Morphing Prims

Hello all!!!

Great to be part of SL and be able to create anything my imagination comes up with. I am having a bit of a problem though (what with my lack of modeling skills and all, otherwise known as newb syndrome). I have trolled the forums for about a week now, searching for this and that, and checking out tutorials both here on the forums, privately owned websites and in game at the Ivory Tower Library of Primatives (GREAT stuff btw). Only problem is, since I suck at modeling, is that I can't get any "organic" shapes out of the prims (yes, I know the torus would help alot with this, but it isn't what I am looking for really)...

Anyway, getting to the point. I am trying to "wrap" an avatar with different pieces of prims to create a jacket essentially, but with enough coverage to make it appear larger than the skin tight textures we can manipulate through PS alone. There is a whole other set of questions surrounding different attachement points, and if you can set it to attach as a whole to different points (like putting the jacket on as one piece), while still preserving the other attachment points to keep the "sleeves" on the arms, etc... My problem lies with meshing the different prims together. I saw a picture of different things like the Light Bike from Tron (the person that did it excapes me right now, but it was PHENOMINAL to say the least), and one of a chopper in the same thread. The gas tank on the chopper, and looks like most of the light bike were prims that were "meshed" together. I could REALLY use the knowledge of how that was accomplished to get the look I am after.

One final aspect, and I am sure it is rudimentary, but how would one apply a specific set of textures (like cutting pieces of a picture and placing them on different prims, then reassembling the prims to rebuild the picture)? It seems to me that I would have to know the exact measurements of the prim, to make a texture that covers what I want to have covered EXACTLY (or is it alot more forgiving than I am implying?).

Any help would be appreciated, and if has been posted somewhere else, forgive me, I DID search diligently, but did not find anything resembling this (learned alot though in the process!!!)

Thank you for any assistance you can offer!!!

Cog

Not quite sure what to suggest about the first part of your post, Coglio, but there is a free (Windows) program created by Adrian Eisenburg that may help with your texture/prim reassembling. Check it out here: /109/bf/90527/1.html

If you're building prim clothing / armor, keep in mind that the AV mesh can be quite variable in sizing from AV to AV, so there's no "one size fits all".



If I understand you correctly, the "meshing" is prims joined together seamlessly? If so, there's not really a trick - it comes down to fiddling with the params and positioning until both prims fit together nicely. Using appropriate textures can go a long way towards a continuous look too.



You can stretch textures to make them fit (smaller or larger). On a jacket, the problem would likely rather be to get the details (like pockets and zippers) and the shadows and highlights to end up at the correct place.

When I texture complex objects, I like to use a "test pattern" grid texture that I got from Robin Sojourner's excellent texture tutorial. I apply the test pattern to the object in question, fiddle with the repeat 'til the texture looks nice and even, and then I overlay the test pattern and the texture I intend to use, in Gimp. The little checkers of that grid are colored and numbered, so by comparing SL and the texture in Gimp, I can tell where to edit the texture, so whatever detail I'm adding ends up in the right place. You can find Robin Sojourner's tutorial in-world in her picks.