What about this then, Mr Linden?

Dense as I am it took me a bit to wrap my head around what this topic was all about.

let's see, on the one hand you have the extant ready made avatar meshes which one edits by sliders etc.

and what you're asking for is sculpty meshes that deform via the same sliders.

if i had that kind of controll over standard sculpties i would be doubly extreemly happy. I WISH we could skew and taper and hollow and cut sculpties.

but as it is i have many animated sculpts on avatars of mine. i don't think having sculpts for avatar meshes would nesessarily enable animating (as in pulsing wiggling rippling animations) them. Because the current animation methods require scripting the prim to swap maps.

that my .02L$

From my limited knowledge, a one peice sculptied mesh would blend better at the joints, that the multiple linked versions, this is true when you look at non sculptie prims people use to make say armour etc. Different body/part sizes may look like the basic 2d clothing with seams stretching and distorting... maybe?

An avatar is more than a static form. It's a skeleton with a mesh. Just replacing the mesh is not going to achieve much. As you're still stuck with the exact same skeleton.

Atm changing the mesh, without changing the skeleton is 99% achievable using sliders, (sculpted) attachments and invisibility prims. (Yes even animated 'beaks' etc. using scripting) Adding a 'sculptmesh' wouldn't add much to the current solution, except maybe a little simplicity. And that's even debatable, as the mesh needs to be able to change based on changes in the skeleton. And we're not even discussing texture layers here. (The mesh defines the UV map, as soon as you modify the UV map, ALL clothes/skins etc. break).
Also current sculptmaps are not versatile enough to completely redefine the complex polygon mesh of an avatar. To do this right, you need to be able to redefine the polygon mesh itself, especially if you want to preserve the correct UV mapping.

A final solution would be for people to not only define the mesh, but also the skeleton. The moment this possibility is introduced, all currently existing animations immediately break though.

So it's not something that can be done easily or without huge consequences.
Interesting concept. Not thought through well enough in a practical sense.

I guess as soon as sculpted shapes will become available they will be available for purchase just like prim hair, prim shoes, realistic human skins and so on. (Now you are being labeled a noob if you don't have these!)

Now I get what you mean! I would buy it immediatly if it is at least as cute as I am now. ) Besides that we would get rid of the feeling of wearing a "furry costume" over small twisted human heads.

Personally, I would rather have user-customized avatar meshes and skeletons.

Yes, I know the issues surrounding doing that. None of it is any more demanding than many things that LL is already doing.

Not so sure this would be such a small step, if I understand what's desired. Kinda by definition, clothing isn't prims, else it would be attachments, and attachments kinda do what I understand to be requested here of clothing. So, unless I'm missing something, in order to make this possible, one or more of the following would have to happen:

- scripts would have to be executable from outside prims (like inside "clothing", whatever that might come to mean)
- scripts would have to be able to manipulate the agent's inventory
- clothing would have to be "wearable" from somewhere other than the agent's inventory

Getting any of those to work without introducing a whole new class of griefer tools (or worse) seems fraught with peril.

@Damani: Quite right. Somewhere in this thread I posted some half-awake nonsense about using existing animations in an offline tool to deform a sculptmap according to a mapping between the current skeleton and a new mesh. I now realize that's hopeless, if for no other reason than the need to synchronize the sculptmap "animation" (for now done with sim-side scripts) with the (viewer-side) skeleton animation. However insane that may have been, I think something like that would be less painful than losing the ability of (almost) all avatars to use (almost) all animations, which is what I understand would be the result of allowing user-defined skeletons. (But, Talarus, do you mean full skeleton definition--new joints and everything--or user customization of existing skeletons beyond the range of existing sliders?)

Personally I'm rather less disturbed by allowing meshes that break the UV map because, well, if my sculpted parrot AV doesn't look great in a swimming suit and Golden Beach Tan skin, it probably won't be that disappointed.

Hey, I just wanted to clear a few things up here.

Regarding my comment about sliders becoming a newbie thing, I wasn't meaning that in a snobbish sense - far from it. Sliders are easily adapted to by someone who's just been thrown into SL head-first for the first time. Sculpt-Maps are not so easily accessible and understood in that sense. By my comment, all I was suggesting is that sliders would stay because of their ease, but as the resident gets more comfortable with SL - they can venture into the area of sculpting their own body shape using sculpt-maps.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is the technicality of using a sculpt-map on an avatar, because the thread in general seems to be making this out to be a lot more complicated than it actually is.

