Turn Edit Lines Off Client-side

Reason: small parts+edit lines=very annoying at times.

especially when working with some extremely small stuff and those darn edit lines just blind you. Even if you change to a subtle color, they still seem to get in the way when zoomed in on the small part. So i just thought that "client side" on and off function somewhere would come in handy at some point and time. I'm sure my fellow micro-builders out there would agree on this one

*Edit*
Just remembered the option to "hide particles" under View>Beacons>Hide Particles

Works like a charm. Sorry about the unwanted post but this info might be of some use to somone so some good use might come out of it

There's also a thread floating around somewhere about an edit you cna do to the second life .config files to make the lines smaller.

And BTW, tiny details that need those lines turned off are best left to a texture. SL has a hard enough time rendering things as it is, we don't need 30 prim diamond rings.

There are some details just cannot be matched by mere texture. And yes, i understand that everyone is intitled to their opinion...but frankly i haven't noticed any problems rendering my smallish prims. Ricx is also another a good example of beautiful "small" primwork.

Exactly, 1st rule of 3D modelling - If nobody is going to notice, don't.

I guess i should have been clearer on my statement. we aren't talking 0.1 size here. I was reffering to like "small" as in around 0.30 + meters. Still very visible stuff if made into like say a necklace and all the prims are viewable at a fair distance. Not "Super Micro ZOMG I can't even see one of the links from here", small . At any rate, back to topic about edit lines...I work close anyway, as I always have in all my 3D apps. Even some larger stuff. The edit lines just tended to be a general annoyance. And I still hope the info about turning them off helped someone No harsh feelings to Draco18s, or ninjafoo

I do work very close myself and have to remind myself sometimes "the only person who knows its not 100% perfect is you" - Usually, if the editor is getting in the way its time to step back a second.

Although I do concede the edit lines can be a real PITA when precisely aligning things.

What I typically do is work at the 1.0 size, link the whole object, then size it down as a whole object. Iv'e had a lot of luck doing things that way.

It also shows me what prim's I can remove because they are too small to be seen at the smaller version.

Note: the original post is referring to edit PARTICLES not the selected prim/object wireframe-esque outline highlight.

It's about the particles emitted from your paws to the object you create. If the object is very small, the "edit line particles" are very much in the way. It's not about editing particle, it's not about if small prims are good or not.. it's just about how to make that situation better ^^.

Unfortunately, there's not much the end-user CAN do to "make that situation better" besides disabling particles completely, which is mindless workaround. LL needs to at least add a settings.ini option to disable edit particles but preferably an in-SL option. Edit particles could also just get clipped when the cam is x distance away from the cam-focused object, or the particles could get smaller as they approach the selected object.

In Windows, in the C:\Program Files\Secondlife\app_settings folder, there is a file called viewerart.ini .

In this file, which is a text file, there is a line that starts with "pixiesmall.tga".

Replace the key that follows "pixiesmall.tga" with f54a0c32-3cd1-d49a-5b4f-7b792bebc204 , which is the key for a transparent texture.

This will make the avatar effects stream vanish completely without disabling other particles.

I tried this and it worked.

Creating a texture which is clear except for a narrow column of white pixels,and using that as the key to assign to pixiesmall.tga might makes an extremely thin effects stream (edit beam) which is still annoying when when editing small objects but much less so than the default. The default texture used for the effects stream is a 128 by 128 pixel texture which is mostly transparent with a white circle and some shading and highlighting applied, so I made a replacement texture with those dimensions, all clear, with just single white pixel in the middle as a minimalist effects stream texture. This worked also.

It might be possible to make a texture with a thin vertical colum tht only goes part of the way up, this might keep the effects stream from going through and sticking out the back of objects in the .01 size range.

I just tried the above, a 128 by 128 texture with a thin white vertical stripe in the center that starts at the bottom and stops at the center. This does give a thin effects stream that doesn't go through the back of a .01x.01x.01 box.

The key for the texture I made is 83e724f0-3bb6-c9f5-2698-98b7f925aeba ,
so to give this a try one would replace the line in viewerart.ini that starts with "pixiesmall.tga" with "pixiesmall.tga 83e724f0-3bb6-c9f5-2698-98b7f925aeba" .

The blank in between tga and the key probably needs to actually be a TAB character.

I just tried a thin triangle, the key for that is 50960e2b-009b-ee95-7f27-2570e303a708

Obviously you didn't try it on a default particle effect because replacing this texture replaces the default particle texture, which is used for default particle effects--not JUST the edit particles!

Well excuuuuuuse me!

I assumed the wiki's description, "The particle texture used for avatar editing beams.", was correct and complete.

---- tries out a particle system ----


Alright, now I have tried it and you are right (duh, of course, he didn't just make it up).

However, folks still might prefer to use this when they are doing intensive jewelry making or other small object editing, yet still see non-default particles normally.

Perhaps there is some other place to change things yet to be discovered.

As with many attempts to get around the program's shortcomings, such as changing font sizes in the settings.ini file, it doesn't really work right. When you increase the font size in the scripting editor using a settings.ini trick, it bollixes up the debug information displays because they are layed out for a particular text size, which is the same one the script editor uses.

There ought to be a way to turn your effects stream on and off, and to change it's transparency, size, pulse rate, and texture, separate from anything else, built into the client.

---- Note: ---

I have revised the wiki's description to read: "The particle texture used as both the default texture for particles and for avatar editing beams."