A Rainbow of Colors

Building Tip:

Once your have your items made -- be it a flower, a chair or a bracelet -- it's fairly simple to make a variety of versions of the product. Even it you have made items for yourself, it's nice to have things in a rainbow of colors and textures. Items such as furniture that is not attached to your avatar is quite easy, but the act of attaching makes it a little more complex. Here are some hints. NOTE: There are other methods to do this, but I have had parts of items disappear or lose their attachment orientations using them. So this is one way -- and one that I have not had any issues with :D

• Make a copy of the item you want to change. Rename it to its new name. So, for example, "Gold Bangle Bracelet Jade" would become "Gold Bangle Bracelet Rose Quartz".
  

• Attach the new item. Since you have made a copy of presumably the already fitted item, you should be able to just choose WEAR and have the prims attach in the correct spots.

• With the Build menu open, choose Select Textures in the Texture Pane. Then carefully click on each piece you want to change to a different texture or color -- holding down the shift key. In this case I wanted to change the texture on each of the 20 bead colors in the bracelet.

• Camera controls are needed here and it may take you days (weeks - months) to get REALLY comfortable with the panning around. My suggestion is to start out with something simpler than 20 beads attached to an avatar's arm :D.
  

• When you have ALL the prims you want to change to ONE specific color and/or texture, go to the texture window and choose the new tga or png from your inventory. You can also open (or upload) a texture and drag it onto the texture window in the build menu.

• With the texture changed, detach the item and then wear it again. This let's you test that all is OK and "sticking". Beware that textures can revert to the old pattern now and then. This is not an Opensim problem per se as it happens at Phil's also. I haven't seen it happen in OL yet, but it probably will, so be prepared for one bead turning back to it's old color for example.

Inventory Tip:

An odd thing happened to me today that I want to pass on. I had just finished filing about 200 or so textures and 20 products in appropriate folders in my inventory. The sim abruptly crashed; viewer closed, no warning -- you get the idea.

When I got back into world I found those bracelets back in their old spot rather than where I had moved them. Not enough time for the viewer to take note of the change perhaps? Whatever the reason all 200 plus textures were also in my Textures folder rather than "wood", "metal", "misc" etc. So I was sort of bummed.

BUT -- just by accident I found that left clicking on each object or texture put it back in the folder where was supposed to be -- it's planned place in my estimation anyway. THAT was a relief and so cool. So I wanted to pass that along.