Introduction to Cinnamon & Chai
Unpacking your body
When you first purchase Cinnamon you will receive an unpacker that you need to wear. The Cinnamon Chai logo will appear on your screen, unpack 2 items and a notecard, and detach itself from your screen again. That is all there is to unpacking. You need to be on land that allows you to use scripts.
Which one to wear?
Read the notecard and decide whether you would be better suited to Cinnamon, or Chai
Wear the “Cinnamon” or the “Chai” unpacker and accept the folders that they give you
Cinnamon
Cinnamon is a mesh body built with optimal texture, mesh, resource cost in mind. On this page, you will find instructions on how to use Cinnamon from the moment you receive the unpacker in your inventory upon purchase. The Cinnamon template solves a number of issues inherant in the SL template but requires custom skins, alphas and tattoo layers.
Chai
Chai is a mesh body with a hybrid SL template texture and identical mesh and weighting to Cinnamon. We have attempted to solve a major issue with the SL template in Chai – ie: the feet – which is why she requires custom skins or foot tattoos, but she still has some of the compromises seen in the SL template with regards to symmetrical arms, seam placement and texture stretching.
When you attach the Cinnamon or Chai unpacker, it will deliver a folder and deatch itself. Find the new folder in your inventory If you can’t see it, check the “recent” tab where it should be sitting at the top.
The items you will see in the new folder are one mesh body and one body HUD. Right click and “Add” them both to your outfit.
If your body appears red, remove any and all alpha layers you are wearing from previous mesh bodies.
If the instruction is Cinnamon or Chai Specific, it will be indicated below.
If you would like more information on why you should choose Cinnamon, please read this article
THE MAIN HUD SCREEN
Menu Bar
Cinnamon’s HUD says Cinnamon across the title bar. Chai’s HUD says Chai. You cannot mix and match them. If you are wearing Cinnamon, wear the Cinnamon HUD, if you are wearing Chai, use the Chai HUD. If you wear one HUD with the other body, strange things may happen when you press the buttons!
The button that looks like a trash can will delete all the scripts in your Cinnamon/Chai body. CAUTION ONLY TO BE USED ON A COPY, ONCE YOU HAVE SET YOUR BODY UP AS YOU LIKE IT – THIS WILL REMOVE ALL NON BOM FUNCTIONALITY FROM THE BODY.
The ? Button will give you a help panel that describes what each section does without going into too much detail. Helpful if you need a reminder. Also, it will link you to this page!
The _ button minimises the HUD to the little pink logo, along with easy access to the foot animation buttons, that can live on your screen until you need it.
the X button detaches the HUD. Note – it is recommended to wear the HUD as long as you are wearing the body, this is why there is a minimise button. You can also right click the HUD and select “detach” to remove the HUD from your inventory.
The HUD minimised
Please do not attach the HUD to any other place than the default – doing this will make the HUD appear in the wrong orientation and may make it difficult to find and move.
Skins
Cinnamon Specific
Cinnamon requires skins made especially for Cinnamon. You will find these in the [skins] button. Press the button to deliver a folder full of skins in a number of tones and ethnicities, plus neck blenders for both the default SL head template and the Lelutka EvoX head template. In the EXTRAS button you will also find some layers for body hair, eyebrows, freckles and glitter made especially for Cinnamon. These will unpack into their own extras folder. If you wish, you can drag the folders of skins and extras under the folder where your body and HUD are stored to make them easy to find in the future. You will also receive some pre-made shapes, as well as templates and examples of skins to give you a start in making your own personal skins for Cinnamon if this is a thing you want to do. This doesn’t require any special creators kit as system layers can be created by anyone.
Chai Specific
Chai uses a hybrid SL template for skins and the skins built specifically for Chai are included in this button on the Chai HUD. You will also find all the same options as with Cinnamon, as well as the foot/ankle tattoos for when you want to wear a NON Chai skin and need to blend the ankles properly. Choose an ankle blender slightly lighter than the skin you are wearing and tint it to match your skin.
Both Versions
The skins & extras button will also send you the included underwear set, a number of different body layers like pubic hair, eyebrows and freckles and the skin templates and example skin textures that you can download to your computer and work on to create your own skins. You will also receive the nail applier kit which will allow you to easily create your own nail sets. (works on Cinnamon and Chai, and Slink Physique hands, feet and bodies)
Alpha
Cinnamon Alpha Options
The ALPHA button on the Cinnamon HUD will send you a folder of limited alpha layers and the template for creating your own alpha layers, it will pop up this help page which you can dismiss by clicking anywhere on the page, and open a link to the alpha page on the Become Cinnamon website. Clothing made for Cinnamon and Chai should come with custom alpha layers from the clothing creator.
Chai Alpha Options
The ALPHA button on the Chai HUD will show this page, where you can turn off the arms in sections individually. This will allow you to wear asymmetrical designs with Chai.
The same as the skins, Cinnamon’s custom template requires alpha layers built just for her. Under the [alphas] button you will find a number of generic alpha layers for Cinnamon fully utilising her unique asymmetry layout, as well as a template and instructions for you to make your own alpha layers.
