SL Clothes Previewer

No, the file was not pulled on purpose. I'll check on the file in a minute. This has happened before, the file just randomly disappears from their server. What can I say, it's free hosting; maybe they share a facility with the asset server

And yeah, a few mirrors would be great. I'll probably add a list of mirrors to the first post in this thread.

ADDITION: alright it's fixed, sorry bout that

I downloaded and started it but it says unable to create 3d scene and crashes ....

I have also encountered this problem.

Well first try closing SL before you run slcp, that makes a difference for some people. If that doesn't work, it may just not work on your computer; there's little I can do about that, sorry. Hopefully SLCP 2 will work on a wider variety of systems, but I'm not sure when exactly I'll be able to release that

I'm getting an "unable to create 3D scene" error message

I'm running it as a Win2K virtual machine under VMWare ... what Windows stuff are you relying on? Active X? .NET?

I can add things to the virtual machine if they are needed.

OH ... and if you are willing to open source it, you cna put it on Sourceforge.net

Keep in mind that people WILL want to improve it for you.

It doesn't use either ActiveX or .net, it uses DirectX for rendering. Are you sure that virtual machine supports 3D? I know the Windows emulators for Mac don't support 3D.

k I suppose I'll put the code on Sourceforge later when I have a minute. As I mentioned before in this thread, I don't know how many people would actually be able to do anything with the code since I used a relatively obscure development tool called Blitz3D, but since Sourceforge doesn't cost me anything and I have no problem with opensourcing this I suppose I will. Do I need to include a license document or can I just say LPGL on the Sourceforge page?

ADDITION: Actually, I probably won't bother putting up the code for SLCP 1. SLCP 2 is better; I wrote it using a closely related development tool called BlitzMax (www.blitzmax.com) which uses OpenGL and is cross-platform. The first thing that would be nice for someone else to do would be to compile it for Windows, since I only have a Mac!

ADDITION2: alright here's the project page http://sourceforge.net/projects/slcp/
The code isn't actually posted yet though; I haven't used sourceforge before, so I can't figure out how to set it up, and I gotta go to work so I can't mess around with it anymore right now.

Okay sourceforge is pretty annoying. As a total computer nerd this is embarrassing to admit, but all this CVS mumbo jumbo just confuses the hell out of me. Besides, this isn't a huge software project so much of it seems like overkill. I just updated the Mac download to include the sourcecode in the zip; if anyone with BlitzMax (plus the GUI and miniB3D modules for BlitzMax) cares to compile that for Windows, have at it!

Hi I quickly tested slcp2 under Mac OS X 10.4.10 Intel, here is what I can say :

- middle mouse zoom doesn't work
- right shift zoom doesn't work, only left
- crash when removing SKIRT.JPG with the button
- why only TGA, HEAD.JPG etc are JPEG, it forces us to convert even for quick tests
- what are the different layers for each part, they have no name
- scene and files are not saved

Thanks for the feedback!


That's odd that middle mouse doesn't zoom for you, it works fine when I try it. Are you using one of the new mighty mouse things from apple, or a more standard 3-button mouse from another manufacturer?

Right-shift isn't supposed to zoom. The right mouse button is for panning the camera around; Use left-shift to zoom.


doh, good catch. I'll look into this bug.


You have a point that I ought to switch the template textures to TGA for consistency. However, it makes sense to only allow TGA for loading, since you should always be using TGA file format for uploading to SL. Besides, for every layer other than the base layer you should have alpha transparency, and that's only supported in TGA format.


I didn't really see any point to naming the layers. As it is, the layer names in SL aren't actually followed (eg. skins are on the tattoo layer.) Just load your texture on whichever layer is available and works for you.

I also didn't see any point to saving the scene. It's not like you are editing the images in SLCP, you only view them. The image files aren't affected by SLCP, and it only takes a few seconds to load up all your images again to continue what you were working on the night before (or whenever.)

Yes.


I meant the right shift key, not button.


Well it's a preview app, I don't think you can reasonably ask files to be converted just to be previewed.
A lot of people don't create their own textures and get them from the Web, not always in TGA.


If I mainly create male clothes, or like the window larger, or a different background color, or if I want different UVW maps, or if I'm working for several days on a several layers - I'd like those things to be remembered for the next time.

Off-topic:

Johan, I'm not into the clothing business. But I want to make you a big compliment about your couples animations sets. I got the combined one. Very good work! Thanks!

aw thanks man


ah well I would expect that the mighty mouse is doing something weird with it's middle mouse button, considering it can also do sideways scrolling. The middle-mouse functionality of SLCP is designed for more standard 3 button mice; incompatibility with Apple's odd hardware is why I also had a way of zooming using the left-mouse button.


Thanks for the clarification. Still unsure what's wrong though; for a second I thought I forgot to enable it for both shift keys, but I just tested it and it works fine for me. Anyone other than Simil notice this?


*shrug* difference of opinion then. I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect people to convert images they've downloaded.


