More flexible mesh customisation

Proposal link: http://secondlife.com/vote/vote.php?get_id=1724

As someone who likes making wacky and often not human avatars, I'm constantly frustrated by the limitations of the body type customisation.

For example, I can make the legs ridiculously long, but I cannot make them ridiculously *short* for a toony effect (think cartoon weasel/ferret or a penguin), I cannot make the avatar taller than 7-8 feet or shorter than 4 feet without AO tricks that don't work well, I cannot make very fat or very thin shapes that don't look distorted and square, and I cannot tone down the muscle definition to keep my avatars from having silly defined pecs.

My proposed solution is at least to make the sliders have twice the range they do now, if not more for some of them. I don't see why the mesh *can't* be deformed more than it is now, other than to keep people looking vaguely human--but this is 'Your world. Your imagination'...why can't we be whatever we want?

I havn't been around very long, though long enough to know who you are and respect your work - I think I should point out that in the original conception of Second Life, many creations like your own were not predicted to come into existance. Perhaps Linden Labs were not completely aware of the various combinations of infinite complexities the imagination could produce. Or, perhaps they were, and felt it would be better to leave those creations and ideas up to the users, rather than hard-code them into the basic avatar sliders.

I've seen your artwork, and for that alone I support the idea. Not just for your work alone, but for everyone elses'. This could go a bunch of different directions, but it might take some time to impliment.

While we're discussing sliders and avatar compositions, I do think it is about time the mirror effect on the arm portion of a texture template was addressed. :)

This frustrates me too but I've heard a lot of clothing designers have brought it up, so I thought it'd be redundant...maybe they haven't changed it because then all old textures would be borked D: I dunno.

Perhaps an option to use 'type1' or 'type2' when concerning texture files for this issue? Some avatars, I'd imagine, would find a use for a smaller, simpler texture template, while others would take use of being able to have a little more freedom without the mirror effect.

You would imply need to define a new layer type that worked with a new texture map, and add a switch to the clothes and skin to use the new or old texture map.

I would also like to be able to set the 'shininess' of the avatar skin. There are some serious flaws in the avatar model (shoulderblades in thin male avatars, the 'bags of water hanging from the neck' effect that creates an inexplicable groove below the female chest) that are greatly exaggerated by the "improved" shading in 1.9.1.16/1.10 and later. I'd love to have the option of returning to the old shading model... call it "matte skin"... where you could use tattoo 'muscles' to lay down better looking shapes, or leave the surface flat to simulate fur.

And of course to address these flaws directly by adding additional sliders (shoulderblades, knees) and even directly editing the body mesh to create non-human shapes without attachments...

Oh, they were quite unaware of the uses of attachments to make non-human avatars--I've heard this from the creators of the Lusk avatars and Nexxus Ambasador (owner of FurNation site and sims). Second Life was meant to be "make your human look like whatever, here's the sliders. Now MAKE a world that is your imagination."

Well, conformity seems to be on everyone's mind at one point, be it for technical reasons or whatever have you. Perhaps one day cultural and net diversity will reach a true pinnacle of acceptance. Until then, it's up to those that seek a broader realization of total freedom to fight for it.

Given enough time and patience, eventually everyone else with catch up.

These are useful requests - not only in the furry sense, but in the human sense as well. I'm sure such fantastical things such as dwarves and gnomes and whatever small-race one can dream up could come from such an expansion on the basic building block of our avatars. And not just small things, either.

It's all about expression and creativity. At some point, someone simply wanted to express an ideal - be it as minor as 'I want to be different', or as complex as 'I want to be normal', thus diversifying net culture by forming groups of said 'different' individuals along the same conceptual line.

Our boundries are unfortunately holding these things back due to our inate want to hole up and extend our personal reality into our personal virtual reality. If it isn't 'normal', or shared within a society, on a whole, society tends to reject it. Often times the case is that large portions of society simply deny these changing factors until they set themselves in their own ideals en masse, gathering attention and changing society's view over time through exposure.

It's all a part of growing up.



EDIT: Hmm. Got on a bit of a rant there. Point is - the world will grow when people stake out a hold in it and make it grow. And suggestions like these are merely the building blocks. :)