feet + hands + breasts + bottom

[Bree Giffen]

Why don't all the makers of all the different body part add-ons get together and form a complete avatar body and be done with it?

Or should Linden Lab make one and put them all out of business?

[Bree Giffen]

Why don't all the makers of all the different body part add-ons get together and form a complete avatar body and be done with it?

Or should Linden Lab make one and put them all out of business?

[Ren Toxx]

---

Bree Giffen wrote: [...] 

Or should Linden Lab make one and put them all out of business?

---

Kinda. LL should enhance the base avatar (something that has been occasionally called 'Avatar 2.0') and creators should then strive to offer mesh improvements to that, either partial or, as in fact already exist right now, complete.

[Syo Emerald]

And kill all system clothes/all mesh clothes instantly? No, thank you.

[Marianne Little]

If we think like that, we will never have progress, never better avatars. Who cares if old clothing goes? Who uses it anyway? It is always new things made. Mesh was expensive, now it's lots of freebies. Same  with a new avatar... it will be some whining and people will say they are leaving SL. But they won't. 

---

Syo Emerald wrote:

And kill all system clothes/all mesh clothes instantly? No, thank you.

---

 

Why can't avatar 1 and avatar 2 live together? The old shapes can still be in the library. Those who will change, can change and update. Those who will not, stay with their old avatar.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Not everyone likes mesh clothes or can even wear them if they do because they don't fit their avatar.  I like them but I still wear a lot of my system clothes too.  Mesh clothes are not the be all and end all of clothing.  They are just another option.  As far as who uses them, open your eyes and don't be so blinded by what fashionistas tell you to think.  There are plenty of people still wearing system clothes.  In fact a lot of lola clothes are still system layers.  They are also still used to layer under mesh clothes.

A new avatar would not only mean a new exterior surface but new bones too and that would make all the clothes, including current mesh, and most avatar accessories and components obsolete.  It would also break a lot of content other than clothes too.  Current animations would not work on so all the AO's , Furniture, dance huds, vehicles or anything that uses animations would break.

I think a lot of people would leave SL if all of the sudden most of their inventory is worthless because they don't want to start over. You may have lots of RL money to spend on replacing most things in your inventory but most people are not going to be willing to do that.  You also won't have much new stuff to pick from a long while as all the merchants stock would be obsolete too and creators would have to start from scratch.

As far as having two avatar meshes to choose from in your library, if it were that easy I think LL would have done it long ago.

[Madeline Blackbart]

---

Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

Not everyone likes mesh clothes or can even wear them if they do because they don't fit their avatar.  I like them but I still wear a lot of my system clothes too.  Mesh clothes are not the be all and end all of clothing.  They are just another option.  As far as who uses them, open your eyes and don't be so blinded by what fashionistas tell you to think.  There are plenty of people still wearing system clothes.  In fact a lot of lola clothes are still system layers.  They are also still used to layer under mesh clothes.

A new avatar would not only mean a new exterior surface but new bones too and that would make all the clothes, including current mesh, and most avatar accessories and components obsolete.

  It would also break a lot of content other than clothes too.  Current animations would not work on so all the AO's , Furniture, dance huds, vehicles or anything that uses animations would break.

I think a lot of people would leave SL if all of the sudden most of their inventory is worthless because they don't want to start over. You may have lots of RL money to spend on replacing most things in your inventory but most people are not going to be willing to do that.  You also won't have much new stuff to pick from a long while as all the merchants stock would be obsolete too and creators would have to start from scratch.

As far as having two avatar meshes to choose from in your library, if it were that easy I think LL would have done it long ago.

---

False. You can place any avatar mesh on the current bones set. In fact this is how rigged mesh is created.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

 

A new avatar would not only mean a new exterior surface but new bones too and that would make all the clothes, including current mesh, and most avatar accessories and components obsolete.  It would also break a lot of content other than clothes too.  Current animations would not work on so all the AO's , Furniture, dance huds, vehicles or anything that uses animations would break.

---

 

That is the big question, will it or will it not break current content?

