Magic Alpha HUDs

From Ocean Engineering. GD
Kayaker Magic, September 2019.

These are transparency HUDs for the Athena, Adonis, Ruth 2.0 and Roth 2.0 mesh bodies in OpenSimulator. (The Athena HUD may work with other mesh bodies like Venus and Freya.) These Magic Alpha HUDs work like the default ones that came with your mesh body, but with more features. Like the default Alpha HUD for Ruth, these have a doll that you click on to make different parts of your mesh body transparent. Typically you wear an outfit and click on the parts of the doll where your skin sticks out of the mesh clothing. In addition there are extensive load and share options for your Transparency Sets.

Go to my blog for a list of places where you can try out and buy Magic Alpha HUDs. My blog also has links to other places around the Metaverse where you can demo Ocean Engineering products. (Coming soon: Click here to see a video demo of the Magic Alpha HUD in operation. Click here to see how to set up and use the Ready2Wear prim to link Transparency sets to your outfits.)

Features:

Use instead of the Alpha HUD that came with your mesh body
No change needed to the scripts in your mesh body(so far)
Change transparency patches by clicking on a "doll"
Rotate the doll to any angle
Default Transparency Sets loaded from a dialog
Save your settings in named Transparency Sets
Share your Transparency Sets with others, even on other grids
Find Transparency Sets shared by other designers
Comes with "Ready2Wear" prim for automaticaly loading transparency with your outfits
The Athena version has positioning buttons for feet and shape buttons for finger nails.
Low prim count, COPY MOD
DEMO version is TRANS but has save and load features disabled

No changes are needed in your mesh body, these HUDs talk to the scripts already there. Rotate the doll to any angle: When rotating by small angles the 3D doll turns smoothly but it snaps quickly when turning larger angles. Many angles helps you identify areas you need to make transparent, and prevents you from getting confused about which side is left or right. Once you have a Transparency Set you like, you can save it by name in a database and load it back later. You can mark your Sets shared so that others may us them. The instant you click 'Share' others will see it the next time they use the HUD. This works even if your friends live on a different OpenSim grid! Save any number of named Transparency Sets. All Transparency Sets are loaded from dialogs: There is a dialog for the default preset Transparency Sets (the ones that were on separate buttons in the Alpha HUD that came with your mesh body). To try and limit the number of Sets you see at once there are buttons for only seeing your private Sets, only your shared ones, only the ones shared by a particular designer. Also included is a "Ready2Wear" prim which can be set up to automatically load the right Transparency Sets when you wear an outfit.

Why use this instead of the free Alpha HUD?

The default Alpha HUDs have no, or poor, options for saving Transparency Sets. I considered joining the Ruth/Roth 2.0 project and adding save and load. But OpenSim has poor options for saving semi-permanent data from a script. My solution is to store the Transparency Sets in an off-world server database. But someone has to pay to keep that server running! So the price you pay for this Magic Alpha HUD will be used to buy beer\\\\\\\\help pay for that server. I use a WEB hosting company that has provided reliable service to me for over 10 years. Using a database also allows me to add neat features like sharing Transparency Sets with your friends! If you are a mesh clothing designer and wish to help out your clients by setting up Transparency Sets for all your popular outfits, give me a call. I'll give a free copy of the Magic Alpha HUD to qualified designers.

Quick help for the Apha HUDs:

Here is what each of the buttons on the HUD do

Reset	This button removes all transparency from your avatar and all the transparency indications from the doll in the HUD
Defaults	Opens the dialog with a list of all the preset Transparency Sets available for your avatar. There are more sets than will fit in the dialog, navigate through them with <MORE> and <BACK> When you click on a named set, it is loaded into your avatar and the doll in the HUD. The dialog pops back up so you can select another, press IGNORE when done. Transparency Sets are additive, each one makes more areas transparent. Use 'Reset' to start with a clean slate. If you load the same Transparency Set twice, it will remove transparency instead of adding it.
My Private	Opens the dialog with a list of the private Transparency Sets that you have saved. Click on one to load it, click 'Reset' first to load just this one.
My Shared	Opens the dialog with a list of all the shared Transparency Sets that you have saved. See 'Un/Share' below for how to share your sets with others.
All Mine	Lists all your private and shared Transparency Sets in one dialog.
*Designer*	This brings up a list of "Designers", people who have shared Transparency Sets. When you select one of them, the dialog re-appears with a list of all the sets that person has shared. If you are a clothing designer, you can put Transparency Sets in here for all your popular outfits.
All Shared	Lists all Transparency Sets shared by everyone. To see only sets shared by one person, see the Designer button above
Save New	Opens up a text box for you to type the name of a new Transparency Set. Only the first 12 letters of the first line typed into this box are used. When you hit SUBMIT, the current transprency in the doll and avatar are saved under the new name. You can have several with the same name, the newest one appears first: lowest and left, the older ones right and higher and in <MORE> pages. New Transparency Sets are always private to you, to publish them for others to use press 'Un/Share' below.
Save This	The current Transparency Set is saved back into the database. This allows you to load an old Transparency Set, make changes and save it back with 'Save This. You can only save sets that you made yourself, not shared sets made by others.
Un/Share	This button changes the current Transparency Set between private and shared. A new Transparency Set is always private, pressing this button changes it to shared. Pressing this button on a shared set changes it back to private. You can only change the shared/private status of Transparency Sets you made yourself. You can load an old Transparency Set at any time and change its status with this button.
Rename	A text box appears, enter a 12 letter or shorter name in the first line. When you press SUBMIT, the last Transparency Set saved or loaded is renamed. You can only change the name of sets that you made yoursef, not shared sets made by others.
Delete	The last Transparency Set saved or loaded is deleted. There is no way to undo this. You can only delete Transparency Sets you made yourself.
Help	Brings you to this WEB page, you must already know that!
Nails	For Athena mesh bodies only: Switches between transparent and 5 other nail shapes.
Feet	For Athena mesh bodies only: Switches between transparent and 3 other foot heights. Clicking on the feet on the doll also cycles between all these options. Foot and nail settings are not saved to Transparency Sets.
LEFT FRONT RIGHT BACK	This is the rotation bar. Clicking anywhere on the bar rotates the doll to any position in 360 degrees. For example, clicking between FRONT and RIGHT turns the doll to a 3/4 position. If you click an angle close to the last one, the doll rotates slowly into position. If you click an angle far from the last one, the doll quickly switches to the new rotation.

