New: Size-change scripted hair @ DragonFly Designs
March 4th, 2008 at 01:18pm Ryan Darragh
I’ve had this “In A Perfect World” kind of dream for a while now. It goes something like this:
In a perfect world, when I wear a new hairstyle for the first time, the Guardian Angel of Hair miraculously fits the hair perfectly to my avatar. The effect is dazzling. My friends are wowed and unable to restrain their admiration. I live Happily Ever After.
So far I haven’t met the Guardian Angel of Hair. Over time I’ve gotten better at it, but fitting hair has for me remained more of a somewhat tedious chore than a miracle. Although the inclusion of hairstyles in two or three different “starting sizes” is a practice I applaud and encourage, the only real exceptions have been those rare and beautiful occasions when my head’s size and shape are apparently nearly identical to that of the designer. TOmmy Fairplay is working on a solution to this ever-present problem: his two newest styles for men, “Metro” and “Hectic,” are touch-scripted to change size automatically via menu.
Here’s how it works: right-click and wear the hair as usual. However, rather than looking around for the nearest posing stand so you can stand still and stretch the hair to fit, simply touch the hair to get the size adjustment menu. From here, you can click helpfully labeled buttons to increase or decrease the hairstyle’s overall size by 1%, 5% or 10%–the hairstyle grows or shrinks uniformly from the center. You can also reset to the original size if you want to start over. If the process seems simple, it is. You may still need to adjust x-y-z placement on your head in the usual way.
But there’s a catch–although copiable, the hair is No Mod, so you won’t be able to edit individual prim strands. If like me you’re accustomed to “fine tuning” your hair by tweaking individual strands, you won’t be able to do that here. Although I was able to fit and and position these styles properly on my avatar, on each there were a few bits that I would have loved to shift or resize slightly, but couldn’t. I don’t know, maybe I’m just picky. One solution might be to sell “traditional” hair, moddable but not scripted for size changing, as an alternative, or even include both versions of the style in a pack.
So, is it perfect? I would have to say no, not quite, not yet, mainly due to the lack of moddability (new word of the day, right there). Also, there are variables other than head size (such as neck size and ear placement) that may affect how a given style looks on your avatar, variables that the scripting here can’t adjust for. But it does work as advertised, and this may be very friendly and helpful indeed to new residents or others who simply aren’t comfortable resizing or otherwise editing complex prim objects like hair.
But what about the styles themselves? In short, I like ‘em. Both are fairly shaggy, but “Hectic” (at top and at right) is a bit shorter, while “Metro” (above and at left) is more grown-out. (I had meant to wear green for “Metro” and blue for “Hectic,” but when I came back to get a picture of the touch menu I screwed up that particular rhythm. There was method to my madness, but the madness won out.) Both are nicely detailed, with realistic hair texturing and great colors–I’m particularly fond of the color I’m wearing here, Hibiscus Warm. Careful layering and wispy, tendril-like strands add depth.
TOmmy’s hairstyles are reasonably priced at L$200 each, comparable to styles that don’t include size-change scripting. A wide variety of color packs are available, and each pack includes the same style in four different but related color tones. For instance, the “Hibiscus” packs I bought include Hibiscus, Hibiscus Blend, Hibiscus Cool and Hibiscus Warm. You can pick up free demos in the shop, and the demos are also scripted, so you can play with the size-change feature before you buy.
Available at DragonFly Designs (DragonFly Oasis 112, 51, 26).
If you’re aware of similar scripted hair by any designers, please leave a comment! This is the first I’ve seen and I’d be curious to check out any others that are out there.
Disclosure: Seen in World: Yes | Review Copy: No | Friends List: No
Notes: On Ryan: "David" Entice for Men skin by Sezmra Svarog (Nora BodySkins). Striped Longsleeve Crew and "Casual Friday" outfit by Nylon Pinkney (Nylon Outfitters).
