Chopine Aura

Chopine’s shoes – the help notecard in HTML format

1. Product information
2. Resizing the shoes
3. Texture changing on feet / ankle skin and toenails via HUD
4. Color changing on feet / ankle skin and toenails
  4a. Color changing using the HUD
  4b. Color changing using the edit menu
5. Replacements
6. Terms of use

1. Product information

Each pair of shoes comes boxed with eight items:

- a pair of ankles (depending on the shoe model, those may be decorated with ribbons etc.), which will attach to the lower leg;
- a pair of feet (with shoes, if not bare feet), which will attach to the feet;
- a texturing HUD, which you will only have to wear when actually retexturing the feet’s skin or the nail colors;
- another box with viewer 2.0 compatible versions of the above mentioned items:
Viewer 2.0 allows for disposing of invisiprims on shoes and instead requires you to wear an alpha layer on your legs. However, since viewer 2.0 is not used by everyone on the grid, and those who don’t use it can’t use that alpha layer (and therefore require the invisiprims on the shoes), the ‘Viewer 2.0 version’ of Chopine’s shoes are currently just an option that I decided to include in the actual package for those who are using the 2.0 version of the Second Life viewer (or other viewers compatible to the 2.0 version’s features).
So ONLY unpack and use the contents of the 2.0 version box if you are actually running a 2.0 viewer version.
- a help notecard, which you’re reading right now.
- a landmark to Chopine’s main store.

2. Resizing the shoes

***Optimized settings for viewing sculpties in Second Life***
Please note that it’s entirely possible the shoes look weird to you, like having gaps and flickering. That’s because they’re Second Life sculpties and because you probably don’t have optimized settings for viewing sculpties. So before resizing them you’ll want to make sure that you’re actually seeing the shoes the way they’re supposed to look. Here’s how:
First, make sure you can see the ‘Advanced’ menu in your viewer. If you only have ‘File, Edit, View… etc..’ but no ‘Advanced’ on top of your viewer, press Ctrl-Alt-D on your keyboard, or Opt-Ctrl-D on a Mac.
Second, select “debug settings” near the bottom.
Third, in the blank space, copy and paste the word: RenderVolumeLODFactor (or you can just click the arrow and scroll down to that word).
Fourth, increase the number given there to at least ‘4.000′ – personally, I’m running this setting at ‘6.000′.
*****

 Also, as with everything you resize in Second Life, note that you want to wear a copy of the shoes when resizing them, just in case you mess something up.
To copy them, you’ll want to right-click the feet and shoe items in your inventory while NOT wearing them (hold down the SHIFT button to select them one by one while right-clicking them), select copy, and paste them to a folder of your choice. For example, you can make a folder named ‘resized’ in the product folder and paste them to that one.

In case you accidentally messed up the original pair of shoes / ankles and need a replacement to start over, scroll down to “8. Replacements” and read about the possibility of getting a quick replacement of your purchase.

 All shoes and ankles are copy / mod and contain no resize scripts.
That means resizing has to be done by you, preferably when standing on a pose stand, via the edit (build) menu. To get that menu, click on either shoe (or ankle) while wearing it and select ‘edit’ from the menu.

Now, select (while holding down the ‘SHIFT’ button on your keyboard and by left-clicking the items you’re wearing) BOTH feet AND BOTH ankles.
This will make sure that you’re resizing both feet to the same scale, and feet and ankles in relation to each other.

As soon as you have selected all four – your ‘Build’ menu should show you four selected objects, the number of prims will vary according to the shoe model you’re wearing – you have to hold down the [STRG] and [SHIFT] buttons on your keyboard. When doing that, the ‘directional arrows’ between your feet will disappear and instead, several (eight, to be precise) white squares will appear around your shoes.

Now, concentrating on ONE side of shoe / ankle (but while still having BOTH sides selected!), you cam around your feet and make sure that the ankle attaches flawless to the lower leg. You don’t need to look for the other foot/ankle, or for the foot! Just concentrate on the ankle and that its size looks nicely when attached to your lower leg.

