Snugglies ClosetHelp

What this is

SNUGGLIES Closet is a wardrobe for Second Life. It helps you keep your outfits tidy and put them on with one click.

Here is the problem it solves.

Your inventory is everything you own in Second Life. It is a maze of folders inside folders, and it often holds 30,000 to 50,000 things. You see it in the viewer (the program you use to get into Second Life). The outfit you want is one folder among thousands that all look alike.

Many of us have bought far more than we ever wear. We use a handful of outfits and forget the rest. It is just like in real life: whatever is at the back of the wardrobe or at the bottom of the pile gets forgotten.

So, how does the closet help with that?

At first, it does not. The closet does not magically find your outfits for you. You need to put in the effort. But I have done everything I can to make that effort as small as possible.

So, you add the ones you like, one at a time. Then they are all in one place, each a card with a picture, a name and tags. You click the card, and the outfit goes on you.

"I still don't get why I should use the closet when the viewer already has outfits."

That is a fair question. The viewer has outfits of its own, called the Outfit Gallery. But those are only a snapshot of what you were wearing when you saved that outfit.

The closet is more than a snapshot. Each outfit is a folder that you choose to keep, with a name, tags, pictures and the body it fits. You can search, sort and group your outfits, and you can share them from a web page.

If this is your first time, read what you need. Then follow the walkthrough. The walkthrough takes about ten minutes. At the end, you have an outfit in your closet and on your avatar.

The three parts

The closet has three parts. You use all three.

The HUD
Something you wear. A HUD (heads-up display) is an object that shows on your screen instead of in the world. This one files your outfits into your inventory. It also talks to your viewer, and that is how it puts outfits on you and takes them off. (The part of the viewer that allows this is called RLV, and only some viewers have it, such as Firestorm. See what you need.) And it gives you the link to your closet.
The dropbox
A box that you put down on the ground. Second Life calls that "rezzing" it. You drop the pieces of an outfit into the box, give the outfit a name and press Save to closet on the HUD. Then you accept the folders that Second Life offers you. The outfit is now filed and in your closet. You do not need to sort the pieces first.
The closet
A web page where your outfits live. It has pictures, tags, search and sets. It has links that you can share. And it has the buttons that dress you.

The HUD and the dropbox find each other on their own. Both must be yours. Both must be in the same region (the part of the map you are standing in). A dropbox that somebody else put down will not answer your HUD.

How you get in

The closet has no username and no password. You cannot just go to the closet's web address and log in. Instead, you get in through the HUD.

  1. In Second Life, touch the HUD's link button and choose Open closet. The HUD gives your viewer a link that is only for you.
  2. Open that link. Your browser opens the closet, and it remembers you.
  3. Now bookmark the page. Next time you can open the bookmark, and you are in. You do not need the HUD or Second Life for that.

Your browser remembers you for up to a year. It stops remembering if you clear your browser's cookies or site data, or if you use another browser or another computer. Then you open the link from the HUD again. The same happens if you make a new link with Security → New link, because that stops the old link from working.

Want to show your closet to a friend? You can! Press Share in the closet and make them a link of their own. They can just look at your outfits, or you can also let them dress and undress you. You choose, and you can take the link back whenever you like. Here is how sharing works.

What it does to your inventory

The dropbox makes copies. It does not delete anything and it does not move anything. The one exception is an item you cannot copy (see below). That rule comes from Second Life, and RLV bends it a little. The closet uses this to give you a setup that soon feels natural.

When you drop a piece into the box, or a whole folder of pieces, Second Life copies it in. The originals stay where they were. When you save, you get those copies in a new folder under #RLV/~Closet. So every outfit you save adds a second set of its pieces to your inventory. Everything else in your inventory stays exactly as it was.

The closet website cannot change your inventory. It can only ask your HUD to put outfits on you or take them off.

An item you cannot copy (Second Life calls it no-copy) is the exception. Second Life moves it into the box instead of copying it. The dropbox cannot file it into the outfit's folder for you. Read no-copy items before you use one, and the disclaimer there.

When you delete an outfit from the closet, it waits in the trash for thirty days. It keeps its name, tags and pictures. Deleting never touches the folder in your Second Life inventory. If you no longer want that folder, delete it yourself.

Where to go next

What you need →