Day 110: Creating Prim Shoes Part 3 (Texture and Sexy Walk)

This is Part 3 of the creating prim shoes tutorial. In this tutorial, we are going to jazz up the heeled pumps we made in Creating Prim Shoes Part 2. We are going to add texture and sexy walk to the shoe.

Even if you did not make the heeled pumps from Part 2, you may want to follow along with this tutorial. I wrote this as a tutorial for texturing techniques and adding sexy walk (Animation Override or AO) to objects. You can just rez a box on the ground and try the texturing on it. You can also rez a hollow cylinder or torus, wear it as a bracelet, and put the AO into it. Theres even a "Power" walk for the guys :)

So lets get started!

1. Applying and Adjusting Texture on an Entire Prim

Adding texture to any prim in SL dramatically enhances its appearance. It can turn a plywood block into a work of art in a museum. Probably all the paintings in the Second Louvre were once prims with plywood textures!

Most of you probably know how to change the texture on a prim. But we are going to apply texture to a linked prim. This will demonstrate a number of techniques for selecting prims and texture surfaces.

When applying textures, you can select an entire prim, or just one of its many surfaces.



When you select an entire prim and apply texture to it, all of its surfaces will receive the texture, along with other settings (repeats, rotation, etc) you make to the texture. (Um...can you say Gurl6 :P)



You can also select just a single surface on a prim and apply texture to it. In fact, you can have a different texture on each surface of a prim. Think of a dice with different numbers on each face.

We will do both to demonstrate how this works.

The first thing we want to do is apply a texture to the toe cover of our Heeled Pump.



Go ahead and rez the "Heeled Pump (L)" from "Creating Prim Shoes Part 2" on the ground (you can actually use any shoe you have Mod/Copy rights to, but make a copy first!). Dont Wear it, but actually drag and drop it from your folder to the ground.

Now Right-click on the shoe and select Edit.

Click on the "Edit linked parts" checkbox on the top of the Edit window. This would enable you to select a single prim out of a group of linked prims in an object.



Click on the toe cover of the shoe to select it. If SL wont let you select it (because it is already selected along with other prims), click on something else outside the shoe, then click on the toe cover again.

Go to the Texture tab. Click on the square above "Texture". This will open the Pick:Texture window.



Go to the "Library" folder and expand the "Textures/Fabric" sub-folders. Click on the "Fabric - Pink Toile" texture and the Select button.

How did I know that you have the "Fabric - Pink Toile" texture in your Library folder? Linden Labs provides the Library as a common resource for all SL users. So all of us have this folder with the same content! There are some nice textures and other articles in there, so take a peek through it if you are ever bored :)

Thats it. There should be a pretty pink and white texture on the toe cover of your shoe. The texture would look a bit stretched, so we are going to fix that.

In the Texture tab of your Edit window, there are a number of settings for adjusting the appearance of the texture on the prim.

Under "Repeats Per Face", change the "Horizontal (U)" to "2.000". This controls the number of times an image would appear on a surface of the prim. But since the toe cover has Path Cut in it, part of the prim is "missing". But the texture still gets stretch over the "missing" half. Increasing the "Repeats Per Face" value fixes that problem.

Under "Offset", change the "Horizontal (U)" to "0.500". This controls where the texture starts on the shape. If you dont change this setting, there would be a seam right in the middle of the toe cover. Changing this to 0.500 moves the seam to side of the shoe (where you cant see it).

Feel free to play with the rest of the settings under the Texture tab. Especially things like Shininess and Transparency. You can make some really cool things happen with very little effort.

2. Applying Texture to a Single Prim Surface

By applying texture to a prim like we just did, it applied the texture to all surfaces on the prim. If you looked on the inside of the toe cover (requires some trickly camera movements), you will notice the texture there as well. If this is not something you want, there is a way to apply texture to just a single surface on a prim.

We are going to add the same texture to the back of the shoe (the little round piece that sticks up at the very back). We are only going to texture the outside, and not the inside (or edges) of this piece.

Right-click anywhere on the shoe and select Edit. Now click on the "Select Texture" radio-button at the top of the Edit window. This enables you to edit the texture on a single surface of a prim.



