Day 66: Violet Dress in Little Toyko and Creating Flexi Prim Skirts

OMG, I just found out that I am scheduled for the Miss Second Life Formal Dress Competition next Wednesday (12/6)! And I dont have a formal dress ready! *Yikes* *Yikes* I need to really start working on this... Im so excited about this though! Its finally happening!



Welcome to Nagaya, a little Japanese-themed sim right in the heart of Second Life. Here, you can find all manner of things Japanese, from merchants of Japanese goods (cloths, art, furnishings, even ninja animations) to some fun things to do while exploring. Theres a 5 story Pagoda behind me (got the name off the sign :P).



Next to the Pagoda, there is a small Japanese garden where you can relax and meditate. Nagaya is not particularly rich in activities. It is more like a normal little Japanese town. However, there are some interesting things to do if you explore further.



Theres the little sushi restaurant, filled with all manner of things you would find...well...in a sushi restaurant.

More saki! More saki!



Or how about taking a dip in a traditional Japanese bath? Theres a bathhouse there that provides you with towels and a wrap for when you are done. I was tempted to break out my yellow polka-dot bikini, but decided against it in case some ninja got mad and decided to use that weird ninja animation.



Oh...and you have to find this person-carrier and sit in it. Then click on the carrier. Oh...and bring a parachute :P

If you are interested in Japanese culture, or would like to buy some Japanese-related products, check out Nagaya. To come here, click on the Search button at the bottom of your screen, select the Places tab, then enter "nagaya" as the keyword. The SLURL is Juho (89,165,62).



Today's violet dress may look pretty tame, but notice the little white petticoat at the bottom of the dress? Yep, this is a double-skirt, with a violet dress and a white petticoat underneath.



The idea is that when you move, there will be a flurry of violet and white panels flying around. Thats me doing salsa in my backyard :)

There are 16 flexi-prim panels that make up the violet outer dress, and 16 flexi-prim panels that make up the white petticoat. Thats 32 sim-crashing flexi panels whenever I go twirling around :P

The dress was relatively easy to make, except for the Second Life software update today! This made it impossible to work until the evening. Stuff that should be in Inventory didnt show up. I couldnt "Wear" certain clothing items. And textures that were uploaded disappeared. These things made it *really* tough to put an outfit together :P Thankfully, things settled down later on.

I know the people at Linden worked really hard to add the cool new features...so Im not complaining! We can finally add friends without being mapped (you can now decide whether friends can see where you are or not). The down side is that I cant use that as an excuse to refuse Friendship from weird guys :P

This dress is based on the Yellow Dress in New Paris, except this required longer panels to be a long dress. I could simply have enlarged the Yellow Dress panels, but that would have created a dress with too much poof: it would look like a ballgown.

So, after another marathon session with the Necklace Generator, I managed to create a new skirt shape that would accommodate a full long double-skirt.

You can find the Necklace Generator, along with a lot of other cool scripts and tools, at Ariane Brodie's Second Life Tips and Scripts.

Using the Necklace Generator to create skirts is not for the faint of heart. You need a good understanding of how flexi objects work, a little about running and tweaking scripts, linking groups of prims together, moving the "root" from one prim to another if needed, and a steady hand for adjusting single prims next to a bunch of flexi (moving) prims. And oh...a lot of patience, cause you need to run through the steps a number of times to get the right shape. I do plan on writing about some of these topics in the future. But beware that this is a frustrating process!

If you are a brave soul, here are the high-level steps involved in creating a flexi-prim skirt with the Necklace Generator:

1. Creating a single flexi-prim skirt panel. This is basically a long cylinder (about 2M) that is hollow and path-cut so it is relatively flat and thin. Note that the size is purposefully large. You will reduce the size later. The dimensions of this panel is *CRITICAL* to the shape of the final skirt. So thats where I spend a lot of time tweaking... Here are the parameters I used for the violet dress panels:

Shape: Cylinder
Size: X = 0.400, Y = 0.700, Z = 2.200
Path Cut: B = 0.300 (shows up as 0.299) and E = 0.700
Hollow = 95
Taper: X = -0.50, Y = -0.50
And of course, turn on Flexible Path

Not that this generated a longer, slimmer shaped dress (less poof). The shorter skirts required very different settings.

2. Place the panel you want to duplicate into the Necklace Generator's Content tab.

3. Adjust the settings in the Generator script. This includes the number of panels you want, the elipse parameter (determine whether the final shape is a circle or line or something in between), and the rotation of the panels. I typically use 8-16 panels (16 for the violet dress), around .75 for the elipse parameter (depending on the design), and 180 degree Z-axis rotation on the panels (its the 3rd number under rotation).

4. Position the Necklace Generator (somewhere off the ground so you can grab all the panels), then touch it to generate the panels.



Heres what it looks like after you generate the panels. Note that the panels are inside out. You will flip them over later for to wearing.

5. Link all the panels together as a single object. I actually use the Necklace Generator itself as the "root" object of the linked prims. This makes it easier to position the panels, since the Generator is in the middle of the ring of panels. The easiest way to link it all is to make sure you go to the Tools menu at the top of your screen and select "Select Only My Objects". You can then edit one panel, and then draw a box around all the other panels to select them.

6. Flip the Linked Panels over (180 degree X-axis rotation). You can just type "180" in the Rotation X box, or rotate by hand. You need to do this to expose the Necklace Generator in case you want to repeat all these steps again (and I know you will :P).

7. Take a Copy (dont take the original) of the Linked Panels. Now attach it to either your Stomach or Pelvis (they are the same attachment points, with just different starting positions).

8. When you first attach the panels, they would be upside down, turned sideways, and way too large. So first, turn the Linked Panels over (use the World Grid to get it to exactly 180 degrees). Then, you need to rotate the panels 90 degree clockwise or counterclockwise (especially if you made the skirt look like an elipse). Finally, you need to resize all of the panels together by dragging the white resize buttons and shrinking them down to a size that looks like a skirt.

9. Be sure you disable the generator script in the copy of the skirt you are wearing (either by unchecking the "Running" option in the script, or by deleting the script altogether). Otherwise you can set it off by simply touching the Linked Panels, and end up with another mass of panels around you.

10. Dont be too surprised if the shape doesnt look right. Thats why you should "Take a Copy" in step 7 above. If you want to try again, unlink the Necklace Generator from the original Linked Panels. Delete the panels. And start from step 1 again.

11. If you like the shape, but a few panels appear out of place (or are sticking out of your back), then its time for the fun part: final adjustments by hand. Thats right, you will almost certainly need to do some final tweaking by hand.

To edit a single panel, be sure you check the "Edit linked parts" checkbox. This will let you select a single panel from the skirt.

Also, you may want to change the Ruler mode occasionally, depending on what you are doing. This is in the top part of the Edit window. You can flip between "Attachment" and "Local" mode. "Attachment" means that all movement is relative to the avatar's attachment point. "Local" means its relative to the object you are editing. They are both useful: I like to use "Attachment" to position the panels, and "Local" for rotations.

Did I mention its a pain? :P But it sure beats creating and aligning 16 panels by hand!



I love this sign! In English, it means the camp chairs are to the Northwest :P