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I hope you guys will pardon me for a bit of a rant, although it comes from a place of love and genuine concern about the future of SL. But OMG has second life ever become confusing! I guess I should start out here by stating, I am not a noob. I've been in SL more than 13 years. So you would think I could navigate all of the new developments . I'm usually a quick study, I know how to search for answers....but I swear, I am hitting one wall after another when it comes to even something as simple as getting dressed anymore. My bom body skin doesn't show up on my legacy body. I remove alpha's...and select Bakes On Mesh, and then my eyes don't show up. Suddenly, my whole head doesn't show up, when the "outfit" worked perfectly only yesterday. I downloaded the black dragon viewer because I love to take pictures...but whoops, ever since, my neck and collarbone are black. I tried to correct it with the legacy neck-fix...unsuccessfully, and have since not been able to find any way to remove the "neck fix" color, even after re-applying my skinnery body BOM. I've clicked the eraser on the lower right of the screen again and again, but it is not removed. I started fresh with a re-delivery of my classic body. I copied display settings from someone who seemed very knowledgeable on youtube...in case it was a viewer issue, to no avail.  I cleared the cache.  It just seems like a constant struggle, every step of the way. While I do appreciate the advancements that are surely better than the olden days...I shudder to think about what a new person, just logging into SL would have to contend with today. If I am struggling, with a fair amount of knowledge and years of experience...how on earth would a new person navigate all of this?

 

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Please try not to be too stressed about it.
Things have changed massively but there is a mindset to adopt which will enable you to relax.
B.O.M simplified means "skins and clothes of old", (apart from full 3d mesh clothes), and the associated layers,
but worn on top of a 3d mesh body.
I'm lucky I use a Slink body, who were very early adopters of BOM etc and pretty much got it right first go.
Having said that, I have little personal knowledge of the legacy body, my apologies.
I do wish there was a tick-sheet of do's and dont's for each brand of body.
I can only suggest user chat groups as most peeps love to help with specific brands & applications.

 


 

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The body, head and clothing industry has really become to complicated and a pain in the ***.
There is very little fun in sorting things out. It is only stress, stress and a bit more stress.
One of the reasons (but not the main one) that I threw the towel in the ring a few months ago. I'm done with SL. (For now?)
And I can totally understand why there are only very little real newbies in SL.
Instead of learning and mastering this mountain of information around avatar adjustment and beautification, you can happily play hundreds of hours of whatever else floats your entertainment boat, without so much stress and frustrations.

LL made in my view a big mistake when they let users set the avatar standards instead of themselves.

Edited by Sid Nagy
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1 hour ago, Sid Nagy said:

The body, head and clothing industry has really become to complicated and a pain in the ***.
There is very little fun in sorting things out. It is only stress, stress and a bit more stress.
One of the reasons (but not the main one) that I threw the towel in the ring a few months ago. I'm done with SL. (For now?)
And I can totally understand why there are only very little real newbies in SL.
Instead of learning and mastering this mountain of information around avatar adjustment and beautification, you can happily play hundreds of hours of whatever else floats your entertainment boat, without so much stress and frustrations.

LL made in my view a big mistake when they let users set the avatar standards instead of themselves.

I felt so browned off with the rat race of "beautifying" my avatar to the current acceptable level last week that I turned myself into a goose, and I had the BEST few days.

Next week I might be a piece of furniture and go hang out in people's homes just for the larks. 

Being a humanoid has become very tedious to me, and painful in the arse as well as the head. 

I hope you get your SL mojo back though, but a break from it is good - I had one for several years. 

_____

Edited to add.

Some mesh clothes suck. I bought a couple of mesh ball gowns last week which looked lovely while I was standing still, but there was no movement when I walked, and I miss that. I miss when I danced my dress swishing around like it would in real life.  There is no getting away from the fact, no matter how "realistic" the avatars are made to look, they still look like glorified Barbie dolls, and only some clothing has improved. 

