How to hide poseballs and other obstacles for SL photography?
September 22, 2007 10:16 amThe nature of our - brave new virtual world imagined and created but not owned by it’s residents - makes that poseballs are almost indispensable. Only to often unused pose balls are lingering around when you want to snapshot. When all - typing ‘/1 hide‘ - fails those evil ones force you to either live with the ugly red dots in your snapshot, spend a lot of time photoshopping them out or to choose another - less good - composition for your photograph.
Hiding Pose Balls
But there is a solution (which Smiley Barry pointed out to me when I was complaining about those round balls of SL-photography-doom) that never fails:
- Activate your ‘Client menu’. (Ctrl-Alt-D)
- Go to ‘Rendering’ and toggle ‘Hide selected’.
- Select those obnoxious poseballs, advertisements, … by holding shift and then clicking them.
Did you select a wrong item? Just click it again whilst still holding shift.* - Open your snapshot menu and start shooting Second Life photographs.
Note: I’ve tried this on avatars and prim clothing and it does not work on those. Bummer. :p**
And some other good advice from Smiley Barry: For selecting linked poseballs, use “Edit Linked Parts”, dummies! Lol.
** Hiding Avatars
Jacek found out how to hide a complete avatar *grins* or to hide it’s prim clothing / attachments *grins even more*:
Well, glorious day and jubilations, because I’ve found a way that it will work! Just toggle on `Client > Character > Character Tests > Allow Select Avatar’, and you’re ready to go! You can now select avatars and their attachments — and so, in combination with the `Client > Rendering > Hide Selected’ (*Vint points to part one ‘Hiding poseballs’ from this blogpost*) option, you can hide them!
Another fine she points out is that you can also client-side move them that way:
Fortunately, with the `Allow Select Avatar’ option turned on, you can just select the offending avatar and move it (along with all its attachments) somewhere else where it won’t be in your way! The movement is client-side only, so if the avatar moves (walks, turns, jumps… animation movement doesn’t count), the server will send an update to your client and the avatar will pop back into its old position. But, it should be enough to get your shot in!
* Unhiding Prims
HUD objects are shift-click unselectable, but that’s because the HUD is special, and it absorbs clicks even when the prim you click on is invisible. Objects in the world won’t do that, so instead the object behind it gets clicked on.
But you can use the deselect cordon tool to surround the object you want to deselect! Here’s how you do it:
- Hold Shift key
- Click+drag the cordon around the object, as if you were selecting it.
- With the mouse button still pressed, release the Shift key, and press and hold the Ctrl key instead. The cordon will turn red, indicating that any objects it surrounds will be _de_selected.
- Release the mouse button.
30 Responses to “How to hide poseballs and other obstacles for SL photography?”
Hmm, you got an error over there :-/ The only bug is that, if you select something you didn’t mean to select, you can’t unselect it. Just choose something else without holding Shift, and start over :-/.
Not really a bug, that’s exactly how it’s designed to work >_
Clicking it again did work for me on my HUD. I tried all in-world first before blogging it. *confused* *goes try again*
O.O *kicks, punches, and throws computer out the window* OOPS X.X .
No Smiley, you were right. I tried it on my HUD again and it does not work. Strange. I was convinced it did. I hope you only threw the computer from ground floor? :/
Lol, if I would, it would be floor 9 ‘^_^ Going all the way up there with the computer, and *SHOOOOOOO* throwing it down >:)
Heyas, Vint! I found a simple way where you *can* select avatars and attachments to hide them! Huzzah!
Technique is detailed over at my blog: http://jacek.meratalk.com/?p=171
Oh, also, regarding deselecting things if you selected them by mistake:
HUD objects are shift-click unselectable, but that’s because the HUD is special, and it absorbs clicks even when the prim you click on is invisible. Objects in the world won’t do that, so instead the object behind it gets clicked on.
But you can use the deselect cordon tool to surround the object you want to deselect! Here’s how you do it:
1. Hold Shift key
2. Click+drag the cordon around the object, as if you were selecting it.
3. With the mouse button still pressed, release the Shift key, and press and hold the Ctrl key instead. The cordon will turn red, indicating that any objects it surrounds will be *de*selected.
4. Release the mouse button.
Voila!
Genius!!! Thank you :D
This IS a great tip!! Thank you for sharing it with us :))
Interesting example shot … did someone just die in your pool?
Unfortunately it doesn’t work for poseballs embedded into objects. Selecting a poseball attached to a chair, will not only make the poseball dissapear, but also the complete chair. Stupid thing. Who builds deckchairs with M/F poseballs without the possibility to hide them ? Aarrgh.
@bella
Dunno, the script I made years ago has hide/show as the first function >_
Great find!
Updated the blogpost with the info Jacek gave me: how to hide avatars, how to hide prim attachements and how to un-hide prims.
Bella, I’m not sure if the poseballs were linked to the swimming pool. That sucks. :(
Mylena: did you ever try floating elegant with an armour on? :D
No I didn’t, I only wear fancy clothes :))
I probably take 25 pictures a day. I’ve avoided taking pictures with excessive junk in the background, missing some otherwise great shots. This Hiding Poseballs and Other Obstacles tutorial is a *wonderful* tip! HUGS
well, this are interesting tips and tricks..
but.. mmm… does the “Hide Avatar” trick also work on our friend Prokofy??
anyone ownes a dungeon where whe can move him??
We export and import in There? :p
Seraphine: Thank you and I’ll forward the largest part of that hug to Smiley Barry. ;)
Wow, Thanks, Vint and Smiley!
If you keep giving us this good advises i will marry you!
eurm… Raul??? there might be some legal problems…
Smiley is still on the teen grid..
:-)
Hmm, it appears my mobile phone didn’t send my reply while away… For selecting linked poseballs, use “Edit Linked Parts”, dummies! Lol.
P.S.: Smiley is back from his mini-vacation! Woot! (Blog post coming soon ‘^_^)
Wb! And I’m not sure if I feel comfortable being called a dummy by a teen. ;)
Lol, just kiddin’ ;-) Still, isn’t it obvious??? Lol.
thanks Vint!
this trick is SO useful for me!
[…] C’mon, everything is Second Life is different from that sphere our humans reside, so this can not be to difficult? Just find the thing that’s most exotic to you: be it prim breasts, a baby furry or having texture teeth and still having to brush them. Just don’t go with a silly picture with a obviously non-exotic belly dancer and palm trees, will you? ;) If you’re all new to the SL photography stuff, use the ’snapshot’ function and read up on my tutorials on how to use it. If you’re not familiar with photoshop or the gimp, you might consider to read up on how to prevent objects you do not own from appearing in the snapshot. […]
For some reason, this isn’t working for me. When I shift-click items, nothing happens, they don’t disappear. D=
‘Hide Selected’ is enabled, so I don’t know why it’s not working for me. Gah
Ah I see what I was doing wrong. I thought that I could unselect the item and it’d stay invis, I didn’t realize I had to keep it targetted. Aha
Still doesn’t work for me. Maybe its disabled in v1.22? Grr will have to wait till tomorrow and try again.
Care to comment?