Using the Ready2Wear Prim

In inventory make a copy of the Ready2Wear prim for each outfit.
Give it a name that reminds you which outfit it belongs with.
Wear the Ready2Wear as a HUD and also wear the Magic Alpha HUD.
Press the START button on the Ready2Wear, it will start recording
Use the Magic Alpha HUD to load the Transparency Sets that work for your outfit.
Press the DONE button on the Ready2Wear, it will say Ready2Wear in chat if it worked.
Close the Magic Alpha HUD, minimuze the Ready2Wear HUD and move it out of the way.
Save your outfit with the little R2W arrow visible on your screen.
The next time you load this outfit, your transparency settings will be loaded with it!

Notes and Tricks with Ready2Wear

Pressing CANCEL on Ready2Wear stops recording and leaves any previous memory as it was.
Ready2Wear can remember just one Transparency Set or several, for example a diferent set for a shirt and pants
If you load the wrong transparency set, just load it a second time to undo it.
If you 'Reset' all transparencies on the Magic Alpha HUD, Ready2Wear also starts over.
Only wear one Ready2Wear at a time!
Once set up, you can remove it from the HUD and wear it anywhere, for example on the right hand (set it to transparent).
Ready2Wear stores a list of transparency sets in its description, you can edit that if you know the ID numbers.

Notes about Adonis:

The Adonis body comes with feet and genitals, but these are not reset to opaque when you reset all the other transparency patches. There is no way for the HUD to force these to a known state. This is a fundamental problem of the alpha script that came with your Adonis body. This means that the Magic Alpha HUD can never be sure if it has set the feet or genitals transparent or opaque. It tries to keep track, but can get out of phase if you use other programs to change these. When you hit the RESET button on the Magic alpha HUD its intent is to set the feet and genitals visible, like all the other alpha patched on the Adonis body. If this does not happen, you can set them visible with other programs, like the default Alpha HUD, to get things back in sync.

Setting Adonis' Genitals:

The Adonis doll in the Magic Alpha HUD does not have genitals (like the default Alpha HUD that comes with Adonis) so these transparency patches are included in the list of DEFAULTS dialog. You will find the Pubic_Hair, Penis and Foreskin in this list. Also a Genitals button will change all 3 at once.

Setting Adonis' Feet:

You can make one or both feet transparent by clicking on them. Or make both transparent at once with the Feet button in the DEFAULTS dialog. See the note below about feet not being changed by Ready2Wear. The hands on Adonis are a separate prim that does not have

Ready2Wear cannot set Adonis' Feet or Genitals:

The Adonos Magic Alpha HUD tries to keep track of the transparent state of the feet and genitals, but the Adonis Ready2Wear prim does not have access even to this questionable information! To avoid the feet disappearing or the genitals appearing when they should not while loading an outfit, the Adonis Ready2Wear simply refuses to ever change the alpha status of the feet or genitals. Typically the genitals are not used, so Ready2Wear will leave them invisible. The feet are more problimatical, you may have to load the Magic Alpha HUD to change the transparency of the feet for some outfits.

How to fix all these problems with Adonis:

I have a design for a new script for the Adonis body. This script will fix all the above problems and add a few new features. Features like the ability to make the hands transparent, the ability for the HUD to load itself with the transparency set from the body. Combining the alpha, nails and skin applier scripts into one script to decrease the load this body puts on the servers. This new script (when I finish writing it) will be full perm. It will require you replace the scripts in your Adonis mesh. It will require a new version of the Magic Alpha HUD and Ready2Wear. An upgrade will be free to all my customers.