Edited by Marigold Devin
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2 minutes ago, Marigold Devin said:

I felt so browned off with the rat race of "beautifying" my avatar to the current acceptable level last week that I turned myself into a goose, and I had the BEST few days.

Next week I might be a piece of furniture and go hang out in people's homes just for the larks. 

Being a humanoid has become very tedious to me, and painful in the arse as well as the head. 

I hope you get your SL mojo back though, but a break from it is good - I had one for several years. 

I have a dinosaur avatar for this very reason, lmao. A furniture avatar chilling in someone's random house would be hilarious! 🤣

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Thanks for hearing me out and for the encouragement. It's good to know I'm not alone in the struggle! And admittedly, my patience has been wearing down a bit. My SL has become more complicated since I started trying to improve my photography skills, and have been trying to make more complex characters for that purpose. So I've been doing a lot of switching heads, bodies and skins...I think life was much easier when I was just changing clothes and hair! And yes, as Alwin pointed out, thank goodness there are tons of good people making tutorials and I have been watching tons of them. The only trouble is the ever-changing versions of the viewers, bodies & heads...even trying to duplicate the steps in the tutorials is not always as easy as that. SL has always had a steep learning curve, and I used to enjoy learning...I mean, I still enjoy learning but I guess it's just getting a little overwhelming. I think maybe I need to pace myself or step back for a bit. But you invest in these new tools with the hope it will all come together...so you can get back to the creative stuff that is the main reason I'm still here. I guess having all of these new customization tools comes with a price!

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3 hours ago, Marigold Devin said:

I felt so browned off with the rat race of "beautifying" my avatar to the current acceptable level last week that I turned myself into a goose, and I had the BEST few days.

Next week I might be a piece of furniture and go hang out in people's homes just for the larks. 

Being a humanoid has become very tedious to me, and painful in the arse as well as the head. 

Marigold, don't EVER feel like you have to meet some random standard of avatar beauty to participate in SL. Running around as a goose sounds amazing! That's the beauty of SL right there - avatar diversity, which I absolutely love. There are so so so many creative ways to dress your avie - I still chuckle when I run across the little otters in Santa hats draped in Christmas lights. It's the cutest thing ever! Being human gets boring and frustrating at times - hence why, well, you know how I roll LOL.

 

3 hours ago, Marigold Devin said:

Edited to add.

Some mesh clothes suck. I bought a couple of mesh ball gowns last week which looked lovely while I was standing still, but there was no movement when I walked, and I miss that. I miss when I danced my dress swishing around like it would in real life.  There is no getting away from the fact, no matter how "realistic" the avatars are made to look, they still look like glorified Barbie dolls, and only some clothing has improved. 

100%!! I own quite a few gowns now thanks to advent and event freebies and I'll just wear one long enough to lock myself into a pose, take a photo, and yeet it back into my inventory. Gowns have absolutely not improved with mesh (flexi wasn't the best either, but it offered a few more options like...oh...being able to walk without looking *too* ridiculous). I've got a very active AO, too, so you can imagine how often my train flies up into the air, lmao. It's sad because one of my gowns is so insanely gorgeous (it's got a beautifully animated sparkle to simulate sequins!) but I can't really wear it out unless I want to just stand around motionless looking cute.

 

9 hours ago, Lauren Delvalle said:

I hope you guys will pardon me for a bit of a rant, although it comes from a place of love and genuine concern about the future of SL. But OMG has second life ever become confusing! 

It realllllly has! I swap looks quite often and can try and help you out in-world sometime if you find yourself still struggling. It's a lot to take in. I took a long break from SL myself when system avatars were still a thing and came back to full mesh. Took me about a week to get comfortable enough with appliers and Omega systems - and then everything switched to BOM and I had to relearn it all over again!! GAAAAH. I will say BOM is a lot easier to deal with, but things do get a bit confusing if you try to mix and match slightly (want a BOM head and body with applier eyes, which alpha to choose, where'd my body go, why is my head red, etc. etc.).

