Mesh designers: Who will update to BoM for free?

[Marianne Little]

Who has said they will update previous releases to BoM when it's introduced?

I think we can use the Omega layer on all who's Omega compatible, but I would like to see the onion layers gone - or reduced.

I have only one alt with no-Bento head and I will buy her a Bento head. But I will not support a designer who refuse to update their products.

[Love Zhaoying]

Maybe some designers will release bodies with a “no onion” version if they see a market for it.

[angeoco]

I'm sure the body-makers won't want to upset their customers who have made big investments in appliers, so the onion layers will have to stay. However, they could be separated from the body, worn as optional attachments. That has been done already (Orange Nova do it in their Nauha body and maybe others). Applier layers will still be superior to BOM in some ways, like stockings/socks where you don't want them "painted" onto the toes but covering them.

[Ceka Cianci]

Something has me curious with bakes on mesh..

Are clothes going to fit like mesh or are they going to go back to wrapping us skin tight like before?

 

 

Edited September 2, 2018 by Ceka Cianci

[Skell Dagger]

3 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Something has me curious with bakes on mesh..

Are clothes going to fit like mesh or are they going to go back to wrapping us skin tight like before?

They will wrap skin-tight, as before. Try the Bakes on Mesh beta viewer and you'll see. Some system skins look great, even on mesh heads, but they fall down completely and look terrible around the fingers and toes.

[Ceka Cianci]

11 minutes ago, Skell Dagger said:

They will wrap skin-tight, as before. Try the Bakes on Mesh beta viewer and you'll see. Some system skins look great, even on mesh heads, but they fall down completely and look terrible around the fingers and toes.

If clothes go back to wrapping us skin tight like before,then that's going to suck..In my eyes that is a step backwards and just going to be some performance fix..

The best thing about mesh has been that it took away the skin tight clothes that went up the cracks of our butts and wrapped our breasts and instead gave things depth..Like jackets and jeans and t-shirts that fit like they should rather than looking all two dimensional..

I'm gonna have to see if there is any videos on it on you tube and also do what you suggested and check out the beta..

[Skell Dagger]

While I'm looking forward - personally - to BoM, in regard to the possibilities it holds, I'm absolutely dreading it as the CSR for a large mesh head store. Every day we deal with hundreds and hundreds of people who have questions about their heads, and a surprisingly large number of those people need extremely detailed step-by-step guidance, as in: you tell them in great detail to do baby step 1 ("find the item named XYZ store HUD" in your inventory, right-click it and select WEAR") and it takes them several minutes to do that, then you move on to baby step 2, etc. With some people this process can take anything up to a couple of hours because - even using simple language and no slang terminology - some people just... need infinitesimal guidance and hand-holding.

With troubleshooting we start with the obvious questions first, because we know nothing about the experience level of the person asking the question. (Sometimes that obvious question provides the answer, and sometimes it leads to them telling us they're not a f&*^ing idiot.) We all pay for the pro version of Gyazo so we can make on-the-fly one-minute videos showing people exactly what to do to fix their problem or issue, or how to do what they want to do (I have a whole bookmark folder linking to videos for the most common questions). However, before we even get to those questions, we sometimes have to tease out the exact nature of the problem, because when someone comes into group and says "My eyes are weird; how do I fix them?" it can take ages just to find out that their actual issue is that they're wearing additional mesh eyes as well as the rigged eyes that come with their head, or that they've use the eye direction AO and they're looking upwards all the time, or that they've demo'd eye appliers and want to know how to get rid of the demo, or...

We've spent upwards of two hours with some people who struggle to follow even the simplest of instructions (and I'll admit that, on rare occasions, I have thought to myself - after the first hour and a half - this person has GOT to be trolling...). We've spent an hour troubleshooting an issue with people who reply "I've already done that" to every suggestion that we make... only to come back and then ask us (or the group) half an hour later how to do the very thing(s) that they've told us they already did.