And what actually is needed?  Where are the problem areas.

If you devided the triangles at the problem spots into a few more triangles then the necesary smoothing could be accomlished and old textures could still be applied on top of them.  Some people have been playing already with the vertex weights: ( https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1800 ).  What may be hurting them most is lacking the ability to fine tune because of not enough triangles.

As far as bones go we are talking about just adding some bones where they are missing.  So again, how would it break current animations?  Maybe someone like Medhue could answer.

And correcting the problem with T-Rex arm syndrome caused by the center line settings in the default AV. 

The only real possible problem is the resulting rendering weight for the new Ava.  It would be heavier.

I'll confess to not knowing enough about it to make a statement, yes or no as to whether it can be done.  My little Martian brain says yes.  But it could be wrong.

Really, we are not needing a "new" Ava but enhancing the existing one, adding more flexibility to it.

 

[Coby Foden]

---

Marianne Little wrote:

 

Why can't avatar 1 and avatar 2 live together? The old shapes can still be in the library. Those who will change, can change and update. Those who will not, stay with their old avatar.

---

Yes, I think that could be possible. Might be complicated thing to do - but not impossible.

That would satisfy both - the ones who don't care about old content, and the ones who care about old content.

 

 

I'm always surprised to see the resistance to avatar updates with comments like: "But it will break existing content. No thanks!". Is it so that those people are completely satisfied with the present avatar? For ever? Very bad future in my opinion.

We spend enormous amounts of time and effort in beautifying our avatars. So the avatar is very important to us. But we can only do so much with the present avatar. It is far cry from perfect. It is ancient, it is very outdated, it looks rather dead in expressions (statue and cartoonish like). It is not lively in facial expressions. It looks rather dead actually.

In some games the avatars are more sophisticated, more customizable, more lively. Surely it could be done also in Second Life, if there is the will. Need there sure is.

 

An example video about lively, great looking avatar and the adjustment possibilities:

Pretty awesome. :smileyhappy:

 

 

 

[Coby Foden]

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

 

The only real possible problem is the resulting rendering weight for the new Ava.  It would be heavier.

 

Really, we are not needing a "new" Ava but enhancing the existing one, adding more flexibility to it.

---

With the present avatar wearing all kinds of separate mesh body part add-ons (heads, hands, breasts, butts, feet) will add rendering cost too. Possibly even a lot more than a professionally well designed new avatar mesh would do.

Really, we definitely do need new avatar. The present avatar mesh is very badly made. Patching it with some weighting tweaks is not going make it good.

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

---

Madeline Blackbart wrote:

---

Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

Not everyone likes mesh clothes or can even wear them if they do because they don't fit their avatar.  I like them but I still wear a lot of my system clothes too.  Mesh clothes are not the be all and end all of clothing.  They are just another option.  As far as who uses them, open your eyes and don't be so blinded by what fashionistas tell you to think.  There are plenty of people still wearing system clothes.  In fact a lot of lola clothes are still system layers.  They are also still used to layer under mesh clothes.

A new avatar would not only mean a new exterior surface but new bones too and that would make all the clothes, including current mesh, and most avatar accessories and components obsolete.

  It would also break a lot of content other than clothes too.  Current animations would not work on so all the AO's , Furniture, dance huds, vehicles or anything that uses animations would break.

I think a lot of people would leave SL if all of the sudden most of their inventory is worthless because they don't want to start over. You may have lots of RL money to spend on replacing most things in your inventory but most people are not going to be willing to do that.  You also won't have much new stuff to pick from a long while as all the merchants stock would be obsolete too and creators would have to start from scratch.

As far as having two avatar meshes to choose from in your library, if it were that easy I think LL would have done it long ago.

---

False. You can place any avatar mesh on the current bones set. In fact this is how rigged mesh is created.

---

That may be true but what most people are talking about when they say a new avatar is not only the mesh but the bones too.

 

[Bree Giffen]

So a new mesh avatar released while still keeping everything else? Does that sound right? Or perhaps a new mesh avatar and the old avatar redesigned together? The best of both worlds and let the chips fall where they may?

