9 years in SL and I'm stumped

[Ronaye]

So, I created a new avatar. I have discovered that the avatar I picked is a mesh one:(

I cannot try on skins, or shapes and for the life of me, cannot find how to fix this.

I have gone to my Library, as suggested, but when I 'wear' a non mesh skin and shape, nothing is changing.

What am I missing?  If new people are receiving mesh avatars upon start up, I can see why they are getting frustrated, because I sure am. Creating a new avatar used to be fun:matte-motes-confused:

Any help would be appreciated; maybe I have something turned off/on that I dont know about??????

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

You have to detach the mesh avatar.  It is worn over the original avatar.

[Coby Foden]

Creating a new avatar is still fun, nothing has changed in that respect. Linden Lab just have (foolishly) introduced the new (bad looking) starter mesh avatars which confuse people a lot.

First of all detach everything what you are wearing. Take off also all clothes, tattoos and alpha masks.

To "create" a new avatar mesh (i.e. the body) do this:

• In your inventory right click a folder (where you want the new shape to appear)
• Select "New Body Parts, New shape"
• Wear this shape and start tweaking the shape to your liking with the appearance editor

If you don't want to go the above route, you can find also the classic avatars (non-mesh ones) in the library. Just look into: "Library, Clothing, Initial Outfits". All outfits there which have not the word (Mesh) are the classic avatars. Below the "Initial" outfits folder there are many other folders which have the classic avatars.

[Ronaye]

Thanks so much!!! Geez....what is LL thinking of with this route? I've been here 9 years and got mad; what is this going to do to a newbie???  Another boneheaded idea:(((  Stop pushing mesh down peoples throats!

I love Sl and they are making this harder and harder for new people to get into.

Thanks so much for your help; now I can go (finally) skin and shape shopping:)!!

Huggggs:matte-motes-inlove:

[Syo Emerald]

I'm suprised that a 9 year old resident hasn't figured out mesh avatars, or mesh in general, yet. :matte-motes-agape:

[Conifer Dada]

I know some people are scathing of the traditional 'system' avatars, but really they're not that bad, and what I think LL should do is improve them by correcting things like poor joint articulation and also add some more things you can adjust.  

Mesh is great for things that can't be created realistically from prims, and also for loose fitting clothing, but most human mesh avatars I've seen aren't that good - certainly the starter ones aren't

[Zsigmond Alcott]

I agree the new mesh avia as defalt choice is not a great idea. Confuses new people even more but my guess is that this is part of the new thinking/transition to the new platfom. I bet it will be mainly meshed based. Just a guess but time will tell,

[markkemp]

Or they could just make the standard non-mesh avatars look like something other than a goth freaky looking thing (no offense to goths).

Designers seemed to be able to make the standard avatars look ok for a loooong time. No need for mesh as standard.

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

Ronaye wrote:

Thanks so much!!! Geez....what is LL thinking of with this route? I've been here 9 years and got mad; what is this going to do to a newbie???  Another boneheaded idea:(((  Stop pushing mesh down peoples throats!

I love Sl and they are making this harder and harder for new people to get into.

Thanks so much for your help; now I can go (finally) skin and shape shopping:)!!

Huggggs:matte-motes-inlove:

---

It won't be any more confusing for a newbie than the practically useless sliders for manipulating skins and hair which are still in the viewer and messed with me briefly in 2010. New people don't have assumtions about How Things Work based on how they worked in previous years.

[TundraFire Nightfire]

---

Syo Emerald wrote:

I'm suprised that a 9 year old resident hasn't figured out mesh avatars, or mesh in general, yet. :matte-motes-agape:

---

I wasn't very active for about a year and a half on SL which corresponded to the introduction of mesh on SL. Even though I was a creator in the past, I found it very confusing at first. I've never tried on mesh avatars yet so I would be a complete noob if I did. I like my old avatar, still have an older skin and I'm still happy with her looks.

