Requesting tutorial for skirt adjustment for buyers

Hi, I'm not a builder, just an ordinary buyer. I'm 5'4" and petite. Therefore I must adjust nearly any prim skirt or dress because they usually are too wide at the hip.

I ruin about half of the skirts I try to adjust, basically because I don't understand the differences in those little white adjustment boxes. Sometimes I get it right, other times I make a hopeless, unwearable mess out of it and that's the end of that.

If there is an online or in-game tutorial on how to adjust the clothes one buys for good fit, I would love to have that pointed out to me.

Also, some clothing makers design prim skirts in such a way that the top circle of the skirt cannot be shrunk at all, rendering the skirt useless since there is a gap between my hips and the skirt all the way around. My avatar seems to be smaller than most in SL, but in real life terms, the avatar is the same size as me. Something to consider for you clothing makers out there.

Thanks much.

EDIT: To clarify, I'm talking about prim/flex skirts only. I already know that the "normal" skirts, for whatever glitchy reason, are sized too large and that some people have a second "skirt-body" for such clothes. To me that is a hassle and I just don't buy those kinds of skirts at all.

Hello Sweet!

I don't know of a prim skirt adjusting tutorial if one does exist.

If you use the white boxes in the STRETCH option in the edit menu, you are making everything smaller including the skirt length, size of the panels, etc. I'm not sure if this is what you really want to do.

Here is a quick how-to on adjusting. If it doesn't have a waist band, ignore the first part.

If they are modifiable *with* the waist band, then you may have to edit the flexi prims and the waist band individually

- Make a copy of the skirt so if you mess it up you have an original (if the item is copy/mod of course)
- wear the skirt and stand on a posing stand
- right click, select edit, check the "edit linked parts" box in the edit menu
- click on the waist band and choose STRETCH
- you can now adjust the waist band portion to make it smaller in whichever areas you need to
- choose POSITION in the edit menu
- highlight (click) on each prim of the skirt flexi panels and move them towards the waist band (or if there is no waist band, simply move the prims closer together)
- repeat until they are all where you need them to be

Personally I adjust my skirts at a customer's request if she doesn't want to do it herself, or doesn't know how. I know some other creators do this as well as part of good customer service. I'm not sure if this is an option, but it may be worth a go if you buy a lot from one particular designer.

If you have any questions or would like to be walked through the process, IM me in world and I'll either show you how to or talk you through adjusting one of your own skirts.

Best,
~Ari

I don't know of any existing tutorials about this -- they're probably out there, mind, I just don't know where they are -- so here's my own. This might be a bit more information than you want. Also, this isn't a complete guide to editing skirts; there are more precise ways of shrinking them than the ones I'll mention. But for your typical prim skirt, those methods aren't necessary, and this information will hopefully be more than enough.

Before You Begin

First of all, you'll want a posing stand to use while editing the skirt. This isn't strictly necessary, but will make things easier. You can get one for free at Yadni's or at various other places.

If the skirt is copyable, I highly recommend you make a copy and modify that. Just do this in your inventory: copy and paste in the inventory window, and then rename the copy to indicate it's the one you'll be modifying.

I also recommend editing skirts while you're actually wearing them, as this shows you the exact position and angle of the skirt when it's worn, something that can be extremely difficult to match if you're dealing with a copy that you just rezzed on the ground.

Actual Editing

Okay, so you're standing on a posing stand, wearing a copy of the skirt. Now what?

In the top part of the editing window there are radio buttons and tick boxes. The buttons and boxes you'll want to pay attention to are:

Position: this lets you position a prim or set of prims. When this button is ticked, you'll see arrows. Grab an arrow and drag to move the prim or set. If you're editing linked parts, you'll only move the selected prims; if you're editing the entire object, you'll move the entire object. (More on editing linked parts in a few.) Stretching (more on that later, too) moves objects a bit on its own, so it's good to know how to use this.

Rotate: not something you'll use if you're just shrinking a skirt, but potentially useful if you're making fine adjustments to something. If this button is ticked, you'll see circles. Grab a circle and drag to rotate the object. If you're editing linked parts, you'll only rotate the selected prims; if you're editing the entire object, you'll rotate the whole thing.

Stretch: this is what you're really interested in. Stretch lets you stretch or shrink prims or sets of prims. When it's ticked, you'll see little boxes surrounding the prim or set of prims. Click and drag on a box to stretch or shrink the prim or set of prims. If you're editing only one prim, you'll see little white boxes, plus red boxes, blue boxes, and green boxes. If you're editing more than one prim or the entire object, you'll only see the white boxes. What's the difference? The white boxes will stretch the entire prim (or set of prims) equally -- in other words, the object will keep its basic proportions, but will simply be bigger or smaller. The colored boxes will stretch or shrink the prim along one dimension only. In other words, you can make a prim longer or wider or taller without affecting the other dimensions.

