Dealing with Mesh or Prim Clothing

Disclaimer: I'm not a developer of the Wardrobe nor am I a developer of RLV. I can only tell you what works and does not work for me. -- QuietToday Burner

(This description assumes the function of RLVa. RLV should work similarly, but I can't be sure because I haven't tested it -- QTB).

There's no problem with wearing mesh or prim clothing. The problem is taking it off! This chapter will give advice on dealing with that problem. Along the way, we will also mention a really handy tool developed by Dahlia Orfan--her Smart StripTease Helper. (See Recommended Additional Tools.)

There are three easy ways to take off clothing when using the Wardrobe:

• The Worn Outfits button at the top of the web page will list every individual item that you are wearing and will allow you to take off each one individually.
• The Undress button at the top of the web page will display every clothing layer and attachment point and will allow you to take off one item at a time from any of them.
• You can right-click on your AV and use the pie menu to remove one item at a time from a clothing layer or an attachment point.

The problem with each of these methods is that they can't apply any common sense in knowing which individual items are really part of one piece of clothing. For example, your boots might have a shoe base, two (or maybe four) prim uppers, an alpha, and a HUD. It's tedious and error-prone to take them off one at a time.

It's even worse with clothes that are prim only. Your lovely prim jacket might be attached to your chest, your spine, or a pectoral. Take off the wrong one and you've removed your necklace, or worse, your prim boobs!

And for mesh, it's even worser (Is there such a word?). Your beautiful mesh jacket might be attached anywhere! Often it's attached to your right forearm, but you never really know. In addition, mesh items often come with alphas that need to be removed also. (I prefer to make glitch layers to go with mesh, but that's just a different version of the same problem.)

Dahlia Orfan comes to the rescue. If you wear her StripTease Helper, it constantly monitors, waiting for you to take off an item. Whenever you do that, it automatically removes everything that is in the same folder. So, for the boots... put the shoe base, alpha, prim parts, and HUD in one folder. If you take off the shoe base or the prim upper, the StripTease Helper will remove all of them. Words fail me in explaining what a time-saver this is. To take off my boots, I right-click on my AV, and use the pie menu to take off my shoes. All the other parts go like magic!

Now... let me mention a detail. I said that the StripTease Helper treats everything in a single folder as a single piece of clothing. As far as I can tell, these must be folders of actual items, not links to the items. So, if you, like me, build outfits of links, don't rush off to put sub-folders in your outfits. Instead, create the folders where the real items reside.

But what about items that are pure prim or pure mesh? Well, Dahlia thoughtfully includes a set of transparent clothing layers with the StripTease Helper. So, in the same folder as your mesh jacket, include a copy of Dahlia's transparent jacket. Then you can use the pie menu or any of the other methods to take off the mesh jacket. You might even rename the transparent jacket so that it gives you a clue... maybe something like "Mesh jacket layer".

The StripTease Helper has another wonderful function. It can add items to your AV when you're naked. That sounds like a contradiction, but can be very useful. Suppose your naked AV has prim nipples or a prim pussy. You wouldn't want those items to show through your shirt or your pants when you're clothed, but you would like them to be added to your AV when you're naked. The StripTease Helper allows you to set up special folders named .naked, .nakedbottom, and .nakedtop. Inside those folders, you would put the items (or links to them) that should be added to your AV when that part of your body becomes naked. For example, your prim nipples would go in the .nakedtop folder and your prim pussy would go in the .nakedbottom folder.

This turns out to be particularly helpful with mesh clothes. Mesh clothes fit your body more loosely than layer clothing or even some prim clothes. Sometimes the best fitting size of a mesh item may make you look fat. I deal with that by making a skinnier mesh shape (see "Making a Mesh Shape" below). I include a link to that shape in the folder for any mesh item that makes me look fat. When I wear that item, the skinnier shape goes on me, and the rigged mesh item conforms to the skinnier shape, with the result that, all considered, I look as I should. But, how do I get my normal shape back? Well, I put my normal shape in .naked, .nakedtop, .nakedbottom, and another special folder named .defaultshape. The StripTease Helper will put on the normal shape from one of the .naked folders when I take off my clothes. Also, it will put on the normal shape from .defaultshape when I attempt to take off a folder including the mesh shape.

A detail... The special folders described above can contain links for most items. However, it cannot contain a link for a shape; it must contain the shape itself.

There's one final special folder for the StripTease Helper, the .always folder. It contains items that your AV must always wear, for example, the HUD for the Wardrobe.

Making a Mesh Shape

A rigged mesh item changes its size to fit the "skeleton" of your AV. It does that automatically. So, why does a mesh clothing item come with different "sizes"? Before we're finished, we will answer that question. Along the way, you will learn how to create a skinnier version of your own shape for use with mesh clothing.

This description takes information from an excellent article, The Second Life Skeleton, at [1].

Conceptually, inside your AV is a skeleton. Rigged mesh items conform to that skeleton. The so-called "sizes" of a mesh item actually provide different looseness of fit to the skeleton. Why is that necessary? Well, because, just like real life, AVs with the same size skeleton can have different shapes. Without trying to offend anyone, but trying to keep it simple, let's just say that those different shapes on the same skeleton are due to different amounts of body fat. If you wear the mesh "size" that fits tightly to your skeleton, bits of your body fat will poke out through the mesh item from time to time. Simply wearing the alpha is not always a solution. You may find that the parts of your body outside the alpha are bigger than the mesh clothing item--kind of like a busty woman squeezing out of the top of a bra that is too small for her. You can compensate for this by picking a larger mesh "size," providing a looser fit to your skeleton. If you pick a fit that is too loose, however, your AV starts to look like it really is fat. Of course, most of us deal with weight issues in real life; we certainly don't want to put up with it in Second Life.

One solution is to create a mesh shape that has the same skeleton as your normal shape, but less body fat. It turns out that some of the SL appearance sliders affect skeleton; some affect body fat; and some affect both. There are a total of 120 appearance sliders in SL. Of them, 20 affect the skeleton. Disregarding the ones that affect head and feet, we are left with the following list of sliders affecting the body skeleton:

Body:	Height, Body Thickness
Torso:	Neck Thickness, Neck Length, Shoulders, Arm Length, Hand Size, Torso Length
Legs:	Leg Length, Hip Width, Hip Length

To create a skinny mesh AV, create one where the sliders listed above have the same values as your normal shape. Set the other sliders for the body, torso, and legs to zero or low values. After you do that, you'll be looking at something that looks like a tall, skinny 10-year-old. You will have to apply your own judgment to inching those sliders upward to bring your body to an acceptably skinny shape. Of course, increasing the sliders by too much will cause you to require larger mesh "sizes". Naturally, breast size will be an issue because those sliders count as body fat. I seem to do reasonably well with values of 45, 20, 35 for breast size, buoyancy, and cleavage, respectively. As you're manipulating the sliders, keep in mind, that this shape will be hidden inside your mesh clothes; the StripTease Helper will restore your normal shape with you're naked.