BOM clothing and alpha masks

[Jennifer Boyle]

I am prompted to post this because my expectations about BOM have evolved since I started using it. When I started, I expected to eventually replace all my applied BOM Maitreya clothing layers (almost all underwear and hosiery)  with BOM and to replace all my Maitreya autohiders with alpha masks. However, I have discovered that each has strengths and weaknesses, and, now, I expect to be using both BOM and layer and autohider attachments until there is some further development that changes things.

BOM alpha masks have the advantage that their shape is not limited by predetermined alpha cuts but can be tailored to be exactly what is needed for a particular garment, unlike autohiders. BOM clothing has the advantage that it can be hidden by alpha masks. All BOM items have the disadvantage that there is a several-second delay and visual disruption while the avatar rebakes when they are added or removed. The effect is instantaneous when autohiders or clothing layers are added or removed, but clothing layers are not hidden by alpha masks. In addition, if mesh clothing is modifiable, the autohider script can be in the clothing itself, which simplifies things.

What are others' thoughts and observations? Is it different with other bodies?

ETA: Another advantage of alpha masks over autohiders is that, if the autohider is attached before the body, it doesn't; this sometimes happens when changing outfits when the new outfit containa different copy of the body from the old outfit. Alpha masks always work.

Edited March 20, 2021 by Jennifer Boyle

[Orwar]

5 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

All BOM items have the disadvantage that there is a several-second delay and visual disruption while the avatar rebakes when they are added or removed.

   I don't think this is too big a deal. Unless you're trying to do a Mr Bean on the go, that is.

5 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

In addition, if mesh clothing is modifiable, the autohider script can be in the clothing itself, which simplifies things.

   Which has the drawback of adding to script pollution. Whilst that one script isn't too big of a deal on its own, it starts getting problematic when you're wearing several, and several people around you each wear several each as well. When you're shopping at an event, the vendors being unresponsive isn't because of the TMem or VRAM impact of the people around you (which you can quickly kill off by showing friends only) - that's because of people constantly TPing wearing lots and lots of scripts.

   I preferred the Maitreya save sticks, they were easy enough to set up, pop on, click, and take off when you were changing clothes. Now I'm just making alpha masks for stuff instead.

5 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

ETA: Another advantage of alpha masks over autohiders is that, if the autohider is attached before the body, it doesn't; this sometimes happens when changing outfits when the new outfit containa different copy of the body from the old outfit. Alpha masks always work.

   Yeah, that happens frequently. Especially when you're trying stuff on and take things on and off in quick succession. Not a fan.

5 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

What are others' thoughts and observations?

   The one advantage that I'll give the alpha HUD system is the ability to alpha arms independently of each other. Alpha masks designed after the standard UV only has one arm mapped and mirrors it for the other arm; it's like tattoos, what you put on one arm will appear on the other arm. For alphas it means that if you wear clothes with asymmetric sleeves (or single sleeves), you can't use an alpha mask for the one arm without also hiding the other.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

8 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

All BOM items have the disadvantage that there is a several-second delay and visual disruption while the avatar rebakes when they are added or removed. The effect is instantaneous when autohiders or clothing layers are added or removed

It's pretty frequent for attachments to take their sweet time to attach/detach, and then you still have to wait for the actual textures to load on top of that. I wouldn't really call that instant.

That said I strongly prefer 3D attachments.

[Gabriele Graves]

Some things BoM cannot do which people routinely do with appliers/scripted HUD features:

1. Alpha cuts.

We already know about this one but what you don't not know is that when BoM first came out, I added up the number of individual cuts that are available for Maitreya Lara.  Why did I do this?

I thought that if we could create an alpha mask for each existing cut then people could just add the masks in BoM mode and it would all be baked together.  That would be a win-win for all.  People who couldn't or did not want to make custom alpha masks could have the convenience they wanted without using the HUD and even I would definitely not care about alpha cuts any more.  Seems ideal, except you cannot wear more than 60 layers (Second Life Bakes on Mesh).

So for up to 60 choices from 208 cuts the number of permutations are so many that calculators have to abbreviate the number for you.  That's not even taking into account that you may want layers for other things too.  So I thought about combining alphas for different larger areas to make this manageable.  I quickly realised that even if possible (not even convinced now) that this was going to create massive amounts of inventory assets to cover the possible larger combinations to make them feasible.  At this point the biggest problem becomes how to manage all those assets and name them so that the user can quickly get to the selection they want, the selection that only takes a few clicks on a HUD.  I gave up at that point.