While you're stretching objects, you'll want to make sure the "stretch textures" box is ticked. This ensures that the textures on a shrunk skirt look like those on the original. Additionally, if you're stretching individual prims along one dimension, you might want to untick "stretch both sides." This won't do anything if you're using the white boxes to stretch an object, but if you're using the colored ones, unticking it means that if you click and drag to make a prim longer, it'll only get longer in the direction you're dragging.

However, there is a limit to stretching, as you've already discovered. Objects cannot be smaller than 0.01 m in any dimension. If a prim has any dimension that's 0.01 m, it can't be shrunk. And if a set of prims contains any one prim with a dimension that's 0.01 m, the entire set can't be shrunk as a set. This is the problem you're running into with the waistbands. The solution is to make the waistband bigger and then shrink the entire skirt (or to shrink the actual skirt prims on their own). And that brings me to:

Edit Linked Parts: this is a tick box, not a radio button. What this allows you to do is edit only some of the prims in a multi-prim object. Tick it, and then click on a prim in the skirt. The prim you've clicked will have a blue (or sometimes yellow) glowing outline, while the rest of the object has no outline. The glowing outline means the prim is selected: you can now shrink it, rotate it, reposition it, etc. If you click on another prim, it will now be selected instead, and it will be the one with the glowing outline. If you want to edit two or more individual prims at a time, you can do that. How? Click on one prim to select it, then hold down the shift key and click other prims to also select them. Now you should have multiple prims with glowing outlines. If you want to unselect a single prim, hold down the shift key and click it again.

Examples

So, if you wanted to just shrink the entire skirt, you'd go into editing mode, and tick the "stretch" button in the editing window. Then you'd grab one of the little white boxes and drag it until the skirt was small enough. Then you'd tick the "position" button in the editing window, and move the skirt back into position. If the skirt is too small or still too big? Later, rinse, repeat.

If you wanted to shrink a skirt with a problematic waistband (or other part), you'd... well, probably try the above steps until it became apparent that the skirt wasn't getting any smaller. So you'd locate the excessively small prim and tick the "edit linked parts" box and the "stretch" radio button. Then you'd click on the offending prim, figure out which dimension is too small, and stretch the object (probably along that dimension only). If you can't figure out which dimension is giving you the trouble (which won't be a problem for waistbands -- there will only be one dimension in which those are too small), just stretch the object using the white boxes. Then tick the "position" radio button and move the object back towards its original position, if it seems to need it. Then untick "edit linked parts" and shrink the entire object at once. If it needs it, tick the "position" radio button and move the entire object back into place.

If the skirt mostly seems to be the right size but you wish a few prims were in closer to your body, or farther away, or higher or lower or whatever? Check "edit linked parts," click the "position" radio button, and click on a prim you want to move. Move it, and then repeat the process for any other prims you want to move.

I am very grateful to both of you for your wonderfully comprehensive answers. I'm going to have to practice, I see.

Unfortunately, most of the dresses and skirts I buy are no-copy, so it's hard to minimize the risk in the way you've described. Another situation I encounter, and this is where I most often screw up, is skirts with three parts to them (left, right, and center). I have a lot of difficulty adjusting these without messing up. Often, to hide the top points of the prim skirt inside my body, I have to move them in so close that my bottom sticks out of the back of the skirt.

Rarely do the skirts look on me as they look on the box, and I just wish I was a little more adept at adjusting them. I'm going to print off your two replies and consult them closely as I try to fix the skirts I have right now that are unwearable, and as I try to adjust new outfits.

Thanks again so much!

I make prim skirts, and the butt always gives me trouble, too. Sometimes making individual prims longer or shorter helps, but not always.

The other thing that sometimes works is changing the angle of the individual prims around the butt, so that they're angled out more from the body; this will, ideally, let them cover the bottom while burying the top points in your avatar's body. If you decided to do this, you'll probably want to go to the drop down menu in the edit window and change it to "local." Change it back when you're done. Setting it to "local" will cause the axes of rotation to be based around the prim itself (or selected prims themselves), instead of using the global north-south, east-west, up-down axes. It makes it much easier to only change that one angle. The problems with this approach, though, are that it can be tricky, it will change the shape of the skirt a bit, it can result in a certain kind of gap in the skirt, and it doesn't always work. It's not something I'd try with a no copy skirt.

Ultimately, it may be impossible to get the skirt to look like it does on the box, since the model has a different shape than you do.

I also recommend going to the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives, if you've got some time and want a really good grasp on editing. It's an extensive building tutorial, with plenty of examples. (When I went through it something like a year ago, it was on buildable land, so you could practice what you were reading about right there. I don't know if this is still the case.) Not all of it will be useful to you if you just want to edit clothing you've bought, but much of it will.