[Qie Niangao]

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

---

Ronaye wrote:

Thanks so much!!! Geez....what is LL thinking of with this route? I've been here 9 years and got mad; what is this going to do to a newbie???  Another boneheaded idea:(((  Stop pushing mesh down peoples throats!

I love Sl and they are making this harder and harder for new people to get into.

Thanks so much for your help; now I can go (finally) skin and shape shopping:)!!

Huggggs:matte-motes-inlove:

---

It won't be any more confusing for a newbie than the practically useless sliders for manipulating skins and hair which are still in the viewer and messed with me briefly in 2010. New people don't have assumtions about How Things Work based on how they worked in previous years.

---

On the contrary, I think those do-nothing sliders are disastrous to new user retention, and the more of these vestigial controls in the UI, the more hopelessly baffling the experience. Learning the process of customizing an avatar now requires an entire tour through the history of SL to have any hope of even understanding what products can function together and which will supercede others. It's utterly bewildering to anybody starting out now, and something that must be simplified in the next generation, no matter how many content categories are made obsolete in the process.

[Coby Foden]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

 

It's utterly bewildering to anybody starting out now, and something that must be simplified in the next generation, no matter how many content categories are made obsolete in the process.

---

Yes indeed.

For the new users the first login experience should definitely have a WOW effect, like: "This looks really cool!" I'm sure that if it was so, many more new users would login back again and explore the world. I wonder why this is so hard for Linden Lab to understand!

Some things towards the wow effect would be:

• The default starter avatars should look beautiful, handsome, even awesome

• The default animations - few walks, few stands, few sits - should be natural looking and excellent

• The first login region should be interesting with lots of helpful instructions

I have often wondered why the starter avatars must look rather bad and even really bad? Same thing with the default animations. What is the "grand" idea behind this thinking? It looks like as if Linden Lab really does not want to give an amazing first login experience at all. This is really strange.

:matte-motes-frown:

[Madelaine McMasters]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

---

Ronaye wrote:

Thanks so much!!! Geez....what is LL thinking of with this route? I've been here 9 years and got mad; what is this going to do to a newbie???  Another boneheaded idea:(((  Stop pushing mesh down peoples throats!

I love Sl and they are making this harder and harder for new people to get into.

Thanks so much for your help; now I can go (finally) skin and shape shopping:)!!

Huggggs:matte-motes-inlove:

---

It won't be any more confusing for a newbie than the practically useless sliders for manipulating skins and hair which are still in the viewer and messed with me briefly in 2010. New people don't have assumtions about How Things Work based on how they worked in previous years.

---

On the contrary, I think those do-nothing sliders are 

disastrous

to new user retention, and the more of these vestigial controls in the UI, the more hopelessly baffling the experience. Learning the process of customizing an avatar now requires an entire tour through the history of SL to have any hope of even understanding what products can function together and which will supercede others. It's utterly bewildering to anybody starting out now, and something that must be simplified in the next generation, no matter how many content categories are made obsolete in the process.

---

To continue this line of thought, I think third party viewers are also disastrous to new user retention. It has been argued that the SL Viewer was such an abomination that alternatives were necessary. I'll argue that if LL doesn't do a good job on the new world and its viewer, there will be no time for alternatives to form. I think Ebbe has said the viewer will be closed, at least at the start. I think that's unavoidable if he wants success. LL can't afford another Tower of Babel experience, in which the native viewer is denegrated while mentors struggle to teach noobs where the knobs are the alternatives.

If the next world's viewer is once again opened up to third party development, absent tight guidelines for what deviations are allowed, I think that would be a dead canary.

[Deltango Vale]

If LL were to announce that the Firestorm team would be the exclusive developer of the SL2 viewer, I would probably agree with you, but LL has a proven track record of failure on viewer development. The contrast between the skill, intelligence and enthusiasm of the Firestorm team and LL's crude, sloppy V2 is legendary. Firestorm is the SL viewer now. The idea of LL being the only developer of the SL2 viewer sends shivers down the spine of the entire SL community.

