The third installment of Second Life University dropped on Thursday. This is the first of the promised tutorials led by Boston Blaisdale. In this almost bite sized video – has to be less than five minutes for me to call it bite sized, I guess my mouth isn’t that big [I heard that!] – he takes us through the basic mechanics of dressing up your avatar. At just under eight minutes, this is a quick introduction for new residents. It could save a lot of frustration.
I usually methodically collect a bunch of timestamped links when I look through such videos, but whoever is uploading the videos, I assume Strawberry, is doing a great job of that lately. Just look in video’s description or use the shamelessly pillaged table of contents below.
- 0:42 – Second Life Marketplace overview
- 2:49 – Purchasing from the Marketplace / trying on a DEMO
- 4:10 – Hiding classic avatar (non-mesh) body parts using an alpha HUD
- 4:43 – Using the viewer’s search function to find and teleport to a location in Second Life
- 4:56 – Purchasing items inside Second Life
- 5:49 – Unboxing your purchased items
- 6:23 – Wearing your new clothing
- 6:58 – Detaching or removing HUDs or clothing
Topics Covered
The main idea of this tutorial is, naturally, how to dress your avatar. The main points covered are how to buy an outfit on Marketplace, how to wear your outfit inworld, and how to shop at a main store.
Shopping Marketplace
The Marketplace overview familiarizes new residents with:
- Searching for clothing by categories, subcategories, and featured items
- Using the keywords search bar and the store link
- Merchants and stores tab search
Boston also discusses single items vs. fatpacks, how to look for body types in descriptions.
Moving on to purchasing items from the Marketplace, the concept of demo versions is introduced right up front. I’m glad he’s stressing this. Getting in the habit of trying the demo before buying can save a lot of aggravation.
He next goes back inworld to the viewer and illustrates how to find your new Marketplace purchases in the inventory and how to wear them. Also covers how to handle bits of body showing through clothes using mesh body alpha HUDs and alpha layers packaged with the outfit. Autohide gets a mention. Style control HUDs are mentioned but get a fuller treatment later.
Shopping Inworld
He uses the viewer’s search bar to locate the main store and shows how to teleport to it. (Sadly, this approach is more reliable than following the “Inworld Store” links in Marketplace, which are (coughs) not always completely up to date.)
Next is how to use inworld vendors to find products appropriate for your body, get demos, and purchase products.
After that, the next lesson is naturally how to unpack from product HUDs, boxes, and bags.
Finally, using a style control HUD to customize the outfit is presented.
That’s a lot in eight minutes! But it doesn’t feel rushed. I’m going to keep a link to this video handy to hand out when I run across confused new residents! Thanks Boston!
Thinking Outside the Plywood Box 