Avatar Clothing Issue - Advice Requested

Hi folks,

I initially joined SL in April and recieved new clothes from new friends and from freebie places. Due to some personal events I left SL for 2 months deleting the software but not my account. About 3 weeks ago I returned to SL uploading the latest version and then experienced the clothing issue that has plagued me since. The issue I am having is this:

I can dress my avatar in jeans and shoes and objects no problems. However I cannot place a shirt on the chest of my avatar. It simply doesn't appear. And if a shirt/jacket does appear it is not on for long. This is frustrating as I have not been able to find any help modules. I went shopping and purchased new shirts and the same thing happened, I cannot wear them.

I am requesting any help or advice. Many of the shirts on my inventory from prior to me leaving don't wear anylonger. These shirts were given by fellow users. My skin and shape and hair is fine, as I purchased those before leaving and they are still in place.

Any help or advice anyone. And thank-you in advance for help given.

Cheers,
Petar

PS: What does the term Rez mean? And do I need to Rez stuff in my inventory? And if so how? I am a basic (free) account holder and can't access any of the tutorials. I purchased more shirts and now they appear as boxs..I payed 200 Lindens and they were shirts. Again any help would be really appreciated.

Petar

Hi Petar, here is a few things you can try. Even though you uninstalled SL quite some time ago and reinstalled it recently, unless you went in and manually deleted your cache location folder, it may still be retaining some old data regarding your avatar appearance. I have seen this happen before. I would suggest locating the folder and deleting everything within it.

It's normally found here:

C:\Documents and Settings\YourSystemUserName\Application Data\SecondLife\

Once you restart SL, it has the same effect of doing a clear cache from within the client, except it truly eliminates everything stored, including any preferences you may have changed, so you'll need to reset those.

If this doesn't seem to help, goto the client menu, if you don't have it, it can be invoked by hitting ctrl-alt-d. Then go; Client->Character->Rebake Textures. Give this a few mins to take effect, you'll usually see it occur, your avatar's clothing, skin etc will kinda go real fuzzy then gradually clear back up. This is SL rebaking (reloading) all the texture information that composes your avatar's appearance. Once this is complete, if it still hasn't corrected the issue, then the last thing I would surmise is you have a corrupted asset (have seen this before also). You'll have to go through a process of elimination to find what it is you are wearing (it will not be an object based attachment) like your skin, shirts (all layers) and just replace them one by one, and rebake perhaps in between.

To rez and object means to drop it on the ground where build is permitted. In the case of "Boxed" clothing, you just need to find someplace you can build, drag the item (box) from your inventory window to the ground in front of you, then right-click the box and select "open". Then you can choose "copy to inventory" and it will move the contents of the box, to a new folder in your inventory.

Hope this all helps!

Thanks Rhyph for the info and advice.

I will attempt to do all you said tonight after work. I've come down with a savage cold.

Cheers.
Petar

lol Petar I bet you have a cold!

I have never heard of this problem, and I bet you happen to be accidently wearing something, or some collection of things, that is causing it. Have you checked your inventory for everything you're wearing? This is simpler and quicker than deleting your cache files etc..

You do it (apologies if you already know this) by opening inventory and typing WORN in the search line (lower case is fine). Everything you are actually wearing will show up in bold. Take EVERYTHING off (particularly a skin if one shows up) and put on just one of the shirts you bought. Then rebake textures, as described above.

And one more question. Are you using a standard human avatar, like one of the default ones from when you first signed up? If you changed at some point to a really bizarre avatar made of prims (like a tiny or a transformer or something), perhaps that could cause a problem that looks like this. Your shirt could possibly be hidden by part of the avatar? Test this by going into your library and choosing a simple avatar. (First be sure you write down the name of the avatar you want to go back to!)

Good luck!

In advance thanks again to Rhyph and Nika for your two help.

I tried several things that you both told me to check on with some limited success. Rhyph thanks for telling me how to Rez, I managed to go to a place where build was possible and rez several pieces of clothing and objects and copy them into my inventory. That part is done and with success. When I picked the option copy and wear the clothes came on. When I changed to another shirt it went back to being bare chested.

I manually deleted the SL cache where Rhyph told me and that didn't help at all. I accessed the Client mode and rebaked textures, that didnt help. I attempted to rebake individual shirts. This led to this unique issue, I can see the outlines of shirts on my avatar but not the shirt itself. Several of my friends said the same thing.

I then decided to return to the test male avatar from scratch and found I could not put on a shirt with that standard avatar either, it only came out as an outline.

I next decided to spend 2000 lindens and brought myself a new shape and skin thinking this may alleviate the issue. I found out I could put on new clothes I had brought on the spot and the shirt stayed on. But if I changed shirts, the shirt would disappear and the new shirt's bare outline would appear only.

Nika in answer to your question I am using a standard human form avatar, with no enhancements other than the new shape and skin. Thanks for showing me the WORN feature.

I must have a problem that LOL only I can come up with! And yes still sick as a dog with a savage cold (hate winter)!!!!!!

Cheers,
Petar

Petar you poor thing! The only thing that I can think of, if you and others are seeing this, is a server performance issue. Have you tried this in more than one sim? If you are doing this in a crowded area (lots of green dots on your minimap; a sim typically becomes very slow at around 40 avatars) or in a very slow sim (one on an old server) your clothes may simply not be rezzing completely. Try going to Lime, often mentioned as a low-lag sim. Note that LL is rolling out a fix even as I type which should fix a bug that has been causing VERY slow rezzing this last couple of weeks.

I suppose the same thing could be happening if you are using a really marginal PC yourself. Here are the minimums PC requirements, from the sysreqs page: http://secondlife.com/corporate/sysreqs.php

Internet Connection*: Cable or DSL
Operating System: Windows XP (Service Pack 2)
OR Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4)
NOTE: Second Life does NOT currently support Windows Vista
Computer Processor: 800MHz Pentium III or Athlon, or better
Computer Memory: 256MB or better
Video/Graphics Card**:
nVidia GeForce 2, GeForce 4mx, or better
OR ATI Radeon 8500, 9250, or better


If it is still happening, try posting in the Resident Answers forum instead. It's really a better place for this sort of "I'm using SL and it's borked" kind of questions.