Often I have seen complaints that Maitreya bodies don't have as many alpha cuts as with other bodies so that just exacerbates the problem for any body.  So there is the challenge.  If someone can find a way to make that a BoM scheme work as quickly, like-for-like, effortless fashion as the Maitreya HUD does for the same cuts, I am onboard.  Bonus points if you can do it for all major bodies where they had alpha cuts until BoM.  Until then, BoM isn't a serious replacement for user selected alpha cuts which achieve this very neatly indeed.

I am not even going to go into the many reasons again why users shouldn't just shut up and accept whatever alpha masks clothing creators deign to provide for them or the elitist, logical fallacy that alpha masks are quick and easy to make for anyone, so everyone should be able to do it.  I'd love to see what skills those who say that find impossible to acquire or how long it will take them to do something complex that another can do in a heartbeat!

2. Eyes that are different.

System eyes only define one eye and it always is baked on to both.  May seem uncommon to some but believe me, it is very common amongst some sections of the SL population.

3. Finger and toe nails.

The SL system layers are not up to the job to provide nails for for mesh bodies, the texture area for nails on the SL UV map is tiny.  People with mesh bodies are never going never abandon mesh nails and go back to system .  Forget it - not going to happen.  In theory you could make BoM nails though.

However to get the same possible resolution as with appliers, it requires a custom UV map and use of at least one of the two (one - assuming you only want the same texture for both finger and toes nails) new AUX channels for new things that don't fit into other BoM body sections.  The more items trying to share these two already overloaded AUX channels just increases the likelihood of conflicting with each other.  No body creators I am aware of are doing that and from the discussions I have had it seems likely that this is the main reason.

Even if that changes and they attempt it, they would be limited by comparison to appliers.  Appliers can apply individual nails with differing textures as well as having different sets for hands/feet.  As I mentioned, you could do that with BoM nails but you would be using both AUX channels unless you wanted to have a combined hand/foot UV and half the resolution.  Even then a set of nails would have many universal tattoo combinations for individual hand/foot nails that you can find in applier sets.

4. Custom blend layers for make-ups and tattoos

Like with alpha cuts this is neatly achieved with appliers and a HUD but cannot be done at all with BoM currently.  The nearest possible thing is that the creator supplies fixed alpha preset tattoos which again creates a lot of inventory to have to visually scan through to find for most people though doable if done for 10% increments.  However most creators, if they add these at all, only at a few.  Many, many don't and so renders this useful, universally and easily accessible feature impossible do achieve for that product.

5.  Tinting

Alright, you can do this but it requires the tattoo creator to leave the assets modify.  It is my experience that many do not and so for many products, it is not possible.  This again is something achieved neatly and universally with appliers/HUD no matter what you wear.

6.  Materials

BoM doesn't have any support for materials though this can be added if you have an applier or HUD feature (surprise, surprise) to do it for you.  Even if your body is mod, the creator of whatever BoM was supplied may not give you whatever texture or other parameters you need to achieve the same materials effect by editing the mesh.

So as you can see from this somewhat incomplete list, a fair amount of functionality and usability is lost with BoM.  Obviously there are also things that BoM can do that appliers cannot which are also well known.

This is the unfortunate reality of BoM. See this for why it will never be different:  XCD Standards

A lot of people have this idealistic, quite frankly purist idea that BoM could and would completely replace appliers and simply ignore there are quite a few significant feature gaps which matter greatly to some people even though it doesn't for them.

Just so that I am clear, I am not saying that we should give up BoM and use only appliers either, far from it but the issues need to be understood instead of swept under the table.

For myself, I am BoM 100% of the time and I have been like this for a long time now.  I often compliment my look with appliers (though not-HD make-ups ones) and HUD features to achieve what I cannot achieve with BoM alone though for make-ups that really only when I wear my older heads,  I don't use HD make-ups, etc. at all.  When I don't need appliers or alpha cuts, I don't use them.  If I have an alpha mask that is perfect, I will use it.  I will lower my render cost at every opportunity.

