Behind the Scenes: Clean Your Poses

Fix Jazz Hand Poses & Make Poses Easy Access

I have been getting a lot of 'How do you do it' questions from my friends and readers, so once a week I will be choosing one of the questions they give me. I am very forthcoming about teaching people how to do things on SL -- when I was a newb, I had no help. Nobody was willing to help me find freebies and such. Though freebies are no longer necessary for me, I do try to still cover them to help others out. I also like giving tutorials for other bloggers just beginning in their path.  

Today I'd like to cover my current project. I am currently cleaning my inventory so blogging will be easier. I'm beginning with my multitude of poses -- I have over 1,000 poses I have been collecting over the years, and going through folders takes hours to find the right poses. Well, not anymore. I managed to get rid of 6,000 items from my inventory in one day without actually losing access to them. Note, this only works with copy poses only. You will lose no-copy poses doing this.

I tried a pose hud recently made by Peli (peli.dieterle) and I am really pleased with the results. This hud, called the .PoseBox Hud v1.01, is an "innovative Inventory Tool for Animation Collectors / PoseHud Inventory Organiser". The $45L demo is a no copy version of it -- but it still gives you a full access to all the functions in order to try it out. It is easy to use. Rez it on the ground at any sandbox and put in your animations. According to Peli, "with long names the script will remember and play approximately 150 poses, and with shorter animation names I had the hud working with approximately 500 poses before it gave me the stack heap collision error. " If you only have a handful of poses, all you need is the demo.

 

However, if you're like me, and have thousands of them, the full version is much nicer with both copy and modify rights. It is $145L and very easy to use. All you do is drop your poses in and then wear the hud. It is simple as that. If it gives you a script error, just reset the scripts and it is fixed in two seconds flat. I love it. It has made boxing up my poses so much easier and even if I can't rez, I can use them easily without a pose stand.

Another tool I have recently been using is the [gi inc] Multi Pose Stand Rezzer 2.0. This pose stand is $250L, but do not let the price tag chase you away -- this is an invaluable tool. Place the multirezzer down and then rez out one of the pose stands. Take the pose stand and place all your animations into it, rename the stand to something short like 'FairyPoses' or 'E.InkPoses' because the stand's name needs to be under 24 characters long, and then place the pose stand into the multirezzer. This creates a menu option in the rezzer so you can quickly and efficiently rez and use different pose stands, and the hud allows you to control up to five stands at one time. I really have to thank Chobii for giving me this as a present. You are a blessing to me, Chobii. Thank you so much for being there for me.

Now that I have showed you these two projects, I can now explain how to combine them to make your own poses with animations you already obtain when you shop. You know those bag poses that scream 'Delete Me' when you open the box? Don't delete them. They are an invaluable tool for creating your own pose.

Take all those bag poses and stick them in a Posebox Hud special for just hand poses. Most bag poses only affect the hands. This makes them perfect for combining them with other poses so you can either move your hands, because jazz hands aren't pretty, or make it possible to carry a bag or purse while you have a another pose for the rest of your body.

Sit on your pose stand and wear your hud full of bag poses. Turn on the hand poses and begin cycling through the animations until you find a pose which works with your hands. People always wonder how I can move my hands in my different poses and combine them. They sometimes ask, "that's not what the pose looks like. How did you do that?" I merely moved my hands with these bag animations!

I hope this behind the scenes was informative on how to make your poses clean and easily accessible no matter where you are. You will lose no-copy poses doing this. So only do this on copy poses. However, using this method I managed to get rid of 6,000 items by boxing the poses in the pose stands and huds. I also took the time to delete all the landmarks and notecards included with those poses and other items.