Adjusting prim clothes - effing white balls!

I have questions on adjusting clothes to fit.

I did a search on this topic, and found a very helpful thread:

/109/48/156723/1.html

particularly Miriel Enfield's response (which is #3).

However, I would dearly love a tutorial, particularly a VIDEO tutorial about how to do this.

It's clear that prim clothes can't be ready to wear unless you happen to be the right size. That's a given. And I often (but not always) succeed in making clothes fit.

I understand the steps: (1) make a copy of the item if allowed, (2) change a little, (3) look at it, (4) repeat steps 2 and 3 until satisfied or fed up.

What I DON'T understand is this: when you're stretching clothes, why are some of the white boxes (the ones you stretch with) large and some small? Is there some difference? I don't see any. It seems like a big visual clue... to what?

And why do those white boxes stretch clothes at weird angles? When I want to pull a waist straight back, I can't find a white ball that will do that. One pulls up and left, another up and right, etc. All the angles are at 45 degrees to my body and skewed -- why?

It also seems that the checkbox "stretch both sides" works sometimes but not always. Just this morning I was stretching a bra-like item and ended up with one side much larger than the other... probably, I guess, because of the wacky angles provided by the white balls. Okay, if I want to make the bra larger, I pull up and left and back (because that is the best available choice) and meanwhile the right bottom is moving out. Or not?

I'm hoping there is some REASON for this imaginative and (as far as I can see) unhelpful setup, and that my frustration is due only to my ignorance.

Can someone explain please?

I've made a folder in my inventory: Clothes that need editing. So far, what goes in there doesn't come out. If I can't make it fit in a half hour, I give up.

The little white squares are really the corners of an invisible cube. Bigger is closer to you.


When you have linked items, all you can change is the overall size if you stretch it like that. There isn't any option to make linked things longer or wider. You *can* do that with individual prims, if you pick "edit linked parts". You will get red/green/blue boxes along with the white ones to enable that, but it can be a real pain with something like a skirt that has many parts that have to move individually.

The weird angles you see on items all stem from the way the object was built, and how the root prim in the link set was oriented. You might be able to add a prim to the object, or relink it with a different prim as the root, to make this easier. But that can also mess with the positioning of attachments and scripts, so leave that as a last resort if all you want to do is make something fit.


The "stretch both sides" thing is kind of a misnomer, it really affects the final position of the prim after resizing than it does what shape you'll get. what you describe sounds like the garment was maybe more than one object, or you were in "edit linked parts" mode?

Thanks! That makes a lot of sense.

The rest, too, but the "invisible cube" clears a lot of my confusion.

It was made of at least three parts, and I was editing it as a single thing.

I've read your post a number of times, and it helps a lot.

The "affects final position" is really what happens. I went back to look, and all I did was displace the bra in a funny way. So I pushed it back.

This thing is part of a panther woman outfit, and it's supposed to be made of vines or something like that, and it's (like I said) three or more pieces.

Now that I've looked at what you've said, I think I'll have an easier time of it.

thanks again.

I really need to finally write up a tutorial of how to fit prim clothes. I have been teaching customers and new residents of SL how to do it for ages, but have never taken the time to write everything down. Maybe this will give me the kick I need.

Viktoria's advice is right on target. I would add a few generic hints.

First, be sure that you make any adjustments while you are on a pose stand or are similarly immobilized.

Second, position the garment as well as you can before you start adjusting fit. Positioning will probably change once the fit improves a bit, but it's hard to adjust a garment that's in the wrong place.

Third, use your camera liberally. Zoom in and out, change viewing angles often, and remember to keep an eye on what the whole garment looks like -- not just the part you are working on at the moment.

Fourth, click the Edit Linked Parts box and unclick the Stretch Both Sides box before you start messing with individual parts of the attached article of clothing. (There are times when you might want to stretch both sides, but not many. At least, check the box to be sure you know what you're doing.)

Fifth, if you will be adjusting several similar pieces (panels of a skirt, for example), pay attention to the X:Y:Z size numbers at the top of the screen so all similar pieces are adjusted the same amount.

Sixth, the default frame of reference for anything you are wearing is "Attachment." Sometimes, though, it makes sense to change it to "Local." This is particularly true if you are going to rotate prim elements. It's a pain to adjust the flare of a skirt if the panels are in the Attachment reference frame, for example, but a snap if they are Local.

Seventh, if you make a mistake, all is not lost. CTRL-Z undoes position/size changes that you have made, and that's true for each prim individually. (This is VERY handy to remember when your hand does one of those inexplicable hiccups and flips a skirt panel around backwards.)

