Mini Tutorial on Shoes

I have had several people emailing me and asking at my in-world clothing classes about prim shoes and especially, the invis prim for the heels.

Although, shoes are technically building, they are certainly part of clothing, at least for women. That and because the questions were first asked here I am posting this in the Design & Texture forum.

Let me state up front that I am not an accomplished shoe designer. I have dabbled in them from some months, producing two sets of wearable shoes; a pair of color changing wedges and some basic hi-heel sandals, which can become the base for several designs. I simply haven’t had the time to work on them more. This mini-tutorial will be based on my limited knowledge. Others may be able to add to it.


First and foremost shoes are a building project. If you aren’t at least comfortable with building things, shoes aren’t for you. I lump shoes and jewelry together as a specialty subset of building because; they are far different from building houses or furniture.

In making shoes you will be working with very small pieces. This is because of the 0.001 meter limit on any prim. If you attempt to make a large shoe and then shrink it down to size, you will most likely find it stops shrinking before it gets small enough, unless you wear a size 10 DD shoe. You will reach the 0.001 meter limit on some part before you get it small enough.

Learn about the weird types of prims, like the torus and how to torture them. Experiment with shaping and twisting the prims. You will find knowledge of what tortured prims look like to be very helpful, when trying to make a piece look real.

Start by imitating. Take a pair of prim shoes and photograph them. Go to edit so the prims are visible and take pictures of your shoes. In this way you will get an idea of what can be done and how it is done. You can also use another shoe to get an idea of size. Just how big should your shoe be?

When you start making shoes stay simple. SL shoes don’t need straps to stay on your foot. Make the base; sole and heel. Make each piece a different color. This helps immensely in aligning the small pieces. Once you have a shoe shape that looks correct it is time to make your foot.

If you are not familiar with prim shoes, they come is threes. You will have primitive objects making the left and right shoe. You will have a third piece, the foot. It looks like a foot icon in your inventory.

In SL we make a foot that sinks through the shoe to the ground. To get your prim shoe to fit your foot, you mold the foot. Go into appearance and using the sliders change the height, thickness, width of heel and toe to fit the dimension of your prim shoe. It helps if you have an approximate foot with a pair of prim shoes that is modifiable. You can use it and just modify the foot to fit your new prim shoe. Be sure and SAVE AS.

Because the foot goes through the shoe to the floor, you often need to hide it. You don’t want to gross out your boy friend with deformed feet wrapped around your cute little stiletto heels. This is where the invisaprim (my word) comes in. It is a prim that has a transparent texture and invisible script. I don’t know how it works but, it will hide your foot, while allowing your cute stiletto heel to show.

You want to shape the invisaprim to fit up under the shoe. Make it tall enough and wide enough to hide any part of the foot that might stick out from under the shoe. You are now ready to try on your shoe.

Attach it to one foot. Move it around and slide it back and forth using the CTRL positioning rings or the positioning numbers until it fits. I find this to be the worst part of shoe making. Rarely will the shoe fit right. You will find that you have to modify one or more of it’s prims.

Remove the shoe, unlink the parts adjust the offending part. Re-link the parts and often, you will have to go through the entire process of realigning the shoe all over again. This can be frustrating. When it is finally done to your satisfaction, texture the shoe using standard textures or just tinting. Now duplicate it and rename it to the other foot. Using the attach selection, attach it to you other foot and align, as before.

Now, go out and make the other girls drop dead envious of your new prim shoes. If you want a copy of the invisaprim, I will place one in a gift box at my store, “Jennifer’s.” It is located in Hagen. You can find it in Find. Go there and get a copy. This way it will be available 24/7.

I hope this is helpful

Jen

Thanks for the ideas! One of my own to add: use a posing stand. They're free, but I'm not really sure where to get one. They just kinda showed up in my inventory over the years. It's basically an object that you "sit" on that uses the Editing Appearance animation to hold you still, and your feet straight and pointed forward at zero degrees (or whatever angle you rotate the pose stand).

This way you can build the shoe on your foot to make sure it fits from prim one, without having to wear it yet.

Also, I request of budding prim shoe makers to make their shoes modifyable, or at least make them in several sizes for those of use without Barbie feet.

Good point Lora. There is no way you will get the shoe adjusted correctly without a stand. I forgot to mention that.

Jen

Jennifer, thank you so much for this information! I went to your store but the box with the prim doesn't allow copies or allow it to be taken. I'm sort of new so maybe I"m doing something wrong. Seems I need on instructions on how to get instructions hehe

I'm not Jennifer (obviously!), but did you try right clicking and selecting "Buy"?

Hi Jennifer! This looks great, but you don't have to Unlink the shoe to manipulate the prims.

Just click in the box that says "Edit Linked Parts" in the top section to enable it, and then click on individual prims, or Shift click on several of them, to tweak them to your heart's content.

When you are happy with the result, just click again to disable "Edit Linked Parts" and the object will behave like a single thing again.

This prevents you from accidentally choosing a different Root prim, which is where the realignment problems you're having come from. (A linked group uses the Root prim for alignment, name, overall perms, and all the rest of that. The Root is the one you click on last. If you click the prims in a different order, it changes which is the Root, and so changes the object alignment, name, etc.)

This should make your shoe-building life quite a bit simpler!

