This article was published in Fusion Magazine, July 2014. Click for the magazine!
Greetings everybody! We've talked about boxing (using boxes to store our items), and even using notecards when packing our inventory, in order to make the total count of items go down.
There are some specialized items that will allow us to use some assets, even if they are packed: pose HUDs and texture organizers, to mention a couple of examples. This is extremely useful: while some of our assets are packed, we can still use them as if they were unpacked.
So what are these interesting tools we've mentioned?
A texture organizer, for example, is an object that will allow us to browse the textures we put in it, not needing to have the textures unpacked in inventory: when we need one, we just click on it in the organizer, and it will deliver us a copy. We use it, and delete it when we're done: it will still be in the organizer... and if we're extra-careful packing, in a backup box. (If we're extra-extra-careful, we'll also make a copy of the texture organizer. Things happen all the time.)
What features would be nice in a texture organizer?
As many categories as possible, ability to label the categories as we wish, search function, remove duplicates function, rezzable and HUD at the same time. Extra bonus if it recognizes sounds and animations. This is a tool particularly useful for builders and designers in SL.
A pose HUD is also a very helpful tool, especially if you are into SL photography (if you plan to be a blogger, you will need this). We may have in each of our pose HUDs thousands of poses that don't need to be unpacked in our inventories, and browse them easily, selecting which one we want to use at any moment.
What features would be interesting on a pose HUD?
Again, as many categories as possible, ability to label categories, search... but also, facial expressions, eye movement, ability to make at least one more avatar to pose. Perhaps we don't find all these together in a single HUD. If that's the case, know that there's a free HUD that will allow you to control facial expressions and eye movement, if you don't find an all-in-one that is within your budget. Look in Marketplace for Anypose Expression.
Texture organizers and pose HUDs will have a specific requirement: Do not add a no-copy asset. This is for technical reasons, but it is also important to bring it up, because we have to be really aware of the following fact:
If we drop just one no copy asset into just one box of a big linked object, the whole object is going to turn into no copy in inventory, and this is a risk. I would suggest packing no copy items separately, to avoid the risk of losing one of our packing boxes because of SL eating no copy items. Keep an eye when packing, because at times it's a no copy ad (texture) among all the copy/no transfer items, or a no copy alpha layer... and just that will make your packing box quite vulnerable to a SL mishap.
We'll continue in the next issue, with the last part of this series: Appliers and outfits. We're almost done!
Enjoy your SL.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Saturday, July 26, 2014
"Act your age"
Not always I can do that.
Should I do that, all the times?
At times, I like to giggle. At times, I like to play and indulge in silly talk. Is a 37 year old expected to do so? While I find the answer, I'll go hang upside down, fall, and laugh at how clumsy I am.
Have a great day :-)
Should I do that, all the times?
At times, I like to giggle. At times, I like to play and indulge in silly talk. Is a 37 year old expected to do so? While I find the answer, I'll go hang upside down, fall, and laugh at how clumsy I am.
Have a great day :-)
Monday, July 14, 2014
Thoughts on UV mapping
I would like to think that it doesn't happen often, but truth being said, I don't know how often I make this mistake when teaching: assuming that something as natural to me as breathing, is also equally evident to everybody else. It happened when I started teaching UV mapping.
Basically, UV mapping consists in "laying flat" your 3D model, so you can create a texture for it (textures are flat entities). In my mind, that was exactly the same as playing making my own cardboard dolls and items, an activity I devoted myself for a long time while I was a little girl.
My world was a world where my parents had to skip dinner so my brother and I could have it. Their budget was pretty tight, and clearly, toys for the little kids wasn't a priority. But there was cardboard, there were color crayons I used to steal from my aunts in my summer visits, scissors and glue. I spent hours figuring out how to design my own toys, trying to make them "real", "3D". I didn't know what I was doing at the moment: I was mentally seaming and unwrapping 3D models on cardboard. It became natural to me, and I assumed that everybody else had similar experiences with cardboard games. To my surprise, these experiences weren't that common, and some of my students don't even recall to ever have constructed a dice from cardboard, which is one of the basic layouts to use.