In the UK, there is the well-known concept of the 'cowboy builder'. He's the sort of guy that shows up at your house with a hammer in one hand and a saw in the other then proceeds to hack and chop at everything in sight until he finally leaves your house in ruins - and charges a huge fee for his shoddy workmanship. V2 was the result of 'cowboy builders' - a godawful mess that took years to fix. Without Firestorm, SL would have been severely crippled, perhaps permanently crippled. I doubt you would rehire the same company that installed your roof upside down. Do you really want to give LL exclusive control over the SL2 viewer?

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

Deltango Vale wrote:

If LL were to announce that the Firestorm team would be the exclusive developer of the SL2 viewer, I would probably agree with you, but LL has a proven track record of failure on viewer development. The contrast between the skill, intelligence and enthusiasm of the Firestorm team and LL's crude, sloppy V2 is legendary. Firestorm

is

 the SL viewer now. The idea of LL being the only developer of the SL2 viewer sends shivers down the spine of the entire SL community.

 

---

Actually SL V2 was designed by an outside company brought in as an expert in interfaces. The "innovations" that Firestorm brought in were largely to make it look similar to SL V1 which was designed by...

um...

Linden Lab.

(And it WAS a giant ball of suck, mind you, but lets give credit where credit is due.)

[Perrie Juran]

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

---

Deltango Vale wrote:

If LL were to announce that the Firestorm team would be the exclusive developer of the SL2 viewer, I would probably agree with you, but LL has a proven track record of failure on viewer development. The contrast between the skill, intelligence and enthusiasm of the Firestorm team and LL's crude, sloppy V2 is legendary. Firestorm

is

 the SL viewer now. The idea of LL being the only developer of the SL2 viewer sends shivers down the spine of the entire SL community.

 

---

Actually SL V2 was designed by an outside company brought in as an expert in interfaces. The "innovations" that Firestorm brought in were largely to make it look similar to SL V1 which was designed by...

um...

Linden Lab.

(And it WAS a giant ball of suck, mind you, but lets give credit where credit is due.)

---

Really there are two parts to the Viewer.  I use the analogy of a car.  There is the engine under the hood and there is the Dashboard, etc, where we all the controls are where we 'interface' with the engine.

Most people are oblivious to what is under the hood, whether it is a couple of hampsters in a wheel or a nitro powered engine.  Linden Labs focus for several years now has been on the Engine and for the most part they have abdicated responsibilty for the Dashboard to the TPV's. 

What makes the TPV's popular is that they give us ease of access to features that make Second Life easier for us.  They make the things that we do simpler for us to do them.  And while there is sometimes a steeper learning curves because so many functions are put at our fingertips, many of those functions were still there in the official viewer howbeit they were buried in things like the debug settings or preferences.

I've maintained for several years that the biggest problem with the Official Viewer is that design (interface decisons are made by people who don't have Second Lives, hence are clueless as to what we really need. 

The failed attempt at doing a Basic Viewer for New users is one thing that highlights this.  We could dig back into these Forums and point to problems new users had because of functions that should have been there in that Basic Viewer but weren't.

Another more recent example is CHUI.  The fact that CHUI almost went live without a Chat Bar is absolute proof to me of this. 

[Dresden Ceriano]

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

Actually SL V2 was designed by an outside company brought in as an expert in interfaces. The "innovations" that Firestorm brought in were largely to make it look similar to SL V1 which was designed by...

um...

Linden Lab.

---

That isn't how I remember it.  If I recall correctly, it was actually The Phoenix Viewer which users flocked to in order to escape the horror that was V2.  I believe the original Firestorm was based on V3 code (which, to LL's credit, was much, much better) and I'm pretty certain there was no Phoenix mode, which emulated the V1 interface, upon its initial few releases.  This, of course, doesn't mean that the point you were trying to make is devoid of any validity.

