Christine's Outfit System Example: Beach Trip

Hello everyone :-)

I worked a little on my outfit-system..... because I really needed a way to change parts of my outfit faster. And since I may publish it soon I'm giving you an overview of how it works here.

I recently bought some beach clothes and I think it's a good example for how my system works.

First of all I need to plan the outfit. It includes 8 #RLV-Folders in total (take a look at the Appendix at the end of the post to see what's in these folders):

 

Navy-colored top and shorts

 

White bikini- top and -bottom

 

Barefeet and  Barefeet+Flip Flops

 

Sunglasses and hair

 Note that these are the pictures which I made for my wardrobe (check it out if you don't know it, it's great: http://carlyletheassolutions.com/wardrobe.php), the lingerie is not part of the outfit, I include it in pictures which are not about underwear or bathsuits. And only the last hair is used, the hair on the other pictures is only there because I don't like making pictures without hair ;-)


Now lets get started. First of all I have to attach my CJOS-HUD. It is usually located at the top right.

Now I have to wear all of the above folders, click the HUD and hit Scan. The HUD will automatically detect all the folders I am wearing. Afterwards I click manage to delete folders which I don't want to be included in the outfit (I never change my skin, therefore I delete the skin from the outfit). If something were missing I could add it via the Add-Button (type in the name of the folder there, not the whole path, the HUD will find it automatically).

Afterwards my Manage-Menu will look like this:

Note that the menu-dialog may not be able to display all the names of the folders (there's a restriction by Second Life). Check the local chat, all the folders should be listed there.

Now I can reate Compilations. I just select Dressoptions from the Manage-Menu and give them names. I'm going for:

Compilation1: Dress All
Compilation2: Barefeet
Compilation3: Swimsuit
Compilation4: Topless
Compilation5: Naked

I leave Compilation6 blank, because I don't need it at the moment.

Now I go back to the Manage-Menu and edit the folder-setting. There I can select whether an folder should be attached when I choose one of the Compilations from the Main Menu (checked) or detached (unchecked).

I use the following settings:

Hair: Checked in C1-C5, because there is no reason to change or detach it
Flip Flops: Checked in C1, Unchecked in C2-C5
Barefeet: Checked in C2-C5, Unchecked in C1, because they have to be worn when the Flip Flops are not attached
Sunglasses: Checked in C1&C2, Unchecked in C3-C5
Bikini Top: Checked in C3, Unchecked in C1&C2&C4&C5, because the prim won't fit under my shirt
Bikini Bottom: Checked in C3&4, Unchecked in C1&2&C5
Navy Top: Checked in C1&2, Unchecked in C3-C5
Navy Shorts: Checked in C1&2, Unchecked in C3-C5

Now my Main Menu looks like this:

Lets go to the beach and try it out:

Compilation1: Dress All

Compilation2: Barefeet

Compilation3: Swimsuit

Compilation4: Topless

Compilation5: Naked

I hope this helps understanding of the CJOS can be set up :-)


Appendix: Contents of my folders

Setting up the #RLV-Folder

Many people use their #RLV-Folders for their adult toys only. This way they loose a big deal of the potential of this great addition to Second Life. In this tutorial I'd like to show how all the items (at least the ones which you'd like to attach to your avatar) of an inventory can be placed in the #RLV-Folder so that its owner, other players and scripts can easily access them.

1. Set up the folder

Some viewers will automatically create the RLV-folder for you. In case yours didn't go ahead and create a folder named #RLV in your root folder (the highest place where you can create folders). #rlv or #Rlv won't work with most viewers, so make sure that you only use upper-case letters only.

2. One item per folder

Placing many different items in one folder appears to be an easy way to store outfits. After all you can just right-click the folder and attach all items in it to your avatar.

But this effectively renders auto-detach useless. When a script tries to detach one item from your avatar it might scan your inventory for the folder this item is in and will detach all the contents of this folder as well. This makes sense, because this way the script can detach for example your shoes (which are usually located at the left and right foot (I know, in RL that's obvious ;-) )) as well as the alpha and the shoe-form belonging to these shoes without worrying about the alphas of other clothes, your hair, etc.

Also this way you can't swap or (un-)dress single items in an outfit using scripts.

Therefore I advise to put each item in a single folder.

3. Naming folders

Sorting

You can add special chars in front of the names of folders to change their order. For example a ? or a ! will place them higher in a list. Only use special chars when needed and don't use too fancy ones. Some scripts and viewers show unexpected behavior when using them.

Invisble folders

A . will render the folder invisible to scripts which scan folders, but is will still be accessible to scripts which attach or detach folders.

A ~ will work the same way a . does. Typically folders given to you by other objects will start with a ~ so you might want to avoid using this character yourself to avoid confusion.

Protected folders

Adding (nostrip) at the end of a folders name will make it impossible for scripts to detach them. Use this for important things, like your relay, your AO, your hair, etc.

Unique names

Also make sure that the names of your folders are unique. Having a folder "Blue" in one subfolder and another folder "Blue" in a second subfolder might confuse scripts.

It is also important to keep in mind how scripts search folders. They will only the first result which matches their search criteria.

Example:
If you have the folders

"Pretty Blue Dress"

"My new Blue Dress by Some Creator"

"Blue Dress"
and you want to attach the last one your script will have problems to locate this folder, because if it searches for it it will only find the first folder. Therefore you should include enough information in a folders name to avoid confusion, for example the creators name, the date you bought it, etc.

Also: some popular scripts treat spaces as separators of search parameters, meaning that a search for "Blue Dress" might return "Dress Blue" as well, since it contains both words. As said above: make the names unique.

Understandable

When you are into adult activities you might want to give other players access to your folder-structure (no, other players cannot move, edit or delete your items, that's a myth!). Make sure they can understand the names of your folders and start with the relevant word first. Example: "Gag Ball Red Rubber MoDesign" is faster to understand than "Modesign Red Rubber Ball Gag". Especially because menus chop of texts after a certain length.

4. Organization

For your scripts to work it doesn't make any difference where you put the folders. In theory.

But in reality you don't want to have too many sub-folders in one folder. At least if you want to navigate your menu with dialogs. Scripts have memory limitations and they may chop of menu items if there are too many. Also it's a pain to navigate dozens of menu-pages.

As a rule of hand I wouldn't put more than 30 sub-folders in a single folder. If you need more create additional folders in between.

Also, like stated above, other players might take a look at your folders. You might want to make it easy for them to find what they are looking for. Place the stuff they might be looking for at the first positions (take a look a t Sorting above).

And don't worry about the script-load on the server for scanning your inventory. This is done by your client.