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No Demo??? ​  ​🙄​😠 ​


MajikVixen Lorefield
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Hi!

...Alright, I'm not trying to be nasty in any way, honest.  I am kinda frustrated, tho, and I truly and genuinely would like to understand what is with some fashion creators that choose to purposefully NOT provide demos? 

If I cannot find it inworld, I will try to find it on MP.  If I can't find it anywhere, I'll ask politely (sometimes via NC), explaining that it is NOTHING personal, but I have several special things going on with my avi that I want to make sure their wonderful creation will flatter (and of course, mutually/respectfully vice-versa).  Maybe not that detailed, but enough to schmooze and presume that if they are smart enough to design mesh, they also possess some customer foresight.

...I have LONG mesh hair which will alpha glitch with a few mesh dresses or pants or whatever and have me end up giving everyone a free show.  Yeah, I guess I can alpha out the Maitreya where my butt is to prevent this, but isn't the point of this short dress, where I would've really liked to have tried a demo on with first, to see if that can actually be done in a flattering way??  ...And yeah, if I can cam around and this dress doesn't cover some very important parts of my breasts, I want to know just how much failing alpha-ing or tattoo underwearing I might be doing once I have unsatisfactorily prevented having dropped L$ on this regret, all because they would NOT let me try a demo!

And I get it, if they simply do not have a demo because the outfit is new or whatever and they just wanted to get the sale out ASAP, okay, fine.  Thank you, anyway.  I still think you're a hero.  But when I ask very nicely and politely if I may try a demo... Why do some creators think that their creations will be absolutely flawless with every avatar creation, as they tell me, "We do not do demos."  ...Excuse me??  ...Perhaps they don't care to sell their creations to those who nit-pick at how something would look on their avatar??  *confused*  ...Are they suggesting that I don't be myself and change my avatar to suit their clothing??  *a bit angry*  ...Are they honestly that afraid and paranoid of giving out a demo to a possible copy-botter?  *rolls eyes*  ...See, I would NEVER buy something in RL without trying it on first, or without having a good understanding of the return policy (and to my knowledge, there is no return policy in SL, you are on your own).  

It is not just disappointing to be told "I'm sorry, I can't have a demo for you in enough time," but really, to more so say, that they flat out, "do not ever do demos."  ...I'm sorry, are you a SL God?  -I beg your pardon??  Even the all star creators do demos, hun.  *hint hint*  ...You mean you do not actually want this money I'd gladly give you if I could just try on a stupid demo??  I'd even actually pay you a L$ or two for a #%^ demo!  Come on. 

I've actually started to avoid whole shopping districts that statistically rent to creators who do this.  But the problem is that more and more creators are doing this because they think this is okay?  ...Is it?  What am I missing here??

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@MajikVixen Lorefield Agreed. Just don't buy from them. There are so many other selections for you to choose from that it's actually their loss and not your's. There was this one store that was in a weekly sale that I always went to check out but they never had any demos so I never bought. But eventually they started putting out demos. I think the smart creators would notice and respond to things like this and make changes to benefit their store.

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4 hours ago, MajikVixen Lorefield said:

What am I missing here??

You are not missing anything.  To me it all boils down to lazy.  Yes it takes a lot of time and work to create something in the fashion world of SL,  and no way do creators actually ever really recover what their time is worth in terms of lindens.   So here is how I see it.  Those who do not provide demos are saving themselves some time, by not having to duplicate their work with DEMO written on it or attached to it.  Lazy in my view.  And of course when confronted with this, they are going to defend their practice with a load of justifications, to cover up the truth.. i.e. lazy.  I sell clothing in S L and no way would I put something out without a demo (unless perhaps if it is a gift),  because I am also a consumer and as such I would not consider buying anything without a demo myself..  so why would I expect my customers to buy without a demo?  To me it is just good business practice.  Because no matter how lovely something looks in the picture,  there are no guarantees that it is going to look great on every avatar, and folks should have the right to test that out before spending the lindens.  And that goes for those who sell for cheap cheap prices as well.   We have seen this same complaint over and over again in this forum, and yet those who need to get the message just don't seem to get it.  But if customers stopped buying without demos,  they might have to rethink their practices.

 

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22 hours ago, MajikVixen Lorefield said:

...I have LONG mesh hair which will alpha glitch with a few mesh dresses or pants or whatever and have me end up giving everyone a free show. 

Apologies if this is an obvious suggestion that you've already tried, but...when you wear the offending piece of clothing which is making you glitch, have you tried removing and then re-wearing your hair? That always fixes it for me. 

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6 hours ago, PixieGirrrrl said:

Apologies if this is an obvious suggestion that you've already tried, but...when you wear the offending piece of clothing which is making you glitch, have you tried removing and then re-wearing your hair? That always fixes it for me. 