That's how I built a whole unit assuming that everybody would naturally knew where to seam basic models. And with that assumption I went into explaining how you would cut and align the pieces of your models, to make understand how hard it is to do it manually, so I could introduce how Blender marks seams and cuts and aligns the pieces for you. And then I went into showing how our UV map can tell us where are structural issues in the geometry. And then I finally explained one way to decide where to place the seams, based in decisions we can take when seaming simple primitives.
And there it was: confusion. I seemed to be almost the only one clearly knowing why we had to seam at all, and visualizing the relationship seams-unwrapped model. Barely nobody knew why I was taking those decisions, how they would apply them on their own... Why I was doing everything I was doing. It actually was a struggle.
So 167 pages after, I decided to sort of start again. Taking advantage of the fact that we already knew the tools, we would seam models, from basic to a little less basic, to adding a bit more of detail. I took the chance to introduce more concepts, more insight to the process and nomenclature, and more methods. It seemed to help fixing my initial mistake of assuming that some of my experiences were a common place to everybody. Fortunately, my students have patience with me, and they know we eventually reach to somewhere.
That mistake makes me think (worry) about being too self-centered, and if perhaps my little world is too little. But how does one go about being more social, to learn about more experiences from others, when you're devoted to your work and said work requires concentration?
I don't know the answer.
Basically, UV mapping consists in "laying flat" your 3D model, so you can create a texture for it (textures are flat entities). In my mind, that was exactly the same as playing making my own cardboard dolls and items, an activity I devoted myself for a long time while I was a little girl.
My world was a world where my parents had to skip dinner so my brother and I could have it. Their budget was pretty tight, and clearly, toys for the little kids wasn't a priority. But there was cardboard, there were color crayons I used to steal from my aunts in my summer visits, scissors and glue. I spent hours figuring out how to design my own toys, trying to make them "real", "3D". I didn't know what I was doing at the moment: I was mentally seaming and unwrapping 3D models on cardboard. It became natural to me, and I assumed that everybody else had similar experiences with cardboard games. To my surprise, these experiences weren't that common, and some of my students don't even recall to ever have constructed a dice from cardboard, which is one of the basic layouts to use.
That's how I built a whole unit assuming that everybody would naturally knew where to seam basic models. And with that assumption I went into explaining how you would cut and align the pieces of your models, to make understand how hard it is to do it manually, so I could introduce how Blender marks seams and cuts and aligns the pieces for you. And then I went into showing how our UV map can tell us where are structural issues in the geometry. And then I finally explained one way to decide where to place the seams, based in decisions we can take when seaming simple primitives.
And there it was: confusion. I seemed to be almost the only one clearly knowing why we had to seam at all, and visualizing the relationship seams-unwrapped model. Barely nobody knew why I was taking those decisions, how they would apply them on their own... Why I was doing everything I was doing. It actually was a struggle.
So 167 pages after, I decided to sort of start again. Taking advantage of the fact that we already knew the tools, we would seam models, from basic to a little less basic, to adding a bit more of detail. I took the chance to introduce more concepts, more insight to the process and nomenclature, and more methods. It seemed to help fixing my initial mistake of assuming that some of my experiences were a common place to everybody. Fortunately, my students have patience with me, and they know we eventually reach to somewhere.
That mistake makes me think (worry) about being too self-centered, and if perhaps my little world is too little. But how does one go about being more social, to learn about more experiences from others, when you're devoted to your work and said work requires concentration?
I don't know the answer.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Creator Resource - Moving to Blender 2.70 (and 2.71)
This tutorial is available at: Creator Resource - Moving to Blender 2.70 (and 2.71).
There's a new version of Blender since some months ago, 2.70, recently updated to 2.71. This has been a major release with many new updates. If you're following my Blender books, you may wonder if it would be advisable to update, if you can update, and if there will be problems following the books that refer to a previous version. In this post, I will address all the interface changes that may make some Blender screen snapshots to look different, and where some tools are located now. My apologies I couldn't do this before: RL has been a little crazy in the past months, and catching up with all the delayed work involving my Blender classes and books has been quite hard.
Would it be advisable to update? Yes, no doubt, go to the Blender website and download Blender 2.71 right now!
