Thursday, October 25, 2007

Attachment Set Tutorial

Hullo, and welcome to the Attachment Set Tutorial. This is the first tutorial I’ve ever written, so if there is anything that doesn’t quite make sense, or is simply omitted, well, I suppose it was to be expected. Feel free to drop me a reproving word here or in world via IM.

Attachment Set is a free, open source, full permission script written by the talented and slightly goth Mrs. Carricre Wind. Its primary use is to prevent your prim skirts from falling down when sitting, or from trailing behind whilst walking. Here is the “ad” for it I did for Mrs. Wind (sorry about the rather plain model :P)



Now then, the first thing you need do is run out and get a copy of the script. It is currently available inworld at Mrs. Wind’s Caveat Emporium in New Toulouse . Follow this SLURL to the address.


Caveat Emporium in New Toulouse http://slurl.com/secondlife/New%20Toulouse/120/84/24


Essentially, Attachment set works by monitoring the state that your Second Life avatar is in, and moving the skirt (or any other prim attachment) to a location and rotation you have preset for the skirt.

To make all these adjustments easier, you will want to have a central “pivot prim”. In other words, your skirt should have a prim that the rest of the dress can pivot around like this:



If it does not have one, rez your skirt on the ground. Then right click the ground and select create, click on the sphere icon, then click on the ground to create a sphere. Then right click the sphere, edit, then hold the control and shift keys down together. You will see little white boxes. Drag one of those boxes until the sphere is very small (look on the object page and try to shrink it to about .02. Don’t go to .01, or you will not be able to shrink the skirt later on. Trust me on this ;)). Release the cntrl and shift keys, and you will see the position arrows. Drag on the position arrows until the sphere is in position above the skirt. Then click the skirt, and hold the shift and L keys down.

The sphere is now the “root prim” of the skirt. When you edit the skirt, that central prim should light up yellow, the rest of the skirt blue.

Note that this is not precisely necessary, but it makes it easier to rotate the skirt.

Now, take the skirt back into inventory, don the skirt and right click on it. Select “Edit”, then go to the “Contents” tab. Drag the script marked AttachmentSet OSS from your inventory to the Contents page on the edit window. If you do nothing else now, the skirt will automatically move back to this position in all stances.

But we want the skirt to move as we move. So, first turn on your animation override if you have one (vendors will probably want to just use default Linden settings). Now we will turn off the Attachment set.

Type “/66 suspend” in chat (no quotes). The skirt will say “Skirt animations stopped.”

Next, adjust the skirt to how you want it to be when you are standing. If you know how to do that, skip the next three paragraphs.

Right click the skirt, select Edit from the pie chart, then you will see three arrow representing the three axes you can move the skirt on. Click and drag on the ends of the arrow to move the skirt in that direction.

If you wish to rotate the skirt, hold the Cntrl key down. You will see three circles instead of the arrows. Click and move the cursor along the circles to rotate the skirt. (Trust me, this makes much more sense when you actually do it).

Finally, if you wish to resize the skirt hold the control and shift keys down together. You will see little white boxes. Drag one of those boxes inward or outward until the skirt is the size you like. You will probably need to reposition it after this.

Now you should look something like this:



Type “/66 set stand”. The skirt will say “Standing position and rotation edited and reset.”

Now sit down somewhere.



Terrible looking isn’t it? Saucy expose of knees and stocking will not do. So, edit the skirt as above into position so it looks something like this:




Then type “/66 set sit”. The skirt will say “Sitting position and rotation edited and reset.”

Next, we want to combat the way flexi skirts trail behind us when we walk. So, to do that, we want to tilt the skirt forward a bit when walking. About 10 degrees does the trick for walking, about 15 for running. From the side it will look like this (for a walk position):



Again, once walk is set type “/66 set walk”. The skirt will say “Sitting position and rotation edited and reset.” Once run is set type “/66 set run”. The skirt will say “Running position and rotation edited and reset.”

Finally, you will want to set the ground sit. Sit on the ground (or play the ground sit animation, if you have it in inventory). The stock ground sit is a bit, well, ugly, and takes a bit of a fiddle to get it to look right in a long dress. But here it is:



Once set type “/66 set ground”. The skirt will say “Ground sit position and rotation edited and reset.”