 

What would be a good example of a mesh avatar that could be used in SL? The Eve online avatar? I recall Eve is a game involving mostly space ships and not avatars.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

---

Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

 

A new avatar would not only mean a new exterior surface but new bones too and that would make all the clothes, including current mesh, and most avatar accessories and components obsolete.  It would also break a lot of content other than clothes too.  Current animations would not work on so all the AO's , Furniture, dance huds, vehicles or anything that uses animations would break.

---

 

That is the big question, will it or will it not break current content?

And what actually is needed?  Where are the problem areas.

If you devided the triangles at the problem spots into a few more triangles then the necesary smoothing could be accomlished and old textures could still be applied on top of them.  Some people have been playing already with the vertex weights: (

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1800

).  What may be hurting them most is lacking the ability to fine tune because of not enough triangles.

As far as bones go we are talking about just adding some bones where they are missing.  So again, how would it break current animations?  Maybe someone like Medhue could answer.

And correcting the problem with T-Rex arm syndrome caused by the center line settings in the default AV. 

The only real possible problem is the resulting rendering weight for the new Ava.  It would be heavier.

I'll confess to not knowing enough about it to make a statement, yes or no as to whether it can be done.  My little Martian brain says yes.  But it could be wrong.

Really, we are not needing a "new" Ava but enhancing the existing one, adding more flexibility to it.

 

---

 

Don't get me wrong.  If the current avatar could be improved without breaking everything, then I say go for it.  But it's not that simple.  If it were that easy , why hasn't LL done it when people have been asking for it for years now?  Having better and more realistic avatars would probably help with the noob retention rate enormously as well as make a huge percent of the population much happier with SL.

However, it is not only my opinion that a lot of content would 'break".  This came up in many SL Solution Provider meetings I have attended over the years. When the issue was raised the Lindens always voiced the concern of being able to update the avatar without breaking content.  

See this blog post by Harlow Heslop where she states:

"I think the Lindens would love to give us a new avatar. The problem is the literal RL millions of dollars of content such a change would break."

Also this post by Nalates Urriah where she says its actually been tried with poor results:

"There is also the problem of clothes and skins. Some well known modelers have tried to make a compatible Avatar 2.0. I’ve written before about the problems of creating an avatar that would use a compatible UVMap. My speculation was a clothes-compatible-avatar would be counterproductive and difficult, if even possible. That seems to be what the modelers are finding.

The point of having a new avatar mesh is to improve the appearance of the avatar. Making it compatible reduces the quality for the sake of compatibility, which defeats the point. Dropping compatibility means we can have the best avatar possible. But, it can’t wear existing clothes… well… it could but they would be bizarre looking."

I won't go so far as to say Avatar 2.0 will never come about, but it will be a long time until it does and then only if LL sees a way of doing it without angering all the current residents who would be dismayed if all of the sudden they have to replace a huge portion of their inventories.  Right now it isn't even on LL horizon.

I think LL is looking to the creator community to make mesh avatars that can be worn over the existing one.  But personally, I don't think that's ever going to catch on for two reasons.  The first is that those avatars need special clothes and there is a very limited selection of them.  Of course they could all get together and create one basic shape all of them would use, but that isn't really a solution either.  Individuality is prized in SL and having everyone the same shape or even on of a choice of a few shapes would eliminate a lot of personal choice and make SL look like clone world.

[Ren Toxx]

The current base avatar, while obviously lacking in 3D detail for many people's tastes, could be somewhat improved by merely shifting a few triangles... it has been demonstrated, and though it *may* disrupt a few designs of creators who made things incredibly tight-adapted to the old one, I imagine for most people it would be an improvement, albeit a minor one.