I love working as a CSR, don't get me wrong (I'm one of life's "fixers" who loves to get things sorted, fixed, and organised). For all its occasional frustrations it's an incredibly rewarding job. But anyone who has done a job like that in SL will know what I'm talking about, and Bakes on Mesh is going to add a whole new level of complexity for us, especially when it comes to asking the initial questions to figure out exactly what someone's issue is!

Edited September 2, 2018 by Skell Dagger

[Skell Dagger]

28 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

If clothes go back to wrapping us skin tight like before,then that's going to suck..In my eyes that is a step backwards and just going to be some performance fix..

BoM will only apply to things that act like appliers do now. So instead of having to layer a blended tattoo applier, a masked and empty underwear layer, and a blended clothing applier skinny tank (in order to prevent the alpha glitch) before then putting your mesh jacket over the top of it all, you can just add both of those layers as system and they'll bake down into one layer. No alpha glitches or anything like that. It's absolutely amazing for layering makeup (with the beta viewer I've had about eight layers of makeup on the go, and you can add even more than that, and - even with the older 512 texures that system makeup and tattoos etc had - it's amazing to see). The main issue is going to come with regard to materials support, which BoM doesn't have, so I suspect that most bodies and heads will retain at least one 'onion-skin' layer just for that.

The below is what I managed in my initial try-out with the beta viewer, after it first came out in March. Yes, you can see some fuzziness on the body tattoo, because it's a 512 texture and my mesh body is a 1024, but anything that designers issue as new will be 1024 and that problem will go away. In this shot I've got layered on a system skin, two of my favourite old system tattoo eye makeups, some system tattoo lipstick, and a system body tattoo. (Eyes weren't supported at that time, but you can bet that - if they had been - I would be wearing some older IKON system eyes as well.) And this was just a small handful of layers. As mentioned earlier: in my experimentation I had something like 8 layers of makeup on the go at one point!

Edited September 2, 2018 by Skell Dagger

[Ceka Cianci]

28 minutes ago, Skell Dagger said:

BoM will only apply to things that act like appliers do now. So instead of having to layer a blended tattoo applier, a masked and empty underwear layer, and a blended clothing applier skinny tank (in order to prevent the alpha glitch) before then putting your mesh jacket over the top of it all, you can just add both of those layers as system and they'll bake down into one layer. No alpha glitches or anything like that. It's absolutely amazing for layering makeup (with the beta viewer I've had about eight layers of makeup on the go, and you can add even more than that, and - even with the older 512 texures that system makeup and tattoos etc had - it's amazing to see). The main issue is going to come with regard to materials support, which BoM doesn't have, so I suspect that most bodies and heads will retain at least one 'onion-skin' layer just for that.

The below is what I managed in my initial try-out with the beta viewer, after it first came out in March. Yes, you can see some fuzziness on the body tattoo, because it's a 512 texture and my mesh body is a 1024, but anything that designers issue as new will be 1024 and that problem will go away. In this shot I've got layered on a system skin, two of my favourite old system tattoo eye makeups, some system tattoo lipstick, and a system body tattoo. (Eyes weren't supported at that time, but you can bet that - if they had been - I would be wearing some older IKON system eyes as well.) And this was just a small handful of layers. As mentioned earlier: in my experimentation I had something like 8 layers of makeup on the go at one point!

Ah I see,Ok that makes me feel a lot better about clothes..Thank you for explaining that..

That looks great! \o/

I remember watching Strawberry Singh's video on bakes on mesh awhile back and got all excited about her mentioning like 62 layers,but she was mostly talking about skins and makeups and tattoos and also not having to wear alpha layers anymore..

I never thought about how jackets and clothes and things would fit.. It just literally came to me to ask about it when reading this thread.. hehehe

 It will be nice to avoid things like what I ran into last night, trying to find a way to get a tattoo under an eyebrow tattoo..