Yes, and then when you TP, the alpha glitch is back!  

I went out of my way to buy Doux hair, which I truly and thoroughly love.  It does come with a HUD where you can turn on/off materials and that helps too... But like I said, you have to keep pushing that HUD materials button every time you walk, turn, TP, you name it.  Alpha glitching is a "normal" SL thing.

Gryphon of Maitreya said it best about stacking a bunch of things with alphas, SL doesn't know how to process which layer goes on top, thus the glitch.  And I even give picture examples with my flexi hair (and who knew, mesh hair has alphas too) and an alpha skybox.

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11 hours ago, PixieGirrrrl said:

, have you tried removing and then re-wearing your hair? That always fixes it for me. 

that is a fix that only you see and even that is temporary, as noted above each time you tp  or change something it's back.    Sometimes clothing has alpha blending on and it really does not need it.  If the textures applied were on a transparent background in .png format  when applied to the mesh it will automatically give you alpha blending.  If you have mod perms you can change that to alpha masking which stops the glitching.  I would think that most creators of clothing would know that and either use .tga format or put a background layer under their texture map to avoid their customers having this issue.

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I've seen lots of shape sellers (which is already the lamest thing you can sell) refuse to provide demos. I don't get how people can be convinced to buy a shape based on one ad. Same goes for poses/AOs without demos. Yes I definitely know what the animation will look like based on one static image... /smh

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If a creator (of clothes, hair etc) does not offer demos, I have to assume that the reason is that the paid product is so awful that no-one would ever buy it if they actually offered one.  Same for demos that cost more than L$1 - they know the product is so bad that no-one will want it and they rely on demos alone for income.

 

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42 minutes ago, Lewis Luminos said:

If a creator (of clothes, hair etc) does not offer demos, I have to assume that the reason is that the paid product is so awful that no-one would ever buy it if they actually offered one.  Same for demos that cost more than L$1 - they know the product is so bad that no-one will want it and they rely on demos alone for income.

 

LOL, well I know for a fact that is not always the case but I do agree that "I" don't buy without demos (or VERY rarely just on principle).   I  kinda got caught the other day on some bad LODs (not clothing).   But I worked around it a bit and the item is good for photos :D.  

 

And for the folks that have mentioned the "extra work" needed for a demo --- it is MINIMAL.  In Sansar I made demos for all my clothing (pretty much the only clothing creator there that did with a lot of frowning towards me for "cluttering up the store" :D. Really it isn't any different than making "one more color". We are talking a few minutes even with vendor photo (which really aren't needed if you just change the regular photo to gray and write demo in the listing or on the sign.  So THAT argument (albeit well intended) isn't a very good one. 

I know most of the folks reading this have never made clothing demos so they have NO idea :D.   Hence my comment. 

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20 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

And for the folks that have mentioned the "extra work" needed for a demo --- it is MINIMAL

I would not put out an item for sale without a DEMO.  Once you get into the habit of making a demo it becomes automatic, just part of the process.  I do, however, draw the line at making a full DEMO texture hud to go with the DEMO item.  I make a lot of clothing items that come with a texture hud and do not charge the usual Fat Pack price.  My price is maybe 100L more than a single item if that (depends on the item).  So with charging those prices I am not willing to make a whole other texture hud with DEMO on everything,  that would be a lot of extra work that in my opinion is not needed and would certainly have to bring up the cost of the item in the end.  To me a DEMO is to see how the item looks in terms of fit i.e. does it work for my body? Does it still cover properly on movement?  Can I cover parts that poke out with my body's alpha sections?  Do I like how it looks on my body?  And if I do then I will buy the item, all I need is one of the textures/colours too see what I need to see from a DEMO.  I provide a picture of the actual Texture/Colour Hud on my main product picture so folks can see what the choices are.  

As for poses and animations and dances..  I only buy those from inworld stores where I can go and jump on a pose stand and check them out.  I can't see how anyone could just pick one of those up on MP without testing them out first.

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I think any item selling for more than L$75 to 100 should have a demo. Below that... I am not sure it is worth the merchant's effort to make a demo. 

I used to occasionally buy under L$100 items without a demo. I figure it was about 50-50 win-lose deal. 

I am now much more leary of no-demo items now.

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  • 1 month later...

There's actually a creator selling a bento head without a demo (yes you read that right), that anime/Venus head. The creator's known to be extremely unfriendly/snobby and provides pretty much zero customer service, but since the quality itself is okay he's got a cult following of loyal otakus who'll pretty much buy anything he puts out without a thought. Unfortunately it's virtually the only quality anime head in SL, so I guess he can afford to be a snobby a-hole and provide no demos on his products since anime fanatics (and there are a lot in SL) pretty much have no other choice but to buy his stuff.