This brings up the subject of animation overrides, also know as AOs. I usually use Mme Kamileh Hauptmann’s excellent Victorian AO. It works fine with the same dress positions as the defaults, except with the ground sit. So, when I fit my dress for me, I do it with the AO on, and set THAT position as the ground sit.



Vendors might wish to keep this in mind for their customers and let them know that if they have a very unusual AO, they might have to do some adjustment.

Now, we’re all set! To start the AttachmentSet working again, type “/66 resume”. The skirt will say “Skirt animations restarted.” Note that since the skirt only notices change in state (in order to keep lag down), you will have to move before it adjusts itself.



Additional notes
:

Using the skirt is very simple. Wear it, and it automatically adjusts itself. Note that different sized avatars might need a bit of adjustment, so if you sell skirts with AttachmentSet, you might wish to include instructions (feel free to link to this page, but I’d prefer links to copying).

When making skirts using Attachment Set, you will want at least a short glitch pant, as the skirt will need to rotate forward when sitting, invariably exposing the fundament.

If you use a pose ball, including a dance ball, SL thinks the avatar is sitting. If you don’t wish to have the skirts move to the sit position (such as when dancing), type “/66 suspend” before getting on, then “/66 resume” when getting off.

This is a fairly low lag script. It only moves the skirt when the avatar’s position changes, and uses a slower timer than most AOs. Still, if sim lag is an issue, you might wish to turn it off via “/66 suspend”. When you want it on, you can type “/66 resume” resume again.

If you want the skirt to automatically stop in high lag areas, copy the following code into a script, then drag the script into the contents tab of the skirt (script is derived from a Linden LSL wiki example):


integer paused;
default
{
on_rez(integer s)
{
llResetScript();
}

state_entry()
{
llSetTimerEvent(0.3); //Repeat every 3/10th of a second.
}

timer()
{
float dilation = llGetRegionTimeDilation(); //Get the dilation
if(dilation < 0.65)
{
llOwnerSay("Sim lag is high, pausing skirt animation");
llSetScriptState(“AttachmentSet OSS”,FALSE); //Pause it
paused=TRUE;
}
else
{
//If the dilation is more than 65%
llSetScriptState(“AttachmentSet OSS”,TRUE); //run it
if (paused==TRUE)
{
llOwnerSay("Sim lag is low, restarting skirt animation");
paused=FALSE;
}
}
}
}


This will also tell the owner when the script is stopping and starting.

Finally, don't forget that there are many other things besides skirts that can use this. Mrs. Wind made a clever walking stick that demonstrates how it can be used for a walk and a stand animation: the stick neatly slides into the appropriately jaunty position based on avatar posture. I'm sure the creative can can up with even more examples than this!

Well, off to start fiddling with all my dresses in stock :P

Cleaning Out the Closet

Well, I have been sewing and tinkering, as I mentioned last week. But truly, I am a lazy person and tend to let things sit about in bins rather than trouble myself to get all the permissions sorted, the items neatly lined up and named a bit catchier than "RDLskirt texture7", a box made, a vendor set up, and don't even mention the ads and the SLEx.

Be as that may, my ego does conflict with the laziness, and besides which, I just bought a new parcel of land in Caledon Penzance, so the avarice is coming into play as well. Such an odd feeling to have those conflicting feelings of vice tilting at each other betwixt one's ears.

So.

I am putting up a few dresses I've been working on. One is a circa 1815 Regency Ballgown, which I will be putting the automatically adjusting AttachmentSet script into (so one's knees won't poke through when sitting). More on that amazing script later, for now, you can pick up a copy at on the freebie cart now in Endless Destruction at the Caveat Emporium.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Endless%20Destruction/204/169/23

Oh yes, the dress. You may have seen this already, as it was originally a commission for Miss Diamanda Gustafson. Per our agreement, she was entitled to a few balls in it before I released it to the rest of the world. Do hope it worked for you, Miss G!