One would just keep replacing the other rather than sitting over the other, so my final image ended up looking like this..I guess you could say,it's an eyesore and it drives me nuts hehehehe

 

I'm looking forward to the freedom to set the priority of some of the things,like what sits over what..That will be a nice improvement for sure

 

 

Edited September 2, 2018 by Ceka Cianci

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, Skell Dagger said:

They will wrap skin-tight, as before. Try the Bakes on Mesh beta viewer and you'll see. Some system skins look great, even on mesh heads, but they fall down completely and look terrible around the fingers and toes.

Fingers and toes are an easy fix though - I was able to make a simple tattoo that just blanks out the fingertips and adds the shading from the Slink applier kit to the toes. Nipples are trickier but I'm working on a fix for that.

[Marianne Little]

10 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Fingers and toes are an easy fix though - I was able to make a simple tattoo that just blanks out the fingertips and adds the shading from the Slink applier kit to the toes. Nipples are trickier but I'm working on a fix for that.

I had skins without nails and shading to use with prim nails. One of these days, I must unpack some of the boxes named "skins" in my inventory. Wonder what I put in there, and what I trashed...

I really itch to log in and try the BoM, but I haven't had time.

While I am sure that bodies like Maitreya and Slink, and maybe Belleza, will update to BoM reasonably fast, I wonder what head designers do.

We have that designer with the lion's share of the market, or is it correct to say the lioness? I refer to Catwa. To update their heads to BoM will be a lot of work. I don't dare to buy a Catwa head. I am afraid that no one of her heads will be updated. Sometimes I feel that half of SL females have the Catya head. I like the animations and all the add-ons for the big head brands. I like to get all in one place.

I notice that Skell don't say that Catwa will update the heads. I can understand it because it's a lot of work. But I can't wait any longer for BoM. Wish it was already here. Layering makeups freely with no alpha issues with the lashes.... MMMMMMMMMMM!

And speaking of alpha issues, when I use appliers, they disappear if it's hair hanging over. This will not be an issue with BoM either. The alpha sorting issue will just be gone. It will be so great.

Of course it will not replace mesh clothes that's not skintight, but all tattoos, add-ons like freckles, stretch marks, wrinkles, spank marks, birthmarks, scars, zombie rotting flesh, blood drops, bandaids (Please let us have BoM in time for Halloween), all that will be layered without trouble. Over that can I use BoM for lingerie, stockings, leotards, swimsuits, leggings and tops under jackets. BoM will be great for layering, because it's impossible to wear a top under a jacket now. BoM will fix that.

Edited September 2, 2018 by Marianne Little

[Skell Dagger]

6 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

We have that designer with the lion's share of the market, or is it correct to say the lioness? I refer to Catwa. To update their heads to BoM will be a lot of work. I don't dare to buy a Catwa head. I am afraid that no one of her heads will be updated. Sometimes I feel that half of SL females have the Catya head. I like the animations and all the add-ons for the big head brands. I like to get all in one place.

I notice that Skell don't say that Catwa will update the heads. I can understand it because it's a lot of work.

The reason why I didn't say anything about whether Catwa will update her heads for BoM is because I've not spoken to her about it, thus I've no idea yet what her plans are for it. And yes, it would be a lot of work, but - if she does decide to update - then it will be done as quickly as she can do it. When she updated all of her Bento heads to v3.0 with motion capture animations the entire lot were done within the space of around 2-3 weeks. (And yes, we still get people asking whether their non-Bento head will ever be 'made Bento' and updated to mocap animations. Answer: no, because they're created and rigged entirely differently.)

The following should be taken as pure speculation, bearing in mind that I've not spoken to her about it and don't know what she plans to do, but I would guess that her two main options are as follows:

1. To update each head to only be BoM (which, I should imagine, would involve removing the additional layers that currently allow for the upper/lower system that Catwa's Bento heads have). This would create far too many potential pitfalls at the beginning of BoM adoption, because the technology would be so new that hardly any creators would yet be making new system layer items (not to mention all the thousands of people who joined SL long after system layers went away and therefore have none to dig out of their inventory archives). People would complain that their current upper/lower layering options have gone away, so - until BoM is widely adopted - switching to only BoM would probably not be good for business!
2. To update each head and add an additional BoM version into the folder in the same way that she currently has - for the male heads - an 'SL neck' version (for the male system avatar and all male mesh bodies with the exception of Niramyth), as well as a special 'Niramyth neck' version. This, too, would create pitfalls, because - just as we currently have to deal with a lot of guys asking why they have a big gap between their head and body (the answer: unless you're wearing a Niramyth body, don't wear the Niramyth neck version of your head!) - we would then have people asking why the upper/lower layering system on Catwa Bento heads isn't working for them (the answer: make sure you're not wearing the BoM version of the head if you're not using a BoM compatible viewer).