Eighth, be prepared to work iteratively. When you change the length of a skirt hem, for example, it may balloon out farther until you readjust the flexi parameters, at which point you have to go back at tweak the hem again. Don't be tempted to try changing several properties of a prim element (size+shape+flexi+position) at once.

It's not really difficult to make minor adjustments to most prim clothing, and it is important to know how. Just as in RL, very few of us are "average" enough to expect clothes to fit perfectly "off the rack." Making major adjustments, however, is an art that is not for the faint-hearted. It's best to build up your confidence by experimenting with expendable freebies before you move on to the big time.

Thanks to you both. I have a big sense of relief, especially about the way "stretch both sides" works... it's nice to know I wasn't crazy - that it wasn't working the way I expected.

If you do write the tutorial, Rolig, please let us know, or pass me a copy inworld. I will be glad to pass it on to others as well.

You explain things very clearly. I think the main thing is, I feel ready to go tackle that outfit again.

Another point to be aware of. Sometimes you try to resize a linked group of prims smaller, and it just won't go as small as you want it. What is usually the problem here is that one or more of the prims in the item has hit the minimum size of 0.010 M in at least one dimension. to continue resizing the item, you must locate that individual prim, and make it thicker.

A good example of that: At "Abranimations and Friends" you can pick up a nice set of free roller skates, that are modifiable. They start out about the right size for an adult female Human, and can easily be scaled upward to fit a larger male. But you can't readily scale them downwards to fit a child-sized avatar.

That drove me bats for a while, as I do have a kid-sized avatar, and I really wanted her to be able to roller skate. Well, the first several times I tried to adjust the skates, I could not locate the thin part. But on examining the skates carefully, I finally found one rectangular bar beneath the sole of the skate shoe, that was only 0.010 thick. I resized that one prim to 0.015, and was then able to reduce the size of the skates by another 1/3 from there.

Wow. I thought it was cause it was whacking up against my body!

Thanks for the tip.

Wow. I consider myself to be an expert builder, and yet, I found some really great advice here.

If you're trying to adjust your prim clothes and you skipped over any of these great posts, go back and read them again. It will be worth your time.

I'm going to add some more advice. Might be particularly relevant since I make and sell panther prim clothing, which can be particularly detailed and complicated. I make several panther loincloth/belts that top out at over 150 prims.

In addition to all that has been said above, one particular difficulty is that prims cannot be unlinked or easily multi-selected while you are wearing them. As a result, more complicated refittings can be arduous and time consuming.

One strategy to employ with clothes that are copy/mod, is what I call "virtual fitting."

1. Throw down a pose stand, put on the garment in question, and hop on the stand.

2. Rez a copy of the garment next to you. Reposition it in world so that it is positioned as exactly as possible in the same place as the one you are wearing.

3. Detach the one you are wearing. You now are on the pose stand with a rezzed copy of the clothing that looks like you are wearing it, but you are not. You can edit it with you on or off the pose stand to your hearts content, unlink it, link it, add parts to it and so on. When you are done, take it back into inventory and wear it. If you want to check it's fit as an attached object along the way, just relink it and take a copy of it into inventory and wear it. The rezzed copy will remain and you can continue to work on it as you please, taking new copies of it each time you want to check fit.

This strategy is particularly helpful if you want to add prims to a given prim object...such as adding a belt or other accessory to a skirt.

One reminder. The fit of a piece of prim clothing is based on the position of the base prim of the object. That is why some skirts for example have invisible cubes as the base prim. If when you relink the object you don't end up with the same base prim as you had before you unlinked the object, the placement information will be lost and you will need to choose an attachment point and reposition the object when you go to wear it.

That's a very clever and useful bit of advice, Heather. When I am creating a skirt, I always build it around myself while I'm on a pose stand, of course. I think most of us do that. I have also been known to have two or three versions of the same proto-skirt floating over neighboring pose stands so that I can try different ideas about length, flare, flexi, and whatever without having to drag them out of inventory one at a time. Somehow, though, your trick of pulling a finished skirt out on inventory and making it a "virtual attachment" while doing alterations hadn't occurred to me. That's brilliant. Thank you.

Heather's trick will also allow someone with mod rights on your stuff to adjust prim attachments for you. Mod rights won't allow you to mod an attachment that is being worn, but if the person is locked in place with a pose stand, and the prim item is simply "in place", as she describes, it works fine!

So I guess I could log in as my alt and fix my clothes that way.

Ha! That would be a hoot!