New Avatar Mesh and Control System

Greetings, Linden Labs,

I have been a supporter of SL since 2003 and am now a shape designer in SL. I design only realistic female shapes so that a woman can feel like a woman instead of a fake stick figure barbie doll. However, there are so many little discrepancies with the avatar mesh and the options available. Modeling has become so advanced these days with over 1,000 mesh options on a single model that you can do almost anything.

If you take a look at the number of polygons, skeleton meshing, and muscle meshing on a single Crysis model, it makes SL look so archaic.

The population of SL demands that we update the mesh system to allow a much more advanced and detailed avatar mesh system.

For example, more eye options such as eye tips, eye width, eye length, eye height..or more breast options such as chest width, nipple shaping, and most importantly, breast physics, or more butt options to allow for more rounding out of the buttocks or more fat or less fat content added individually to the buttocks.

There is so much we could with this system to give SL the true definition of character individualization.

Please Linden Labs! Support your users and bring us the best freedom to our individuality as possible!

May I suggest spending some time at their bug-reporting/feature request site? It's likely that this has been brought up before, so I'd search it first, and if not, you can always submit your own feature request.

https://jira.secondlife.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa

More information on how the issue tracker works:
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Issue_tracker

The forum here isn't the best way to bring LL's attention to something, it seems to have been rather abandoned.

Thank you! I'll try there too

Thank you lianna, I too have been making fuller figured shapes in SL and finding the same problems. I see more avatars wearing a fuller figured shape and many more choices for sale. The men seem to love them too .
I find certian areas that are very hard to look just right. If you want that fuller figured look you have to live with certain issues.
Let me know what I can do to help in this quest for better tools to get the looks we want.
Cent

Do remember that updating the entire SL human model would also make everything created clotheswise from the dawn of SL to that day broken.

As an opt-in system, though, I can see it happening. Perhaps have a setting for "High Detail Avatars", and then on clothing items, a setting for, well, "For High Detail Avatars" of course.

Yes, it would need to be introduced slowly, but it is neccessary. We cannot continue to be limited. If a clothing designer could create more detail into their designs, wouldn't they want that?

It shouldn't be necessary to break existing SL content, ensuring that the UV mapping of clothing layers to the mesh remains consistent would be a bitch, but isn't impossible. All we really need is more detail levels (for faster machines, without hurting slower ones) and more options for deforming the mesh in various ways as required.

Besides that all that needs changing is the way that shapes are stored, but I'm sure there must be a way to just tag on extra fields when available (rather than having to process ALL shapes ever made to try and add the extra fields in).

Wow, I am glad that their is an increase in fuller figures. It still seems to me though that 80-90% of female av's use the same basic body shape in SL (thin, small curves, etc.)> It always makes me happy to see someone go more original with a fatter, more tomboyish, taller, shorter, curvier, etc. shape.

To me the main issue with avatars is at the more acute joint angles. In normal moves or poses I look fine (so I'm told!). Greater spine flexibility would be good too.

It's probably a long way off, but it would be nice to have flex hair that doesn't disappear into the flesh when one bends over, but linstead lies against one's skin.

I'm skinny but I think a lot of people would like the opportunity to create plump, or even obese avatars more realistically.

It's not just the shape sliders; the avatar mesh is...well, no offense to whoever was it's craftsman, crap. You open it up in Blender or 3DS and it is terrifying. The edge loops are a mess, and important areas like the shoulders barely pass on anatomy, not to mention the hands look like someone injected silicone into the palms. Actually, the entire upper torso could use a restructuring. Also, the foot geometry doesn't even look like it got past extrusion.

The good thing is the people over at dedalo3d have been working on this problem with MakeHuman (a free parametric human modeler). The mesh they've come up with is very well put together, with nice face flows and anatomy. Unfortunately, it has 10000+ faces. But it is a good place to start, or to look for ideas for improvements (especially considering the mesh is specifically designed to cover the gambit of human shape, both male AND female). Their slider system is also very cool; four sliders to cover something like 70-80% of the overall shape of the body.

Its so horrible, I'll give the offense for you if you want. Multiple times.

I've never really seen a more upsetting marriage of vertexes and lines. But like I've said before, generic meshes are crap.

unfortunately, as apparent as this is to everyone in secondlife, lindens and clothing/shape/accessory designers alike, its more likely that ll will alleviate this (major reason half of people who try SL don't stay) is when they're finished catering to the kind of people who think DAZZLE!(LOL) is the best thing to ever happen to SL.

dystopian? negative? well, stick around for a while, you'll get the hang of it XD

Definitely something that could use improvements

Especially with windlight making the glitch areas more noticeable.

I do think they did a good job with the old "washing out" bug that made avs 'pop out' from the local lighting...but really its like re-decorating your doghouse to have marble floors, a tiffany lamp and a (reflective) waterfall (water physics, sigh, another topic maybe), the ability to talk to OTHER dogs but hey...its still a mutt when you zoom in on any decent level.

Thank you Liana,

I could not agree with you more! The whole mesh system need updating. Maybe after the WINDLIGHT update is done, the Linden could do AVATARS!.

I really hate my shoulders, I like nice square shoulders, I have nice square shoulders, but I can't get it them in SL.

I did a test the other day, and tried to get my avatars shoulders to look like several pictures of models I had up on the screen.

I could just not do it!.

And I am quite good at AVATAR modelling.

Maybe we could start a movement?

Love
Fur Yifu
x

Agreed all. The first time I logged into Second Life I thought it was cool, but the anatomy is disturbing. Perception is kind of confused by the world in flux, always hoping the mesh will continue to download and appear suddenly perfect.

this would be one of the best updates to SL ever....

question though.. being the avatar mesh, this would be more than just body shape, but clothing shapes and options? Clothing is soooo limited in SL, I'm guessing due to the avatar mesh. If this would allow better shapes, as well as much more detailed clothes than the few options we have, I'd love this more than anything else. Clothing is so damn limited right now... people try to make up for it, kind of faking things, or using prims.... but damn they just look so bad... Same with hair. prim hair looks better than AV hair, but why cant they just make AV hair good, not requiring stupid prims to use for hair? I think all the work arounds are done for the crappy avatars, and its time to just make them actually decent intead of so ... well below sub-standard.

Although, as posted above, I think the avatar mesh could be improved, it's still pretty good compared to other worlds I've seen.

If the mesh was made more detailed, with more traingles, would that affect the application of skins?

One problem most females and a some males will be aware of is the over poofiness of skirts. This is easy to overcome by having a modified version of your shape kept specially for skirts and dresses, with narrower hips and reduced butt and saddlebags. Nobody sees this alteration, it really is a good trick, at least with knee length hemline. Not so good with minis where thighs are visible, though.

I would like to see an additional layer, perhaps called the overcoat layer, that would mean I could have a coat or dress that is loose fitting from the bust downwards, and overlays the skirt. That would also mean I could wear a long, baggy jumper with a skirt.