prim avatar
skinning guide. v4

guide by - heatherhawnlast modified. 04-11this guide will cover the creation of a prim psuedo-rig on top of the SL avatar rig.
intended for 'fully jointed' humanoid avatars, but I'll try to point out what to do differently for tinies throughout, at the bottom of each part. traditional prim tiny avatars use special AOs ( not typically deformers ) to fold the limbs in half, and use only one bone per limb.
tiny avatars can be considered 'partially jointed'.other alternatives rigs are possible too, which will be covered in the future AO & animation section.

prerequisites;

entry level build mode knowledge
shape with desired proportions; set all the fat & muscle sliders to 0
full body alpha
pose stand; T-pose preferred
tinies will require specialized poses. Raglan Shire has a tiny making kit containing a pose stand, inside the Welcome Center - it's one of the plaid patterned boxes on the top shelf.

settings;

Preferences > Advanced > 🗹 Show Developer Menu ( will be used later )
Build Menu > 🗹 Edit Axis at Root

part 1. creating our 'rig'.

part 2. fitting.

part 3. finish.

part 1. creating our 'rig'.

p1.0

you can use any prim shape for joints.I personally use spheres, they usually can remain visible on some finished avis.
prisms & cubes may be better for visually telling which way a prim is facing without having to edit them to see.we will be using these 'joint' prims later as the root prims of our avatar's different sections/link sets.rez a prim
set Transparency to : 2%, this ensures the center of the positioning Gizmo is visible.select pose stand
Copy Positionselect prim
Paste Position
( you can move the prim up slightly so it's not hidden inside the pose stand )sit on the pose standnow, we can enable a rendering feature that will help us achieve accurate & smooth joints

Developer > Avatar > Show Bones

( don't do this in heavily populated area. it will get very laggy! )
all of your avatars bones should now be visible, with little dots at the ends & areas they connect. these are your joints .

p1.1 spine

move your prim to the bottom dot/joint of the Pelvis bone,
take special care to have it centered on the joint. there is a Groin bone that could be mistaken as the Pelvis, just know that the Groin bone is disconnected from any other Bones, and can be ignored.that's the first joint

hold shift before moving a prim to duplicate it

( aka shift-drag )move another prim into the next dot.
repeat this for the rest of the spine, & ignore the bone at the very top.now, to name these prims to match the bones we will later be attaching them to.
from Top to Bottom, we have ;'avatar_name' Head
'avatar_name' Neck
'avatar_name' Chest
'avatar_name' Spine *
the attachment point here is actually named Right / Left Pec, but spine makes more sense imo. there is an attachment point named Spine too, which is actually the Chest too. it's a whole thing. you can read about it here.
avatar_name Pelvis

for tiny avatars, you only want a Head, *Neck, and Chest.
( Neck isn't necessary, depends on design )

p1.2 arms

arms are fortunately the simplest to get in place.
after you have a prim in place for the Shoulder, its a straight path.
pick one arm to start with, we will mirror it later.move another prim onto the end joint of the Shoulder Bone
( the dot closest to the center of the body, furthest from the rest of the arm )repeat with prims down rest of the arm's joints, and you should now have 4 prims in place. ( ignore the finger bones, we unfortunately cannot attach prims to all of them. )this is how I prefer to name these, starting with the Shoulder ;
( add L or R depending on the side you chose )'avatar_name' Shoulder
'avatar_name' Arm Upper
'avatar_name' Arm Lower
'avatar_name' Hand

for tiny avatars, you only want the *Shoulder & Arm Upper.
( Shoulder isn't necessary, depends on design. )

p1.3 legs

finally, its time for the legs.
since the leg bones are inherently bowlegged, they are a little annoying to prim with..I have a maybe unorthodox solution.
pick one leg to start with.

position a prim at the top leg joint, name it

'avatar_name' Leg Upper
select the local orientation ruler mode, and switch to move mode.my solution is to use the axis lines coming from the move gizmo on our prim as a guide.scroll wheel the rotation(s) in small increments until one of those lines is overlapping with the debug bone view lines. tap the key-bind for rotation mode after ( ctrl ) to update the gizmo/axis lines.

scroll wheel increments can be changed by holding CTRL, SHIFT, or ALT.

create a duplicate of that prim, and move it via local orientation down the bone, sliding to the knee joint.
this prim will actually be kept as part of the upper leg, just so we can have two joints available to rotate & position with later.duplicate that prim & make the new prim slightly larger, overlapping the previous.
this will be our lower leg prim.

'avatar_name' Leg Lower
you can repeat the local orientation trick here, & duplicate to continue down the rest of the leg. the next joint is the last one for prim avatars. it will be named;

'avatar_name' Foot

for tiny avatars, you only want the Leg Upper

mirroring.

you can mirror later after designing your avatar, but I recommend testing a mirror script at this stage if you're a first timer.

FURWARE > very fast to use, comes with an infinite use demo.
ROSAL > works with flexis.

link the limbs & one of the prims that make up the spine together, with the spine prim as the root.

scripted method

shift-drag copy the link set & place script insideafter activating the script , copy position of the original link set, paste position on the mirrored one.
unlink the mirrored link set and delete the loose spine prim that created .

manual method

shift-drag copy the link set & rotate globally Z: | 180° |you will have to do some re-aligning with these new prims.
also, individually rotate the prims they are facing the same local direction as the original side.
unlink the mirrored link set and delete the loose spine prim that created .

part 2. fitting.

p2.1 attaching the parts

link your avatar's segments into various link sets, with the joint prims placed in part 1 as the roots of their respective link sets.with everything now linked, individually go to each segment & Take Copy.
( newer versions of SL now can take separate objects in bulk. use 'Take Copies as Separated Items' if available. )in your Inventory, search : 'avatar_name'put these segments into a new folder ( organization ! )you can start attaching the segments;
here is a list of the prim names we used & the names of the attachment points to use.-
Head -> Skull
Neck -> Neck
Chest -> Chest
Spine -> Right or Left Pec
Pelvis -> Pelvis-
Shoulder -> Shoulder
Arm Upper -> Upper Arm
Arm Lower -> Forearm
Hand -> Hand-
Leg Upper -> Upper Leg
Leg Lower -> Lower Leg
Foot -> Foot
-

p2.2 finishing touches

all you got left to do is to line up your segments.
everything is gonna be rotated the wrong way, but thats ok.start with positioning .Developer > Avatar > Show Bones ( if not turned on already )
re-position segments into the same joints they were before. now for rotation..
enable snapping & rotate in 90° increments. won't be perfect for every joint, but that's ok.
just get most of the way there!for sections not fitting perfectly, you can use the scroll wheel trick ( from p1.3 ) until everything is lined up.

part 3. finish.

CONGRATULATIONS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you are now a certified PRIM LORD !!!

PLEASE save your avatar as an outfit, and then take off the outfit.
SL is not guaranteed to have automatically saved any changes made on attachments.
re-attaching acts as a manual save .

prim avatarskinning guide. v4

prerequisites;

settings;

part 1. creating our 'rig'.

p1.0

p1.1 spine

p1.2 arms

p1.3 legs

mirroring.

scripted method

manual method

part 2. fitting.

p2.1 attaching the parts

p2.2 finishing touches

part 3. finish.

prim avatar
skinning guide. v4