All published books up to date are affected. However, don't feel "oh my gosh, do I need to learn everything again?" You will see that almost everything we learned behaves exactly the same. There are not many interface changes with respect all that was explained in those books, but please refer to this post if you find differences and feel lost :-)
(The affected books, in case there are doubts: Interface Basics, Modelling Basics, UV Mapping and Texturing Basics, Curves. About the upcoming books: Although they say they're using Blender 2.69, I tried to check all the screenshots in Blender 2.70 and 2.71, and there should be no differences.)
Remember two important things before going for the changes that affect the Blender books series:
Blender 2.71 makes even easier the task of moving our settings. Open it up, and read carefully the splash screen:
Yes, it says "Copy Previous Settings" and it's going to do exactly what you think it will do. Click it. Yay! :-)
With that said, let's go now for the changes that are relevant to all of the books published until now.
Instead of having that long list of tools that made us to scroll until finding them, they have now been arranged into tabs, categorized. There will show more tools if something is selected, related to what is selected:
Hitting TAB for Edit mode we continue to see that the tools change to tools that are available only in Edit mode:
And notice how in particular, the Shading Smooth/Flat buttons that, in Object mode, were under the Tools tab, in Edit mode are under this new Shading/UVs tab, giving us shading option not only for faces (as we were used to), but also for edges and vertices, all in the same place:
By the way, maybe you have noticed that the Info Toolbar no longer has an Add menu:
This has been moved to the Create tab of the Toolshelf:
Personally, I find this to be a more consistent place for these options to be. SHIFT A continues working over the 3D View, showing the Add menu.
Where else are we going to find tabs? Within the Image Editor, in the Toolshelf, for now:
Also, notice that in here there's another consistency change. We know that when we hit T over the 3D View to open up the Toolshelf, it opens to the left, and when we hit N for the Properties panel, it does open to the right. When we worked in the UV/Image Editor, the T panel opened to the right, and the N panel opened to the left. This has changed: Now, when in the UV/Image Editor, the T panel opens to the left, and the N panel opens to the right, to be consistent with the behaviour on the 3D View.
Menus have now separator bars, which in my opinion makes them clearer, specially since similar options are grouped together:
Not much is left that could affect us and the material that's up to date in the Blender course. So as you can see, even though Blender 2.70 and 2.71 have been major releases, there's not much that did affect us :-) There have been a lot of new features, but our course hadn't reached them yet.
If you want a full description of all features, Gottfried Hofmann from Blender Cookie has made a wonderful course, available for free, here (The course is in video tutorial format, with some text as a summary per section.)
If you have heard about Cycles render, or have worked with it, here it comes the big news: Blender 2.71 supports baking for Cycles! See: You wanted to download Blender 2.71 right now :-)
PS: If you're following the books, remember that in this page you will find a list of questions and answers related to the books, from people having followed them. When other people had trouble and completed the right form in the store, I've tried to help them sort the issues. I find that kind of material quite relevant to learning too, which is why it's published in the store blog. All names are removed. The important is what they asked.
There's a new version of Blender since some months ago, 2.70, recently updated to 2.71. This has been a major release with many new updates. If you're following my Blender books, you may wonder if it would be advisable to update, if you can update, and if there will be problems following the books that refer to a previous version. In this post, I will address all the interface changes that may make some Blender screen snapshots to look different, and where some tools are located now. My apologies I couldn't do this before: RL has been a little crazy in the past months, and catching up with all the delayed work involving my Blender classes and books has been quite hard.
Would it be advisable to update? Yes, no doubt, go to the Blender website and download Blender 2.71 right now!
All published books up to date are affected. However, don't feel "oh my gosh, do I need to learn everything again?" You will see that almost everything we learned behaves exactly the same. There are not many interface changes with respect all that was explained in those books, but please refer to this post if you find differences and feel lost :-)
(The affected books, in case there are doubts: Interface Basics, Modelling Basics, UV Mapping and Texturing Basics, Curves. About the upcoming books: Although they say they're using Blender 2.69, I tried to check all the screenshots in Blender 2.70 and 2.71, and there should be no differences.)
Remember two important things before going for the changes that affect the Blender books series:
- You can have different versions of Blender installed in your computer, and execute each time the one that would be more convenient. As long as different versions are installed in different folders, all is fine.
- Remember that you do not need to set your user preferences each time you install a new Blender version. This short tutorial covered how to move your Blender settings from one to another version.
