The truth about Shapes

Perhaps I'm not articulating this the way I want.

You can say that "Sure, anybody can set the sliders, but anybody can also rez objects, script, and apply textures", etc. This is true, but it is also misleading. Not everybody is capable of creating every single object ever created in 2L. Same holds true with clothes and skins. Designers use 3rd-party software that not everyone can afford or understand; they hand-draw things that nobody can precisely match; they have access to textures and sounds that not everybody has access to, because they are unique or proprietary or user-created. Sure, somebody could create an exact duplicate of your object, and rip the texture using a bot, but that's (in theory) illegal and *actionable* - you have recourse to protect your intellectual property via the DMCA (or whatever, etc). Lawyers can get involved. It is nothing less than completely obvious when someone has copied, or is clearly attempting to copy, your work - and you have options for dealing with that.

That is true for skins, objects, gestures, textures, clothing, and just about everything (if not indeed everything) else in 2L - EXCEPT shapes.

Why?

Because somebody who joins 2L today and spends 15 minutes on that one little section in Orientation Island can, by pure accident, come up with an exact duplicate of that shape you're selling, to the precise value of every single slider, and you can do nothing about it. A shop two sims over could be selling shapes, and you could find out that, though they're using a different modeling skin, one of their shapes is an exact duplicate - again, down to every single number - of a shape you're selling. AND YOU CAN DO NOTHING. Even if you suspect copying. What's more, you have no reasonable RIGHT to suspect copying. Because anybody can do anything with the sliders on the shape they come with when they join 2L - including copying their results and selling them. You can never truly claim to have "created" your shape in the same way you've created a texture or an object, because the shape always existed - you just changed a couple of values (unlike a set of prims, which didn't exist until you took the necessary steps to create them, etc). Do you see now the fundamental, crucial difference between shapes and all those other things that "anybody could make"?

Be that as it may, I understand some people are willing to pay other people to do things (like make clothes or objects, etc) that are well within the buyer's capability to create, but they just simply can't be bothered to take the time to do it. Somebody's fast-food analogy was pretty accurate. That's all fine and good. Perhaps you don't mind dropping L25, or L200 on a shape. But KNOWING that you could make any shape you wanted for yourself, would you pay L900 for a shape? L1200? More? How could you justify spending that much money? Moreover, how could anyone justify CHARGING that much?

Further, I reiterate that since shapes are the only thing in 2L that are not, or cannot be made to be, unique in any way (as described above), when a newbie finds out that people have imported 3rd-party objects into 2L, it is not intuitive to him or her that shapes cannot be so imported; therefore, it is not unreasonable for a newbie to think that shape - especially an atypical one - is something that was also created 3rd-party and imported. Such a newbie, knowing that quality skins can sell for a couple thousand L, would probably expect that the person selling that shape for L1200 has produced something unique, something that's worth as much as a skin because, like the skin, there's no place else you could get something of that quality. It's not true, and I believe that a lot of people might be getting fleeced.

As I've said, I've bought shapes. Perhaps, like some others, if I feel I can't be arsed to do the work myself I might yet buy a shape in the future. But if I had known what I know now, I would NOT have spent the amount of money I did on those shapes when I bought them.

Perhaps I'm just sore because I feel like I got tooken. Ah, well.

Not really. Textures are about creativity to some degree or other, and using them on prims can be very skillful. Making shapes is like linking some untextured prims together. I see the comments that not everyone can do it, because not everyone has an eye for it, but I largely disagree with that. Imo, most people have an eye for a good body shape, and very few don't.

Also, making a shape isn't anything like making a sculpture from a lump of clay, as someone suggested. You start with a shape that isn't far from what you'd want, but a lump of clay isn't anything remotely like the finished sculpture - it's just a lump.

Skip this post if you are allergic to me talking about my SL Business .. Since to explain I will be mentioning some what I sell.

I always recommend people try to do their own shape first and only buy one if they don't end up with the look they want.

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Hmmm

The true truth about shapes ...

In or around March 2005 there were 2 shapes stores for humans ..

Blake's and Skin Doctors

Blake sold his no Mod/ No Copy shapes for 1500 and 2000L, he did offer to modify them, 1 change for free additional changes for extra. You got a No-mod/ No-copy result.

Skin Doctors sold 2 or 3 shapes for 800L

It had gone on like this for a little while, only furries had shapes that were reasonably priced or mod. Humans made their own or forked over lots of L$.

Just like today some people's results were less than stellar. Not only did they not look good but they could achieve the result they even hoped for.

Then came the evil author of the modern shape industry ....

