Problems building. (Please HELP!)

Okay, I'm trying to build a head for my new avatar, and for some reason the sphere of the head will not link with the rest of the pieces.

When I try to link them, it says "Link failed: Pieces too far apart." The pieces are TOUCHING! How can they be too far apart?!

The head is 132 prims all together (mostly hair). Is this too many? Is that why it's not working?

If you can help, I would greatly apprieciate it. I might be on SL so you could also contact me on there.

Thank you. ;_;

Hi Gina. It's not uncommon to get the "too far apart" error when trying to link objects that have a lot of tiny components. Once you get into the triple digits, it becomes pretty frequent. I've been unable to determine whether this is actually a bug or whether there's just some funny math involved that I don't understand.

What I do know is this. The smaller a prim is, the shorter its linkable distance is from any other prim in the linkset. Just because your sphere is touching one of the other prims doesn't mean it's not legitimately too far away from another.

Remember, it's not the surface of the prims that counts; it's where their centers are. For example, you could line up five 10x10 cubes in a row, and the two end pieces would be too far apart, even though they're both touching the inner pieces.

For objects that do not appear to be legitimately too far apart, I've found that unlinking the whole thing, then linking it into a few smaller groups, and then linking the groups together can sometimes work. I haven't been able to determine any rhyme or reason for why some group combinations work and some don't.

I can only assume there's some really weird shape dynamics going on in the "link field" surrounding each object. For an individual prim, the field is obviously spherical, but each prim you add to the set changes the shape. Logic would seem to dictate that the field should only get bigger with each addition, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It sure would be nice if there were a debug function or something that could visually illustrate the linkable area around selected prims.

So anyway, try the sectional linking thing, and see if you can figure out how to jigsaw puzzle the thing together. There probably is a combination that works, but finding it can be maddening, fair warning. Beyond that, you can try to find a way to use less prims, which isn't a bad idea anyway since it sounds like this av of yours is going to be a lag monster from hell with the amount you seem to be building towards. Cutting, twisting, hollowing, and transforming, combined with clever texturing, can almost always cut your prim count down to a tiny fraction of what it started as, while looking nearly the same.

Theres some info here.

http://secondlife.com/badgeo/wakka.php?wakka=piecestoofarapart

It normally happens when you link really tiny or thin pieces with something proportionately larger, like the headball. If all the linking methods fail, try fattening up some of the prims in the hair. Most of the time, you only need the outer surface anyway and the insides can be invisible.

Thanks for the link, Cottonteil. Very helpful.

Thanks so much you guys! I finally got it to work! *happy* <3<3 Thanks for all the information and the suggestions! I really apprieciate it.