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Show off your no-mesh avatar


ChinRey
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Just got the idea reading the "non-mesh doomed to extinction" thread. So here's your chance to show how good an avatar you can put together without any fitted mesh.

And... ummm... I really ought to start with a picture of my avatar but it turns out I don't have any no mesh outfits... :$

I do have alts who are less vain than me though. Jazz here was not happy when I forced her to remove her Slink hands and her shoes are probably mesh (although not fitted). Not exactly a perfect start but it is a start.

(Oh btw, yes, I will give Jazz her Slink hands back if she promises to be nice.)

 

590230fa990fc_Jazzwithoutmesh_003cutdown.thumb.png.04ceca3f82ac9d8bc23abe5e2560429a.png

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This musketeer outfit is old school in approach. Rather than being a single mesh piece, the shirt is system with separate pieces for the collar and sleeves (like they used to do with sculpts). Same approach for the trousers, system plus extra pieces where it needs fullness.

I'd like to include it because it's also mixed gender, something which is hard to pull off with full mesh clothing. It was a hunt gift from Tamiron Forge (thank you Tam!!!) The women's gift was a lady's gown, which doesn't suit me at all, but I could borrow the sleeves from it to use with the men's musketeer outfit to come up with one I love. That sort of freedom is what SL is all about to me.

 590240368d5bb_BitsyMusketeeerAquitainieCoeurNordCalWL_001512x38443.2HEALED.png.184e4bfecba78718948176588f185ac7.png

Edited by Bitsy Buccaneer
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And I who just trashed so much. But still, some stuff left.

Hair LeLutka

Peasant blouse Hudson

Wanderer necklace League

Jeans Zaara

Boots Gos aviator boots

Belt from Maitreya Boyfriend jeans

Nails Mandala

Skin League

Jep, even if the hair, boots and necklace look good, they are from before mesh.

old collage.jpg

Edited by Marianne Little
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I do enjoy a challenge, but since it would have been easy to log Skell in and wear any of the hundreds of pre-mesh outfits he's put together over the past ten years (because seriously, that boy is such a packrat) I decided to put two twists on this challenge:

1. Absolutely no mesh whatsoever. Back to clothing layers and sculpts.
2. Absolutely free. Not a single L$ to be spent.

Both of those are pretty easy to do for a female avatar, even now when mesh is so prevalent, but it's a bit harder to do well for a male avatar (so much free menswear is either gangsta-bling or dull-n-boring). And, since I like pretty boys, that's what I decided to create, with an emo twist.

noobdude_emoboy.jpg

Everything in that look is free. Some is from Free Dove, a couple of bits are from Marketplace, the makeup is from the Free*Style store, and a couple of things (eyes and skin) are from the default avatars. I started with one of the default male shapes and modded it a little, then began trying the default skins over it. And that's the secret behind the pretty boy look: it's a female skin. Yep; there's boobs under that sweater, and it's not the first time I've done that! ;)

It's far from perfect (I can see that I need to make the hands a bit smaller) but it was a fun challenge. Anyone want to take me up on those two new rules: do it free and with absolutely no mesh whatsoever? Bonus points if you don't dig through an old avatar's inventory for stuff you never threw away, and instead go out and find it all now.

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1 hour ago, Skell Dagger said:

Anyone want to take me up on those two new rules: do it free and with absolutely no mesh whatsoever? Bonus points if you don't dig through an old avatar's inventory for stuff you never threw away, and instead go out and find it all now.

Ok! ^_^

I have to let the bonus points go for now though. I don't have time to put a competely new outfit together. Maybe later.

This is my youngest alt, Storm. I never give her any Lindens so she only has freebies. Except a pair of shoes I bought in her name on MP (and that was only because I had to get her payment info on record so she could open an MP store for me).

The eyes and all the clothes are from a free complete avatar she found at the place the portal park dropped her off at on her first day. I think the skin is from FabFree. The shape started off as part of some freebie package but it's been so modified over the years I probably should claim it to be my own original by now. I have absolutely no idea where the hair and earrings are from.

 

5902969b64a56_StormEmmaoutfit_002cut.thumb.png.49652690f806d439c45cb0686536b931.png

Storm is 190 cm tall - a giantess compared to my other alts, a fairly long beanstalk by RL standards and a midget by normal SL standards. With a little bit - or rather a lot - of help from those oversized cuffs it's actually possible to get reasonably well proportioned hands on an avatr of that size - very obviously scaled down male hands rather than female ones but still not too bad.

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With the danger of turning this into a "Rey show off her alts" thread, here is my second response to Skell's challenge and this time I can claim the bonus too.