...Dres

[Madelaine McMasters]

---

Deltango Vale wrote:

If LL were to announce that the Firestorm team would be the exclusive developer of the SL2 viewer, I would probably agree with you, but LL has a proven track record of failure on viewer development. The contrast between the skill, intelligence and enthusiasm of the Firestorm team and LL's crude, sloppy V2 is legendary. Firestorm

is

 the SL viewer now. The idea of LL being the only developer of the SL2 viewer sends shivers down the spine of the entire SL community.

In the UK, there is the well-known concept of the 'cowboy builder'. He's the sort of guy that shows up at your house with a hammer in one hand and a saw in the other then proceeds to hack and chop at everything in sight until he finally leaves your house in ruins - and charges a huge fee for his shoddy workmanship. V2 was the result of 'cowboy builders' - a godawful mess that took years to fix. Without Firestorm, SL would have been severely crippled, perhaps permanently crippled. I doubt you would rehire the same company that installed your roof upside down. Do you really want to give LL exclusive control over the SL2 viewer?

---

Del, LL will be the only developer of their new virtual world. If you trust them to get that right, why not trust them to get the viewer right? If you don't trust them to get the world right, why care about the viewer? I don't see how having a multitude of viewers will improve the situation. And there is no way LL can open up the viewer to third parties until there's a viewer to open, so the important design decisions will be LL's alone.

So yes, I want LL to have exclusive control over everything. If they someday recognize a benefit to allowing something akin to plug-ins to extend viewer functionality, that's fine. But if they allow another proliferation of user interfaces,  I don't think the new world will survive.

[Madelaine McMasters]

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

---

Deltango Vale wrote:

If LL were to announce that the Firestorm team would be the exclusive developer of the SL2 viewer, I would probably agree with you, but LL has a proven track record of failure on viewer development. The contrast between the skill, intelligence and enthusiasm of the Firestorm team and LL's crude, sloppy V2 is legendary. Firestorm

is

 the SL viewer now. The idea of LL being the only developer of the SL2 viewer sends shivers down the spine of the entire SL community.

 

---

Actually SL V2 was designed by an outside company brought in as an expert in interfaces. The "innovations" that Firestorm brought in were largely to make it look similar to SL V1 which was designed by...

um...

Linden Lab.

(And it WAS a giant ball of suck, mind you, but lets give credit where credit is due.)

---

Really there are two parts to the Viewer.  I use the analogy of a car.  There is the engine under the hood and there is the Dashboard, etc, where we all the controls are where we 'interface' with the engine.

Most people are oblivious to what is under the hood, whether it is a couple of hampsters in a wheel or a nitro powered engine.  Linden Labs focus for several years now has been on the Engine and for the most part they have abdicated responsibilty for the Dashboard to the TPV's. 

What makes the TPV's popular is that they give us ease of access to features that make Second Life easier for us.  They make the things that we do

simpler

for us to do them.  And while there is sometimes a steeper learning curves because so many functions are put at our fingertips, many of those functions were still there in the official viewer howbeit they were buried in things like the debug settings or preferences.

I've maintained for several years that the biggest problem with the Official Viewer is that design (interface decisons are made by people who don't have Second Lives, hence are clueless as to what we really need. 

The failed attempt at doing a Basic Viewer for New users is one thing that highlights this.  We could dig back into these Forums and point to problems new users had because of functions that should have been there in that Basic Viewer but weren't.

Another more recent example is CHUI.  The fact that CHUI almost went live without a Chat Bar is absolute proof to me of this. 

---

And keep in mind that the entire new world that Ebbe has announced will be done by the same company that did CHUI. Why worry about the viewer when we can worry about the world?

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

Dresden Ceriano wrote:

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

Actually SL V2 was designed by an outside company brought in as an expert in interfaces. The "innovations" that Firestorm brought in were largely to make it look similar to SL V1 which was designed by...

um...

