Minikin Free Mesh Avatar by Caverna Obscura

Now you can get a petite sized mesh avatar FOR FREE! ^^ At Caverna Obscura of course! 😛

Minikin Free Mesh Avatar by Caverna Obscura

So what’s the dealio? Last week we had a conversation in Caverna Obscura V.I.P. group chat where girls were complaining that they cannot afford Petite mesh avatars… I thought it can’t be too hard to make a mini sized avatar for them as an alternative… Another reason why i made this: since new Caverna Obscura mesh outfits were released last week, i got many requests to make them fit for Petites… Which i can’t do! I need to have a model of Petite body in my 3D modeling software to make mesh clothes that would fit. Which i obviously don’t have, because it was made by Yabu. Now that i have my own mini-sized avatar, i can make mesh outfits for it. ^^

Important thing should be mentioned: Minikin avatars are NOT compatible with clothing made for Petites!!! So please, don’t buy Petite clothes for Minikins! Animations made for Petites, furniture and other non-wearable things might be well suitable for Minikins, although i haven’t tested any.

INSTRUCTIONS

Minikin avatars come in 2 sizes: 0.3 and o.4 of the normal avatar. Size 0.4 is very close to Petites size, and Size 0.3 avatars are even a bit smaller than Petites. Each package includes 2 copy / mod body meshes (1 scripted and 1 not scripted), 1 set of no mod / copy green mesh eyes, 1 set of copy / mod untextured mesh eyes, HUD for skin coloring, shape, alpha layer. The scripted body mesh can be tinted with the HUD and its hands and feet can be turned off by a chat command. Syntax to use on channel 999: “/999 hands off”; “/999 hands on”; “/999 feet off”; “/999 feet on” (type without “”).

TIPS & TRICKS

You can make a copy of the body and apply your own skin textures. Be sure, that all skin textures are 24-bit TGA files, which means: they should not have any transparency. The usual skin textures will do, but you will have to get rid of transparency in Head texture first, as head textures are usually saved as 32-bit TGA files, or as PNGs, both of which do have transparency. Rezz the body mesh in world, edit it and use Select Texture option in the edit window to texture head, body, legs, hands and feet separately.

You can also apply your own eye textures to the modifiable eye mesh. Just rezz meshes in world, rename them and then apply your own textures.

So far you can clothe Minikin avatars ONLY in prim clothes. If there is enough interest i will make clothing layers available as well, so that you could apply clothing textures to the body.

But luckily, there are enough modifiable prim outfits out there that you can resize by hand or with a resizing script. Example in the picture: resized all-prim outfit Flower Fae II ~WHITE~ by Caverna Obscura. There are several resizing scripts available on the market. But some of them have a minimum size limit, which you could really do without when sizing down things for small avatars. It works like this: normally if you try to shrink a linkset it will only go so far until the smallest prim in the linkset reaches its smallest size. Which often is not small enough for small sized-avatars. That’s why I highly recommend a resizing script that ignores the fact that the smallest prim has reached its smallest size. Such a script will continue resizing the rest of the linkset, ignoring the smallest prim. It goes slightly out of proportions but in most cases you won’t even notice that. Sometimes it can of course get too distorted. That’s why it is wise to make copies first and have both kinds of resizing scripts: one with and one without smallest size limit. I got my resize script with the size limit on Marketplace for free (copy/mod/trans), but the one i use most often is the script without the sizing limit, which i pulled out of A & A hair (no mod/copy/no trans).

How to use a resizing script: rezz your prim item in world, edit it, go to the Contents tab of the edit window, drop the script into the Contents folder. Take the item back to your inventory, wear it and start clicking on it to resize. Once you are done, drop the item, edit it, delete the script from the Contents folder, take it back to your inventory. Sometimes it’s important to drop it (or to re-rezz in world) and delete the script this way (rather than using Kill script option), because no mod scripts will make your items not modifiable.

You can wear prim hands, feet, footwear with Minikin avatars, because there is an option to hide mesh hands and feet of Minikin’s body. If you need to hide more (for digilegs for example), i recommend to use invisi prims. If your attachments are no mod but resizeable, you can make your own invisi prims separately to wear with your digilegs and use Add option, instead of Wear.

~~~~~~~~~~

If you have any questions or suggestions about Minikin avatars, please leave a comment below or send an IM to Elvina Ewing in world.

~ by cavernaobscura on Monday, March 19, 2012.