Avatar Howto

I'm very impressed by the following Avatar and would love to have some idea as to how it was created, specifically the 'hiding' of the default skin?

http://secondlife.blogs.com/photos/nwn/jaylene_slide_by_mechanique_thirty.jpg

I know about the "invisi-prim" that can make the Avatar seem invisible and I have an idea about how to customise the skin ... what I can't work out is how do I hide the basic Avatar? Or am I missing something fundamental ... most likely

Thanks
Leon

the invisi-prim does inded make your basic av (skin and clothes) invisible - as well as attachment textures that have an alpha channel (I think)

But - attachments with solid textures still appear - what you are seeing with this particular av is a whole bunch of attachments consisting of prims twisted/cut and hollowed in various ways.

So, just to check I'm understanding correctly.

The 'default' avatar is being hidden by one or more invisi-prims and the visible bits are attached (to the avatar) as solid coloured prims, i.e. the prim attachments have no 'alpha' layers present?

Thanks
Leon

absolutely correct.

the left foot, for example, is wearing an attachment that consists or one or more invisiprims (to hide the foot) and two spheres that have been cut and hollowed, painted yellow on the outside and red on the inside. the invisis and spheres are linked together to form one attachment for the foot.

the right foot is similar, but the spheres are cut and positioned differently

the lower leg attachment is probably an elongated sphere invisiprim linked to a tortured prim or two.

Thanks that makes sense. Now, as an aside if I wanted to make say a 'skeleton' I'd have to 'hide' the real avatar and rebuild the skeleton and attach it to the real avatar, bit by bit ... that is quite a tedious task Especially as you couldn't use 'alpha' masking to get just the right shape to the bone!

Thank you very much for explaining though.

Leon