Probs with flexis

1. I had hoped to make an old fashioned sheet over the head type ghost costume, but flexis only seem to bend from the side and not from the center.

There doesnt seem to be any way around this?


2. When I tried to make a flowing, ethereal type cape a couple weeks back, the thing didnt rest on my av's shoulders but started to go through.

There's gotta be a middle ground for that. If the flexi cape does not acknowledge the back of the shoulders, how do people wear hair that doesnt hang down inside their heads?

1 - Try linking two flexi prims together end-to-end. The resulting object will then appear to flex from the middle.

2 - You don't. All attachments are phantom, so the flexis will go inside the body at times. You might try making a jacket layer that has just the back painted to the color of the cape, sort of like the glitch pants that we sometimes get with gowns and skirts. (Would that be called a glitch jacket?)

Nice idea, but don't expect miracles. When you link a prim to the flexing end of a flexi prim, it stops being flexi. The top prim becomes rigid. This doesn't mean that you can't still get a nice effect this way. I have made skirts that have flex panels that attach to a mini-skirt length ring of panels. Even though it's only flexi from mid-thigh to the hem, a skirt like that still swings from the waist and looks cool.

Yea, I guess I should have been more specific. You will have to link the non-flexing ends together in order for this to work. In fact, you might be better off having a 3rd rigid prim between them.

I will have to try making one of those skirts like that, Rolig. It does sound cool.

doesnt sound like it will have the desired effect.

setting the various force, direction and springiness factors can generally keep a flexi from flying through your body (most of the time) I've done as much with several flexi skirts ... it's definately something you have to play with to get right though

It won't work with just one prim. You will have to have multiple prims in a circle like the way flexi-skirts are made.

It would be great if you could flex from the center of stuff out towards all edges. Sounds like a good feature request.

Right. Try this...

1. A hollow half sphere, big enough to cover the head and shoulders, textured with a couple of black spots for eyes.
2. A ring of flexiprims attached to the bottom edge of the sphere.
3. A complete white body suit underneath. Possibly a pale white Goth skin as well.
4. Apply a very small amount of transparency to the prim items, and make them Full Bright and maybe a tiny bit of Glow for fuzziness.

The flexi-prims in hair are usually cylinders which start at the horizontally-widest part of the skull. The tops of these cylinders are hidden under the various cut-toruses (and other shapes) which form the upper part of the hair.

A flexi-prim doesn't know where anything else is in relation to its current flexed apparent position, other than the fixed base point of the flexi itself. No other prims exist in its flexing calculations. Not even other flexis in the same linkset. This is a major pain for people making flexi tails that use multiple flexi cones to make a floofy tail. As the tail twitches, the cones invariably get out of synch, with one lagging or leading others. Flexing is entirely client-side. As far as the server is concerned, the flexi prim is stiff as a plank of wood.

No prim or avatar clothing item supports "collision" with the avatar. When a leg or arm or shoulder should collide with a cloth surface, nothing happens to prevent penetration. We simply don't have dynamic collision of cloth surfacesin SL, like in the higher-end verions of Poser.

The best bet for making a "sheet over the head" ghost costume would end up being as the others here described, with some sort of prim construct (or a sculpted prim) covering the head and shoulders, and flexiprim skirting hanging down from the shoulders. Under that I would wear a long-sleeved dress in a matching color, so when elbows or knees or other parts of the body inevitably show through the flexi parts, it isn't as noticable.

Or for a really spooky effect, add the "meat ball" Animation Overrider that is used in a lot of mini or tiny avatars to the costume, so the actual avatar body under your ghost is squished to a half-meter spherem and hide that in the ghost's head. Not sure if you can readily find an AO script of that type that will allow you to specify the height offset from the ground, but that should be available. ("Look ma! No legs! Spooky, huh? Ma? Hey Ma, don't faint! It's just a costime, Ma!" )