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I hit that wall every time I set up BOM with an all mesh avatar. I have to find the BOM settings in both the head and body huds, then figure out what combination of alpha layers to wear, and make sure I am wearing textures in the right order and not wearing extra textures. Lelutka even has separate ears to worry about now. 

I really can't think of a way to make this easier for new people. But people are figuring it out right? Otherwise we'd still be using system avatars. I think having someone walk you through within SL is the easiest way to figure things out. They can look at what is happening to your avatar as you are doing things.

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Yes a helpful person can speed up things.
But hey, this is 2022. Does it really have to be such a pain to conduct even such a simple thing as changing your underwear*?
It should be: drop it on you and it fits, ready to go.

 

* Same goes for head, shoes, makeup, all kinds of clothing, hair, jewelry, ........ 

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15 hours ago, Lauren Delvalle said:

I remove alpha's...and select Bakes On Mesh, and then my eyes don't show up.

I think this is one thing everyone in sl can agree on, it's confusing. 

I started sl about 3 years ago and it took me about 1 year to understand that alphas hide parts of the system avatar. Example: You buy a shirt and parts of your back and chest stick out, most products will come with objects in the folder the shirt came with called alphas to hide the body parts sticking out. Some clothing products do not come with alphas and users are left with the impression that their body is too fat and that was a waste of money, even though the product says it was made for the avatar. 

I was totally against going full mesh humanoid at the time I guess the mesh people seemed too clicky and snobish. But I had a problem on my system avatar I did not like the bumpy fingers, but I wanted my fingers to be smooth and move. Something clicked and my mission was to hide my system hands and use bento gloves (in simple terms most of the second life avatar's fingers do not move because they are not bento fingers). Only problem was the alpha to hide the hands from sticking out of the bento gloves that moves fingers was either not included with the product (assuming the creator assumed customer would have a mesh body with a body hud that can easily control alphas. So I forced myself to learn texture mapping and I manually uploaded the modified upper body system texture map found on the sl knowledge base. I took that upper body texture map I downloaded into like photoshop and erased parts of the hands leaving them transparent/alpha and uploaded to sl as a texture png with transparent background and I added that as an alpha layer on my avatar to hide my hands, I had to do that a few times to get where the glove met the lower arm was seamless as possible. 

I never heard of a hud before sl or alpha. Because of sl I can now understand when I watch space docus and they say this ship uses hud, heads up display, I know what that is now. 

Eventually I was like screw it im going to pay 20USD to get a Mesh Body with built in body alpha hud and kept my system head for I would say a good 6 months until I was like screw it im going to spend another 10-20USD on a bento head. And then I had to deal with neck gaps and skin textures not matching perfectly where the mesh body and head meet. Trough trial and error and a lot of demoing I found a head and body combo that I was satisfied with. Honestly, like the goose lady :) I prefer to just avoid that whole situation and with my blank avatar attached a dog or a horse or a flower or a anything to my avatars center, saved each appearence so I can easily transform and called it a day. It's funner and way less confusing. (maybe when sl releases their new mesh system avatars they will include birds, dogs, cats, or a train compatable with the railways maybe people can ride (with official permisions maybe ridable avatars (see jira), more simple animals).

And after learning all that alpha craziness Bakes On Mesh takes over (which I love by the way). 

Learning BoM took me about 2 days trough trial and error. Easiest way I found to help. Was to make a folder maybe called master body and head files. I would make another folder called test body, I would make a copy of the files inside the master body folder and place in the test body folder, that way if something like my eyes turned red or completely vanished or something screwed up I could delete the contents of the test folder and recopy the master folder to the test folder again. Before I could do that I would have to take off all the parts I was working with in order to delete them from the test folder (sl needs a blank avatar within the system avatars for people who wish to build their own avatar with ease) I made my own blank avatar appearence by removing everything possible. 