Occasionally, you’ll have to push the ankle / feet combination on the side you’re concentrating on into a certain direction in order to make it attach nicely to the foot while resizing it. In that case, just let go of the [STRG] and [SHIFT] buttons on your keyboard for a moment. The ‘direction’ arrows will instantly reappear, and you can grab them (left-click-hold) to drag the ankle/foot combination in the desired direction.

Note that it will usually not be necessary to drag them into the ‘Z’ (=blue arrow) direction. X and Y (red and green) will do.

 Eventually, after resizing / pushing for a while, you’ll be successful and the ankle will attach nicely to the one leg you’re concentrating on. However, now the other ankle will look weird in relation to the leg it’s worn on.

Just deselect the one ankle / foot that’s looking good (by holding down the SHIFT button on your keyboard while left-clicking the ‘good’ ankle and foot), then use the arrows to push the other ankle / foot in place on the ‘bad’ looking side. If you followed the instructions above to always resize BOTH sides at the same time while concentrating on positioning ONE of them, you shouldn’t have to resize the ‘wrong’ positioned foot / ankle combination any more – just a bit of pushing will do.

 The problem you may be facing after correctly resizing and positioning both feet and ankles is that maybe the invisiprim, which the Non-Viewer 2.0 versions have, has lost its correct position. You’ll easily see that if your prim feet, shoes or ankles have strange, skin-colored ’spots’ hovering over them.

What you’ll have to do to make those spots go away is to reposition and maybe resize just the invisiprims on the feet and ankles. This is pretty simple, since each of them just used ONE invisiprim.
Go into the ‘Edit’ mode again, and check the ‘Edit linked parts’ box in the Edit window. Then, try to find the invisiprims. It’s a tapered cylinder on the ankle and a sculpted, SL-foot-shaped prim on the foot.
Note that Invisiprims are, well, invisible. They can’t even be seen (as ‘red clouds’) when activating the ‘highlight transparent’ option in the ‘View’ menu. So you really have to just ‘find’ the invisiprims by clicking where you think they are. The following picture should help you locate both the foot and the ankle invisiprim.

You don’t have to edit all four invisiprims simultaneously when resizing them. It’s not even required to resize them, as shown in the picture, per side. Just edit each one as a single prim, and, by resizing / repositioning, the ’spots’ of skin that still show through will disappear. Don’t forget to cam under the feet to see if the invisiprim also covers the sole of the avatar’s feet!

 In case you’re using the Viewer 2.0 versions and go inworld with the Viewer 2.0 (any other combination would be useless…), you’ll occasionally see weird ’skin lines’ over your prim ankles / feet / shoes. In that case, you’ll want to rebake (keyboard: [STRG]+[ALT]+[R] pressed simultaneously) – the lines will disappear a few seconds later.

 There, you’re done resizing and repositioning your shoes! Now on to matching the skin color!

 
3. Texture changing

 To make the skin of ankles and feet match the skin your avatar is wearing, you have to change the textures of the feet’s skin. Of course, there’s also an option to change the nail color; I’ll get to that part later.
To do the texture change, you’ll have to wear the HUD. Just right-click it in your inventory and select ‘wear’ and it will attach to your screen. Note that you only need to wear the HUD while using it to make texture- or color changes to the feet. After that is done, you can detach the HUD (please also read 5. – saving and loading your settings – and 6. – deleting the scripts – before you actually detach the HUD).

The upper row of squares on the HUD shows possible skin colors.
Select one that seems closest to the skin you’re wearing while having your camera zoomed in on your feet. It can take a few seconds until the new skin textures have loaded on your feet; that is nothing to worry about.
You just have to make sure that the skin color vaguely matches your own. Preferably, if you can’t find an exact match – which would be unlikely – the skin tone of the ankles and feet is a tiny bit lighter than your skin color – the rest can be done by slightly tinting the feet, which we’ll do in the next step.
In case you’re wearing a very unusual skin color (such as ‘Drow blue’, or the like), you’ll want to select the skin color on the very right (white/grey looking). With unusual skin colors, you’ll receive the best results this way, by recoloring the entire skin in the next step.

To change the nail colors, you just have to click either of the metallic or non-metallic nail colors on the HUD. There are also options for ‘French’ (which just work RIGHT AFTER you have selected the skin tone!) and ‘rainbow’, which will give each of your toenails a different color, resulting in a ‘nail rainbow’.

