Some Second Life residents like to change their avatar quite often, whilst others like to change their appearance for special events by wearing novelty avatars or themed outfits. Rather than changing from your usual avatar to a new one, one item at a time, there is a way of doing this very quickly:
How To Do A Quick Avatar Change
1/ Find the folder
containing the new avatar skin, shape etc in your inventory.
2/ Hover your cursor
over the folder and hold down the left mouse button.
3/ Drag the folder onto
your avatar then release the left mouse button.
4/ The new avatar skin,
shape and anything else in the folder will now rez onto your present
avatar.
Changing Back To Your Usual Avatar
To quickly change back
to your usual avatar skin and shape you will need to put everything
you normally wear into one folder. This is so you can drag it onto
your avatar. The kind of things you want to add to this folder
include your usual
- skin
- shape
- eyes
- hair base
- hair
- shoe base with matching shoes
- a set of clothes
If you do not add
clothes to this folder, when you do a quick change your avatar will be
naked. Adding clothes will mean you can do quick changes safely in a public area.
If your usual avatar came with a number of shapes, or you have edited the shape you normally wear, it is a good idea to give it a name that will allow you to identify it from other shapes before you take it off.
Other things you may
want to add to the folder might be jewelery and any huds you wear.
Creating A Folder For Your Usual Avatar
1/ Open your inventory
and pick a standard folder such as the Body Parts or Clothing folder.
2/ Right click on the
folder and from the drop down menu click on New Folder.
3/ Give this new folder
a recognizable name so you'll know what it contains.
4/ Now find the folder
that contains your skin and shape.
5/ Open it and find the
skin you wear. Right click on it and from the drop down menu select Copy.
6/ Go back to the
folder you created for your skin, right click on it and from the drop
down menu select paste. Your skin will now have been copied to this
folder.
7/ Follow the steps
explaining how to copy and paste items in your inventory until your
new folder contains everything you need to do a quick change.
8/ Now that this folder
contains everything you usually wear, every time you want to change back to
your preferred avatar skin and shape etc, you can simply drag the folder
onto your avatar.
Remember to add a
set of clothes to the folder or you will be naked when you change
back to your usual appearance.
Creating Outfits
You can see from the image above that once you have clicked on 'Copy' you are given the choices of either pasting the item to a folder, or 'Paste As Link'. Paste As Link is preferable because it allows you to add the item to different folders.
Pasting as a link allows you to copy and paste items of clothing to a folder to make up an outfit. The same item of clothing can then be pasted to different folders and can be used in a number of outfits.
If you scroll through your inventory you will find a folder already named 'Outfits'. By following the steps above, you can build up an outfit by:
- creating another folder within the Outfits folder,
- giving it a name so you know what the folder contains,
- copying an item of clothing from a different folder,
- pasting it as a link to your new folder.
Once you have created a folder with an outfit you can again drag the folder onto your avatar and thereby do a quick change.
Using Two Inventory Windows
If the idea of copying an inventory item from one folder then scrolling to find another folder to paste it in seems confusing or at best tedious, you can instead use two inventory windows; one to copy from and the other to paste to. To open a second inventory window:
1/ look at the bottom left of your inventory window where you will see a cog shape, (click on the image above to enlarge it).
2/ Click on this which will open a drop down menu.
3/ Towards the top of this menu click on 'New Inventory Window'
Now your screen will display two inventory windows.
Learning how to do quick avatar changes can save a lot of time instead of adding one part of an avatar piece by piece, or searching through your inventory to find a particular item of clothing. Some residents also find it fun to create outfits for themselves. Once you give it a try you will find it a handy tool.
