Invisibility

What is the current best way to be invisible?

My avatar uses matches, and i have to cover myself with huge invisibility prims to hide my real avatar completely.

1. Would it be possible to apply that invisibility texture to clothes?

2. Is it possible to use them with particle effects? The one I have erases everything with an alpha value, which sucks.

3. Is there a way to calculate exact limbs values? There is an xml file in the second life directory with all the ratios, but i haven't found a way to know what each parameter is actually set to. This would be my current best guess to auto-create a primsuit with the closest fit, but obviously using clothes would be better.

Nope.


I'm not sure if it would work with particals or not, but there's one way to find out. Give it a try. As for the alpha thing, that's just the way it works. Unfortunately there's no way to change that.

Remember, invisibility is not a feature, but a bug. It doesn't even work in all sims. Sooner or later I imagine LL will either add a real invisibility function or else do away with it entirely. Either way, be prepared for the day when that texture doesn't work anymore.


I don't know if there is a way to get the exact size of limbs, but it's certainly not hard to match prim lengths by hand. Just use a pedistal with an animation that holds you still and matching things up is super simple. Alternately, if you want to hide certain parts of your av, but not the whole thing, you can use animations to bring limbs inside the body.

Chosen, I have yet to come across a case where the sim itself prevents my invisibility prims from working -- don't know about anyone else's. The only thing that keeps them from working correctly is if a nearby invisiprim uses the same textures but doesn't refresh in the same way (the order the textures are loaded into memory influences the effect), in which case they simply hide all bitmapped textures.

Yes, they could get rid of the invisibility bug at any time. However, considering how popular it's become for all sorts of avatar effects (high heels, digitigrade animal legs, headless swordsmen who laugh at you maniacally), I strongly doubt they would remove it without giving us an alternative.

'Invisiprims' are anti-social and an utter pain in the arse. The problem is that because avatars are drawn early on by the graphics engine (sky and terrain get in before) they fill the z-buffer with close-up values and then you not only can't see the thing that's supposed to be hidden by the prim but you can't see anything behind it that was rendered after it either. That may include other avatars but is usually parts of buildings and other scenery except the ground plane.

Hopefully in a future version LL will either do something to prevent transparent textures on attached prims, or else turn off z-buffer writes when rendering avatar attachments.