Blender 2.71 makes even easier the task of moving our settings. Open it up, and read carefully the splash screen:
Yes, it says "Copy Previous Settings" and it's going to do exactly what you think it will do. Click it. Yay! :-)
With that said, let's go now for the changes that are relevant to all of the books published until now.
Tabs
This is the first that's going to strike us as "hmmm... Where did everything go?" When we open up the Toolshelf, we see that it presents this appearance:Instead of having that long list of tools that made us to scroll until finding them, they have now been arranged into tabs, categorized. There will show more tools if something is selected, related to what is selected:
Hitting TAB for Edit mode we continue to see that the tools change to tools that are available only in Edit mode:
And notice how in particular, the Shading Smooth/Flat buttons that, in Object mode, were under the Tools tab, in Edit mode are under this new Shading/UVs tab, giving us shading option not only for faces (as we were used to), but also for edges and vertices, all in the same place:
By the way, maybe you have noticed that the Info Toolbar no longer has an Add menu:
This has been moved to the Create tab of the Toolshelf:
Personally, I find this to be a more consistent place for these options to be. SHIFT A continues working over the 3D View, showing the Add menu.
Where else are we going to find tabs? Within the Image Editor, in the Toolshelf, for now:
Also, notice that in here there's another consistency change. We know that when we hit T over the 3D View to open up the Toolshelf, it opens to the left, and when we hit N for the Properties panel, it does open to the right. When we worked in the UV/Image Editor, the T panel opened to the right, and the N panel opened to the left. This has changed: Now, when in the UV/Image Editor, the T panel opens to the left, and the N panel opens to the right, to be consistent with the behaviour on the 3D View.
Menus have now separator bars, which in my opinion makes them clearer, specially since similar options are grouped together:
What else?
Not much is left that could affect us and the material that's up to date in the Blender course. So as you can see, even though Blender 2.70 and 2.71 have been major releases, there's not much that did affect us :-) There have been a lot of new features, but our course hadn't reached them yet.
If you want a full description of all features, Gottfried Hofmann from Blender Cookie has made a wonderful course, available for free, here (The course is in video tutorial format, with some text as a summary per section.)
If you have heard about Cycles render, or have worked with it, here it comes the big news: Blender 2.71 supports baking for Cycles! See: You wanted to download Blender 2.71 right now :-)
PS: If you're following the books, remember that in this page you will find a list of questions and answers related to the books, from people having followed them. When other people had trouble and completed the right form in the store, I've tried to help them sort the issues. I find that kind of material quite relevant to learning too, which is why it's published in the store blog. All names are removed. The important is what they asked.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Keep your inventory under control (Part 4)
This article was published in Fusion Magazine, June 2014. Click for the magazine!
Greetings everybody! In the previous article, we went through a lot of information and tips in order to help us when packing our inventory. Then it was mentioned that in this one we would talk about several ideas to delete items that have already been packed. So, let's go for it.
The first idea is quite immediate: If you have packed an outfit that contains mesh clothes, and you don't plan on changing your shape often, then keep only your size and delete the rest. In the event you do change your shape, you can always rez the packed object, look for the outfit (here is where having used descriptions, as previously suggested, helps!), and extract a new copy of the size you need now.
Continuing with this, we can go a bit further. Many fatpacks contain a box with each color, that we have to unpack one at a time. Those fatpacks will contain a copy of the alpha layers with each color. We don't need to keep a copy of the alpha layer for every color. We can just arrange our fatpack as the image shows.
In the event all items have the same name regardless of color, the picture shows how we can help ourselves organize our fatpack anyway.
The same can be said for other items that are often contained in each color of a fatpack: landmarks, notecards, textures with the ad/photo of the product. Keep just one for the whole fatpack and only if you really need it. As for the landmarks, we don't even need one per fatpack copy. We just need one landmark per store.
Since we're on the topic, did you know that you can embed landmarks into a notecard?
Notecards aren't the safest way of storing items, but for landmarks, they are good enough. So we can categorize our landmarks, for example, using two notecards (e.g., Places to visit and then Stores), and then hit enter to create new lines, and start dragging and dropping landmarks from our inventory to the notecard. We can of course write down headers to sort our landmarks within the notecard, and finally save it.
