Prim Lashes - How to do it NOT sculpty??

I was messing around with some lash textures I bought from TRU Textures just to see if I was any good at creating prim eyelashes. Evidently I wasn't. So how do I go about creating them without having to enter the world of sculpting? I don't have the time to tweak away at a 3D object, and I'm creating them to come free with my skins(still in the making), But I want them to look good. I tried using a hollowed cylinder, sliced in half to create the curve, but they still stuck out A LOT. What is the best prim to use for creating eyelashes, that is non sculpty, and what is the best method of positioning the four prims so they fit right?

I've never made prim lashes, but it seems to me that if you want them to stick out less, just embed them further into the avatar. Then, to see the whole texture, simply change the repeat value accordingly. In other words, if you've got half the prim sticking out, set the texture repeats per face to two instead of one. That way you'll see one full instance of the texture on the part that's sticking out, and the other instance will be buried inside the av where you can't see it.

As for what type of prim to use, if it were me, I probably wouldn't use a culinder. In my opinion, a cylinder cannot get small enough, or more importantly, thin enough to make a convincing eyelash shape. What I would do is use a series of dimpled cubes. Start with a sphere, and dimple it to 0.49, 0.51. This cuts away 98% of the object, making it as thin as it can possibly be, considerably thinner than hollowing could make it. Now convert the sphere to a cube, set the cube's Z size as small as you can (.01M), and you've now got what looks to be a flat plane. Set it as small as possible on the other two axes as well, and you've now got a building block suitably small enough to be part of an eyelash.

Now just arrange 3 or 4 of those tiny flat panes so that their profiles trace the curve of the eyelid, and link them together. Texture them with your eyelash texture, being careful to set the horizontal repeats properly, so that the texture spans once across the whole group. Do this for each eyelid, attach the objects to the av, and you're all set.

Oh, and of course, you'll want to use a posing stand to keep the avatar absolutely still during the process.


Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to address what you said about "I don't have the time to tweak away at a 3D object". If you don't want to take the time to learn how to use another modeling program besides SL, that's fine, but don't assume that using one to make a sculpted eyelash would take more time than doing what I just described to do in SL. Considering the challenges involved with working on anything at too small of a scale in SL, I would say that making a sculpted eyelash in Maya or another similarly functioning modeling app would take only a small fraction of the time it would take to do the above in SL. Seriously, I could probably sculpt all four lashes in about five minutes, and texture them in about 20. So could you, if you knew how.

Just like anything else, if you've never used a 3D modeling program, it of course can take a while to learn how, sure. But once you've got that know-how under your belt, the actual process of using it for any given task doesn't have to take much time at all. It all depends on the particular task at hand. Some projects can take months; others only minutes, just like in-world prim-based projects. The truth is that some things that could take forever and a day to make out prims can take mere minutes to sculpt, and some things that could take a long time to sculpt could be made very quickly out of prims. It all depends on exactly what you're trying to do. The simple curve of an eyelash shape is among the more quick and easy things you could ever want to sculpt.

That doesn't mean you should or shouldn't sculpt it, of course. Do whatever you're most comfortable with. Me, I'd probably use the prim method, since it seems ridiculous to me to invest 2048 polyons into an eyelash, when those 4 dimpled cubes put together only add up to about 200 or so, total. In my mind, the performance gains from not wasting polygons far outweighs the little bit of extra time it takes to make and align those tiny cubes.

My only point in all this was don't assume something will be time consuming just because you've never done it before. Often you'll find that it's not.

I've bought some prim lashes and from what I've seen they use toruses to make the lashes. One torus for the top and one for the bottom of each eye. They are all tied to a root prim which is usually an invisible cube placed in the middle. It's kind of hard to explain. Try buying some and you'll see.

its a torus hollowed out and cut

I have those textures, this is how I got them to work
Try this:

Torus
Sizes
X: .030
Y: .090
Z: .090

Hollow: 95
Path Cut B:.675 E:90
Profile Cut B: 40 E:700

Texture
Horizontal: 3.5 Flip
Vertical: 2.5

Rotation: 90
Offset Vertical -.100

Be sure to alpha out the sides where there should not be texture.

Do this for both top and bottom lashes, for each eye, then link them all together to one center cube as small as you can get it. Attach where ever on your head, nose, chin, whatever works for you. You could even make them a part of your hair if its mod.