paint a skin in SL, you have to consider who will be using the skin, what the shape they will be apply it to.. and million other things... that can be hard to work around... but your work is not done with the skin.. Because people like varity you then have to take into account... Girls want makeup... Guys like Tattoos... Sickos want hand prints on there asses, and so on.. and so forth...
So to do that, you paint a basic skin texture, and then start adding layers in photoshop for tattoos, make up, oiled down, slapped around, and beaten down... then you can eather sell those extra layers as undergarment layers... or you can bake them right into the skin layer you made... and try selling that.. Thats ok I guess... but it gets expensive for both the buyer and seller, it may not be exsactly what the buyer is looking for, (after all they might want a tattoo on there back, and a oiled down look...), and to do that.. you have to get the party makes the skin, to apply a tattoo, and oiled down layer just for you in photoshop...
So instead of forcing the buyer to search accross all of SL for the right skin with all the right goodies applied to it... and seller to do huge amounts of uploading and spending to give just about anyone the right look... you give the everyone a little button that lets you combine textures over each other like putting clothing over skin, but in effect it perminatly merges the layers you want into a single layer.. I think that be really nice if you buy multipule tattoos you what to applie to your body, you could do a texture bake right in SL. Just take a copy of the skin you like, and tattoo you want, (I love mommy left arm, don't mess with texas right arm, trible banding around the legs, and apply kiss right here on the ass for exsample..) Then you open up your nifty texture bake feature, put the skin, and tattoos in order, (maybe even be allowed to move the tattoos around on your body, play with the oppacity, and streach as you like, all while you see how this affects your skin on the model...) and when you got something you like, hit apply... This in turn would mearge the many layers into one... and would allow your charicter to use up fewer layers, (which in turn would let the servers run more reliably since they have to only hold in ram one 512 texture set instead of the many you might like to get the proper look you want...
Now obviously this would put skin painters to work on what they really like since you would not have to accept a terrible skin just to get the nice tattoo you like... you could buy one skin you like, and a few tattoos you like to get a unique look you like for your skin... If they want to do makeup, they only have to do makeup now... the same goes with tattooes, oiled down looks and anything else you can emagine.
It also be great for skin painters since instead of having to, upload, and sell huge bundles of skins with every emaginable tattoo/makeup combination emaginable, painted on its own skin layer... you only have to upload a small collection of tattoo/makeup, and sell those on there own for a reasonable price... lower prices would deflate the market, and keep people playing the game longer...
The next thing that could really help SL out is better lighting... I could theoreticaly paint a great skin layer for a charicter that standing still. As long the charicter stands in there feet.. the minnute they sit down... the illustion is broken because I painted the model to be stand... (say nothing of what happens to the illution when you make the charicter fly...) it also be nice if the skin had some way of better reacting to light like textures on objects do... So instead of buying a wet look, you just turn up the shine on your skin...
Well thats my two cents...
Posted at 3:27PM on Jan 12th 2007 by Cheezedog