Yeah .. well anyhow .. I opened my store in July of 2005.

It was the very first "human" shapes store that sold MOD / COPY shapes. I also sold a whole array of figures for 300L just like now so people could just pick where to start make all the copies they wanted.

I included some hints on how to make changes to help out getting the look they wanted.

I never claimed to get special shapes from anywhere I had a notecard explaining what I was selling.

Quickly competition flourished and even Blake and Skin Doctor's prices came down. The overall prices of shapes dropped.

Withn 6 months I had probably 15 competitors, nowadays hundreds.

Are all good? Nope.
Are some better than mine? Depends on what you are looking for.
Are all of them inexpensive? Nope.
Are some cheaper than mine? Yep
Do some have better variety than me? yep

Some good ones of my competitors - Haver Cole's, Torrid Midnight's

Nowadays no one has heard of me, not even on the forums - I keep meaning to get a fancy signature ad like the rest of you all but never bother.

No one without some bot is going to be able to duplicate any of my shapes in less than 5 minutes .. and I am certain that goes for most of my competitors.

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But again .. if you'd rather spend the time and learn to make your own shape .. thats a great idea, there definitely are some people who buy shapes that probably could have made their own.

I never wanted to make any money that I didn't earn. I'm happy to stick to selling shapes to the people who know they want them.

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If anyone wondered .. My shape took well over 100 hours, although I use an earlier, slim version for Carli.




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Again, if you are the type to scroll bottom to top skip this post if you don't want to read about my SL business.

Now if any shapes store is actually telling people you are buying a shape that can't be achieved using sliders, that would be wrong in my book.

Exactly my point. It's like buying one of those Stretch Armstrong toys, pulling the arms and legs out a little (maybe twisting them here or there) and then reselling the result at twice the price as something unique.

Put it this way. If you could buy a bag of 50 Legos for $5, and you found out that somebody bought such a bag for that price, and used the 50 Legos to make a "sculpture" that you think you liked - would you pay $10 for the sculpture? $50? $100?

Do you ever eat say Take Out from a Restaurant?

Don't many simply make food you could make yourself if you wanted to take the time?

Totally agree here. Someone gave a freebie shape to me when I first came to SL almost a year ago. It was a shape that suited me and I was still using sliders for my skin. Then I found a skin I liked and it went well with the shape.

One year later I have the same freebie skin that I have made adjustments to over time to tweak an area here and there.

I too have no earthly idea why someone would purchase a shape by itself.

I've taken recently to buying shapes. My reason is simple...........I hate having to spend endless hours on the face. I suppose I might do things backwards since I buy a skin first then go shape shopping picking up dozens of demos to try on with my new skin. I only pay attention to the face because I know my slider settings for boobs, butt, hips and height. As long as the shape is copy/mod I could care less about anything but the face.

So are shapes worth the lindens? Absolutely they are.

The main reasons people buy shapes are:

To save time

And to pull off a look you cant manage yourself

Someone made it a job requirement**

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Just as everyone cant produce really intricate twisted prims, not everyone can produce shapes sculpted to the way they would like.

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Some additional reasons ..

To help learn how to do their own shape (give them hints in the direction they wanted)

To have additional looks for whatever purpose. I've had several female designers buy men's shapes from me so they can make vendor picks with them.




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** I think the job requirement reason is stupid, a purchased shape should never be a condition of hire.

Most shapes, unless they're copies of others, are technically unique because the chances of duplicating the numbers exactly are next to nil. No Dakota, there are no protections in place to keep someone from making a shape that looks nearly identical to someone elses. Even if a boughten shape is nomod, someone with spare time and the right eye can duplicate it to where nobody can tell the difference. Even if someone does this and gets the numbers right, there's still nothing anyone can say about it.

Since everyone who's gone through orientation island knows full well you can adjust your appearance sliders, it's not as if shape makers are pretending they are using special tools. Besides, does that really matter? Should we pay a violin player more than a vocalist because everyone has vocal chords?

At the end of the day, there are people who make custom shapes for sale, and people who want to buy them. If the shape doesn't look like the advertizement, yes, that is a swindle. But other than that, I fail to see why anyone has any trouble with shape makers.

If you sell them mod they can even see your numbers

People thought I was crazy when I said I was selling them mod anyhow.

But I figured who would buy a shape if they would end up looking like everyone else.


Maybe it helps to think of selling shapes more as a Service rather than Merchandise.

How much do tubes of paint and brushes cost? Why buy that $1000 painting when you could just spend $50 and do it yourself?

