A request has been put to me, and so I am fulfilling it.
With the recent explosion of furries, dragons, birds, wings, and other various interesting AV's and parts, it's obvious that not everybody is happy with being "Just a plain old human". Sure, you can do cool tats and such, but hey, ever seen how many sets of wings are out there?
So, with people doing some interesting things, adding attachments like crazy, and doing what they can to make interesting AV's (I got divebombed by a huge dragon today!), it goes to show that maybe there need to be more options.
Somebody has recently brought up the idea of actually having more AV meshes and suchnot to cater to the more "interesting" side of AV creation, and to make some basic non-human features more accessible to everybody. SO I was asked to comment on the idea, and give information, recommendations, ups and downs, and solicit opinions.
First, the basics. A mesh is a set of polygonal shapes put together in a 3D grid to create a full 3D shape. If you have ever worked with the AV Skin templates, and looked at the "UV Map" layer, that is a 2D representation fo the mesh that the AV is created out of. All 3D objects in the world are created out of meshes, however MOST of them use prims, which are basic mesh shapes that can be built into more complex forms by overlapping them.
Every AV is comprised of the 3D "wireframe" mesh, and its actual surface information to show the outside of the AV. Then there is "Bone" information. This is the actual definition of the joints and movable parts of the AV that allow it to be animated (Sometimes well, sometimes badly) without bends appearing at all the wrong places. And all those sliders that you see int he appearance dialog are called "Morph targets". Each slide represents taking a PART of the wireframe of the AV and changing the SHAPE of it without changing the actual number of wires/polygons in it. So it stretches parts, squishes parts, and moves things around, kind of like clay.
Next, we can get on to the fun bit. Some people want Nicer Wings™. But for now, they are stuck with alpha-mapped pictures, or possibly complex prim constructions. In the event that wings are created as a mesh object, the wings would actually have bones, and morph rules. Importing the wings into poser would allow a person to create animation files for them. Sliders would be able to change aspects and attributes of the wings. A person would be able to fly with wings that could actually flap with smooth animations.
Other possibilities are possible as well, anything from genuine animal avatars to working moving tails to digitigrade legs to quadrupedal to even Six-limbed 'taur critters. All with animatable and working moving parts!
The obvious primary upside is that SL would have capabilities that no other system has, and built right into the system. New users could chose to have feathered wings, or fairy wings, and have simple sliders to change how they looked or worked. Centaur hind legs could move properly, and tails could flick and wag.
Of course, there are downsides and caveats to everything. Every new form would have to be created as a full mesh, and all the morph targets for it generated as well. The new meshes and morph targets would also increase the size of the client download. (Though with Broadband Required, that shouldn't be TOO bad. Still beats the 250M for some games.) And the users would be limited to the variations made possible by the morph targets and sliders, with new AV capabilities coming as LL creates them. The total workload for LL would be increased to deal with the new AV creations (I know some folks over there are tickled pink by the idea. *chuckle*), and anything that is not "Popular" may not exist, since the work involved to make it would not be justified by the minimal use it would get.
Also, unfortunately, doing something as "Simple" as new morph targets and new bones in the human AV mesh really would not be a suitable solution.
On to other concepts involved in this...
Along with the capability to create full new AV's with whatever necessary shapes and morph targets to make completely new characters, there is also the capability to create mesh-based 'pseudo-attachments'. This capability can be used in to methods. One is to create the mesh (Such as wings), and raw-attach it to the AV, where collision and joining is pretty much ignored. The other method is to set basic rules for actually merging the parts of the meshes, thus creating a seamless joint between the parts. teh former has the downside of not being seamless, thus creating overlap and such. The latter obviously adds complexity.
*Comes back from being interrupted* Excuse me while I head to dinner. If there is anything else I need to add, I will do so in a reply. Otherwise, as usual:
Comments? Ideas? Concerns?