A new, higher-detail avatar as an option would still be nice to have, though... and, while they're at it, it'd be nice if they increased not just the actual mesh' number of polygons, but also the maximum texture resolution. Of course, this would increase the avatar rendering cost and bandwidth usage, but perhaps there'd be a way to make it bilaterally optional, something like the avatar physics: you can choose whether to wear them or not, and other people can choose whether to view them or not; and as for increased texture resolutions... I think there already is, too, an option in most current viewers to not load textures in their full resolution.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Ren Toxx wrote:

The current base avatar, while obviously lacking in 3D detail for many people's tastes, could be somewhat improved by merely shifting a few triangles... it has been demonstrated, and though it *may* disrupt a few designs of creators who made things incredibly tight-adapted to the old one, I imagine for most people it would be an improvement, albeit a minor one.

A new, higher-detail avatar as an option would still be nice to have, though... and, while they're at it, it'd be nice if they increased not just the actual mesh' number of polygons, but also the maximum texture resolution. Of course, this would increase the avatar rendering cost and bandwidth usage, but perhaps there'd be a way to make it bilaterally optional, something like the avatar physics: you can choose whether to wear them or not, and other people can choose whether to view them or not; and as for increased texture resolutions... I think there already is, too, an option in most current viewers to 

not

load textures in their full resolution.

---

It's the big question.

Just how much improvement do we want and need?

Sure we would all love an Avatar that was so detailed in its 3D presentation that it literally walks off the screen at you.  But we also know that the computational expense as well as the potential of breaking current content may make it impractical to do.

But because that perfect Avatar is not practical, do we now use that as an excuse for doing nothing?

At the risk of upsetting the perfectionists, if as some of the bloggers insinuate, the fear of upsetting them is stopping LL from doing anything, that is a bad business decision.

 

 

[Medhue Simoni]

Well, I haven't read all the comments but I will state my opinions on Avatar 2.0, even though I've talked about it many times.

Bones - Adding bones would not break current animations. Or, I should say, it doesn't have to. Bones are labeled. As long as the animation has the right name for the part, then it will animate. Even the default SL avatar skeleton has bones in it that most animations in SL don't use. You could literally add as many bones as you wanted, and as long as you kept the core skeleton all normal avatar animation in SL will work. We have had a jira asking for more bones for years now. Every1 in the jira agrees it is a good idea. Tail bones, wing bones, ear bones, boob bones, you name it. I'm all for it.

For many years now, I've been advocating for attachable bones, which I think is an even better idea, and which Cloud Party just implemented. You just attach bone sets to your attachment points. So, some1 models a pair of wings, creates bones for it with animations, uploads it to SL, and you attach it to your spine. Plus, because the system would be animating a custom skeleton, that means we also get animated standalone meshes with skeletons too. So, a realistic looking npc moving like a real avatar, or any number of other things. No more scripted propellors and stuff.

On the concept of Avatar 2.0. LL could actually make an avatar that matchs up exactly with the default SL avatar in every way, so that everything still works. The clothing and skin maps are just that, MAPS. If you made a new avatar with new geometry, you'd just match up your maps with the old UV maps. Weighting problems can be fixed without any issues to any products, except slight differences in rigged meshes, but those use alpha layers. There is some1 who did make an Avatar 2.0 as I have just described, and because it matches so perfectly with the default, everything else works too, when you also use the mesh deformer. There is a video on Youtube showing it working with all the sliders. I don't remember at all the name, or I'd post the video here.

Personally, I don't think LL should do Avatar 2.0. To me, this is a useless venture which goes around the problem, rather than doing what really should be done. Plus, I'm not all that sure that LL has the skills to make a great Avatar 2.0, which is not a knock on them, but just how specialized the task is. What I think LL should do, is allow the avatar creators to make avatars that work exactly like the default. Allow us to import morphs, or shape keys, meaning the sliders to change the avatar. We'd get custom expression with that too, and moving fingers. Giving creators more options is better than Avatar 2.0 could ever be.

[Medhue Simoni]

Allow me to also propose how to resolve the problem of every creator making a different avatar. Note: This is after LL gives us total control of the avatar with morphs. What we could do is start a fundraiser for Avatar 2.0, and have a competition to name the default avatar. The winner would win all the money, and they would submit all the neccessary UV maps and dae files for others to make things for it. I would imagine the prize money would be quite significant. Every1 would basically vote on which is the best. We might want to do the female and male avatars separately, who knows.