The bottom line for me is that long ago I realised that BoM and Appliers/HUD functionality are both just toolkits, each with their strengths and weaknesses and that BoM is not a whole replacement for the other.  I can understand why BoM was sold that way by many people but it was a failed strategy from the start.  I have come to love what it provides and use it to the fullest I can but it isn't the whole story.

To all those who don't care because none of these things affect them and they are just perfectly happy with BoM alone and a no-script BoM head/body, so think that anything else should be removed.  Good for you!  If we all took this approach though, things that you care about which don't affect others could also be subject to being dismissed, trivialised and ultimately advocated for removal "for the greater good!".  You may not be so happy about it then.

A word or two on performance

Aiming for better performance is an admirable thing, something that is necessary, however we need to remember that it is still a continuum between performance and providing features.  If we are aiming for absolute performance without regard to anything else then we should be advocating for getting rid of mesh altogether and going back to the simplest types of prims only, removing complex scripted systems from the grid completely and only having the simplest of scripts allowed.  In fact we should only be able to choose from a set of vetted avatars without any customisability or attachments for similar reasons.  The acceptable line is drawn in a different place for each of us otherwise it becomes a ridiculous race to the bottom.
 
As I showed on another thread, I can get in excess of 350fps on my setup if I am 1000m high, 128m draw distance, derender all objects, all other avatars and only wear a single black BoM texture for my whole avatar but why would I want to experience SL like this?

Absolute performance at all costs by throwing away good things that enrich SL, make things easier and/or more accessible to people shouldn't be what we are aiming for.  A careful measured and balanced approach in each case as to which fork we take for performance related decisions that require features to be sacrificed should be what we are striving for in my opinion.

Edited March 21, 2021 by Gabriele Graves

[Orwar]

24 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

As I showed on another thread, I can get in excess of 350fps on my setup if I am 1000m high, 128m draw distance, derender all objects, all other avatars and only wear a single black BoM texture for my whole avatar but why would I want to experience SL like this?

   No sane people. 60 fps (or 62, depending on who you ask) is basically as smooth as we perceive reality. In video standards, most TV monitors display 25 fps, cinemas in 48 fps (2 x 24 fps). For FPS video games (as in, first-person shooters), 60 fps is largely considered the minimum requirement (some people of course want higher, especially as a higher fps means that fps drops from explosions and such won't necessarily bring you below 60). For SL, being at around 30 fps when out and about generally feels 'okay' for me, if it drops under 20 it begins to get noticeable. 

   However ...

   Framerate and scripts are two different issues. Wulfie describes this better than I do, but essentially:

• Framerate is affected by rendering things, i.e. models and textures.
• Response time is affected by scripts and connection.

   The difference between the two is, one makes the visuals choppy, the other makes interacting with the world slow (like, unresponsive movement, rubberbanding, crashing at sim crossings and teleports, game tables and vendors not reacting or being slow to respond to your input, etc). 

   Furthermore, fps is a rather fickle metric. If you have 120 fps, and for a quarter of a second, the fps drops to 5 fps, you still have 95 fps within that second, which is well above the 60 fps mark - but you'll still notice that fps drop. 

   As far as general performance goes - if an avatar is excessively complex to render, you can very easily derender them and suffer no ill effects of their presence. However, if a person is chock full of heavily scripted attachments and HUDs, derendering them does nothing for you - their scripts still affect the region response time. 

[Karl Herber]

18 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

What are others' thoughts and observations? Is it different with other bodies?

I'm using Slink Redux which is BOM only- there are no alpha cuts on the hud at all. There is a "Classic" body included, which does include an alpha hud, and I have converted this to BOM as well, just in case I ever needed to use it. So far, I haven't. The Classic version can't use alpha masks. This is also the case with Belleza which is what I started with. I would much rather have BOM-only than HUD-only. Inbetween I had Kalhene, which I gather is the same as Maitreya in that you can use either. But I don't like the body shape of either Kalhene or Maitreya as much as I like Hourglass.

I am getting better at making alpha masks. I wear a shirt and pants made with the clothing template texture, then wear the mesh garment over it, and make an alpha texture with all the parts that are covered up turned alpha. It's time-consuming but not difficult. More often than not, I can find an alpha I already own in a different outfit that works.