Linden Lab.

---

That isn't how I remember it.  If I recall correctly, it was actually The Phoenix Viewer which users flocked to in order to escape the horror that was V2.  I believe the original Firestorm was based on V3 code (which, to LL's credit, was much, much better) and I'm pretty certain there was no Phoenix mode, which emulated the V1 interface, upon its initial few releases.  This, of course, doesn't mean that the point you were trying to make is devoid of any validity.

...Dres

---

I simplified things to suit the current mythos that Firestorm is the Chosen Viewer, the Immaculate Window to the World. I remember when Phoenix was the Viewer of Choice and the Firestorm viewer was seen as an evil usurper and pretender to the throne by many Phoenix users (who then cleared their caches. Again.). I'm also savvy enough to know that Phoenix was actually a decaffeinated version of Emerald, which was in turn a hopped up version of Viewer 1/Snowglobe.

Realistically, the difference between any two viewers running current technology is the difference between a Chevy Camaro and a Pontiac Firebird (or a Vauxhall and an Opel for our overseas friends.)

[Perrie Juran]

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

---

Deltango Vale wrote:

If LL were to announce that the Firestorm team would be the exclusive developer of the SL2 viewer, I would probably agree with you, but LL has a proven track record of failure on viewer development. The contrast between the skill, intelligence and enthusiasm of the Firestorm team and LL's crude, sloppy V2 is legendary. Firestorm

is

 the SL viewer now. The idea of LL being the only developer of the SL2 viewer sends shivers down the spine of the entire SL community.

 

---

Actually SL V2 was designed by an outside company brought in as an expert in interfaces. The "innovations" that Firestorm brought in were largely to make it look similar to SL V1 which was designed by...

um...

Linden Lab.

(And it WAS a giant ball of suck, mind you, but lets give credit where credit is due.)

---

Really there are two parts to the Viewer.  I use the analogy of a car.  There is the engine under the hood and there is the Dashboard, etc, where we all the controls are where we 'interface' with the engine.

Most people are oblivious to what is under the hood, whether it is a couple of hampsters in a wheel or a nitro powered engine.  Linden Labs focus for several years now has been on the Engine and for the most part they have abdicated responsibilty for the Dashboard to the TPV's. 

What makes the TPV's popular is that they give us ease of access to features that make Second Life easier for us.  They make the things that we do

simpler

for us to do them.  And while there is sometimes a steeper learning curves because so many functions are put at our fingertips, many of those functions were still there in the official viewer howbeit they were buried in things like the debug settings or preferences.

I've maintained for several years that the biggest problem with the Official Viewer is that design (interface decisons are made by people who don't have Second Lives, hence are clueless as to what we really need. 

The failed attempt at doing a Basic Viewer for New users is one thing that highlights this.  We could dig back into these Forums and point to problems new users had because of functions that should have been there in that Basic Viewer but weren't.

Another more recent example is CHUI.  The fact that CHUI almost went live without a Chat Bar is absolute proof to me of this. 

---

And keep in mind that the entire new world that Ebbe has announced will be done by the same company that did CHUI. Why worry about the viewer when we can worry about the world?

---

We can only hope that all the people thay are hiring also bring some good sense to the table AND that they are listened to.

[Bobbie Faulds]

I had a poor new resident stumble on to my store yesterday. He was a cloud and was stuck., With a little talking, we got rid of the alpha that came with the mesh avi that he had managed to detach. Got him set up with a default avi and some clothes. Took about an hour to get him squared away....It shouldn't take that long. When I first came to SL it took me about 1/2 hour to get going, but then, the original orientation island had you actually spend 1 L for a mail shirt and then put it on, You could always tell who was brand new since they usually had on that shirt and were carrying a torch. The point is, new residents don't get that kind of help...it's sink or swim. The new mesh avis are just.....ugly. The new residents have no idea how to get rid of them unless they run in to an experienced resident that is willing to walk them through getting it off.