So is coming up with mental image of aesthetically pleasing human shape, and adjusting the SL avatar to match that vision. Seriously, the concept of drawing can certainly be simplified to "it's just setting colours of pixels" if one wants to be dishonest about the effort and skill that goes into it. In the same vein creation of shape is "just moving the sliders" ... but only if you want to be equally dismissive about it.


Then we'll have to simply agree to disagree. I see considerably more AVs out there with obvious proportion flaws than ones that can't be nit-picked in this regard. If you aren't seeing it... it just might be you're missing the mentioned good eye for it yourself, which would reinforce the motion this ability is not as common as you think. Either that or you're really lucky and somehow miss all the less shapely people.

I have to say I have brought shaps for my human alts because once you start mucking around with sliders you can make some really bad discisions, which you pick up months later, particualarly in the face.
If someone wnats to sell shapes so be it, if you looked around you would also notice new shapes are a lot cheaper than new skins. many people also start with a basic shape the just mod it over years so they are unique.

With some of the prices that I have seen for a shape. The creator of the shape could display the shape with one of those free skins on the shape and include it. (not charge more because it has a free skin)

From what I've seen a lot of the shapes they display with the skin, isn't what I'd look like until after I would have to spend more money for that same skin. I'd rather buy a some what complete instant package then just a shape alone, because I want my avatar to look just like that right now. lol

For the life of me, I can't figure out how some shape makers know that the shape they have made measures 36 24 36 or what ever. How are they determining that?

Made my own shape that really works with my RAC skins (based on compliments and attempts to put Jannae in the sack). I even made a few mods so I can be shorter, etc...

The hardest part was the face. The rest was pretty easy.

A lot of "freebie" skins are skins stolen from the original designer or skins that became freebies as the result of permissions glitches ... including the most popular.

Thats the reason I personally will not include freebie skins in with my shapes. Some shape sellers do not have the same reservations.

If an actual skin seller is selling shapes thats different of course, and I think its a great idea for them to do.



Most just make it up. Considering many of those supposed "36/24/36" measurements are on shapes that are over 6 feet tall its pretty obvious.

I have met someone who used an oval shaped prims to rough in a size, but theres no real way to make a tape measure in Second Life. Also the oval prim doesn't list a circumference so even that is based on a guesstimate using a circle as a reference.

You could do a rough comparison using untouched photos of a model you knew the measurements for and eyeball it. But judging from the heights and basic distortions in things such as leg length in most shapes I'd say this isn't often done.

Yep...just what I was thinkin, it's "sculpting" w/ the sliders. For years I thought selling shapes was a big scam. Then I realized how many times I tweaked my av over the years, how many hours it added up to, and how tough it is to bend the mesh into some body shapes w/ out the lumpy edges, like a lotta bulky guys have.

If ya want curves instead of real visible flat planes in random spots, & what not...it takes a lotta time for most folks, not 5 minutes.

So they pay for either:

a) Lack of "an eye" for that kinda art

b) Convenience/impatience

c) A lack of free time (not everybody spends 12 hours on SL, like some folks I know)

there are some body shapers say they are starters of such creations. But really anyone can do this. Mostly in extreme case they are just cut and pasting directly ( for lack of complex terms).....One must know what they are buying before they do. There is a alot of junky high priced shapes in the game. Only a few are worth the big price.

Yep, we can make lots of things in Second Life using only the built-in tools. But I don't enjoy playing with shapes, I find the interface tedious. If I see a shape that's exactly a look I want to use, why wouldn't I hand a dollar or two (at most, usually much much less!) to someone who has already spent the time and effort?

That's a pretty subjective statement. If the shape I want costs 5 lindens or 500 lindens I will buy it. Of course that is with the stipulation that is has a demo I can try on and it's modifiable. I think most people buy shapes for some part of the shape editing that they have trouble with.....mine is the face. If that particular part of the shape solves the problems for that person then it's worth it.....to them. Your idea of what is worth it is irrelevant.

well since many of those creative tools can be used by anyone that has the time. Thye can do make their own.........



subject? irrelevant? well thats subjective on your part right?...........

Have you seen many of those high priced shapes? At times the edges show where those such occurance. As I said not all but there are some people doing this and charging alot of money for this product.

It would actually be cool if you could sell face shapes and body shapes separate

Since many people are like you they are happy with their body but want help with the face ...

Or the reverse want a new body but keep their face.

Good idea, it doesn't make sense that they aren't separate. I would think the face is much harder to get right. But for me, both are not to my satisfaction. I just don't have the patience to continually tweak things.