Since there are like 235729124097 stores in SL selling clothes most creators have no choice but to provide demos or they can just suffer the loss in sales, which is definitely a good thing.

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On 10/3/2020 at 12:56 PM, MelodicRain said:

There's actually a creator selling a bento head without a demo (yes you read that right), that anime/Venus head. The creator's known to be extremely unfriendly/snobby and provides pretty much zero customer service, but since the quality itself is okay

I've made the error of buying that head and... "quality itself is okay" is not how I would describe it...

More correctly I would say... for some odd reason, no one has chosen to compete with this person, so they own an entire market segment...

I imagine that if even one of the furry avatar brands put out a competing head, or if a human head brand put out an anime head - the store in question would dry up ASAP.

It's an entire market segment... a HUGE one judging by the number of 'anime video games' that keep coming out, that in SL only one person has chosen to sell to... Kind of baffling...

 

We have all these human body part makers competing over the exact same slice of the pie... meaning any growth in A's business comes as a loss to B's in a segment that isn't getting any bigger... a few furry makers competing over another slice, and then one third of the pie has been handed over to one person with no questions asked...

I am equally baffled that the furry makers don't jump into the human body space - because skill wise, 3D modeling wise, and script wise, they are vastly more skilled...

It is as if a group of people in medical school have decided to let the entire school health department be run by the kindergarten class... the difference in skill between furry part makers and human part makers is that extreme... with the furry makers being that much better... and yet they choose to ignore the larger market...

 

 

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38 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

with the furry makers being that much better... and yet they choose to ignore the larger market...

I am not a furry, I am mainstream human I guess you would say.  But I have worked with 3D programs and I know how difficult it is to create any kind of human or animal form with any kind of reality to it.  My guess is that the furry makers are just plain not interested in doing normal human stuff.  And I can see why, there is so much more creativity allowed when doing furry stuff.  Part of being a creator of anything is the enjoyment of the creation itself, the business aspect of it is secondary to a true creator.  A business oriented person will look for something safe that is likely to sell.  I could be way off base here but in 15 years in SL, that is one of my observations.

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15 minutes ago, Tazzie Tuque said:

I am not a furry, I am mainstream human I guess you would say.  But I have worked with 3D programs and I know how difficult it is to create any kind of human or animal form with any kind of reality to it.  My guess is that the furry makers are just plain not interested in doing normal human stuff.  And I can see why, there is so much more creativity allowed when doing furry stuff.

I get that... but.... "you can work at Starbucks, or you can own Starbucks..." which one of those job offers should you take.

 

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5 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

I get that... but.... "you can work at Starbucks, or you can own Starbucks..." which one of those job offers should you take.

that entirely depends on what the individual wants;  what they get out of the job..  are they money and power oriented?  or are they people and service oriented?  Do they want the hassel and headaches of being in charge or do they just want to kick back and enjoy their work?  Many variables to look at on that question.

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It's a sidetrack... but... if you look at the furry body parts out there - you will see they are often as feature rich as the human parts, but with more simple, elegant, and less laggy solutions.

These people could do the human parts, without loss in quality, in fact likely improvement in quality, and do it with less work needed... because a lot of the bloat in the human parts is not because they want some feature, but because they don't know how to do it the right way.

On the one hand you have a set of people passionate about 'gaming graphics' who have been in and around 3D models made for real time online use for a very long time - the furry parts crowd.

On the other hand you have people who went to some classes on using Blender who, outside of SL, can't tell a horse apart from a car - the human parts crowd.

It's been a sore point with me for years that the furry makers have no interest in taking over the human body part side of things... we'd all have such better toys to use if they did, and they'd have 'easy money' because the human stuff has fewer complications so would be easier to churn out the parts for...

 

Anyway... to drift back to topic... one other competitor offering a demo for some anime heads could easily own that market segment...

The current person operating there doesn't offer demos because they don't need to because people have no choice but to buy from them.

 

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24 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

Anyway... to drift back to topic... one other competitor offering a demo for some anime heads could easily own that market segment...

The current person operating there doesn't offer demos because they don't need to because people have no choice but to buy from them.

 

Makes sense, albeit a bit sad.  Someone who normally uses a human avatar might be more inclined to switch over if there was a demo for the furry head, even if it was the only one in the market.  It just seems good business practice to offer a demo (like, "yes, my product really is that awesome, check it out, you will want to be furry, you'll never look back, and won't ever regret it"), instead of relying solely on something like a "buy your way in" to a type of "exclusive club" or something ...Which, BTW, is a far cry from what little I thought I understood about furries, dinkies, tinies, etc. (as 9 times out of 10 I've always found them to be quite kind, intelligent, and extremely amusing) ...But, what do I know?  I'm a half breed cheat (succubus/dark fae).  🤣

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