Tess is technically my main since she's my oldest active(ish) account but not really because I don't log her on very often.

I was going to assemble an avatar only from Free Dove but had to give that up because I couldn't find much usable that wasn't mesh there. The Tameless hair is from Free Dove and so are the shoes. I don't think I should mention the name of the shoe maker since the they are pretty much useless. Its possible to hide the fatal flaw on a picture like this but not in a "real" situation (unlike most SL clothes which of course always look just as good on your avatar as they did on that carefully staged and retouched picture you saw on MP or in a blog). All I can say is that they were made by somebody who thought no-modify shoes and sculpt feet without a resizer script was a splendid idea. Top, skirt and belt are four year old group gifts from Wilson's Closet. Necklace is by Charlotta Jenkins, her store at Second Norway is a really good place for free jewelry. Skin and eyes are from a starter avatar of all things (Tess is usually a pale skinned, blue eyed Scandinavian). The body shape is selfmade.

 

5902b42fb1727_Tessdark_002cut.thumb.png.e39c6bc06e1ba990da6b06e743a905b1.png

 

----

Completely off topic but when I had Tess posing, I also took this picture which explains why I don't use my main much:

5902b4f2f08e1_Tessdark_003800.png.81bc0bd559466d34cd228327a4412938.png

When I returned to Second Life after all those years it was as a photographer. I had this idea that SL would be a great place to find ready-made scenes for illustrations. It didn't take me long to realize how wrong I was. You can take pictures of avatars and you can take pictures of scenes but put them together and all you get is something like that picture. Those houses and that street light are actually fairly small by SL standards but they're still so huge compared to the avatar it just look ridiculous. I was about to give up on the place but fortunately(?) I stumbled across a builder one day I had logged on with that minor alt, Chin Rey, and he ordered me to go to Builders Brewery where I discovered something else you could do in Second Life.

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I am not sure if I can take up that "free" challenge. I am so out of touch with freebies, and almost all freebies that is known to me at the moment, is mesh. Stores has replaced them with newer gifts. And I NEVER EVER will visit freebie dungeons again.

I am under the impression that those who are negative to mesh bodies, since they will continue to use the clothes they collected. They don't hate mesh shoes or maybe a jacket. A newbie will not have that "No mesh, ever" thought and happily use what he/she find and like. System clothes, sculpts, mesh clothes, flexi hair.

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4 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

I am under the impression that those who are negative to mesh bodies, since they will continue to use the clothes they collected.

Yes and of course also a question of whether they are willing to pay the price - not just the price in Lindens but also in lag, higher risk of render failures and more cumbersome outfit changes.

But I do believe the main reason why a few people dare to express negative opinions about mesh avatars here is that they react against the peer pressure. Reading through the various posts here, it's very easy to get the feeling that if you wear a mesh body you look good, if you don't you're ugly. That's not true of course - it's not hard to find mesh avatars that look much worse than the pictures people have posted here - but more to the point, peer pressure goes against some of the core principles Second Life once pretended to be based upon and there are still people here who believe in those principles.

Uniformity is also something SL sometimes pretends to be against. It's you world, your imagination (and, of couse, you're neighbor's nightmare ;) ) - not somebody else's. Look at the pcitures of Jazz and Tess here. It's the same body shape with only minor tweaks, they're of course both figments of the same imagination and they're very much my two tomboy alts. To me at least they still look like two distinctively different personalities. The two alts I use the most, Rey and Lynx, have very different styles, Rey is this vaguely Asian character while Lynx alternates between blonde Scandinavian and dark afro-american. The only avatar part they have in common is the same brand of mesh body and that alone is enough to make them far more similar to each other than Jazz and Tess.

I mentioned lag at the beginning of this rant so I have to add that mesh isn't necessarily laggier than older materials. Those mesh shoes in my first picture here for example, they're of course far less laggy than the sculpt ones I used for the other two shots. The most important lesson I received when I was a newbie builder was something Aley told me: use whatever materials and techniques that are best for the job. She never adapted to mesh but that advice certainly does: use mesh when it actually is the best option, not when it isn't.

Anyway, this thread was supposed to demonstrate that its' perfectly possible to create a good looking classic avatar and also as a fun challenge. I better stop writing and let the pictures (keep 'em coming, folks!) speak for themselves. Ending this rant with not just one but two quotes:

Think for yourself (Timothy Leary and/or Geroge Harrison)

and

T'ain't what you do, it's the way you do it (Sy Oliver and Trummy Young)

Edited by ChinRey
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18 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Just got the idea reading the "non-mesh doomed to extinction" thread. So here's your chance to show how good an avatar you can put together without any fitted mesh.

