Edit: 2019/07/19: With Mesmerizer 1.3, the "Precision Stripping" feature addresses almost all of the problems highlighted in this post. Smart-strip still has some use for clothing articles that consist of multiple attachments that should be stripped together, but this is a rare situation. This post will be retained for users of earlier versions of the Mesmerizer or of other RLV controllers, but for Mesmerizer 1.3 and later, the issues discussed here are mostly of historical interest.
RLV support for stripping is fairly limited today, being based upon clothing layers and attachment points, which are rapidly becoming meaningless as SL moves more and more towards rigged mesh. A rigged mesh clothing item will appear at its proper place on the avatar regardless of the attachment point to which it's attached, so it's difficult to predict the point on which a particular item is worn, which makes stripping by attachment point a very haphazard operation.
Conventions agreed between the sub and their owner can help significantly. For example, it can help to make sure that mesh body parts are worn on attachment points that are unlikely to be stripped, and to explicitly use appropriate attachment points for clothing items instead of just accepting the default placing (many clothing designers seem to attach all items to the right hand point).
Another possibility is the use of smart-strip. This requires a small amount of work by the sub when setting up his or her outfits. The basic idea behind smart-strip is that when a clothing layer is removed (for example a pair of jeans), you would typically want to also remove associated attachments (for example a prim belt). That is what smart-strip does - when you "smart-strip" a clothing layer item, the viewer will look under #RLV for the folder that contained the item, and if found, will also remove everything else in that folder. So in the example above, if the sub had a folder under #RLV for "Jeans with belt" that contains both a "pants" clothing-layer pair of jeans and a prim belt,. then smart-stripping the "pants" layer would remove both the jeans and the belt.
Setting things up in this way is a fair amount of work for the sub, since it would appear that every clothing item that they want to be "strippable" has to be given its own folder under #RLV, in which case it doesn't seem to offer much more than could be done by simply using RLV to remove the folder. In addition, smart-strip doesn't seem to support non-clothing-layer clothes (in other words mesh). However, an alternative way of setting things up can address both of these problems, and make smart-strip a very useful tool.
Let's assume that the jeans in the example above are rigged mesh, rather than being clothing-layer items. This would seem to make smart-strip not applicable, since smart-strip starts with a clothing-layer. However, it is possible to easily create an invisible pants layer clothing item that can be worn along with the actual mesh jeans and belt. Then smart-stripping "pants" would also remove the belt and jeans if they are is the same #RLV folder as the invisible pants. Instead of creating a #RLV folder for each pair of pants, it is much easier to create a single folder under #RLV for "all smart-strip pants" that contains the invisible pants layer item described above, as well as links to anything in your inventory that you want to be considered "pants" for smart-stripping purposes. Then to enable smart-strip, all you have to do is to ensure that you're wearing the invisible pants - smart-stripping them will then also remove anything that's linked from the "all smart-strip pants" folder.
Doing things this way means that, when you acquire a new outfit, all you have to do to make part of that outfit smart-strippable (as pants) is to add a link to the invisible pants into the outfit, and add links to the "pants parts" of the outfit to the "all smart-strip pants" folder under #RLV. You can make different parts of the outfit smart-strippable as different clothing layers without having to divide the outfit into multiple folders. There is no "dress" clothing layer, but a useful convention is to make dresses smart-strippable as "skirts".
Smart-strip can remove alpha layers along with mesh or prim clothing, to avoid leaving "holes" when clothes are stripped. However, as mesh bodies become more common, alpha layers are becoming less useful. Today, most mesh avatars include HUDs that control which parts of the body are made transparent. A few bodies are starting to include ways of setting transparency by wearing scripted objects, which is a promising development, but as yet it is not standard. The best way today to make stripping work with mesh bodies is to buy clothing that fits the body without requiring any tweaking of transparency.
No comments:
Post a Comment