Adding a sculpt map to your avatar would be as easy as adding any other map to it, whether that be transparency or texture. Once this sculpt-map is on your avatar, it would function exactly as it would on a sculptie prim. There would not be issues with animation of the avatar. It's perfectly possible to morph the mesh without interfering with the bones system. There is no reason whatsoever that even sliders and sculpt-maps can't co-exist on a single avatar. Applying a texture map to your avatar does not effect it's animation or bones, and applying a sculpt-map would be no different.

The worst that could happen is that someone might 'over' sculpt their avatar making it look strange when the bones bend the mesh. This is not a technical limitation, more a case of the user overdoing it.

I've had a long think about this since I started the thread, and now, the more I think about it, I think it's only a matter of time before we see proper 'Sculpted Avatars' on the grid. It's an obvious way forward for simple and powerful avatar customisation.

Personally I'm more or less happy with the way things work right now - except I'd like to see the imposed limitations on the sliders removed. I.e. the skeleton and avatar meshes could stay the way they are if we could just modify them a lot more. 6-inch tall avatars, and 6-meter tall avatars, for one thing.

However, I know that discussion has been shot down by LL repeatedly since long before I joined up.

-Atashi

Well, I've been away from SL for a while and was amazed to find we still don't have sculpted avatars when I got back

Really, I'm very surprised because the sculpt map tech' is already in there. So all it needs is adapting to the actual avatar mesh. It would even bring about a whole new line of business to SL (sculpted avatar maps).

I think it's crazy we still don't have this!

It might even boost SL performance because we would need less prims on our avatars to get the shapes we want!

I have a fully sculpted dolphin avatar that looks amazing.

I also have some full sculptie avatars. The problem is rendering. Like when Bodhi came to the hangout the other night. For ten minutes he looked like a prune with something detached floating in front of him. THen he finally became a . . . um, I can't remember what he was now, a possum?

Do you both mean on an 'actual' avatar mesh or sculpted prims?

Sculpted prims.

At least one Linden has talked about using flexible sculpted prims to replace the avatar mesh, with the flexibility used to deform the prim between the end-points of the skeleton section they're attached to. But like many cool things they've talked about this one has fallen behind the seat cushions.

Thanks for the heads-up, sounds interesting. I think it's a shame they're not developing that idea. Then again, they probably are but they're just not telling us about it!

I'm not sure it will fly....I had 2 Lindens visit my SIM independently due to its performance and one of the things they mentioned as being a drain on their resources and contribute to the degradation of SIM performance were Sculpties. So what would happen if you had 20, 30 or 40 sculptured avatars at the same location on top of the usual prims, scripts, bling etc etc. I think the grid's architecture would have to be revamped in order to accommodate this suggestion.

SIM performance?

I think not!

Sculpties are simple spheres as far as the sim is concerned.

Well that's what i was told by both Izzy Linden and Dee Linden in tickets submitted.
I could post both their replies in here...but it would be against TOS.

Their replies kind of annoyed me...because I then asked the question "Why introduce a product if you know it drains your resources...what''s the point?"

It sounds more like something from Dizzy Linden or Bud Linden. Not only have I never previously heard any potentially credible source claim that sculpties cause *sim lag*, I can not imagine how that could possibly happen.

Izzy Linden is quite knowledgeable and have dealt with him over SIM issues on several occasions in the past....for now i'm going to have to believe what they say....unless you're implying they told me porky pies and deliberately fogged me off!

PS it wasn't the only thing they mention, it included watching scripts going above x m/s, temp rezzers, texture sizes,those realistic looking waves and mega prims. Sculpties was just one of a list of things to watch over regarding SIM performance. At the time i had about 3 or 4 sculpty trees that's all!

I was not intending to imply that, but now that you mention it I'm hard pressed to argue it isn't a reasonable inference.

If they were talking about impact on the *viewer*, possibly, though even that seems to be exaggerated since a sculpt has about as many polygons as a torus and falls off in resolution faster. But the sim?

Somone already has them. They come barefoot or with cute sandels. I don't remember who, but you can probably find them on barefeet on Xstreet.

i added an extra bit to last comment

I'm skeptical about the megaprims as well.

That's what i was told Argent...i wish it weren't so. The 2 replies + emails I received were a couple of weeks apart....and more or less singing the same tune. I don't know if this is like a standard Linden reply when SIM performance goes down the drain...