Once the notecard is saved, we can delete the landmarks from our inventory. As a final step, to begin decreasing the number of items in inventory, we should purge the trash. But before purging trash, make sure there's nothing valuable in there! If you purge trash and remove something by mistake, LL will not be able to recover it for you.
This last item is not related to sorting notecards, but it's also worth mentioning: Recently, embedding calling cards into notecards was also enabled. We still cannot store calling cards in boxes (the reason is technical), but we can save them in notecards and remove those we don't need.
We'll leave it here for now and continue in the next issue. Well done so far!
Enjoy your SL.
Greetings everybody! In the previous article, we went through a lot of information and tips in order to help us when packing our inventory. Then it was mentioned that in this one we would talk about several ideas to delete items that have already been packed. So, let's go for it.
The first idea is quite immediate: If you have packed an outfit that contains mesh clothes, and you don't plan on changing your shape often, then keep only your size and delete the rest. In the event you do change your shape, you can always rez the packed object, look for the outfit (here is where having used descriptions, as previously suggested, helps!), and extract a new copy of the size you need now.
Continuing with this, we can go a bit further. Many fatpacks contain a box with each color, that we have to unpack one at a time. Those fatpacks will contain a copy of the alpha layers with each color. We don't need to keep a copy of the alpha layer for every color. We can just arrange our fatpack as the image shows.
In the event all items have the same name regardless of color, the picture shows how we can help ourselves organize our fatpack anyway.
The same can be said for other items that are often contained in each color of a fatpack: landmarks, notecards, textures with the ad/photo of the product. Keep just one for the whole fatpack and only if you really need it. As for the landmarks, we don't even need one per fatpack copy. We just need one landmark per store.
Since we're on the topic, did you know that you can embed landmarks into a notecard?
Notecards aren't the safest way of storing items, but for landmarks, they are good enough. So we can categorize our landmarks, for example, using two notecards (e.g., Places to visit and then Stores), and then hit enter to create new lines, and start dragging and dropping landmarks from our inventory to the notecard. We can of course write down headers to sort our landmarks within the notecard, and finally save it.
Once the notecard is saved, we can delete the landmarks from our inventory. As a final step, to begin decreasing the number of items in inventory, we should purge the trash. But before purging trash, make sure there's nothing valuable in there! If you purge trash and remove something by mistake, LL will not be able to recover it for you.
This last item is not related to sorting notecards, but it's also worth mentioning: Recently, embedding calling cards into notecards was also enabled. We still cannot store calling cards in boxes (the reason is technical), but we can save them in notecards and remove those we don't need.
We'll leave it here for now and continue in the next issue. Well done so far!
Enjoy your SL.
Monday, June 2, 2014
"I didn't do it"
I think I've mentioned at least once that when something is happening to me, I'm not too up to talk about it. I start vanishing from everywhere, I stop writing, I push close people away from me... I simply shut down. That time is here again. Well, actually, that time arrived about two months ago. What happened? It doesn't matter.
In trying to find the way back to normality, I forced myself to resume with my daily walks. Yesterday I did, with the camera. I photographed many things. The tears from a burned forest, the amazing sight of the whole region, from the sea to the windmills, that can be enjoyed just by walking fifteen minutes uphill. And when I was arriving back home, I captured a moment that is still making me laugh.
"I didn't do it."
"I didn't do it", in Flickr
I will let each of you to invent your own story for this shot :-)
In trying to find the way back to normality, I forced myself to resume with my daily walks. Yesterday I did, with the camera. I photographed many things. The tears from a burned forest, the amazing sight of the whole region, from the sea to the windmills, that can be enjoyed just by walking fifteen minutes uphill. And when I was arriving back home, I captured a moment that is still making me laugh.
"I didn't do it."
I will let each of you to invent your own story for this shot :-)
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Keep your inventory under control (Part 3)
This article was published in Fusion Magazine, May 2014. Click for the magazine!
Greetings everybody! In the previous issue we learned the Search feature, which helps us find even the most hidden items, and serves also as a filter to speed up our sorting task. In this issue we're going to talk about packing.
Why packing?
First, because exactly as happens in the real world, there are items we stop using. From clothes to videogames to shoes, all those items have a moment in our lives. Many deteriorate and we have to throw them away. Others don't deteriorate, but we use them no more. In SL, it happens the same.
