Day 293: Flexifying Your Wings

Wings: they are one of those things that you either love or hate. Unless you are a Fae...in which case, you probably have a few beautiful sets already :)

Theres one relatively easy and cool thing you can do to really jazz up most wings: You can flexify them! :) I talked briefly about how to do this on Day 45.

This is a step-by-step tutorial on how to flexify a pair of wings. If you have not worked with flexi prims before, theres more info on how they work in the flexible (flexi) prims tutorial.

Flexifying wings is a great way to better understand how flexi prims work. It will also give you a chance to manipulate textures on a prim.

You will need some wings in order to do this tutorial. Ive put together a box of wings that can be flexified. Its in a free box labeled "Flexi(-able) Wings" at (where else? :P) Sirena Hair & Fashion. Its located in the Tutorial Supplies area under the giant mermaid sign.

Alternatively, you can get tons of free wings at Yadni's Junkyard. Just note that not all the wings can be flexified...but I will show you how to tell them apart.


Flexi Wings Overview



Like everything else in SL, wings are made from prims. Most wings are built using the "Box" prim type. They are typically built with 2 Boxes, 1 for each side of the wing.

In fact, we can only flexify wings that are built from either Boxes or Cylinders.



Typically, the Box has a completely transparent texture applied to all its faces, except the main front and back faces with the wing texture. The wing texture is typically a picture of half a wing on a transparent background. In other words, the wing texture has an Alpha Channel for transparency.

Since we can make flexible prims with Boxes, all we have to do is click the "Flexible Path" checkbox, right? Unfortunately, its not that simple... :(



I can just go into the Edit window's Features tab and check the "Flexible Path" checkbox. Most of the freebie wings would start drooping strangely. Its almost like they came loose from my shoulder.

The issue is that almost all freebie wings were either built before flexi prims were introduced, or were built without flexi prims in mind...



If you just rezzed a box, change Size Z to 5, enabled "Flexible Path", and rotated it slightly to one side, it would bend down just like most of the freebie wings. Thats because flexi prims "flex" along the "Z" direction. The bottom of the flexi prim is the anchor (the part that doesnt move).



But with wings, we want the part that attaches to our shoulder to be the anchor. So we would need to rotate the wing and put the anchor (bottom) part against our shoulder.

Of course, if we rotated the wing, the wing texture would look...well...rotated. So we would need to adjust the size of the wing and its texture.

Ready to give it a try?


Flexifying the Wing

Before we start, be sure to make a copy of any wing you are working with. I mess up my wings ALL the time while flexifying them.

To make a copy of your wing, look for the wing in your Inventory. Right-click on the wing and select "Copy". Right-click on the wing again and select "Paste". You should now see 2 copies of the same wing.



Go ahead and Wear one of the wings.

Right-click on the wing that you are wearing, and select "Edit". If you see the "More >>" button, click on it to see the rest of the Edit window.

Click on the "Edit linked parts" checkbox at the top of the Edit window.

Go to the "Features" tab. Click on the "Flexible Path" checkbox.

For this particular wing, you can see that the bottom part is the anchor for the flexi prim. So we would need to rotate this prim clockwise.

(Note: In very unusual cases, some wings are built with the wing texture on the anchor side. These wings would not "flex" even if you enable "Flexible Path". We would need to move the wing texture to another face in order to flexify these wings. But because we dont own the wing textures, we would not be able to flexify this type of wing.)



Before we rotate the prim, turn "Flexible Path" off by unchecking the checkbox. Flexi prims can be really annoying to rotate :P

Also, change the "Ruler mode" from "Attachment" to "local". This means we will be rotating the prim relative to the prim itself (local), instead of rotating it relative to the avatar (Attachment).



Click on "Rotate (Ctrl)" at the top of the Edit window. The color arrows will change to color wheels.

Click and hold the Red color wheel and rotate the wing 90 degrees clockwise (until the part that attaches to your shoulder is pointing straight up).



Theres a trick that may help you rotate something exactly 90 degrees. When you click on the Red color wheel, you will see a white circle with tick-marks appear. If you move the cursor outside this white circle, you will notice that the wing will only stop at the tick-marks. This is really handy for rotating things by an exact amount.

I have a short video clip about this trick (in this case, its about hair).



Once you are done rotating the wing, lets do a quick check to make sure we did it right.

Go to the "Features" tab and click on the "Flexible Path" checkbox. The wing should now flap down. Dont worry if the wing is drooping. We will be adjusting Gravity, Tension, and other settings to make it more realistic later. The important thing is that the anchor side is against your shoulders.

OK, click on the "Flexible Path" checkbox again to disable flexi. We still have a couple more adjustments to make...



Because we rotated the wing by 90 degrees, we need to resize the wing and flip the image so the wing looks normal again.

Click on the Object tab. Look at the Size Y and Size Z settings. If they are the same (as in this case), we dont need to do anything :)

But if Size Y and Size Z are different, we would need to switch the 2 numbers.



Go to the "Texture" tab. Click on "Select Texture" at the top of the Edit window. This enables us to edit the texture on each individual face of a prim.

Click on the wing we just rotated. You should see a circle with a cross in the middle on the wing texture. This tells us that we are working on that particular face.



Change the "Rotate (degrees)" to 90. The wing texture now looks much better :)

How did I know its 90 degrees? Well, I used this super duper formula... Or maybe I just pressed the little up/down buttons on the Rotate box to see which way to go. Take a guess how I did it :P



Now do the same thing to fix the texture on the front side of the wing.

Go to the "Texture" tab. Click on "Select Texture" at the top of the Edit window. And click on the wing texture in the front.

Change the "Rotate (degrees)" to -90. Remember that super duper formula :P



Now we are ready to flexify the wing :)

Edit the wing again (be sure that the "Edit linked prims" box is checked). Click on the wing we just rotated.

Go to the "Features" tab and click "Flexible Path" checkbox. I promise we can keep it on this time :P

You notice that the wing kinda droops. Thats because of the Gravity setting of "0.300".



Go ahead and change the Gravity setting to 0. Taadaa! No more drooping :)

Try walking around while wearing the wing. If you have a big wing like mine, you will notice that it kinda bends back too much as you walk. We can fix that by adding some Tension to the wing.

Edit the wing again (be sure "Edit linked prims" is checked). Change the Tension to about 8. This should give the wing a much nicer feel.

Do you think the movement of the wing is too rubbery? Try playing with the Drag setting. A setting of 0 would make a very bouncy rubbery wing (try it :D). A setting of 10 makes the wing move in slow motion. I typically have mine at around 8.

Finally, would you like the SL wind to affect your wings? If so, turn up the wind setting.



I will leave you on your own to do the other wing :)

Dont worry, its exactly the same as the one your just did. You might need to do that super duper formula backwards though :P



BTW, theres a well-known display issue that affects transparent textures. This happens when 2 transparent textures are behind each other (like when you look at a pair of wings sideways). You will notice that the textures might flicker or act strangely.

This display issue is called "alpha sorting". Because wings have to use transparent textures, theres not much that can be done to fix it. So try not to look at the wings sideways :P

Enjoy all your new cool flexi wings! Heehee try not to hog all the attention in the clubs ;P

P.S. Sukiri mentioned in his comment about using Puppeteer to move your wings :) I totally forgot about this, but its such a cool idea! Thanks Sukiri...

You can use Puppeteer in combination with flexi. By moving your wings just slightly, it will cause flexi wings to flutter. Ive seen it a couple times and its a really cool effect :) The best part is that the Personal edition of Puppeteer is free. So you can try it out!

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