Day 64: Designer Unicorn in Dreams and Precise Prim Positioning

Dont you love my crazy titles? :P Today, Im at Dreams/ShockProof, a couple places with equally mystifying names. These are 2 areas on the same sim, with different focuses.

ShockProof is a community of stroke survivors and those interested in stroke. The same group also supports the Dreams area, which promotes building in Second Life.

Dreams sponsors a number of building competition events, including the Speed Building Competition on Mondays. Today's theme was snowman, and its fun to watch the competitors race to build their scenes within the time limit.

There is also the longer-term Treehouse Building Competition. The building phase is over, and the voting phase is happening right now thru Dec 1. The objective is to build a treehouse in a 20x20M area with 150 prims. So come on down and vote for your favorite! Thats my favorite treehouse behind me.



Like the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives, Dreams has a display (although smaller and not rezzed) of different prim types and how they appear under various settings. This excellent display is actually for sale in case you want a reference at home.



They also have a couple of self-guided tutorials on building single-prim objects. They are pretty neat, cause you see the object rezzed each step along the way.

To come to Dreams/Shockproof, click on the Search button on the bottom of your screen, select the Places tab, and enter "shockproof" as the keyword. The SLURL is Dreams (105,148,24).



Todays outfit was again inspired by a designer outfit in a magazine. What sets a lot of expensive designer outfits from...well...the stuff I buy in Real Life is often the design on the fabric. Many designer outfits use custom prints instead of a repeating pattern. This makes it more challenging to produce, since the fabric has to be cut at precise positions. But in Second Life, this isnt a problem!




The design on my dress is based on the famous Unicorn Tapestries at The Cloisters. The dress uses 2 of the tapestries, one for each side. The one in the picture is on the back of the dress, because of certain...chest-related issue.

The dress is based on the design of the Little Black Dress. The photos of the Unicorn Tapestries were desaturated (turned to black and white), with a layer of burgandy underneath to provide the color for the outfit. The photos of the tapestries were blended into the burgandy using the "Multiply" blend option.




I even made a custom belt for the dress to give it that extra designer flare. And thats it...a designer dress for $30L in upload fees ;P

Let me talk a little bit about the custom belt, especially the little decorative metal studs. They are a good example of how to precise position prims from one side of the body to another. In this case, I created metal studs on the left side first, then needed to have a copy in the exact same position on the right side.

If you create prim objects to wear, you will eventually have a need to do this. Other examples include prim skirts (placing skirt panels), necklaces, and prim hair and shoes (if the design is same on left and right sides).

Of course, you can position the prims by hand on both sides. But it is difficult to get them spaced correctly. And in most cases, you are also working with very small objects. The small studs on the belt are X=0.01, Y=0.01, and Z=0.01, so they could be tricky to move around and position by hand.

So here are a couple tricks to help you work with small objects, to align prims, and to precise position prims. These tricks apply to things that are worn on the body (not buildings, per se).

The position of everything in SL is defined by 3 numbers: X, Y, and Z. These numbers represent the center of a particular object. This is important, since the center of an object changes if its size changes. To precisely position objects in SL means entering X, Y, and Z values by hand instead of dragging the little colored arrows.

First, find the numerical cooridnates of a spot thats at least 1M above ground. You need to know the exact X, Y, and Z coordinates of that spot. You will send all objects to this spot when working on them.

The easiest way to do this is to rez a cube on the ground (click the Build button, and click on the ground), go to the Object tab, and make a note of the numbers under Position (meters). Go ahead and change the X and Y values to the nearest round number (just lop off the numbers after the decimal point). For Z, just pick a round number above the one in the Z box. Now your cube should be in the new spot, slightly elevated above ground. Is this a good spot to work with? If not, try other numbers, as long as they are round numbers (no decimals).

Once you have a good spot, jot down the X, Y, and Z coordinates. Commit it to memory (you will soon anyway).



Here is a closeup snapshot of the belt, positioned at "the spot". Make sure your Ruler Mode is set to "World" before proceeding (Click the Build button, click on the Edit icon at the top, and select "World" at the Ruler Mode dropdown box). Whenever you work on an attachment (or add any prims to it), you should send them to "the spot" by entering the coordinates you memorized. That way, you know exactly where things are, and it helps you figure out the positions of objects on the left and right sides.

Relative to "the spot", imagine that an avatar stands along the X-axis (i.e. when she moves forward or back, she is moving along the X-axis, or the Red arrow). If you stand on a pose stand, you will notice that they all make you align with the X-axis.

So objects to your left and right are positioned along the Y-axis, or the Green arrow. The Z-axis determines how far something is from the ground (up or down).

When you are trying to precise position objects on one side of your body to the other, you are talking about moving it along the Y-axis. So you want to keep the same values for the X-axis and Z-axis, and only change the Y-axis.



Lets take one of the metal studs on the belt. "The spot" in my workshop is at:

X=135.000, Y=24.000, and Z=85.000

The left Metal Stud is at:

X=135.093, Y=24.040, and Z=84.996

So where should the right Metal Stud be?

Well, we mentioned that we should keep the X and Z values the same. Only the Y value would change. "The spot" in my room is Y=24.000. The left Metal Stud is at Y=24.040. So the right Metal Stud should be the same distance away from "the spot", or 23.960 (24.000 - 0.040). Therefore, the right Metal Stud should be at:

X=135.093(same), Y=23.960, and Z=84.996(same)

Sorry for all the math...Im actually not the expert in this, but a friend showed me and its been a lifesaver!

Note that this does not take the rotation of an object into account. Once the object is in position, you still need to match the rotation as well. But this is easier to do by hand once a prim is in the proper position. (My friend showed me how to do the rotation as well, but *yikes* I should have paid attention in the math classes!)

As an exercise, try this out: create a box, and put it in "the spot". Next, create a 2nd box, and put it somewhere to the left of "the spot". Now, create a 3rd box, and use the above steps to position it on the right of "the spot". This will help you a great deal in creating objects that are symmetrical.



Umm...ever get the feeling theres something behind you?