SL Handbook – How to Dress your Avatar

Ok, so you’re looking a little noobish and basic and need to break away from the many others running about in basic outfits. Here are some things to help you reshape yourself a new identity.

> Getting avatar bits and outfits:

Ok, in order to begin messing with your avatar’s appearance – you’ll need clothes and outfits and stuff.

You’ll be able to get a lot of these things by searching for stuff in-world or via the XStreetSL.com website. – A lot can be found for free and many more can be bought.

Whenever you purchase things – the items should appear within your inventory.

> Got a packed item?

Some of the things you buy will begin as a packed item – before you can wear it or use it you will need to “unpack” it.

To unpack – find a place where you can “rez” things (as in create objects on the ground). Drag the packed item to the ground from your inventory. Once it appears – right click and “open” – then once the list of items are displayed (it may take a minute or two at times) then choose “copy to inventory”

Once copied to inventory – you should then be able to locate a folder of the same name as the object you got it from – inside this will be your collection of bits for the outfit or product you purchased.

> Holding a Pose – editing yourself in finer detail

After you have worn your bits and pieces – you may wish to make some adjustments to make them look better on you. For this you may find a “pose stand” useful. There can be a few diffeent pose stands out there to use – some even offer selectable poses – but for starters you can use this one: ????
(Drag/Rez to the ground and then right-click “Sit Here” to put your self in a pose – then click “stand up” along the bottom of your screen when done)

Moving your view around while on a pose stand: Just like the chapter “A different view on things” – Hold ALT, then click yourself and drag the mouse around to view different angles. Holding CTRL + ALT will give you the same thing but with slightly different controls.

> Wearing Items

Thee are a few ways to wear an item, some methods you might like better than others – but what you use is pretty much personal choice.

Dragging stuff to your avatar
Just drag the item from the inventory to your avatar – this will make you “wear” the item in it’s default slot.

Inventory Item – Right-Click and “Wear”
This puts the item into it’s default position – if it is a object based item it will go to it’s default attach point & position. If no point is set it will end up on your right hand.

Inventory item – right click and “Attach”
Similar to “wear” but a bit more controllable – it lets you define which attach point you want it to appear from – so you can shove things on various places like your head, toes, bum, nose, etc… Some things are interface related and go to HUD attach points – everything else is standard attach points.

Adjusting Items that you are wearing

For basic clothing
Right-click yourself and select appearance – this will give you all the options for adjusting your clothing (provided that the bits you have on give you modify permissions. (no modify permissions on some items may limit the options you have until you swap the clothing item for a different one.) The appearance options allow you to edit your body, hair, clothes, skin, etc…

For attached objects
For anything prim/object based – these will attach to various “points” on your body. For example if you put on a set of glasses – if there is not attach point set for the object by default it will show up on your right hand as if you are holding it.

From inventory – right click the attachment and select “Attach to” you can then choose the attachment point to set – so for a set of glasses you might choose the “nose” point (if you don’t have anything else using that point)

The first time you attach the object in the right location – it may not appear lined up correctly (may be rotated incorrectly or off-centre for example). From here you should be able to right-click the attachment that is on you and select EDIT – this will enable the building tools to allow you to modify parts of the attachment or to rotate and position it so that it appears correctly for your avatar.

> Saving your outfit

If you’ve worked out a good look that you would like to keep so that you can change back into later. You can make an avatar outfit.

To make/save an outfit – right-click yourself and select “Appearance” – this will bring up the appearance window where you can adjust your clothing. Down the bottom of this window is a “Make outfit” button. Click on this and it will give you choices of what you want to save.

The first bit you can make a name for your outfit – so you can call it something like “Eskimo Bikini Outfit” or whatever best describes what you are wearing.

The second bit is a bunch of tickboxes – this applies to each invidual item you are currently wearing. If you want to keep the entire outfit – tick them all. If you are only after part of the combination – then just make sure those bits have a tick.

When you click SAVE – this will then generate a folder in your inventory under the “Clothing” folder. Inside this will be a copy of the bits you had ticked.

WARNING! – if any item you are wearing happens to be “No Copy” then it will transfer to your new outfit regardless of which folder it originated from within your inventory. So if you had a previous outfit with a no-copy item and you use it in creating a new outfit – your old outfit will lose the item and your new outfit will gain it.

> Changing between avatars and your saved outfits

This is where things can get cool – once you have some avatar folders setup in your clothing folder – there are a couple of ways to switch between outfits.

right-click the individual items and “WEAR” or “ATTACH” -

This can be handy if you only want to put on a couple of items – but can get tedious if you are changing whole avatars or complete outfit sets.

right-click the outfit folder and select “ADD TO OUTFIT”
This is handy if you have partial outfit folders – like a folder just with the clothing and no skins or other attachments as it just adds the new items to your avatar replacing anyhting that conflicts with their default spot – leaving other bits from the previous outfit behind so your appearance appears like a blend of outfits.

> right-click the outfit folder and select “REPLACE OUTFIT”
Use this one if you have a complete avatar outfit – it basically strips your avatar of all items except your skin, eyes and shape. And then applies only the items from the folder you selected. If your avatar folder does not contain clothing – then you could end up at least partially naked!! (parial outfit folders don’t work out well with this option)

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