If she does update, I would hazard a guess that option 2 would be the one she goes for. (Again, pure speculation.) Yes, it would still cause issues, but there would be fewer issues than if she went for option 1, for the reason I gave above as well as for the fact that BoM is going to be very much like the introductions to mesh and to Bento: it will take around a year or so for most SL users to be on a compatible viewer, so the people who early-adopt into BoM will 'look weird' to people who haven't yet adopted into BoM.

The big visible difference with BoM is that you do not wear an alpha layer to hide your system body before putting on your mesh body. (If you do this with the BoM viewer - at least back when I tried it - then your entire mesh body and head will be red.) Be prepared for about a year of people telling you that your system body is poking out through your mesh body because you've 'forgotten' to wear your alpha layer, just as we had people telling us we were wearing big spiky/chunky blocks when mesh first came out, and just as people told us our faces and hands were 'melting' when Bento was first introduced.

[ellestones]

i may get a BoM head depending on how the baking thingy goes. The reason I haven't got a mesh head yet is that I use all the tattoo layers on my system head

1 * hair base

1 * freckles

1 * button nose

1 * eyeshadow

1 * lippy

5 is not enough really. I wouldn't mind at least 3 more layers. Blush, eyeliner, and 1 for an actual tattoo. Make it 4 more, as sometimes I like to wear 2 lippy where the top one is slightly smaller and 50% transparent so to have an edge effect

save all as outfit, bake them up and I am good

plus

not sure if BoM is going to allow us to save the baked texture as a no-transfer asset in our inventory. Will be a pain if we can't

[Theresa Tennyson]

12 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

We have that designer with the lion's share of the market, or is it correct to say the lioness? I refer to Catwa. To update their heads to BoM will be a lot of work. I don't dare to buy a Catwa head. I am afraid that no one of her heads will be updated. Sometimes I feel that half of SL females have the Catya head. I like the animations and all the add-ons for the big head brands. I like to get all in one place.

I notice that Skell don't say that Catwa will update the heads. I can understand it because it's a lot of work. But I can't wait any longer for BoM. Wish it was already here. Layering makeups freely with no alpha issues with the lashes.... MMMMMMMMMMM!

 

As Catwa heads are Omega compatible they're already Bakes-on-Mesh compatible. Even if they weren't, it would only take one person who was able to make a Catwa applier to make an applier that would send the necessary UUID to the head.

As far as the current onion layers, as far as I can tell if they're turned off the rendering engine just ignores them.

I doubt that head makers will spend much time updating their old products. The big difference will start to come when makers decide that making new heads without the onion layers and necessary scripting and HUD's are quicker and easier. Someone will start releasing good quality heads without the layers that are far less expensive than the current L$5000 heads and customers will simply ask why they should be spending L$5000 any more. As system skins and tattoos are "jailbroken" by their nature being tied into a proprietary system won't be a factor anymore either.

[khry5]

On 9/2/2018 at 1:20 PM, Skell Dagger said:

No alpha glitches or anything like that. It's absolutely amazing for layering makeup

No alpha glitches is great news. Guess it will solve the problem with my current hair that has some alpha which causes in some angles to be able to see inside the clothes.
Also, would it be possible to wear multiple tattoos? I would like to be able to combine tattoos. Some are small, but would look great adding some other tattoos.

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, khry5 said:

No alpha glitches is great news. Guess it will solve the problem with my current hair that has some alpha which causes in some angles to be able to see inside the clothes.
Also, would it be possible to wear multiple tattoos? I would like to be able to combine tattoos. Some are small, but would look great adding some other tattoos.