Entry Filed under: Casual, DragonFly Designs, Hair, New Items
14 Comments Add your own
1. Ran Garrigus | March 4th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I hope designers pay attention to the fact that there are indeed residents out there who want to be able (and often need to be able) to adjust hairs on a prim by prim basis. No one wants to have to size up hair until it’s gigantic on the avatar just to get a bang not to pierce an eye.
2. Lawless McBride | March 4th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
hi ryan, i think i need them both…last week i bought one of Tami McCoy’s new hairs, the “Sordid” using these prim resizer scripts…that was the first one for me..
3. Lawless McBride | March 4th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
oh, and the “sordid” hair has just the option ran is referring to, the “all prims” or ’single prims” choice..
4. Ryan Darragh | March 4th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Hmm, I had picked up Tami’s “Sordid” earlier and didn’t notice that it had size-changes scripting. I wonder if she added that later, after the intial release? I’ll have to check it out. Thanks for the tip!
5. Ran Garrigus | March 4th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Lawless,
That’s interesting. The “single prim” option, does it allow moving of the prim, or is it simply resizing prims on an individual basis?
6. Tami McCoy | March 4th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
The script I use you are in fact able to edit individual prims as well as the entire design. You can move the individual prims using the XYZ by - or + with the script menu. It’s sad that designing has come to this, but as designers we are trying our best to find a solution allowing you the consumer the freedom to edit while we the designers can protect our work. It more work for us so we’re not on a happy spree doing this trust me. But Until LL makes permissions that are actually a safety feature to designers and not a joke, I think this might be the wave of the future. And honestly it’s quite simple to use and no more accidental slips while editing and hair the size of your car
Just be sure to make back up copies and then once you’re done editing delete the scripts with the delete button. Hopefully this helps out 
7. Sean H | March 5th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
This hair is an absolute lag monster. Having an estate I can see the time in ms each object takes. One copy of this hair took up 1/3 of the sim’s resources, averaging just under 2ms with peaks up to 85ms.
(The lag point in a sim is 5ms total script time!!)
With just three people wearing scripted hair your experience would be lagged terribly.
While Tammi’s may have an option to delete the scripts this reviewed hair does not… and you would hope that people with Tammi’s hair would understand why this is critical!
Scripted hair must not be allowed, walking into a sim with 164 listening scripts is a disaster.
I’ll probably start putting up signs to remove such scripted hair, or start eject/banning people with them on.
8. Sean H | March 5th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
forgot to mention… added to which each script is 16K in size… just one copy of this hair uses up almost 4MB of precious server RAM (Every script is a sim under LSL uses 16kB no matter now trivial.)
A better solution must be found, we can’t count on designers to script in removal like Tammi and we certainly can’t count on people to do the right thing and remove the scripts freezing their hair forever (”Oh noone will mind if I leave my scripts in so I can maybe adjust a strand later”)
Find a better solution guys, resize scripts in hair and other prim complex objects is a no go.
9. TOmmy Fairplay | March 6th, 2008 at 9:50 am
This hair is being revamped with the option to delete all scripts, Sean H may not like the fact that designers are having to resort to this option of having to script hairs in order to protect their creations from thiefs, but it is necessary to do. I will post on here again once the hairs have been updated with the new scripts that will allow to move individual prims as well as delete all the scripts once the hair is fitted perfect to each ones head’s liking. It’s sad but with all the prim replicators out there we must protect the items we work hours on.
10. Ryan Darragh | March 6th, 2008 at 10:46 am
I finally had some time to play with Tami’s “Sordid” hair last night, and while the scripting is essentially similar it does indeed provide the option to work with a selected single prim or the whole style. Although this will be very diferent for those of us who are accustomed to (and comfortable with) using Edit Linked Parts to adjust hair, it does work and may well be more friendly to new residents and others who find this task intimidating. As Tami mentioned, it may even protect against catastrophic errors, like hair accidentally stretched to massive size or individual prims mistakenly dragged into a neighboring sim. (Not that I’ve ever done that.)
