Stupid newbie question

So I've gotten the hang of making clothes that use transparencies to modify the look of the default shirt, pants, and skirts in SL. I had some tough moments last night trying to do a pattern that had elliptical cut-outs that spanned the front/back seams, but from what I understand that's not unusual for most of us. A little care, some previews of "Female upper half" and I saved myself a lot of $10L uploads before I finally got it right.

But my next design is going to be a step up. I want to add some scarves or ribbons to dresses. I've done the tutorial on attaching prims to prims, and it's my assumption that it will be the way I'll have to do this.

I'm confident I can play with it long enough to figure out the basics, but in the interests of saving myself some bruises from failed efforts, I wanted to ask about your experience in trying to attach prims to your clothing. Any pitfalls I should know about? Any helpful shortcuts, tools, etc. that would make it easier?

To give you a rough idea of some of the possibilities I have in mind, check out this pic. Both the tiara and the sleeve ruffles look to me like they could be done with small prims attached to the avatar.



Closeup of the tiara:


Similar gown with a complex train:


If you think I'm nuts for even contemplating stuff like this (at least in the flower of my newbiness) please say so Talk me down gently.

Cindy

Okay, here are my thoughts on this. (Beautiful dress, btw.) The tiara is relatively simple. You can do the whole thing with a well made texture on a sphere and a cylinder. The sleeve ruffles are another matter. The problem is the way they hang. When the bride has her arm at her sides, the ruffles are inline with the forearms, but when she extends her arms outward, the ruffles stay parallel to the body, hanging off the elbows. This is may be possible to do, but it would be very complicated. Sice attachments are immune to all physics, including gravity, you'd need to fake it with a system that turn multimple prims visible or invisible, relative to the position of the av's arms. That would require some pretty slick scripting, not to mention the multitude of alpha sorting problems you'd have, and it would probably be a lag monster and a half. If it were me, I'd just us real sleeves, and forget about the fact that they move with the forearms instead of with gravity. Until we get real cloth simulations in SL, this kind of thing will be always be extremely problematic.

as usual i agree with everything chosen says...

would add that you will find prims to move differently when your av moves depending on the attach point. the best was to figure out what works best is to play around... walk, dance, etc with your prims attached

also remember that you can sometimes get better movement action by attaching prims to different points... i.e. don't create a single "sleeve unit" of linked prims and attach the whole to your arm, but instead break it into components and attach the pieces to hand, lower arm, upper arm, etc.

Thank you, Chosen. In my muddled, inexperienced thinking I was fully prepared for gravity-defying ruffles. After all, I have some of the best hair available in SL and my "long" style sticks out behind me like a perverted stalagmite if I lower my head I'm all for expediency until I feel like I have mastered all the object/scripting manipulation.

Since I haven't even touched scripting yet, I think the rest of that idea will have to wait a long time, barring one of my scripthound friends coming up with a solution.


Very useful to know, Forseti. Multiple prims I could do. I'm assuming that once I have all the components built, linking them to the garment isn't tough, right?

*takes a deep breath, swallows hard, and prepares to dive in feet first*

Cindy

note that when i said you can break your prim items into multiple components to attach in various spots, first be aware that some spots are quite popular for things like hair that people are loathe to swap out, also note that i'm not necessarily talking about 1-prim items -- you may need to build multiple prim items within each component.


couple pointers: to link prims, simply drag-select them (helpful often to turn on "select only my objects" or use the shift key to multiple select. Then under tools i believe (don't have it in front of me) you will see the Link and Unlink commands. The last prim that is selected will be the parent prim which will dictate rotation and placement, so if you drag select, you can choose your parent prim by holding down shift and unselecting, then reselecting the desired prim.

to attach to your body (you don't really attach to clothes, just to the avatar) simply right click on the item in inventory and select the attach point from the list.

it is VERY useful to get a pose stand so that you can control how your av is positioned while you 1. build your prim items, and 2. position them once they are attached.