Outside Avs?

Is tehre any technical reason why avs could not be imported from outside of SL provided the conformed to the technical requirements of the skeleton, the mesh density and texture page usage? I mean, I would love to be able to use an outside package to build an paint my AV and then import it into the game, even if that meant I couldnt' use the appearence control panel to tweak it (after all, I could od that with the external package).

Unfortunately, you can't upload meshes to SL. This is a feature that a lot of people have asked for, but one that the Lindens are unlikely to implement for a long, long time. There would just be too much data to transfer if they did.

Yeah, I guess at some point, unless you could limit the number of polys to been the same as the av, it wouldn;t work. Although I'd settle for my av using the default mesh until it could stream in the real one

No, the avatar animation files are independent of the av geometry. It'd work, there just isn't currently a way to stream mesh data.

It would also greatly seperate the haves from the have-nots.

Making an AV would require some sort of advanced modelling package (MAX / MAYA / Whatever), because Milkshape just won't cut it. We're talking about multiple bone skeletal rigging, attachment point editing, bump map generation, advanced texture mapping, and a ton of morph targets.

IE, to make an AV as richly featured as the current AV's probably took them a very, very long time, and used a professional graphics package, if not something they had to build themselves.

It would create a monetary and skill divide between those who have / can do this, and those that cannot, unlike the current method of AV creation which is open to all.