Avatar mesh update?

Back in April there was a thread that mentioned/wished for a possible avatar mesh update. Has there been any recent news on this?

Also a newbie related question?
Looking for definitions of what the avatar files are both on the client and server for example the
the .LLM files?
the avatar_lad.xml files
and any others to better understand avatar building?

Next I moving on to the Poser file downloads from
http://secure-web10.secondlife.com/community/avatar.php

but trying to better understand what all goes into the build and "execution" of the avatar files.

Nope. The avatar's still the same as it's been for years now, unfortunately. I heard talk a while back of some truly exciting changes that are in store, but who knows when (or even if) that's actually gonna happen.


It's doubtful you'll get an answer on that. You're starting to break into the proprietary nuts and bolts of how SL works under the hood. That's programmatical stuff, which is way off topic from anything that would generally be discussed on a forum about building techniques. It's not a subject that would be at all useful for making actual content in or for SL.

If you're curious about how it works at the programming level, you might want to talk to people who work on the open source viewer. I don't know if you'd get an answer from them either, but they'd be a lot closer to it than most of us are here.


If I'm misunderstanding what you're asking, I apologize, but just to make sure it's clear, those Poser files are not actually for making avatars. They're primarily for making animations. They do provide the added benefit of serving as test mannequins for clothing and skin textures, which saves you on uploads, but they won't help you make your own avatar mesh or anything like that. There is only one mesh, which every avatar in SL uses, and there's no changing that. Every avatar is made from a combination of appearance slider settings on the base mesh, prim attachments, and textures. That's it.

Ever since the open source, hacking the avatar has been on my mind.

I imagine the LLM files means something like Linden Labs Morph. Just a vertex number followed by 3 floats.

I'm not sure about the avatar mesh exactly. I don't know where the mesh is stored, so I'm not sure if it can be custom hacked. I would like nothing more than to give the avatar some real edge-looped knees/quads instead of just upping the vert density that currently exists. With some care at the seams, can even be made backwards compatable with the current UV mappng.

But the thing that I really want to dig into is the bones and rig. OMG I so want to fix the hips and the weighting on the inner thighs. Looks like someone baked some envelope weights and over compensated for that one stinking vert. Stupid little vert flies off to Mars with a twist of the hip/knee.

But I don't have access to any of the files or resources to dig into to see how these things are put toether. Prolly won't have access to any of the files for quite some time. Could be months.