 Retexturing finished? On to color changing of the skin!

 
4. Color changing

  4a. Color changing using the HUD

To change the skin color once you’ve set the skin texture (described in the previous step), you just have to click into that colorful rainbow field on the HUD. Usually, a very slight tinting will do. This picture here shows (framed red) the place where I clicked to tint the previously selected texture to match the skin of my legs.  

For more extreme colors (like the aforementioned ‘Drow blue’), you’ll have to select a color that’s closest to your skin. You can always desaturate the color you selected with the black and white color stripe (to the left of the rainbow, in the HUD).

    4b. Color changing using the edit menu

 In case you prefer doing ‘old school’ retinting (as in: tinting per edit menu), here’s how:
You’ll have to select 7 prims on the foot (using ‘edit linked parts’):
The ‘back foot’, the ball, and each of the (five) toes. Depending on the shoe model you’re wearing it’s probably most difficult to select the ball; however it’s relatively simple if you cam into the shoe from the toes.
The following picture shows 8 prims as being selected; one of them is, of course, part of the ankle and also needs to be tinted:

 As soon as you’ve selected those 8 prims on both feet and ankles (and just for the maths geeks, that’s 16 prims in total which have to be selected…), you can tint your happy way using the edit menu.

 
5. Saving and loading your settings

 Once you’re satisfied with your retextured / recolored feet and ankles, you can save your settings by clicking the “Save settings” button on the HUD. The HUD will then save your settings to its memory.

This is a good thing in case you buy more than one pair of my shoes, since it enables you to use just ONE HUD for all shoes you’ll ever buy at my store. If that HUD has your skin coloring / texturing preferences saved, you can load them to any shoe that you’ve bought at my store.

In case you occasionally wear more than one skin, simply use a different HUD to save the settings of that skin to.
While you can’t rename the HUDs (since they’re no mod), you can still put them into renamed folders so it will be easy for you to recognize which HUD has which skin settings saved.

6. Deleting the scripts from the shoes

If you’re satisfied with the way your shoes look, you can delete the scripts from them so that the scripts in them won’t lag you.
Of course you want to make sure to do that on a copy of the shoes, in case you should ever decide to change your toenail color, for example!
To delete the scripts, click the ‘Delete scripts from shoes’ button on the HUD. The HUD will then delete the scripts from the shoes and ankles that you are currently wearing.

 In case you should accidentally do this on the original pair of shoes, please see 8. – Replacements.

 
7. What do I do if the scripts stop working (or don’t work to begin with)?

 If for any reason the scripts don’t work, neither hesitate nor panic.
Just detach / reattach the HUD and shoes from yourself, teleport to a sim where scripts are definitely allowed to be run and reattach your HUD and shoes / ankles. This has, so far, solved most possible problems.
In case you have tried this but it didn’t work:
Please wear shoes, ankles and HUD on a sim where scripts are definitely allowed to be run. Then, right-click either of the shoes, select ‘edit’. With the ‘edit’ window open, select ‘Tools’ (from the upper menu), then ‘’Reset scripts in selection’. Wait until the little window that pops open allows you to ‘close’ it, then repeat this process for the other shoe, each ankle, and, last not least, the HUD.

This should solve all other problems that may come from either the HUD’s or the foot / ankle scripts

8. Replacements

In case you messed up your shoes, you can always get a replacement after buying. There’s a redelivery terminal at my store; here’s the landmark:

9. Terms of use

 You are allowed to use these shoes and ankles in Second Life. This, of course, includes taking shapshots or making machinima with them in any way you please.
You are, however, not allowed to reverse engineer, resell and / or otherwise reuse the textures, sculpties or scripts – which are all custom made by me (Chopine Aura) and a hired scripter for me – in Second Life, other virtual worlds or grids or in real life.

 In case you have any questions other than those already answered above, please do not hesitate to IM me – Chopine Aura – or my main avatar, Naergilien Wunderlich, in Second Life.
If you should ever see my shoes for sale elsewhere at any other than my own or my main avatar’s stores, please inform me. Content theft is a crime. I’ve put months of work into my shoes, and I take pride in my work.