 

[Gabriele Graves]

47 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   No sane people. 60 fps (or 62, depending on who you ask) is basically as smooth as we perceive reality. In video standards, most TV monitors display 25 fps, cinemas in 48 fps (2 x 24 fps). For FPS video games (as in, first-person shooters), 60 fps is largely considered the minimum requirement (some people of course want higher, especially as a higher fps means that fps drops from explosions and such won't necessarily bring you below 60). For SL, being at around 30 fps when out and about generally feels 'okay' for me, if it drops under 20 it begins to get noticeable. 

   However ...

   Framerate and scripts are two different issues. Wulfie describes this better than I do, but essentially:

• Framerate is affected by rendering things, i.e. models and textures.
• Response time is affected by scripts and connection.

   The difference between the two is, one makes the visuals choppy, the other makes interacting with the world slow (like, unresponsive movement, rubberbanding, crashing at sim crossings and teleports, game tables and vendors not reacting or being slow to respond to your input, etc). 

   Furthermore, fps is a rather fickle metric. If you have 120 fps, and for a quarter of a second, the fps drops to 5 fps, you still have 95 fps within that second, which is well above the 60 fps mark - but you'll still notice that fps drop. 

   As far as general performance goes - if an avatar is excessively complex to render, you can very easily derender them and suffer no ill effects of their presence. However, if a person is chock full of heavily scripted attachments and HUDs, derendering them does nothing for you - their scripts still affect the region response time. 

I know all of this already so I don't need it explained.  You seemed to have missed my point on the fps though which was deliberately over-simplistically made because it is exactly about sanity.

You do realise that the same part of a script that changes your finger nails/toenail textures or textures any other face on a mesh body would also be capable if written correctly to completely control all the alpha cuts on a mesh body with extremely minimal extra code don't you?

It doesn't need extra scripts for that or lots of extra code.  There wouldn't be any performance difference from this.  The performance hit comes from having to listen for HUD commands for anything at all.  A body listening for any of it's HUD commands to change any mesh object properties takes no more resources to listen to know change the alpha cuts as well.  There is no script performance issue for alpha cuts if done right unless you have no scripts for anything because you have no HUD at all.  So if you are not changing the alpha cuts when you are out, you are not wasting script time vs. a body that doesn't have them but does have nails/HUD driven features of any kind.

Even Slink has nail texturing and HUDs, just saying.

Edited March 21, 2021 by Gabriele Graves

[Gabriele Graves]

19 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

ETA: Another advantage of alpha masks over autohiders is that, if the autohider is attached before the body, it doesn't; this sometimes happens when changing outfits when the new outfit containa different copy of the body from the old outfit. Alpha masks always work.

Auto-hide doesn't have to be part of an alpha cuts solution.  It sure seemed like a great idea at the beginning and some people may still like them but I am not a fan any more either even though I once was.  A simple HUD option to turn off/ignore auto-hide would give everyone what they want though and could possibly be fixed like that in a future body upgrade.  It wouldn't take much to do or waste extra script time.

Edited March 21, 2021 by Gabriele Graves

[Tarani Tempest]

1 hour ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Auto-hide doesn't have to be part of an alpha cuts solution.  It sure seemed like a great idea at the beginning and some people may still like them but I am not a fan any more either even though I once was.  A simple HUD option to turn off/ignore auto-hide would give everyone what they want though and could possibly be fixed like that in a future body upgrade.  It wouldn't take much to do or waste extra script time.

You could, completely kill the body scripts.  No auto-hide would ever work on it again   Granted you could not use any HUD option at all.  But, if one were clever.... they could use rigged nail addons and only BOM for everything else !

Having the option to disable auto-hide (using the body HUD) all together is not a bad idea though. 

 

[Jennifer Boyle]

6 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Auto-hide doesn't have to be part of an alpha cuts solution.  It sure seemed like a great idea at the beginning and some people may still like them but I am not a fan any more either even though I once was.  A simple HUD option to turn off/ignore auto-hide would give everyone what they want though and could possibly be fixed like that in a future body upgrade.  It wouldn't take much to do or waste extra script time.

What would be the advantage of adding the option to turn off or ignore autohide to the HUD over just not using autohider scripts?

[Tarani Tempest]

38 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

What would be the advantage of adding the option to turn off or ignore autohide to the HUD over just not using autohider scripts?

