Zee impossible shape...

Okay... I am trying and failing to get a certain shape (trying to do it in one prim).

It's a bit hard to explain, so I took pictures...

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y277/Charmande/SecondLife/Snapshot_055.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y277/Charmande/SecondLife/Snapshot_056.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y277/Charmande/SecondLife/Snapshot_057.jpg

Okay... I am trying to make dragonish... maybe even fairyish wings. I sort of have the right shape in the above pictures... but the ends of the purple part of the wings are flat... which is not what I want.

What I want is for the ends to look more like they have bites taken out of them, as in the following picture.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y277/Charmande/SecondLife/Snapshot_058.jpg

Ignore the stuff on the bottom of that pic, it's the little thing on the right side i'm talking about. So why don't I just do it with the wings the way I did in the fourth picture? Because...

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y277/Charmande/SecondLife/Snapshot_059.jpg

As you can see... the thingy in the fourth picture is flat! D=

I'm trying to get the bowed out wings, but with the curved, "bite taken out of" look on the ends... I'm really not even sure if this is possible with one prim...

If it is not, I'd be happy with the flat version... but I'm even having trouble making that, since unlike the thing in the fourth pic, the wings are uhh... curved.

Any help would be... ya know... awesome. o.o

Sorry, but I don't think it's technically possible to do all of that in one prim. We have limited editing functions with regards to the push and pullable points of the objects and the rules they follow for what the whole object does when that point is moved. For example in 3D studio max you can create a sphere and pull and push all the crossing points of the mesh that forms the sphere in any direction you like (e.g. build a whole face from just the one object), but the SL objects ony have adjustable points at the sides and corners.

The closest you could get with just one object is to hollow out a box, take two sides off with a path cut, and apply an image of what you want to the box.

I would use the prim you have in the first pictures (part of a tapered torus) and use a texture which is transparent on the parts you don't want. It might be tricky to get the texture right, I'm guessing it would be mostly the pattern you want for the wing, with a C shaped bite taken out of it, that part alpha transparent.

One way to work it out would be to put some test image on the wing, a grid or something, then you can see where on the grid you should cut it off.

Very good suggestions... only my goal was to avoid using texture wings... because well... just because!

I haven't been able to get alpha channels/transparency to work yet (need a newer version of Paint Shop Pro).

Nonetheless, thank you for the suggestions... and I believe I have come to a compromise with myself...

I ended up using some rather deformed tubes as the wings... I don't have the "bite taken out of" shape I wanted, but I did end up with a dragonfly-esque rounded wing that still fit quite nicely into the wing structure as a whole.

=D

Get the Gimp! It's free!

I assume you mean each purple part should be one prim, not the whole wing should be one prim. If that's the case, this is easy. Use a sphere. Hollow it and cut away about 70% of it or so. Stretch what's left to the right length for each wing section and you'll have that "bitten out" shape you're looking for.

For some examples of this, check out some of the finer dragon avs in SL. Hudson Stryker's robo-dragon is a pretty good example.