As Tami mentioned, her scripted hair does also provide the option to delete the scripts once you’re done with fitting. Without this option, the scripts will always be running, as with No Mod items you are not able to set the scripts to “not running” status. Sean’s information on lag resulting from scripted hair is kind of mind-boggling and I’m sure very helpful. There’s definitely a learning curve in this for everyone, and what encourages me is the responsiveness of designers to the wants, needs and concerns of their customers. The end result is bound to be a better product.
I don’t think Sean “doesn’t like” designers choosing this option any more than I “don’t like” it. We each have concerns regarding the change, coming from different directions–I want to be able to make the hair look great on me, and Sean wants his estate not to be lagged into the virtual ground. (Sean’s concern is arguably less shallow, more altruistic and noble than mine.
) I think both are valid and will be shared by others. It’s great to see that designers do hear and respond to their customers’ concerns.
It’s important to note that TOmmy, Tami and I’m sure others designers are making this change not just for the sake of change but because of their concerns regarding design theft. If you haven’t already, take a look at this post on the recent IP rights campaign launched by several designers. Their concerns are real, and tools can only go so far. Think about what you might be able to do to support designers whose work you admire in this effort.
11. TOmmy Fairplay | March 8th, 2008 at 9:48 am
These hairs now come available where your able to move individual prims as well as delete all the scripts once you have it fitted as you like. It is modifiable by menu. =)
12. Ryan Darragh | March 24th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
I was finally able to make some time to play with TOmmy’s newly re-scripted hair styles the other night. Although the scripting is vastly improved, now allowing for individual prim adjustment and the deletion of scripts when you’re finished, I think there’s still room for improvement.
The controls that grow or shrink the hair are easy to understand and use, and the hair helpfully grows or shrinks uniformly from the center. This is actually an improvement over the Edit Mode stretch tool–in my experience, it’s impossible to stretch hair without getting it off-center, so the process is a constant back-and-forth between stretching and re-positioning.
The controls that re-position the individual prims are easy enough to understand, but awkward to use. Although the selected prim can be made to blink or flash a few times, so you can confirm which prim is selected, it is not highlighted, and it can be easy to lose track of it among other hair prims–or, ugh, inside your head, if you should accidentally move it there. The prim is moved in necessarily small steps, for the most part a good idea, but it’s time-consuming and requires repeated button clicks to relocate a prim by more than a small amount. Also, I found it easy to forget which direction was X+ and which was Y-, so sometimes I would simply click the wrong button, then have to backtrack and try again.
The worst problem is that the script-driven changes seemed to “fall behind” at times and then “catch up” all at once, so often I found that I had over-compensated and clicked too many times, thus moving the prim too far. My admittedly uninformed guess is that this may be due to lag, and more patience on my part might have helped. But I found it frustrating that the process took SO LONG when I know good and well that I could have used Edit Linked Parts to make the adjustments I wanted in far less time.
Ultimately, I was able to get the hair to look good on my avatar, although I think I could have done a better job via Edit Linked Parts. Some may find complex object editing too frustrating or intimidating, and this script-driven fitting method may be perfect for them. I suspect that those of us who are more comfortable with the editing tools will miss the multi-colored adjustment arrows and yearn for the good old days.
13. Kidd Krasner | April 1st, 2008 at 2:23 pm
For what it’s worth, Calico is another designer that has started making hair with menu-driven resizing.
One situation where these scripts are invaluable is in demo hair. Demo hair is always non-modifiable (so that you can’t remove the big overhead Demo sign or recolor the electric green stands). By including a resize script in the demos, it’s now possible to see how a hair style will look on your av after resizing, making the purchase decision much more reliable.
14. Men’s Second Style &hellip | September 9th, 2008 at 10:36 am
[...] absolutely understand why some designers have made this choice. If you’re curious, you can read my thoughts on this in more detail (be sure to read the comments). L$199 at Hairstyles by Tami McCoy (Dixie [...]
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