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Newbie Puberty Part One, Your First Prim Hair
Episode 9: March 10, 2007

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Will Ross here, welcome to The Traveling Avatar’s Quick and Dirty Tips for a Better Second Life. On this show we discuss tips and tricks for the game Second Life, created by Linden Labs. Today’s Topic: Newbie Puberty Part One, Your First Prim Hair.

When you first fall into Second Life things are fairly intimidating. You don’t know anyone, you fly into buildings, and everyone keeps screaming at you to rebake your textures but you have no idea what that means. It’s a lot like being the new kid at school after the cliques have already formed. But eventually you meet some friends, you get your avatar under control, and that’s when things really start to get fun. You begin that special time in every avatars life called “newbie puberty.”

Now newbie puberty can mean a lot of things, from getting comfortable with the jargon, to buying your first land, to guys finding that special attachment that makes them…complete. But to me it’s always going to mean two things: prim hair and a new skin. Today we’re going to focus on prim hair.

Prim hair is, in a nutshell, a hairstyle that attaches to your avatar’s scalp. It’s much more realistic than hair that’s created as part of your shape, and many of the hairstyles also flex and move like real hair.

Now I get my prim hair from the male section of Gurl 6 in Gurlywood, and you can find this by searching for Gurl 6 (Spelled G U R L) or by heading over to QDNow.com and clicking on the SLURL http://slurl.com/secondlife/GuRLyWood/111/106/22. Males can choose from around two dozen hairstyles in varying styles and colors, and women from well over a hundred.

When shopping for hair, most stores will offer you a demo, and just like shopping in real life it’s best to try things on before investing a lot of money. Most hairstyles will come with two pieces, a bald base and the prim hair. If you’ve ever wondered why the really gorgeous people in Second Life are bald for a few seconds when they teleport into a new area, it’s because of the bald base. The bald base changes your hair style to bald to make a good foundation to set the new hair on.

One thing I don’t recommend when buying hair is buying hair that is isted as “no modify.” More than just the fact that modified hair can be tinted and retextured to personalize it to you, if it's “no modify” you can’t resize it. If you’ve ever seen someone with bald patches showing through their prim hair, it’s because they didn’t or couldn’t resize their hair.

So once you’ve found a good modifiable hairstyle, and tried on the demo to make sure you like the style, here’s how to put it on. First, choose the bald base and wear it. Then do the same thing with the prim hair. It probably won’t look exactly right right out of the box, but don’t worry, we’ll adjust it.

Right click your hair right click it and choose “Edit” from the radial menu. This will bring up the edit menu. From here choose “Stretch” and make sure the “Use Grid,” “Stretch Both Sides,” and “Stretch Textures” checkboxes are all checked. Click and drag one of the white boxes that appears until the hair covers all bald portions of your head, and then congratulate yourself on having taken your first big step into newbie puberty!

This week I’m asking for something a little different. I want to hear about the places you like to explore, shop, and have fun at in Second Life. You can suggest them in the comment thread at the website, or by sending an e-mail or a voicemail. I’ll make sure to include some of your suggestions in the show!

That’s it for this episode!

Send your feedback or question to secondlife@quickanddirtytips.com, and the comment line is 206-888-6975, that’s 206-888-MYSL. The Traveling Avatar’s Quick and Dirty Tips for a Better Second Life is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips network, so make sure to check out other great shows like Legal Lad, Mr. Manners, and The Mighty Mommy at QuickAndDirtyTips.com .

So until next time, remember, caging newbies will never be a legitimate sport, even though curling somehow is.

Comments (3) for Newbie Puberty Part One, Your First Prim Hair | Subscribe to Comment

Gator Brown Says:
3/18/2007 11:38:43 PM

This week I’m asking for something a little different. I want to hear about the places you like to explore, shop, and have fun at in Second Life.

Ok, here are some of my favorites:
Best club - Friendly country western feel
Silver dollar Saloon Dixie,(240,208,31)

Best Beach and garden island. You can surf and afterward soak your tired muscles in a hot spring pool next to an active volcano.
Chi(118,192,22)

Best Sci-Fi location - Star Fleet Headquarters. Awesome architecture.
Galaxy(174,87,103)

Best Free Store - Free Dove. It widely known to be one of the best.
Gallii(113,53,32)

Best Men's clothing store - SimWear - it's the JC Pennys of SL.
Lebeda(95,67,29)

Tao Says:
3/14/2007 6:33:14 PM

Tao,

First off, is it true that "The [You] that can be spoken is not the true [You]."?

Ahhh Taoism jokes, I can never tell enough Taoism jokes. Anyway, try a few of these things on you hair and see if you can fix things.

First, check and see if you're only getting baldspots on one side of your head. If you are, you may just need to "Position" the hair instead of stretching it. If it's sparse on the left, just move it a little to the left.

Secondly, a lot of the hairstyles in Second Life have had more teasing than a chubby, awkward kid who likes anime and who wanted to play drums in the school band but instead they made him play the Bells and noone else had to play the bells.... not that that was me, some other kid I know... Anyway, this is big hair, so you might not have made it it's correct size yet. Look at the sides, typically as long as it doesn't cover the ear, you can keep stretching it.

If none of these seem to work, check with another player to make sure THEY see your scalp too. What may have happened is your system's "Draw Distance" is low, and so it's not drawing in parts of smaller objects at 15 meters.

Let me know if any of this helps, and I'll keep thinking up more Taoism jokes.

(Tao-Jones Industrial Average? Nah...)

TA

Tao Lyne Says:
3/14/2007 12:49:20 AM

Once, again, thank you. I eagerly await your every podcast. I just have to be careful where I am when I listen. My laugh is never quiet, and you're podcast always gets me roaring. If you write your own material, you're brilliant. If you're stealing it, you're no less brilliant for a delivery that is so convincingly on target.
Once again, I listened to your cast several times and finally broke down and bought my first prim hair. It was you're pitch for GuRl6Hair that convinced me. I have a difficult time splurging on items, but have come to understand that it affects the way others perceive me in SL, just as in RL, if not more so.
After a bit of browsing, a half hour of tweaking, I have something workable. A bit more tweaking and it might look natural.

I was disappointed with the demos though. None of them were modifiable, so, if they don't fit your out of the box, you'll have no idea what they look like. My head is apparently a little big, because most of the hair disappeared under my scalp.
I splurged anyway based on the photo, figuring I'd get it working.

a question, why is it that my hair looks fine from within 5 meters, but from any farther, my scalp shows through. It was that way with the SL hair, I was hoping it would be fixed with the prim hair. Do I really have to adjust my hair from 15 meters away?

Any more tips to get rid of that pesky distance scalp.