Sorry, but the mesh starter avis are as bad as the "portals" they had for a while where new residents landed then chose the experience the wanted, went through a portal and were randomly dumped somewhere in SL that might have something to do with what they chose. LL decision to do away with the SL Mentors racks right up there as well. I think the era of greatest retention was when LL sponsored private orientation center that were set up. Those were great. I remember the one for Japan was in Japanese and was set up like going through a subway station,. ...shrugs.

[Pussycat Catnap]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

It won't be any more confusing for a newbie than the practically useless sliders for manipulating skins and hair which are still in the viewer and messed with me briefly in 2010. New people don't have assumtions about How Things Work based on how they worked in previous years.

---

On the contrary, I think those do-nothing sliders are 

disastrous

to new user retention, and the more of these vestigial controls in the UI, the more hopelessly baffling the experience.

---

At first I was like... "what useless sliders, the shape sliders work great with fitted mesh..."

But then I realized what you mean - the system skin and system hair for when you aren't wearing a skin texture or using a hair prop.

- I've not seen those in regular active use since my first avatar in 2006.

I agree, those should get zapped.

This is an example for me, of how I am so accustomed to how SL works, that I don't even consider those - and the 2 hours I spent customizing them on my first login in 2006...

One big reason I did not stay in 2006 was those sliders. By 2006, I knew of MMOs with vastly better "graphics", or so I assumed... because those sliders made me assume SL was using 1990s 3D technology...

It was only after looking around again in 2009, and the viewing screenshots of what the regular users were up to back in 2006, that I realized I'd missed seeing the actual quality of SL...

 

How much longer until the entire system avatar is like that - and everyone is on some fitted mesh thing... and then somebody will say something like "how do I change my outfit, I keep wearing this shirt and nothing happens" and it takes us a moment to realize they're using an old system file?

(Granted given the quality of the new official fitted mesh starter avatars - that moment may have been delayed by another year... but its going to happen eventually.)

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

On the contrary, I think those do-nothing sliders are 

disastrous

to new user retention, and the more of these vestigial controls in the UI, the more hopelessly baffling the experience.

---

To continue this line of thought, I think third party viewers are also disastrous to new user retention. It has been argued that the SL Viewer was such an abomination that alternatives were necessary.

---

The key here is "was".

The current official viewer is actually very nicely done. It could use a little more room for user customization - but its pretty good.

All it needs is a plugin system to let people plug in RLV, and to reskin / resize anything individually.

- Something like a MMO's addon system, and there would be no need for TPVs.

 

---

Deltango Vale wrote:

V2 was the result of 'cowboy builders' - a godawful mess that took years to fix.

---

It took a few months.

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

---

Pussycat Catnap wrote:

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

On the contrary, I think those do-nothing sliders are 

disastrous

to new user retention, and the more of these vestigial controls in the UI, the more hopelessly baffling the experience.

---

To continue this line of thought, I think third party viewers are also disastrous to new user retention. It has been argued that the SL Viewer was such an abomination that alternatives were necessary.

---

The key here is "was".

The current official viewer is actually very nicely done. It could use a little more room for user customization - but its pretty good.

All it needs is a plugin system to let people plug in RLV, and to reskin / resize anything individually.

- Something like a MMO's addon system, and there would be no need for TPVs.

 

---

Deltango Vale wrote:

V2 was the result of 'cowboy builders' - a godawful mess that took years to fix.

---

It took a few months.

 

---

Yep. I use Firestorm, but would probably be even happier if there was only the official viewer. When we get questions over in Answers, I must often launch both Firestorm and SLV to find functions that are in different places, or work differently in the two viewers. I watched a building class years ago in which half the instructor's time was spent re-explaining when people said "I don't have that menu item".

Pfft!