Click on just the outside of the back heel piece. You will notice that the entire back heel piece is selected. If this piece were larger, you would also be able to see a faint plus sign in a circle on the surface you selected. This indicates that you are changing the texture on just this single surface.

Now select the Texture tab in your Edit window. Click on the square above "Texture" to open the Pick:Texture window. Go ahead and select the same "Fabric - Pink Toile" texture (Under the "Library" folder in the "Textures/Fabric" sub-folders)



Also, change "Repeats Per Face" "Vertical (V)" to "2.000". Change "Offset" "Vertical (V)" to "0.100" to make the texture a little more appealing :)

Right-click on the shoe and select Take. You will notice that you now have 2 copies of the shoe. The one on top is the one you just edited (you can Wear it to verify). So go ahead and delete the one on the bottom to avoid confusion.

Lastly, you should do the same steps to the other shoe "Heeled Pump (R)".

3. Adding Sexy (or Power) Walk

We are going to put a Sexy Walk animation into the shoe. I talked about how to do this briefly in a previous entry. I will go through the specific steps here.

You only need to do this to a single object attached to your AV. For example, you can just put it into the left Heeled Pump ("Heeled Pump (L)"). You should NOT put it into both shoes...this would just cause extra lag and potential problems.

If you are a guy, or if you do not have the heeled pumps, you can still do this part. Just make a quick bracelet: Rez a torus, change the size to X=0.020 Y=0.080 Z=0.080, Attach To >/Left Forearm, and adjust the position (heres a detailed guide on Single Prim Attachments). Now, you can follow these steps using the bracelet.

You will need 2 things for this part of the tutorial: a Sexy (or Power) Walk animation (Walk Animations) and the "Franimation Overrider FLIP MOD - WAY LESS LAG" script.

You can pick both up for free at Sirena Hair & Fashion (click Search, select Places tab, and enter "sirena" as keyword; the SLURL is West Sunset (160,50,22)). Alternatively, you can grab a big box of animations from Yadni's Junkyard. You can also use the standard Franimation Overrider script (without the Flip Mod) from Yadni's Junkyard. But the FLIP MOD really cuts down on lag!

So lets get started.

First, pick a walk from the Walk Animation folder. "Female Walk" is a pretty good one for a woman. "Power Walk" is a decent one for a man (I guess :P). You need to get the EXACT name of the animation you want to use.

Next, we will prepare the Notecard so the script would know which animation we want to use. Go to the "Franimation Overrider FLIP MOD" folder and find the "*Default Anims" Notecard. Double-click on the "*Default Anims" Notecard to open it.

There are a number of headings in the Notecard for different types of animation you want to replace. The one we want is "-=Walking=-".

Put the EXACT name of the animation file you want to use under the "-=Walking=-" heading. The name is case sensitive, space sensitive, and dont forget any symbols like underscores ("_"). Do not add any extra lines to the Notecard.

When you are done, the "*Default Anims" Notecard should look something like this:

-=Walking=-
Female Walk
-=Running=-

-=Crouchwalk=-

-=Flying=-

-=Normal Turn Left=-

-=Normal Turn Right=-

... (continued)

Press the "Save" button to save the Notecard.

Now lets put the script, the animation, and the Notecard into the shoe (or object).

Rez the "Heeled Pump (L)" on the ground (drag and drop it from your Inventory). Right-click on the shoe and select the Contents tab. Now be sure you do the following steps in order: Drag and drop the "*Default Anims" Notecard you just modified into the "Contents" tab of the shoe. Next, drag and drop the walk animation you want to use into the "Contents" tab of the shoe (such as "Female Walk").

Lastly (you have to do this last!), drag and drop the "Franimation Overrider FLIP MOD - WAY LESS LAG" script from your Inventory into the "Contents" tab of the shoe.

The script will automatically read the Notecard. Wait for it to tell you that it has finished reading the Notecard.

Now Right-click on the shoe and select "Take". Check your Inventory, and delete the extra copy of the shoe.

If all goes well, you should be walking sexy when you Wear the shoe or object.



What a different with just a little bit of texture and animation! :)

In Part 4, we will jazz these shoes up some more with an ankle strap and bling! (Im really milking this series, arent I? :P)

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