But second, and perhaps more importantly, because by packing, we may reduce the total number of items in our inventory. This has good consequences: it's easier to find what we're looking for, and we don't have to wait an eternity whenever the inventory reloads entirely.
Packing in SL doesn't mean getting rid of our items permanently. It means storing them in placeholders that will use less of our inventory space than the items themselves, unpacked.
Packing requires a specific prerequisite: rezzing and linking boxes. We will be assuming this knowledge here, but don't worry. If you don't know what this rezzing or linking boxes mean, the following link from the knowledge base will give you a good start: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Build-Tools/ta-p/700039
Why do we need to know this? Let's think about this, with a practical case: We are going to pack all of our gowns, and do some cleanup after that (Guys, you can pick something different, like suits. Unless of course if you also like to wear gowns.)
Suppose that we have all of our gowns correctly sorted. There will be gowns using system layers and flexi skirts that perhaps nowadays we do not use, and there will be mesh gowns in all their sizes and colors.
Let's count all of them. How many gowns do we have? Six? Twenty? One hundred and thirteen?
Then rez a box, duplicate it, repeat... until you have as many boxes as gowns. You may of course arrange said boxes in rows and columns. (If you are the case of one hundred and thirteen... You will need this!)
Let's add a tip here: If you rez a box, duplicate it, and link the two boxes, now you could duplicate them... Having quickly, four boxes. And if you link those four boxes, then duplicate them... That's it, now you have eight boxes. If you are in need of a high number of boxes, this technique will speed the process quite a bit.
Since we're talking about tips, let's add something else here: when you link all the boxes, then edit the linked set, click the Features tab and change the Physics Type to Convex Hull. That will make, in almost all cases, for the Land Impact count to halve (if there are many scripts, then it may be slightly higher).
Yet one more tip: You can change the Physics Type right in the first box: the property will be duplicated when you duplicate the box, so when you link the first couple of boxes, the Land Impact of the two linked boxes will be just one.
Now, we can use the Name or the Description field of each box, for the purposes of labelling what we're packing: it depends on if identifying the items in each box is relevant for you, or not. It is for me, and this is how I proceed each time I pack:
First I rez and link all the boxes I may need. Then I edit the boxes, and click a checkbox named Edit linked. This allows me to select each box individually. Now I click the first box to select it. I use the Description field to copy/paste from my folder name, the label that will allow me to identify the item inside. Then I click the Content tab of said box. Then I select all items in my inventory, hold the CTRL key pressed, and drag the items from my inventory to the box. I wait to see the inventory of the box reload, then I click the next box, and repeat the process.
Why have I said to hold the CTRL key pressed? It could happen that among the selected items, there are scripts. If we do not hold the CTRL key pressed, the scripts will attempt to execute once inside the box. This may create all sorts of havoc. To make sure that nothing regrettable will happen, always hold the CTRL key pressed (Yes, there are scripts that could delete your linked boxes, and if a script deletes your boxes, there is no way to recover them. Double ouch if you were packing no copy items. Always hold the CTRL key pressed. Always.)
As a little side note: Do not drop more than 100 items at a time inside your box. This could cause inventory creation issues, and it's a pain keeping up with it. If a folder contains many, many items, select several at once, drag them from inventory to the box, wait for the inventory to reload, select more items, and repeat.
Why have I used the Description field rather than name? Because once I'm done, I untick Edit linked and then give the whole set a Name such as Gowns - Packed 2014/05/12, which will be the name showing in inventory. That way, when I look in my inventory and read the name of the object, I know what's inside the boxes, and when was the last time I packed.
Make sure that you are doing this at a place where you can rez. In order to pack, you need to rez inworld. If you don't own land, you may look for sandboxes.
We can now proceed and pack all the items in our inventory. The first time, this may be a very painful (time consuming) task. But once we get in the habit, packing each three-six months (depending on our shopping habits) will not take more than a morning, and we'll keep our inventory in really good shape.
In the next issue we'll talk about several ideas to delete items that have already been packed, in order to free space from our inventory. Keep up the good work!
Enjoy your SL.
Greetings everybody! In the previous issue we learned the Search feature, which helps us find even the most hidden items, and serves also as a filter to speed up our sorting task. In this issue we're going to talk about packing.
Why packing?
