Customizing one's avatar

Maybe it's just me, but I cannot get my avatar to not look unbelievably stupid. I love the amount of customization the game allows you but I would really like to be able to upload my own model (for a price of course). What do the rest of you think? And how could we keep this feature from becoming a mistake?

as cool as it would be, it would be a coding nightmare.

1) how do you stop someone from using a giant penis as their avatar? Or anything else terribly offensive?

2) if you uploaded a dog, how would the game know how to animate your walking?

3) how would you guarantee poly count?

4) (not to sound bitchy, but...) there are all kindsa people in game who don't think their avatars look "unbelievably stupid"

5) As far as I can tell, avatars aren't single skinned objects, but collections of linked objects (someone correct me if i'm wrong?)

Don't get me wrong, I think It would be bloody amazing if we could upload our own models for avatars, I just think the gain is outweighed by the technical difficulties.

hahahaha, most of my avs look stupid, buts thats the point. I'm pretty sure the avs are skinned meshes, not just linked objects - just judgeing from the animations - if every object could behave like an avaar, it would be no problem making attached flapping wings etc which on the current build are not possible (but are coming(i hear).

Otherwise, celerity's right - i'm not to concenerd about giant penises - you can do that with attachmets already. the issue that forces all these constraints is bandwidth.

by using a set avatar mesh, the folks at lindenlab are able to regulate the server resources. and considering all they have to regulate, its amazing how good things like av customization are. Not to mention that we happen to be in the beta - so you can suggest what you want to see so your av doesnt look stupid.

As was mentioned in a earlier post - uploading your own mesh is a pipe dream, in the meantime, they are gonna try to make the current mesh as flex as possible

I was thinking the weren't skinned meshes due to the customization. Say for ex. you work on your hair, try making it reall big and really small, it pretty much resizes indepentently from everything else, it maps independently and it's the only bit that accepts transparent maps (I think someone said that).

Maybe the avatars themselves are all a piece and hair is an attached piece?

Someone also mentioned 'detaching limbs' which would imply they're seperate pieces.

And really I guess the giant penis thing it just a pain in the same vein as guys named 'l33tm4st3r', which you'll notice is not allowed.

Curious Twernmilt,
What aboot yer av makes you look unbelievably stupid?
Took me a lot of tweakin time ta find settings I liked enough to run around in. Sure you could do the same.
Let me know.
Plus I'm sure if you really don't like yer av you could always hide it with a costume.

Basically it my hair, head, and shoulders. I cannot get my hair to look even relativley normal, my head is too big for my body and i cant make it smaller, my shoulders are too wide and i cant make them smaller without my chest looking like its stickout out too far, maybe i'm just stupid <sigh>

For most of your woes, I would suggest that you just keep playing with the customization. hopefully the benevolent gods of LW will hear your plea for a smaller head, but until that build you could make your av bigger - and the head will look smaller. the body width slider should stake care of skinny shoulders, and there are 2 or three sliders that could help reduce chest size.

Hair is fun though. right now you can't make it really long, but you should be able to do a fair amount with it. you will notice that in circulation there is only 1 "style" of hair - depressingly straight and thin. Luckly, we can upload our own kinds if we think we have the texture skillz. I'm (kinda) workin on a dreadlock texture. go to the free bazaar and get the ave tex pack, save the hair template to your hard drive and play around. while we are limited by the shape our hair can be, there isn't a limit on the texture.

PS anyone who might be good at this kinda thing - can you make long curly style?

BBC

Welp Twernmilt, I have to agree w/ BBC there. Keep playin with it. And you are not stupid by any means.. its a lot of options. I still can't remember where they all are.

If you like, e-mail or PM me (or do a fly by in world) next time before you log on. Provided I'm around I'll do what I can to help you acheive that desired look.
flyk

__

BBC What up?
I will try to do that curly hair texture thing, but I'm not guaranteein' anything. Uploaded 6 textures last night and they were all garbage. =P

There's now a headshrinker on staff ... er, I mean a head size slider in the Appearance dialog.