When I first framed this photo in Second Life, there were a few prims that just were not where I wanted them to be. Now there are several ways I could have dealt with those inconvenient prims. I could have spent 30 minutes or so cloning and painting and liquifying in PhotoShop to paint them out of the picture. I could have made a copy of the hair and shoved them inside my head or outside the picture frame. However, I opted for the much easier strategy of simply hiding them or more accurately not rendering them. Unfortunately, not everyone knows about this little trick and so they work much too hard. This short tutorial is to introduce you to the best time save on the grid.
Generally speaking, I look for poses that reduce and eliminate inconvenient prim intersections, but sometimes you just cannot avoid one or two. Here you can see two small intersections and then there’s a bit of hair obscuring the earrings. I am going to make them disappear.
The first step is going to the Advanced Menu. To access it, press control-alt-D. Under the Rendering Sub-Menu, I selected Hide Selected so there is an X in front of it. Now any item I select to edit will disappear.
I selected my hair to edit and it disappeared. I then ticked the Edit Linked Parts box so I could select individual prims.
Holding the shift key, I selected 4 prims that successfully hid what I wanted to hide. This takes a bit of clicking and guessing and clicking some more since alpha textures like these are often all over the place. The top photo is the result of this selection – after I turned off the camera’s show interface option. No editing required.
***STYLE NOTES******
Promotional Copies are denoted by a Bold R
- Poses: Long Awkward Pose
- Skin: PXL Creations July Nat DE Passion
- Eyes: PXL Creations Glow Yellow Green R
- Lashes: Lelutka Diva Prim Lashes
- Hair: Ali & Alli Darla Hair (tinted)
- Jewelry: Eclectica Ruby Red Necklace and Earrings
The things you still learn! Thank you for this hint, I have been editing prims away and out of view for images!
Thank you so much for this tutorial!! I confess to being not amazingly SL techie ( although I continue to learn, obviously) but I’ve always used poses etc that don’t feature these glitches; often to the detriment of what would be a good photo.
Now I know I don’t have to do that anymore, so thank you so much!! This is going to be amazingly useful to me..so kind of you to share:)
All the best,
Kitty =^..^=
What a great tip! Thank you for sharing it. It will really come in handy as I work on my craptastic photo skills.
Never thought of doing this with hair! Thanks!
That’s a cool tip but there is yet another way that in some cases will be easier. Simply take another photo of yourself in the same position without your hair. Then position the two images on top of each other and take a soft eraser and remove what you don’t want. This way you will have your prims and eat them too ^__^
I don’t know why it never occurred to me to do this with hair. Brilliant!
You showed me how to do this last summer and honestly it was one of the best tips I ever learned. You saved me! Hugs to you!
Thank you so much, Cajsa for reminding me of this simple trick I always seem to forget!
I love you for this <3
Very handy! I knew about hiding prims.. just didn’t occur to me!
Laura
Hopefully I’ll remember this in the future. Thanks so much, Cajsa!
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Thanks so much for the comments! I hope the trick works well for you and Gita, thanks for the new trick!
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Wow. What a fabulous tip!