Next up, I've been working with the Versailles set. I need to get the ad's made on the Gentleman's suit, but there are two dresses I am putting out. The first is a long held favourite of mine, the sacque dress, which appears in the first decade of the 18th and stays popular in various forms all the way through the 60s (and you would still see colonial American women wearing it in the 70s). This particular one is based after an extant 1740 dress:



If there is enough interest, I may release this in different textures. The Sacque is quite versatile, actually. Add enough frills, and you have something suitable for Pompadour :)

Finally, I was asked by Duchesse Dobra Lane to make a dress based on the late 17th century court dress from the movie Angelique.


I will be immodest and say that this one is the most difficult and complex outfit I have ever made. The tie backs were actually the hardest part to make--the use of twisted toruses made my head hurt. They have these odd characteristics such that changing one parameter tends to change ALL the parameters, if that makes any sense (play with a torus a bit, and you will see what I mean). Accordingly, I have two sized prim skirts included, as well as two sizes of bodices (the mesh would "bunch" when downsized).

The neck ruffle was created using Mr Ged Larsen's amazing LinkRez--a device that is to necklaces what LoopRez is to prim skirts. It is so fun to watch in action. I created a few lace ruffles, lined them up and used the templates to fit it around the next. A single chat entry later and I watched it create a whole necklace. Then I had to fit it on the neckline and adjust the bodice to line up with the ruffle, but the tedious part was automated. I also created a non-alpha trim to go there, which adds a bit more glitter to the whole affair (it's optional, should you need that attachment point for a necklace or some such).

Then it was the usual texturing thingees. The lace is from photographs of actual 17th century lace. All in all, I'm fairly pleased with it. Oh, I tossed in some of my embroidered shoes, in case you haven't something nicer to wear.



All of these are up in Eyre now, and once I get on grid, shall place them at the other shops as well.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Storm Winds

Oh, yet another busy RL week, followed by a surfeit of SL projects I have been working on. I'm happy to say I managed to make a Jager Uniform of the mid 19th (NOT to be confused with a Jagerkin uniform, though I admit similarities). I've spun out a 17th century man's outfit (which is just the thing for pirating, if you ask me), made a circa 1700-1720 saque dress for Versailles, a new carriage after the smaller coaches of that period (not everyone got to ride in Catherine the Great's carriage, after all), started a shop in Babbage, had a lovely birthday party with Miss Lightfoot at the TARDIS yesterday, and continued work on my Sky Galleon.



I really ought put some of those aforementioned things up for sale, but really, I've been a bit lazy about the merchanting side of the house. I really do like commissions, don't have to bother with all that fluferall one gets in the SL Exchange and similar places.

Oh, and just to establish the point, I did not make that exceedingly clever Air Lancer helmet I have been sporting lately, that is the work of the amazing 3D artist Mr. Expedition Offcourse. If you haven't seen his work yet, do drop by his place in Caledon Sky City, at berth #13.

So, with all this (and a few RL writing projects), what is a poor girl to do? Well, there is always cycling, but when the rain comes, as it does with increasing regularity as the days get longer, one takes solace in a good read. But once the girl is married off/achieves self-actualization/blows up the baddies with the help of her Tennesee boyfriend (just read and loved Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties--the heroine is a former cycle messenger :)), one is left with still a bit of brain mushedness to eliminate....

So, off to the SteamPunk wars!

I do so love flashgames, though I wonder at times about my cheerful reliance upon explosions to unwind at times. Well, so long as such activities don't change my RL outlook (I assure everyone, I feel badly when I need scold my puppy. RL does NOT find me toting Vickers machineguns about)



Here, one is valiantly defending one's Caledonian home from the nasty Middlesea pirates in their flying flivvers and battleships (oh, to be fair, if the lads of Middlesea would simply play more sport, they would not have such an excess of energy) One changes about from station to station, trying to find the best form of proper deterrence against the villainous Air Pirates. At least that is how I read it.

The part that makes this worth more than a singular visit is the strategizing. Not only must you decide which stations need manning, but between waves you must make painful decisions about what things to buy, what things to put into repairs, and where to place everything on your armoured redoubt. All in all fun enough. Now if you will excuse me, I have to nip back the the electronic sewing machine...well, one more round of chittering cannon first. I do hope I can be excused that. :D

Storm Winds, courtesy of Armoured Games:
http://www.armorgames.com/games/stormwinds_game.html