Cool VL Viewer forum

You can always create your own Alpha wearable that would combine all the needed alpha parts scattered in the provided multiple alpha wearables... A good merchant should also be able to provide you with such a combination (I do, for my own products: for example for a product that got parts that can be worn on legs and/or arms, I provide a legless alpha, an armless alpha, and a third legless + armless alpha, so that the customer only needs to wear one of them, depending on what part(s) of my product he is wearing)

That would be Ok to ask for if you are getting your top, bottom and shoes from one source, which with women's clothing is rarely ever the case. I own a few combo packs of alpha's just to work with shoes, long boots, short boots and eyelashes. Even with packages with 50 different combos I've never found one that matches the footwear I want to wear. It doesn't leave me with much hope of finding combo packs that will be useful if the field they have to cover broadens.

As for making an alpha myself...my creative genius starts and stops at making a box, despite numerous classes in building. I wouldn't even have a clue where to go after the start in appearance. I make alpha that covers my whole torso, but then it doesn't seem to have any way to edit it that I can see. One of those mysteries I am not suppose to understand I think. I will continue to be in awe of talented people like you who can do these things.

Tapika Tomsen

Creating a custom Alpha is a piece of cake, really... Just download the avatar UV templates from the SL Wiki clothing tutotrial. For the shoes, use the Lower_body_template_Ver1_1_.psd file, load it into your favourite graphic program (Gimp, Photoshop, whatever), merge all layers into one and only remove in the patron the parts you want to become invisible on your Av, making them transparent in the patron. Save the file (as a .tga or .png), upload it into SL (upload as a free temporary texture for your attempts till you are satisfied), create a new Alpha wearable, wear it, go in Edit Appearance mode, select the Alpha tab, apply your shiny new alpha mask to the corresponding texture in the Alpha wearable (for the shoes, the lower body texture) and finally save the changes and close the floater. Done !

Will cool viewer support the ability to wear more than one of the same kind of clothes layer?

never mind... I found the answer to my own question.

After v1.26.2 will gain Mesh upload support, a new v1.26.3 experimental branch will be opened, which will aim to implement multiple clothing layers and other v2/3 features.

It is indeed standard from the Lab with five layers of each type available to the user.
This is required to make a modern avatar with a polished look.
I would urge you to rethink implementing this standard feature now that you've got mesh going.
If you can't get your shoe alphas and your mesh alphas on, you're not going to look right.
Women require multiple tattoo layers for makeup applications.
Men want to be able to wear long shirts over the pants and a coat, both requiring the jacket layer.
At this point, lack of multiple layers provided by the Lab is a stumbling block to Cool being picked up by more people. Everytime I proudly explain how we've got mesh, they ask about multiple layers. When the answer is no, they choose not to try it.
Please add this no doubt trivia snippet to our beloved viewer and thank you for the continued efforts on Cool.

If you are not happy with how fast I implement new features, I strongly suggest you start developing your own viewer !

I told it COUNTLESS times now, and start getting FED UP repeating it. Multiple layers WILL arrive, WHEN I can find time for implementing them, and like announced already, they are next on the list of the "big features" to come.

As promised, multi-layered clothes made their way into the Cool VL Viewer. The experimental Cool VL Viewer v1.26.3.4 has been released today and supports them.

The following features are now supported:

• Up to 5 layers of each wearable clothing type are supported (like in v2/3 viewers).
• New "Add" entry added to the context menu for clothing inventory items (allows to add a layer over already worn layers of the same type of clothes instead of replacing them). "Wear" still behaves as usual and replaces the worn layer(s) of the same type.
• When using the "Add to Outfit" context menu entry for inventory folders, the clothing layers that folder contains are added over the already worn layers.
• When using the "Wear" or the "Replace Outfit" context menu entries for inventory folders containing several layers of the same type, only one of these layers is automatically worn (this is because the viewer cannot know in which order you wish these layers to stack). You then may "Add" manually the remaining layers in the proper order (or "Wear" the lower one, then "Add" the others over it). [EDIT for v1.26.3.5] the layers are stacked following their description (they are sorted by description, then worn in that order): if the item is an inventory link and its description contains a layer info (*), it is used to allow stacking in the proper order (it is therefore recommended to use inventory links in outfit folders for clothing items that share the same layer with others: e.g. if you have two shirts in an outfit folder, better using inventory links for them).
• Auto-rewearing of multiple layers of clothes on relog (note that although I made it compatible with v1.26.2 and older viewers for attachments, if you log with such an older viewer in between two v1.26.3.4 sessions, you will loose the additional layers on relog).
• Made the "Make New Outfit" floater aware of multi-wearables (i.e. when you select, say, "Shirt" to be copied in the new outfit, all worn shirts are copied). Please, note that because of the limitation currently imposed by the "Apperance" floater (see below), you must open the "Make New Outfit" floater from the File menu of the inventory floater when you wish to create a new outfit with multiple clothing layers of the same type. [NEW in v1.26.3.5] When inventory links are used for the new outfit clothing items, they also automatically store the layer info (that's also why a "Make links for all clothes" check box was added to the Make New Outfit floater).
• [NEW in v1.26.3.5] If you wish to update the layer info stored in inventory links for an outfit folder, wear the items in that folder (and stack the layers manually in any way you wish) then right-click on the outfit folder item in the inventory and choose the "Update Layers Info" option of the context menu; the current cloth layering is then automatically remembered for the next time you will "Wear" that outfit (works with "Replace Outfit" and "Add to Outfit" too).
• RestrainedLove was made aware of multi-layered clothes.
• [NEW in v1.26.3.7] The "Appearance" floater was made aware of multi-layered clothes.

Still on the TODO list:

• Implement support for editing multiple clothing layers in the "Appearance" floater: for now, when you open this floater all the multi-layered clothing items are removed and only the lowest (closest to the body/first worn) layer is kept on your avatar for editing.[IMPLEMENTED in v1.26.3.7]
• Implement a way to auto-stack multiple layers in the proper order when "Wear"ing an outfit folder (may be done via the use of inventory links, but I'll try and see if something can be done for non-linked items too).[SOLVED in v1.26.3.5]

Please, bear in mind that v1.26.3.4 is an experimental release and that given the large number of code changes that went into it, some bugs or regressions might have crept in...

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(*) Inventory links also have a description, which is normally hidden to the user (except for broken links) since when you open the "Properties" floater for an inventory link, the viewer actually shows you the description of the inventory item the link points to. LL uses this trick to store the layer info in inventory links for clothing items (instead of updating the database to include a new parameter in the clothing items). The Cool VL Viewer now also uses the same trick so that it is compatible with LL's viewers, even if it doesn't make use of the v2/3 "Current Outfit" folder.

Thanks a lot for your work on this and the client in general, Henry. :-)

Really appreciate it. Cool VL Viewer is the only client stable enough to go through crowded, laggy serveral-hour events without a crash. I use it for all the events I take photos of.

[edit]Do you take inworld donations, or are you around more in opensim than SL?

There are tip jars in my SL shops (Cool Shop in Ahndang and Cool Adult Shop in Hunburgh) if you feel so inclined.