You'll be able to wear over fifty tattoos and other system layers in any combination at the same time.

[Marianne Little]

3 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

As Catwa heads are Omega compatible they're already Bakes-on-Mesh compatible. Even if they weren't, it would only take one person who was able to make a Catwa applier to make an applier that would send the necessary UUID to the head.

As far as the current onion layers, as far as I can tell if they're turned off the rendering engine just ignores them.

 

How can I know that the bolded is true? It is not polite to name names, but there is one SL resident that claims very convincing; that all mesh bodies and heads should be modify so the unused layers can be linked off and deleted, making SL so much easier to load. Onion avatars are bad, bad, bad.

How can I tell? It is to do my small part of good that I will use a head without all the layers. If that is not making a difference at all, well fiddledeedee, I use the pre BoM heads without problems.

@Skell Daggerwill using applier makeup and BoM makeup together be possible? Let us say I have a Catwa Bento head and will use my applier lipstick and applier eyebrows on the old makeup slots and eyeshadows, hairbase, freckles and blush on BoM? Or any other combination. Is is any known issues before BoM is rolled out?

9 hours ago, Skell Dagger said:

The reason why I didn't say anything about whether Catwa will update her heads for BoM is because I've not spoken to her about it, thus I've no idea yet what her plans are for it. And yes, it would be a lot of work, but - if she does decide to update - then it will be done as quickly as she can do it. When she updated all of her Bento heads to v3.0 with motion capture animations the entire lot were done within the space of around 2-3 weeks. (And yes, we still get people asking whether their non-Bento head will ever be 'made Bento' and updated to mocap animations. Answer: no, because they're created and rigged entirely differently.)

The following should be taken as pure speculation, bearing in mind that I've not spoken to her about it and don't know what she plans to do, but I would guess that her two main options are as follows:

1. To update each head to only be BoM (which, I should imagine, would involve removing the additional layers that currently allow for the upper/lower system that Catwa's Bento heads have). This would create far too many potential pitfalls at the beginning of BoM adoption, because the technology would be so new that hardly any creators would yet be making new system layer items (not to mention all the thousands of people who joined SL long after system layers went away and therefore have none to dig out of their inventory archives). People would complain that their current upper/lower layering options have gone away, so - until BoM is widely adopted - switching to only BoM would probably not be good for business!
2. To update each head and add an additional BoM version into the folder in the same way that she currently has - for the male heads - an 'SL neck' version (for the male system avatar and all male mesh bodies with the exception of Niramyth), as well as a special 'Niramyth neck' version. This, too, would create pitfalls, because - just as we currently have to deal with a lot of guys asking why they have a big gap between their head and body (the answer: unless you're wearing a Niramyth body, don't wear the Niramyth neck version of your head!) - we would then have people asking why the upper/lower layering system on Catwa Bento heads isn't working for them (the answer: make sure you're not wearing the BoM version of the head if you're not using a BoM compatible viewer).

If she does update, I would hazard a guess that option 2 would be the one she goes for. (Again, pure speculation.) Yes, it would still cause issues, but there would be fewer issues than if she went for option 1, for the reason I gave above as well as for the fact that BoM is going to be very much like the introductions to mesh and to Bento: it will take around a year or so for most SL users to be on a compatible viewer, so the people who early-adopt into BoM will 'look weird' to people who haven't yet adopted into BoM.

The big visible difference with BoM is that you do not wear an alpha layer to hide your system body before putting on your mesh body. (If you do this with the BoM viewer - at least back when I tried it - then your entire mesh body and head will be red.) Be prepared for about a year of people telling you that your system body is poking out through your mesh body because you've 'forgotten' to wear your alpha layer, just as we had people telling us we were wearing big spiky/chunky blocks when mesh first came out, and just as people told us our faces and hands were 'melting' when Bento was first introduced.

You must be patient as an angel to work with people in SL. I know I could not do it.