First, because exactly as happens in the real world, there are items we stop using. From clothes to videogames to shoes, all those items have a moment in our lives. Many deteriorate and we have to throw them away. Others don't deteriorate, but we use them no more. In SL, it happens the same.
But second, and perhaps more importantly, because by packing, we may reduce the total number of items in our inventory. This has good consequences: it's easier to find what we're looking for, and we don't have to wait an eternity whenever the inventory reloads entirely.
Packing in SL doesn't mean getting rid of our items permanently. It means storing them in placeholders that will use less of our inventory space than the items themselves, unpacked.
Packing requires a specific prerequisite: rezzing and linking boxes. We will be assuming this knowledge here, but don't worry. If you don't know what this rezzing or linking boxes mean, the following link from the knowledge base will give you a good start: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Build-Tools/ta-p/700039
Why do we need to know this? Let's think about this, with a practical case: We are going to pack all of our gowns, and do some cleanup after that (Guys, you can pick something different, like suits. Unless of course if you also like to wear gowns.)
Suppose that we have all of our gowns correctly sorted. There will be gowns using system layers and flexi skirts that perhaps nowadays we do not use, and there will be mesh gowns in all their sizes and colors.
Let's count all of them. How many gowns do we have? Six? Twenty? One hundred and thirteen?
Then rez a box, duplicate it, repeat... until you have as many boxes as gowns. You may of course arrange said boxes in rows and columns. (If you are the case of one hundred and thirteen... You will need this!)
Let's add a tip here: If you rez a box, duplicate it, and link the two boxes, now you could duplicate them... Having quickly, four boxes. And if you link those four boxes, then duplicate them... That's it, now you have eight boxes. If you are in need of a high number of boxes, this technique will speed the process quite a bit.
Since we're talking about tips, let's add something else here: when you link all the boxes, then edit the linked set, click the Features tab and change the Physics Type to Convex Hull. That will make, in almost all cases, for the Land Impact count to halve (if there are many scripts, then it may be slightly higher).
Yet one more tip: You can change the Physics Type right in the first box: the property will be duplicated when you duplicate the box, so when you link the first couple of boxes, the Land Impact of the two linked boxes will be just one.
Now, we can use the Name or the Description field of each box, for the purposes of labelling what we're packing: it depends on if identifying the items in each box is relevant for you, or not. It is for me, and this is how I proceed each time I pack:
First I rez and link all the boxes I may need. Then I edit the boxes, and click a checkbox named Edit linked. This allows me to select each box individually. Now I click the first box to select it. I use the Description field to copy/paste from my folder name, the label that will allow me to identify the item inside. Then I click the Content tab of said box. Then I select all items in my inventory, hold the CTRL key pressed, and drag the items from my inventory to the box. I wait to see the inventory of the box reload, then I click the next box, and repeat the process.
Why have I said to hold the CTRL key pressed? It could happen that among the selected items, there are scripts. If we do not hold the CTRL key pressed, the scripts will attempt to execute once inside the box. This may create all sorts of havoc. To make sure that nothing regrettable will happen, always hold the CTRL key pressed (Yes, there are scripts that could delete your linked boxes, and if a script deletes your boxes, there is no way to recover them. Double ouch if you were packing no copy items. Always hold the CTRL key pressed. Always.)
As a little side note: Do not drop more than 100 items at a time inside your box. This could cause inventory creation issues, and it's a pain keeping up with it. If a folder contains many, many items, select several at once, drag them from inventory to the box, wait for the inventory to reload, select more items, and repeat.
Why have I used the Description field rather than name? Because once I'm done, I untick Edit linked and then give the whole set a Name such as Gowns - Packed 2014/05/12, which will be the name showing in inventory. That way, when I look in my inventory and read the name of the object, I know what's inside the boxes, and when was the last time I packed.
Make sure that you are doing this at a place where you can rez. In order to pack, you need to rez inworld. If you don't own land, you may look for sandboxes.
We can now proceed and pack all the items in our inventory. The first time, this may be a very painful (time consuming) task. But once we get in the habit, packing each three-six months (depending on our shopping habits) will not take more than a morning, and we'll keep our inventory in really good shape.
In the next issue we'll talk about several ideas to delete items that have already been packed, in order to free space from our inventory. Keep up the good work!
Enjoy your SL.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)