Alpha Mask Cutoff
Under the skins and alphas buttons you will find the Alpha Mask Cutoff. These sliders adjust the alpha mask value on the upper and lower body sections which will allow you to move the edges of your alpha layer (provided they have been created correctly) should you need more or less coverage.
Skin Tint
The skin tint button will let you tint your mesh body (and Slink head if you are wearing one). If you have an RGB value already in mind, type /15 000,000,000 (where 000,000,000 = r,g,b) – this will work on your Cinnamon & Chai bodies and any modern Slink heads!
Hands and Feet Options
Toggling nail visibility
There are 2 buttons here that turn on and off the toenails and fingernails. These are self explanatory!
Foot Pose Selection
The feet buttons let you change your feet from flat, kitten, mid, high and pointe. Please note that shoes not made FOR Cinnamon/Chai will not fit these feet, and will break at the ankles.
Nail Length
The LENGTH buttons change your fingernails to either short, medium or long
Nail Polish
The POLISH buttons have 9 shades built in as well as a button with a stroke through it. The stroke button will apply a transparent texture to your fingernails and toenails. You can clear any materials that have been applied with 3rd party HUD’s here as well using the “Clear Materials” button.
See below for further instructions on nailpolish.
Body Options
Nipple Types
Cinnamon and Chai come with 5 different nipple shapes that you can switch to with these buttons. They will all work as part of the body so will listen to effects instructions, and tint instructions.
Smooth Panties
You can toggle on and off the Smooth Panties option to smooth the genitals area. This is good for system layer underwear or doll skins that shouldn’t show all the details there.
OPTIONAL EXTRAS TAB
Stockings and Nail Selection
Stockings
Cinnamon has 2 stocking options for different purposes.
Opaque uses the Bakes on Mesh texture and is good for socks, opaque tights when the Bakes on Mesh texture includes that option. There is a tintable stocking toe tattoo that you can wear with your stocking layers to make the toes more attractive with this option.
Sheer uses a custom sheer stocking toe texture and is used for sheer and semi sheer stockings. You can set the tint from one of the preset options, or use the Stocking Tint button to use any colour available on the palette.
Tinting the stocking toe
You can change the sheer toe transparency to suit your needs from very opaque to very sheer using the “sheer toe transparency” slider.
Selecting individual nails for targeted polish
The hands and feet images with little pink boxes over the nails is how you can target individual nails for polish or transparency. If you want to turn off the nails on your left hand only, make sure that only the left hand boxes are visible and then use the transparent texture from the polish options above. You can target all, none, all hands, all feet, only hands, only feet, left or right or individual nails as you desire. Want to wear an addon pinkie nail with fancy decorations, target your pinkie nail using the nail selectors and press the transparency button!
SPECIAL EFFECTS TAB
Bump Map and Shiny Effects
Built in special effects
Cinnamon & Chai come with 4 included materials. You must have “advanced lighting model” and “Bump mapping and shiny” enabled in the graphics preferences in your SL viewer.
low sheen is a natural texture for every day wear.
high sheen is a higher gloss natural texture for body oil type uses
wet-look is a high sheen droplets for just out of the pool or shower scenarios
glitter is a shiny textured body glitter to be paired with a suitable body glitter texture (found in the skins & extras button)
Gloss and Environment Sliders
These sliders let you adjust how matte or glossy your body is. The environment slider controls the environment reflections and will give you a metallic look so is not recommended for natural human avatars.
You can change the gloss tint for some fun effects – particularly nice with the body glitter option. The darker the gloss tint, the less visible the gloss effect will be.
Clearing the special effects
Clear specular and clear bump will clear all materials from your body.
HAND POSES TAB
Changing the hand poses
These buttons will activate animations in the body to pose your hands. You can choose left or right in any configuration. When you want to stop the poses, press the left and right button on the far right with the red off symbol.
CHAT COMMANDS
Cinnamon and Chai have quite a few chat commands designed to be used when not wearing the HUD. You can enter a command into your local chat and the body will respond to the command. If at any time you need a quick refresher on what commands are available type /44 help into local chat for a list. You will also get the help chat if you type an unrecognised command.
What chat commands are available?
Example chat command: type in local chat /44 fingernails on [enter] OR you can use the short version of /44 fnon [enter]
- Turn on the fingernails – fingernails on or fnon,
- Turn off the fingernails – fingernails off or fnoff.
- Turn on the toenails – toenails on, tnon,
- Turn off the toenails – toenails off, tnoff,
- Set the feet to flat – flat or ff,
- Set the feet to kitten – kitten or fk,
- Set the feet to mid – mid or fm,
- Set the feet to high – high or fh,
- Set the feet to pointe – pointe or fp,
- Set the nipple to flat – nip flat or nf,
- Set the nipple to average – nip average or na,
- Set the nipple to erect – nip erect or ne,
- Set the nipple to puffy – nip puffy or np,
- Set the nipple to inverted – nip inverted or ni,
- Turn smooth panties on – panties on or spon,
- Turn smooth panties off – panties off or spoff,
- Turn on the opaque stocking toe cap – opaque or so,
- Turn on the sheer sticking toecap – sheer or ss,
- Turn off the stocking toecap – stocking off or soff
Chat commands: