Want to make it EASY to apply tattoos to your skin?

Would you like to be able to easily apply tattoos to your skin, or combine multiple clothing layer items into a single one, for convenience and freeing up the layer for other use? Do you want to be able to wear your bra outside your blouse, like Madonna?

Or are you against allowing this kind of thing?

Either way, please consider voting for or commenting on this JIRA entry.

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-4459

Note that it would work on copiable items only, and the results would be transferrable only if all the merged items were transferrable.

Some examples of what you could do:

* make a skin by combining your favorite skin and tattoos
* make a shirt that combines shirt and undershirt layers ... jacket layer too but the bottom of the jacket would be lopped off
* convert an undershirt (e.g., bra) into a shirt or jacket layer item, for the Madonna effect. (whee) Most likely, you'd be better off finding quality clothing intended to be worn this way, but one never knows!
* make a nice glistening skin from your favorite skin and oils
* make a single item outfit to wear based on skin and clothing (sans prims or skirt layer), to which you could add clothing layer accessories

Thanks!

[EDIT] BTW, there's a closely related JIRA entry to provide tattoo layers between skin and clothing, which I think would be great:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1449

I'd really like the hear the skin/tattoo/clothing makers chime in here, either for or against this JIRA.

I already know how to do all these things (and have done a few of them for personal use only), but having proper client support would be awesome!

Although, wouldn't simply allowing more layers (and allowing clothing textures to be applied to any layer instead of being fixed to one) be a simpler solution?

EDITED TO ADD: your idea has the benefit of being client only though. Which makes me wonder: the client is open source...

There's a somewhat related current thread: /109/02/282730/1.html

Yepyep. I was following that one, too. There seems to be more legal/ethical talk in that one, though. /me cringes at forum lawyers!

For this thread here, I was more curious if any designers would object to LL implementing this JIRA.

on this jira entry. I specifically intended it to be non-threatening to content developers, acting really as an alternative to needing to support an unlimited number of layers. As long as the permissions on the baked/merged layers are ANDed together, the resulting layers shouldn't cause any problems.

The issues I'm actually most concerned about are:
1. original creator attribution goes away. This is a bummer, but really only impacts the owner, I think, unless all the components are trans.
2. watermarking could be obscured by upper layers.
3. really needs a facial clothing layer to complete the job.

I'm sure that last will upset skin makers, since they've become used to getting whole-skin prices for each makeup and facial hair option. On the other hand, this would effectively create a brand new layer industry... e.g. I love my old RaC skin, but the beard isn't quite perfect: I'd rather use a clean shaven skin and buy (or make) the beard I'd like.

This wouldn't solve one of the most fundamental problems which is that we have insufficient layers to enable head tattoos or makeups. I wouldn't be opposed to this feature in principle if it was just a convenience feature and couldn't create distributable copies of anything, but I'd much rather see LL invest their time in addressing the real problem. We need the additional layers.

My proposal would be to allow any texture to be embedded in a new type of inventory object that works like a skin or clothing item but is specifically for head, upper body, or lower body. These should be able to be stacked on the avatar in any order and allow as many as possible (at the very least 2-3 per body section in addition to the existing clothing and skin layers). People wouldn't have to worry about permissions, just about what works well with what. People could then sell tattoos and makeup (or eyebrows, or lips, or eye makeup) all seperately allowing for infinitely finer customization and interoperability between the products of different creators.

Frankly, I'll be pretty pissed if LL finally adds avatar features that turn out to be just a bandaid that doesn't really address the existing limitations.

It's still impossible (not quite impossible. Skirt+undershirt will sort of fuse if you are careful with the fabric around the waist/stomach) or very difficult to make one piece dresses that do NOT have a shirtwaist silhouette. This includes sack dresses, empire waistlines etc... since you can not fuse a skirt layer.

I can see this rebake as useful for one piece bathinsuits, if it will fuse top and bottom textures. It would work as long as any waist gaps disappear. Bolder patterns at the belly still wouldn't match up perfectly.

I agree that we should have more head layers!

Vex raises valid issues, but I don't think any are showstoppers. Only copy/trans distributors would be affected by the change of creator. Watermarking *shouldn't* be an issue, because secure digital watermarks are preserved by additive processes, and plain visible ones aren't much use anyway because they're so easily obscured. And this should not be used as an excuse not to add head layers.

Iyoba, good point that it might not work as well for baking clothing down to a skin as I'd imagined; thanks for pointing out the issues.

I don't see this as a replacement for avatar improvements, but I see it as technically much lower risk for LL.

As to it being client-only and open source, that's a great idea, but I'm afraid I don't have the resources to bear on that size an effort. I do SL for fun, and that would be too much like work!

The other aspect to a client only solution is 10L per texture. Of course, for many of us that's well worth it.

Also, because of the ownership issue, I would be tempted to only allow such textures to be copy only, regardless of the original component parts. If you really want to to transfer something, transfer the originals and do the process again.

Q: can you make something owned by yourself no-mod/no-trans such that you can't change it to mod/trans later?

Hey, some of us like making freebies and distributing them. Stop spoiling our fun!


You mean, *created* by yourself? Yes, just give it full-perms to an alt, change the next-owner perms, and give it back to yourself. Without the use of an alt, or client-only? I doubt it.

This does lead to an issue I overlooked, which is whether a client-only mod could meet the permissions requirements in my initial post. I suspect it would take a server mod too, one to store the asset with the correct permissions based on hints from the client. Since this is only *removing* permissions from the item, it doesn't open a new security hole. But it does raise the bar on the implementation effort required.

With a client-only mod, you'd get the item with full perms, which would clearly not be a good idea!

Oh, and another problem: original item trans/no copy perms would be defeated. You could make a copy, then transfer the original, and now have two copies. It's like a two for one sale! But you don't have to stop there. You can keep moving an original item from person to person, each person taking a copy along the way. I can foresee SL groups being set up!

Upon reflection, this idea seems to be flawed.

That's a good point, Love - the viewer would have to reject requests to do this if any of the layers involved were no-copy. If it didn't do that, somebody could just 'bake' a copy of that single object over and over to make as many copies as they wanted.

And more to my point, it would have to refuse to do it for trans objects. Or remove trans from the original, or something equally self-defeating. So it's only a safe operation for copy/no trans objects. Which admittedly is about half the stuff in SL.

Please reread my OP. This feature would not be permitted on no-copy sources.

Please explain why you think that copy/trans items should be rendered no-trans. So far the only valid concern over this is that the original creator's name is lost.

Why not have the baked texture not appear as any kind of inventory item? Just like the way a baked texture currently isn't anything we can manipulate in our inventory. I guess the only way to do it this way is to have more clothing layers.

Tho two cases I was considering are copy/no trans and no copy/trans, since that's what 99% of items costing lindens are. Even freebies often have one of those two permission sets.

There's another JIRA entry for more layers:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1449

It has a lot of votes already, and I heartily recommend it. It needs clarification, and see Chip Midnight's post which voices my main concern.

I'll add this to my OP, since it's closely related.

Fair enough, but a solution that only applies to roughly half of the items inworld is lacking. Better to just add more layers, no? I was pretty excited by the idea for a while there.

I was even considering seeing what's involved in grabbing and compiling the client. But I won't do anything that could screw content creators (working for non-copy items), and I'm not going to bother with something that I myself wouldn't find useful for my own inventory (disallowing no-copy items).

OK, please explain why you think this is an issue. So far I haven't heard you describe a problem here.

Remember no-copy stuff would NOT be allowed. So, copy/no-trans would yield copy/no-trans results. Copy/trans stuff (if ALL of it is) would yield copy/trans results. So, folks could make freebies based on existing freebies, which I see as a very good thing.

However, the original creators' names are lost. This might be a strong enough argument to say "always no-trans" for the results. The disadvantage to that is that we couldn't make and distribute freebies based on other freebies, as we can with most other forms of SL content. I'd rather see freebies be possible, but I'd be happy to go along with the concensus either way.

The main advantage is that it's quite a bit simpler and therefore much more likely to be implemented, or implemented sooner, and less likely to add new bugs.

Furthermore, I find that quite a bit more than half of the skins and tattoos I find are copy/no-xfer. I'll agree that clothing is split more evenly, but I tend to avoid no-copy clothing because I like to make outfit folders.

It doesn't help at all for the head, where there's currently only one layer and good reasons to need more.

Sounds right to me, actually.

Yep, probably true. I'd worry then that they'd consider the avatar shortcomings addressed and the clock would reset for the next five year wait before doing anything else with it.

Making new layers just gives content creators a new excuse to sell everyone what they bought already a second time.

Just have "worn clothes" as an insertable list where you wear something "before" or "after" something else.

You could wear:
* 1: tattoo (undershirt)
* 2: prim nail base (gloves)
* 3: cami (undershirt + underpants or jacket)
* 4: top (undershirt/shirt/jacket)
* 5: top/jacket (undershit/shirt/jacket)

No need for pre-defined layering and you can stack as much as you like on top of one another without having to care which layer it came on.