Newbie question about Avatar creation I'm afraid.

Hi all,

I've been looking at having a go at creating a custom avatar and _thought_ I'd picked something relatively easy although on further investigation it doesn't appear to and thats where I have some questions.

I've been reading any avatar guides as I can as well as picking up any freebie avatars to see how they were built but I'm still a bit stuck.

What I'm looking to do is create a humanoid with a hooded robe however I only want his eyes, hand and feet to be visible from under that robe which bring me on to my questions.

My understanding is that, in order to obscure the existing facial features (ears, nose, mouth, hair etc. which don't appear to be optional), I'll need to create a replacement head 'attachment' with the correct skin tone (black in this case) and the eyes (created as additional objects joined to the new 'head') that sits over the existing (shruken) head?

In order to create the all in one robe I understand I'll need to create a composite shirt and skirt but I dont understand how I make them look like a single item of clothing (i.e. doesnt tuck in at the waist) and I've no idea how to include the hood (or is that built as part of the head object?)

Finally, moving on from this idea to hopefully others how do people create non-humanoid avatars thats are either too small or not possible to build over the top of a humanoid form?

Thanks for any assistance, I appreciate I am probably still biting off more than I can chew with this.

Hi Rafe- there is a world of learning between where u are and what you are reaching for- several 'disciplines' as it were. Clothes making, prim manipulation, animations, texturing, scripting - tons of stuff - but

Do not let that hinder you, one step at a time. I have something I will drop on u in world that might get you headed in the avatar creation direction. I do not have any advice to offer towards that goal though as I have never done it.

For the black head, you can simply turn the skin of the head black (without needing to affect the colour of other parts of the body) then you'd probably only need attachments for the glowing eyes. Just make a new skin, and apply a solid black texture to the "head tattoo" part.

Hair is optional, by turning hair volume down to zero in the style sliders, you'll be bald.

For the all in one robe you'll need to look at creating it out of flexi prims rather than the shirt/skirt layers. You can pick up some freebie cloaks from medieval/fantasy roleplaying venues like Avilion, that should give you an idea of how they're put together. A flexiprim cloak will look MUCH better than one made on the system clothing layers.

Tiny avatars are made with a special animation called a body-crusher, which forces the human avatar into a tiny ball. Any bits that stick out can be covered up with an "invisiprim" - this is a special scripted prim that hides any part of the avatar mesh that it covers. However I believe there's soon to be a new development allowing for truly transparent skin, which will mean that body-crushers and invisiprims will no longer be necessary.

Hi Rafe,

It sounds like what you need is an invisiprim script. This is a very simple script that sets the prim transparency to 100% (higher than you can get in the edit window). If you drop the script into a prim it becomes invisible and will hide any avatar parts behind it, while still allowing prims to show through. Note that this is not the same as using a transparent texture on the prim. I can't remember the script off the top of my head but it's freely available and some kind person will probably send you one inworld or post it here.

If I was making this avatar, I would make one head attachment consisting of linked invisiprim, prim eyes and hood. For the cloak, I would use prim attachments rather than, or in combination with, avatar mesh clothing.

Tiny avatars, and others which need to hide the whole avatar mesh, usually rely on invisiprims in combination with animations which scrunch the av into a tiny ball, although there is some sort of a new and clever trick which can be done using really enormous megaprim attachments.

P.S. don't be afraid, what's the worst that could happen? Just make sure you have saved your regular av before you start messing it up.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction with the replies everyone