Help! My product isn’t right!
Did you just get something on SL and it’s all buggered? Does it not look anything like the photos? Sometimes Second Life itself causes problems for products, so fear not: You probably have not been scammed and it is most likely an easy fix! This is a list of common hiccups and their solutions.
1. My skeleton is malformed
This issue happens often when you have lots of avatars that use deformations (aka, they are in any way different than the default avatar). When you switch avatars the skeleton deformations act in mysterious ways. Usually this issue is resolved by resetting your skeleton
Right click self>Appearance>Reset>Skel. & Anim. (This will work only in firestorm. The regular viewer does not have a reset skeleton function.)
If this does not fix the issue, then one of a few things is likely the culprit:
-Wearing an AO for a deformed avatar (like a quad)
-Using deforming animations
Remove those and reset your skeleton and animations again. (note that when you reset your animations that you may need to toggle your AO to get it working again)
2. Textures have holes in them where they aren’t supposed to
This is caused by multiple layers set to alpha blending that are layered on top of one another. An alpha is what is used to determine where invisible pixels go. So objects like eyelashes or these Nicolas Cage nipples make use of simple geometry and use an alpha to hide the extra. When more than one layer has alpha blending on, however, the upper-most layer will ‘cancel out’ what is below it, creating the gaps.
The solution is to make sure there is only one alpha blending layer in the set. You can change the alpha mode by going into edit mode on the object. Remember you will need to select “edit linked” or even “select face” on some objects to edit the mode individually.
You will notice there are 4 options:
None: No alpha. No pixels will become transparent. This is good for textures that have no transparency, such as skin.
Alpha blending: Alpha blends into the edges giving a soft transition. The default setting for png and tga textures. Multiple alpha blending textures will cancel one another out.
Alpha masking: Masks over transparent pixels and makes them 100% transparent. Causes harder edges. Will ask for “mask cutoff”. You will want to set it to around 100, more or less depending on how much you want cut. Does not interfere with alpha blending layers.
Emissive mask: Has something to do with light emission. You won’t use this unless you know what you are doing. Don’t worry about it.
So if you have two overlapping layers that need an alpha mode to work, set one to alpha masking instead. If the texture doesn’t actually need an alpha, it may have been set to ‘alpha masking’ because that is the default for png and tga files. You can set it to ‘none’, instead.
Mod makers– sometimes applier kits let you set the alpha mode, but some do not. If you want to avoid your files being set to alpha blending, make your textures jpg/jpeg instead. (yeah, I know, gross. But it is the only way if the applier does not give control over the alpha setting)
Avatar makers– please give your applier kits control over alpha mode where possible
These are the two main problems I always get asked about. If I think of more I will add them in later. Remember that if you are having a problem you can always send me a notecard! This is just for ease of access to the information :) Hope it helps!