Okay, well if I have some free time next week I'll add saving. I wouldn't have thought of saving the window size but I can totally do that too. Should I save the camera position or is that too much? Also, should this be actual load/save functionality, or should it be that SLCP just remembers what the scene was like when it was last quit?

Finally got my desktop computer repaired, and right away I compiled SLCP 2 on Windows. Sure enough, just as I had expected when I ported the code, it compiled without any modification to the code I wrote on a Mac:
http://www.fileden.com/files/2006/10/8/271989/slcp_win.zip

Cool! what are the new features of the update?

Also a question.. looks liek in th eolder version,m you could search and use your own jpg images for skin.. in the new version only targa files are supported?

Now that sl allows 24 bit png images, and they are much easier to create them tga files, any chance of png support as well as targa?

Well, the new features are mostly in the improved UI. So like now you can resize the window, or set the background color to anything you want, stuff like that. Also, hopefully this rewrite will work on a wider variety of systems (although I'm not actually certain.) The core functionality, of loading images onto layers and displaying on an SL av, is still the same.

As I was saying to Simil just a couple posts up, while I could support jpeg (or png) I have chosen to require TGA in order to enforce better content development habits. You shouldn't ever be using either format for making SL textures; TGA is superior. Those file formats are used for web images because they compress the data into smaller files, but with jpeg that is at a cost of image quality. As for png being easier to create than TGA, that's an illusion. In fact, png is more limited in how you can do transparency and/or or more cumbersome to achieve the exact same effects. The one thing they allow that TGA doesn't is using the eraser to rub out parts of your image and save that, and that approach is very problematic for a number of reasons. If you spend just a little time familiarizing yourself with the tools in Photoshop, creating an alpha channel for TGA is much more efficient (seriously, it takes only seconds, a couple minutes at most.) Chip goes into details in many many other threads so I won't bother to rehash it all here.

Reasons that all make sense....but...

Every time I want to make a new targa though, I have to plow through 10 pages of chip's thread, trying to find the easiest targa creation solution in photoshop cs2. Last time I think I spent almost an hour hunting through it again, and finally gave up, and used a png instead, after additional forums hunting remembering there was a 2-3 click photoshop solution.

The ONLY time I've EVER used targa in 25 years of doing computer graphics, has been for sl content creation.

Please don't get me wrong, support and developement for a free tool is always great, and I don't want to sound ungrateful.

if I did targas every other day, it wouldn;t be an issue, because I'd remember whoch technique to use, but since I use them once in a blue moon, I (and a lot of my content creation freinds) always end up going on the hunt again, trying to remember which method was easiest/best.

"Computer graphics" is a broad category; if you do print graphic design or web design then it's not surprising that you've never used targa before. In 3D graphics however targa is a very widely used file format, and SL is an example of 3D graphics.

What do you do? I was just a wee tot back then so I guess I may be off-base, but as far as I know computer graphics barely even existed 25 years ago.

Fantastic update, Johann! I love being able to resize the view and use the mouse buttons for moving around the model.

I have one weird minor problem, though. I have a Logitech G5 mouse, the kind with 3 different tracking speeds, and when I click into the SLCP window, it forces the mouse into the fastest speed. I can click into another window and readjust the speed, but when I click backl into SLCP, it speeds up again.

I remember having this same problem with the last version, but it went away for some reason that I don't know. Its a pretty minor inconvenience, I know, but if you have any ideas, I'd love to know.

And thanks again for a great product!

Actually, the Atari 800 was used "back in the day" for simple commercial text and titles. A few years later, the Amiga came along, which ended up with lightwave 1.0, and the video toaster, and was widely used for music vidoe and commercial computer graphics. Lightwave is still in use today, and I've been on and off with it all this time, yet in all these years, I never found any need or use for targa until SL, because of the lack of compatible formats.

And believe it or not, I still HAVE my old atari 800, and amiga systems, in good working order as well! Just for giggles every now and then I'll fire them up and tinker with them, but that's really only for nostalgia's sake anymore. I'm sure one of these days, I'll turn one of them on, and they'll have left this mortal coil.

What an awesome tool, Johan!! Thank you so much!

THis Is a great preview , even though I have no idea how to make clothes , well maybe just a little ....

I have had to Import so many trials on templates of clothes I tried making Into SL , 10Linden 10Linden 10Linden 10Linden ....

Now I can see what I'm making before importing the final result , thanks John , your a money saver

love your animations as well , good luck and all the best )

Can anyone advise why i am unable to access this program pls? I downloaded it, unzipped it and thought i was up and running. When I try to open the prog it gives me an error message telling me that i have a memory acces violation!!!!

Would be very grateful for any suggestions!!???
thanks - Susie

Have you unzipped everything into one folder? It's not enough to extract just the executable, you need all of the files.

Hi, First thanks for this, Its an amazing tool.

I am having 1 problem tho, the skirt layer, it has one button, says skirt.jpg, i clicked it and chose my file but nothing happens?

am I doing something wrong?

Nat

Edit: I found it lol I forgot to go to scene and choose toggles skirt