And... ummm... I really ought to start with a picture of my avatar but it turns out I don't have any no mesh outfits... :$

I do have alts who are less vain than me though. Jazz here was not happy when I forced her to remove her Slink hands and her shoes are probably mesh (although not fitted). Not exactly a perfect start but it is a start.

(Oh btw, yes, I will give Jazz her Slink hands back if she promises to be nice.)

 

This thread is getting muddled. You say no fitted mesh, but then you seem to give the impression that you mean no rigged mesh at all, and they're different things. The vast majority of mesh clothing before about 2015 is rigged but is not "fitted".

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16 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

This thread is getting muddled. You say no fitted mesh,

I didn't actually say that but a little bit od muddling is great - allows people to intepret the challenge their own way. ^_^

In cse there's any doubt, this is not a competition and it's not an attempt to find the (non-existent) one and only truth. There will be no winner and no definite conclusion.

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1 minute ago, ChinRey said:

I didn't actually say that but a little bit od muddling is great - allows people to intepret the challenge their own way. ^_^

In cse there's any doubt, this is not a competition and it's not an attempt to find the (non-existent) one and only truth. There will be no winner and no definite conclusion.

No, you did say that, in exactly those words, as I quoted.

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Just now, Theresa Tennyson said:

No, you did say that, in exactly those words, as I quoted.

I mentioned in passing that Jazz used non fitted mesh feet. (They're not rigged either btw, jsut regular rigid mesh). In no way did I imply that had anything to do with the criteria for the challenge, it was just a part of the presentation of my initial entry.

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2 hours ago, ChinRey said:

 

But I do believe the main reason why a few people dare to express negative opinions about mesh avatars here is that they react against the peer pressure. Reading through the various posts here, it's very easy to get the feeling that if you wear a mesh body you look good, if you don't you're ugly. That's not true of course - it's not hard to find mesh avatars that look much worse than the pictures people have posted here - but more to the point, peer pressure goes against some of the core principles Second Life once pretended to be based upon and there are still people here who believe in those principles.

 

Well, the naked avatar, or the avatar in a bikini, in chains, in lingerie, looks better in mesh. I still think I looked really good in my default body. I have always tried to pose so I show off the best parts, so the body don't break, and try to hide the ugly parts. But I derail the thread, here we show the default avatars good sides.

 

Edited by Marianne Little
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I love Theresa's posts because they are always so refreshingly provocative. This time she got me to rethink what exactly the phrase "no mesh avatar" really means. Taken to its logical extreme, this is the only true no mesh avatar in Second Life:

59034b0024a2f_Therealnomeshavatar_001.thumb.png.2669fb52eb3a0788a17542957a77da20.png

Or actually, it's not the real thing, it's a reproduction created by Brent Linden and added to the Stillman collection by Torley.

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I created an alt to give this a shot, with Skell's challenge included...and gave up after grabbing the free-under-30-days skin from PF. 

There's a reason even the decent freebie places even have mostly mesh now. I DID revisit the Freebie Galaxy I remember from the OLD old days, and let's just say it hasn't changed a bit, in a BAD way. 

If I hadn't just completely cleaned my inventory and deleted ALL of my old clothes and most of my old hair, though, I would give it a try without the added challenges. Honestly, though...I love my mesh stuff and hate the thought of wandering around without, anymore, so I'll just stick around in my all-mesh avi!

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On 4/28/2017 at 9:04 AM, ChinRey said:

I love Theresa's posts because they are always so refreshingly provocative. This time she got me to rethink what exactly the phrase "no mesh avatar" really means. Taken to its logical extreme, this is the only true no mesh avatar in Second Life:

59034b0024a2f_Therealnomeshavatar_001.thumb.png.2669fb52eb3a0788a17542957a77da20.png

Or actually, it's not the real thing, it's a reproduction created by Brent Linden and added to the Stillman collection by Torley.

Even the fog is a mesh, I think. It's a texture applied to a rectangular tile, which is probably decomposed into two triangles by the GPU, if not before.

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I went digging through my old inventory and put together something.  All prim and system clothing, with a complexity of just over 43,000.59057925c424b_20170429-No-MeshChallenge-1.thumb.jpg.39faf62c6f676227d49f999b353f24d3.jpg

Outfit:  caLLie cLine - aLLy cat mini coat-dress
Boots:  Kiwi - Lexy Ankle Boot
Hair:  Truth - Kensel

Edited by LittleMe Jewell
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