Most mesh clothing that makes use of the auto-hide script are no mod.  Not much you can do about them at that point. You either live with them that way or wear something else.

The newer auto-hide script for the Maitreya, works differently though, as even if they are in no mod items, they can be changed or deleted. This change came with the V5s.

[Gabriele Graves]

8 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

What would be the advantage of adding the option to turn off or ignore autohide to the HUD over just not using autohider scripts?

Tara's post outlines why you cannot just do that in all circumstances.  I have found a lot of clothing makers have not updated their scripts either.

[Jennifer Boyle]

On 3/21/2021 at 2:54 PM, Tarani Tempest said:

Most mesh clothing that makes use of the auto-hide script are no mod.  Not much you can do about them at that point. You either live with them that way or wear something else.

The newer auto-hide script for the Maitreya, works differently though, as even if they are in no mod items, they can be changed or deleted. This change came with the V5s.

Right. I overlooked that when I was posting because the overwhelming majority of my autohiders were made by me, but I do have some of those annoying no-mod clothes with obsolete versions (that don't unhide when the garment is removed)

[FairreLilette]

On 3/21/2021 at 4:43 AM, Karly Kiyori said:

It's time-consuming but not difficult. More often than not, I can find an alpha I already own in a different outfit that works.

Time consuming?  I build.  There would be no way I'd have time for this extra work to make alphas for my clothing.  Absolutely no way, not to mention it would take away my creative flow to have to do more tedious type things.  Most of my humans are for photographs though so if I stay applier at least I'm not lagging others out.  And then, I am a Dinkie for most of my social time, and we are about 10-17K triangles, extremely low.  

I wish you all luck with BOM, but I'm dropping out.  However, that does not mean forever...one never knows.  But, I cannot see having time to make alphas for my clothing.  

[Karl Herber]

9 hours ago, FairreLilette said:

I wish you all luck with BOM, but I'm dropping out.  However, that does not mean forever...one never knows.  But, I cannot see having time to make alphas for my clothing.  

There's no reason why you have to drop out; there are still bodies which allow both options. Maitreya being the main one. Legacy too, I believe (though I don't own that one). It's only a thing I do because I chose Slink - if it's a bother for you then simply don't choose Slink.

[FairreLilette]

2 hours ago, Karly Kiyori said:

There's no reason why you have to drop out; there are still bodies which allow both options. Maitreya being the main one. Legacy too, I believe (though I don't own that one). It's only a thing I do because I chose Slink - if it's a bother for you then simply don't choose Slink.

ooooooooooo, ooooooomygah.  Well, that is good news.  I would never do that though, make alphas for my clothing.  Shakes head, no.

[AdminGirl]

I use both BOM and appliers for my body, but I have to say I prefer the latter. I tend to be more visual when selecting what to wear, and applier HUDs can esily give me an idea of what things look like, as opposed to perusing through BOM layer names in my inventory and having no idea what they are.

And when I'm shopping and trying things on, the Maitreya HUD is the quickest and easiest way to hide parts because the HUD is right there on my screen. I don't have to open up my inventory to add or detach anything. And I'm not just talking about hiding body parts but also hiding parts of my applier clothing.

I use BOM for my skin to try balance out the performance side of things but appliers still seem more convenient for me.

[Anna Nova]

I use CTS Wardrobe (no commercial interest) to manage all my clothes, and some other things too.  Amongst other things, it allows me to tag clothes, so I can see at a glance which things I have in my inventory have which tags.

One of my old tags is 'Needs new Alpha'.

Usually these are older, non-fitmesh, clothes that I got cheap, and most of them I would never wear today - but I have learned that 'never' is not a good concept in SL, witness all the alphas I threw away when I got my first mesh body!

However, it has been fun to make alphas, even though I still use Maitreya, as I can get the cut so much more precise than the Maitreya HUD-cuts allow.  It's worth remembering that Alphas, like Tattoos, are additive, and you can wear lots of little ones to make the overall effect right - so it is not necessary to make many alphas if you have a quick way of adding and taking off sets of them.  CTS Wardrobe uses the RLVa protocol to do this, but it's entirely possible to do it by hand using folders.

Users of the Slink Redux body (like my alt) have access to a large number of pre-made alpha items.