And, everyone, if you need a Posing Stand, I have one that's free to copy at my store in Benten, and also one in the package with the UV Suit (the one that you can wear to see the map on you) in the Texture Tutorials right next to my store.

Hope this helps!

I apologize to all who attempted to get the invisibility prim. I forgot to set the script to copy. (Hey Lindens! Sometimes, you sure make it darn difficult to do things around here. You need a wedding cater’s checklist, to make sure you checked off everything.)


Anyway, it is fixed now. Just Right click, More and Take copy. Please don’t take the box. Someone behind you may want it too.

The box contains a heel prim with an invisibility script.

I also put out a posing stand that is free to copy.

Jen

Well, I warned ya'll that I was not an expert at building. (That's what happens when you have a b/f who is.)


Robin, I know I am half blind but, it is like DUH!! I can’t believe I never knew that before. Mucho thanks for the tip. ** makes note to see if b/f knows this cool trick.**

Jen

Jen, don't feel bad! It's easy to miss things in a crowded interface.

I've been using PS forever, and just the other day I was reading a tutorial and found out that a tiny little unlabled flippy triangle in the "Texturizer" filter dialog would allow me to use any .psd file on my disk as a texture! I, too, was like DUH! I've been trying to figure out how to get my own textures in there for years, and just never saw that flippy, because I was expecting a "Load ..." at the bottom of the menu! (I admit, I had to do the Happy Happy Joy Joy Dance when it was pointed out to me. )

So yeah, it happens. That's what forums like this are for, and why I always read through all the tutorials. Because you never know when someone else will have spotted somthing you just never saw.

Nice job Jen, I added this thread to the Great tutorial Links sticky. woot!! woot!!

I would love to get a copy of the invisa prim, I tried to find Jennifer's but when I go to find it just won't come up for me. Would someone have it in their heart to send me a landmark ??? It would be greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks Nyla Cheeky

Found Jennifer's YAY!!! For everyone looking make sure your mature content box is checked off!

Ok now that i got a shoe made, how do i get a walk?? Do i have to make my own or do ppl sell them with the perms to resell? Anyone have an idea where to point me
Thanks!!

The only person I know selling copy-transfer anims is Nyterave Designers group, although whether they sell any walks I'm not sure.

There must be others out there that do, but I've not seen any.

Most folks prepare an AO in one of the prims (for some reason the right shoe is the favourite) and off you go...

The animations forum is probably a better place to hunt around for animation though, good luck!

I would suggest using a standard AO that you wear as a separate attachment rather than something that inside the shoe itself. This way you (or a customer) can use a particular walk they like (that is in their current AO) and not have to worry about a conflict with the shoes. And that also gives you more ability as you can use several walks with the same shoe, or several different shoes with the same walk without having to edit the shoes or buy a lot of different animations for each different version of the shoe.

-DB

Yeah, what should I do about that? I would like to have the same walk no matter what shoes I wear. But if I buy a walking animation, will it conflict with the animation in my shoes? If the shoes are modifyable, how can I turn off the animation?

It can conflict with a walk in the shoe (and usually will). Most shoes that do have a built in walk, have a way to turn it off(check with the designer). For those that don't you can wear the shoe and right click and go to edit (as if you were going to adjust them) then go to tools menu at the top menu of the screen and select "set scripts to not running in selection" and repeat for each shoe. This sometimes does not work anymore due to the changing of perimssions (and I hope the Lindens put it back soon).

You can renable the walk by selecting the shoes and then going to the tools menu and selecing "set scripts to running in selection". But as I said most have a method of turning them off to avoid conflicts with pose balls, standard AO's etc.

A single walk animation is usually quite reasonable and less that a 100L. The standard AO unit is freely available and most animation stores have them so you don't have to go looking for them. If you have trouble finding one, message me in-world and I will send you one.

-DB

Some shoe designers put the walk in their shoes. Personally, I dont like it since I have my walk on my ao.... if I buy a shoe that has the walk, I remove it.

Make shoes without it, I think is better so they dont interfere with people's ao.. just a suggestion.

Yes I agree as it gives more options to the user. And I neglected to mention that you can remove the walk animation and script from the shoes even if it a no modify object. However those shoes will never be able to use the walk again, if it was no modify. Also keep in mind that some walks are custom made for a special shoe and may or may not work with another replacement walk (I have seen one or two like this, but they are not that common in general).

-DB

I think the best option is to make two right shoes - one with walk replacer and one without and include both. I noticed Jeepers Creepers (my fave, casual shoes evah) did that and I thought, "omg how cool, why doesn't everyone do this?" I personally remove the script when there is one cuz i dont like the particular "sexy walk" everyone seems to throw in them. It's too slow and annoys me. I like the one in my AO.

However, as a noob I remember how nice it was to have the walk replacer since I hadn't figured out how to load up an AO yet. The default walk is hideous, let's face it and having the option of walk replacer is just a nice extra for newer residents.

It's all about options. Since its easy to simpy include one without the replacer, why not offer customers both?

Just my two cents.

Lora, Shoe designers do not make shoes mod because of the detailed, time consuming work put into all those tiny pieces and folks like to come along and copy them prim by prim for resale. Some shoe designers have size 0 and size 9 shoes in their boxes (Shiny Things comes to mind with at least some of her designs) to help with the issue a little.

Char