[Medhue Simoni]

---

Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

---

See

this

blog post by Harlow Heslop where she states:

"I think the Lindens would love to give us a new avatar. The problem is the literal RL millions of dollars of content such a change would break."

Also

this

post by

Nalates Urriah where she says its actually been tried with poor results:

"There is also the problem of clothes and skins. Some well known modelers have tried to make a compatible Avatar 2.0. I’ve written before about the problems of creating an avatar that would use a compatible UVMap. My speculation was a clothes-compatible-avatar would be counterproductive and difficult, if even possible. That seems to be what the modelers are finding.

The point of having a new avatar mesh is to improve the appearance of the avatar. Making it compatible reduces the quality for the sake of compatibility, which defeats the point. Dropping compatibility means we can have the best avatar possible. But, it can’t wear existing clothes… well… it could but they would be bizarre looking."

 

---

Allow me to address these points.

As I said, the UV maps can pretty easily be matched up. I say it is easy, as it is just moving the points to match up with the old maps, but it is tedious. Yes the maps can match up, but possibly not all the old texture would look great. I think Nal is exagerating the difficulty tho. Technically, easily doable. The results tho, will vary because it is a new set of geometry, but I would not qualify that as something that should stop advancement.

As for matching up the new avatar exactly to the SL default geometry, I only suggest this if LL does nothing else, because we need the expressions and sliders/morphs. If LL allows us to import our own morphs, then there is no need to match up the new avatars geometry to the old defaults geometry. Of course, if you change the new avatars geometry from the default, then mesh clothing will not work, at least at is current configuration. So, the only downfall to a brand new shape, would be mesh designer having to redo meshes to fit it, which in many cases is not that big a deal. I just released a mesh deforming tanktop for females in InWorldz, and I orignally created it for my Lycan avatar. Literally, a shrinkwrap modifier and a few adjustments. All this said, there is no reason that both the old and new avatars can't exist together, so technically, no content needs to break.

[Ren Toxx]

Adaptiveness to each user's hardware is already there in SL in many ways, some of it even automated (if, I grant you, rather poorly), as is the fact that some users are going to b*tch about if their 15 years old rig can't run ultra-high-res, full-blown ALM at something like 120 fps; that, in and on itself, shouldn't stop LL from offering improvements to those with both the better equipment, and the understanding that it too has its own limits.

Breaking current content may be a more solid argument, but fact is, LL has had to let some things go along the way in order to improve others. Be it av baking protocols, invisiprims, Z adjustments, old havoc capabilities... as long as the overall result is an improvement for most users...

Part of the equation (or, as you put it, the 'big question') is whether LL has the technical resources to keep offering full retrocompatibility while still making improvements; maybe if they had a bigger, better staff, they'd find a way... but if they don't, sooner or later they'll have to say 'to hell with that, we remove it and save ourselves a big headache'.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Ren Toxx wrote:

Adaptiveness to each user's hardware is already there in SL in many ways, some of it even automated (if, I grant you, rather poorly), as is the fact that some users are going to b*tch about if their 15 years old rig can't run ultra-high-res, full-blown ALM at something like 120 fps; that, in and on itself, shouldn't stop LL from offering improvements to those with both the better equipment, and the understanding that it too has its own limits.

Breaking current content may be a more solid argument, but fact is, LL has had to let some things go along the way in order to improve others. Be it av baking protocols, invisiprims, Z adjustments, old havoc capabilities... as long as the overall result is an improvement for most users...

Part of the equation (or, as you put it, the 'big question') is whether LL has the technical resources to keep offering full retrocompatibility while still making improvements; maybe if they had a bigger, better staff, they'd find a way...

but if they don't, sooner or later they'll have to say

'to hell with that, we remove it and save ourselves a big headache'

.

---

The old "if we ignore it maybe it will go away" syndrome.

Thing is, we're going on ten years since people started asking about the Avatar and it still hasn't gone away.