I hope for option 2 as well, a BoM addition. Since so many people have no tattoo layer makeup and use only appliers, they will be furious to have all that taken away.

If it is possible to use both appliers and BoM the same time, and if unused layers is ignored by the viewer as @Theresa Tennysonsays, then I should just go ahead and buy any head, as long as it is Omega compatible?

I am still a bit unsure.

 

[Marianne Little]

2 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

You'll be able to wear over fifty tattoos and other system layers in any combination at the same time.

Since the SL avatar template has only one arm, it is nice that Slink and Signature allow me to turn on/off an arm layer so I can avoid mirrored tattoos on the arms.

This isn't possible to do with BoM.

Other mesh bodies as Maitreya and Belleza don't offer this, and they are still very popular, so people in SL happily accept mirrored arms.

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, Marianne Little said:

How can I know that the bolded is true? It is not polite to name names, but there is one SL resident that claims very convincing; that all mesh bodies and heads should be modify so the unused layers can be linked off and deleted, making SL so much easier to load. Onion avatars are bad, bad, bad.

@Skell Dagger

@Theresa Tennyson

I did some experimenting with turning layers on and off and checking framerates and drawn polygon counts under controlled conditions - the performance does definitely change for the better when layers are turned off even when they're still physically part of that mesh

 

1 hour ago, Marianne Little said:

Since the SL avatar template has only one arm, it is nice that Slink and Signature allow me to turn on/off an arm layer so I can avoid mirrored tattoos on the arms.

This isn't possible to do with BoM.

Other mesh bodies as Maitreya and Belleza don't offer this, and they are still very popular, so people in SL happily accept mirrored arms.

Also, there is a new category of wearable called a "universal tattoo" that will be released when Bakes-on-Mesh comes out which is like a regular tattoo but which adds channels for the use of the left arm, left foot and three new "auxiliary" channels. This will help to fix that in the future. ("Channels" are groups of textures that are baked into a single texture. Skins and most wearables now use up to three "channels" - a head channel, an upper body channel and a lower body channel.)

Right now the right arm and right foot channels don't include copies of the base skin textures so they're of limited use for existing skins though.

[Blush Bravin]

I don't remember who suggested this but I quite like it. The idea is that bodies would come BoM only and have onion layers that would be attached separately. That way you can decide if you want or need an onion layer or not. I love the idea of not wearing something that is invisible.

[Fionalein]

3 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

I don't remember who suggested this but I quite like it. The idea is that bodies would come BoM only and have onion layers that would be attached separately. That way you can decide if you want or need an onion layer or not. I love the idea of not wearing something that is invisible.

That idea has been around for ages as there are some of us who do not use tattoos or applier cloth... it has not been adapted by the mainstream producers so far, so why should BOM change this? The church of BOM is filled with some hopeless optimists...

Edited September 3, 2018 by Fionalein

[Blush Bravin]

1 minute ago, Fionalein said:

That idea has been around for ages as there are some of us who do not use tattoos or applier cloth... it has not been adapted by the mainstream producers so far, so why should BOM change this? The church of BOM is filled with some hopeless optimists...

I guess you just don't understand BoM.

[Fionalein]

6 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

I guess you just don't understand BoM.

I guess you just do not understand customers...

[Love Zhaoying]

I love BoM, it lets me use my custom system tattoos. Well done, Linden Labs!

[Conifer Dada]

On 9/2/2018 at 12:56 PM, Ceka Cianci said:

If clothes go back to wrapping us skin tight like before,then that's going to suck..In my eyes that is a step backwards and just going to be some performance fix..

The best thing about mesh has been that it took away the skin tight clothes that went up the cracks of our butts and wrapped our breasts and instead gave things depth..Like jackets and jeans and t-shirts that fit like they should rather than looking all two dimensional..

I'm gonna have to see if there is any videos on it on you tube and also do what you suggested and check out the beta..

Bake on Mesh will probably be good for clothes that are meant to be skin-tight though, like leggings or swimsuits. 

Edited September 6, 2018 by Conifer Dada