You avatars eyes are red it's because when you added the hide head alpha (which would to hide the system head) Typically BoM compatiable heads come with multiple types of head alphas, one may say entire head and eyes, or head only not eyes. If you want to use BoM eyes than red is good? I never used bom eyes. In my case red was bad and I wanted to use the system eyes. SOO I used the alpha included with the head that says head not eyes. If your eyes are totally blank sockets um it's because after the BoM button was pushed on your head hud and an eye alpha was appled after would cause that? 

It's like working in reverse with BoM before the goal for mesh was to hide the system avatar now we are trained to unhide the system avater after the BoM button is pushed (within the mesh body and head huds) and alphas that were used to hide the system avatar are removed. Would think the mesh BoM creators would figure out a way to auto remove alphas vs having users do it manually after the BoM buttom is pressed? That would be too simple I suppose. 

I have a few mesh avatars and you start to see patterns. I've worked with several clients and seems they do the same thing I think for job security. Make the processes as confusing as possible to avoid/discourage/minimize compition. 

Honestly, I'd rather spend the USDs on official second life turnkey fully customizable mesh avatars. 

 

Edited by Paulsian
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Ayashe, you are such a sweetheart. Your advice to Marigold touched me, I couldn't agree more. And it was some earlier advice from you that helped send me down this path of advanced avatar customization..lol. It really has opened up a whole new world, experimenting with the fantasy/sci-fi themes. I appreciate your offer to help. I think just giving it a little rest is all I need to get my information straight. Hopefully attempting again with a fresh set of eyes will clear things up. Maybe I've just been trying too hard, like information overload. On the other hand, I do agree with Sid, it does seem like improvements could be made to these systems to make them easier (and more fun) for people. Early on I realized that I was never going to pursue building, because I was not willing to apply myself to learning how to make mesh. It just became a little out of reach for the casual player. So, having resolved myself to making use of all of the amazing things others have created, I've been happy just putting various pieces together and expressing myself that way...but it's becoming so cumbersome that it is getting overwhelming, like the idea of building. Okay, maybe that's not quite a fair comparison but just saying...does SL want to appeal to the average casual player anymore? Why am I playing a game like it's my job?! LOL.

Also, thanks Paulsian! I appreciate the pointers and I like your suggestion about how to organize the body and head folders. My inventory is a mess of failed "outfits" right now and that's also confusing matters.

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48 minutes ago, Lauren Delvalle said:

Ayashe, you are such a sweetheart. Your advice to Marigold touched me, I couldn't agree more. And it was some earlier advice from you that helped send me down this path of advanced avatar customization..lol. It really has opened up a whole new world, experimenting with the fantasy/sci-fi themes. I appreciate your offer to help. I think just giving it a little rest is all I need to get my information straight. Hopefully attempting again with a fresh set of eyes will clear things up. Maybe I've just been trying too hard, like information overload. On the other hand, I do agree with Sid, it does seem like improvements could be made to these systems to make them easier (and more fun) for people. Early on I realized that I was never going to pursue building, because I was not willing to apply myself to learning how to make mesh. It just became a little out of reach for the casual player. So, having resolved myself to making use of all of the amazing things others have created, I've been happy just putting various pieces together and expressing myself that way...but it's becoming so cumbersome that it is getting overwhelming, like the idea of building. Okay, maybe that's not quite a fair comparison but just saying...does SL want to appeal to the average casual player anymore? Why am I playing a game like it's my job?! LOL.

Also, thanks Paulsian! I appreciate the pointers and I like your suggestion about how to organize the body and head folders. My inventory is a mess of failed "outfits" right now and that's also confusing matters.

Ayashe's words touched me very much too. Her avatar is always fantastically put together, and different just about every day.

I think one day it will all just "click" into place as other things have done in the past. 

LOLing at 

"Why am I playing a game like it's my job?! LOL."

My real life family, friends and partner always ask me "Why do you do Second Life. It's become more like a job than a job."

It just does. 

I've had really kind offers of one to one help by various people, and I am extremely grateful to them for their offer of time (and definitely patience). I'm an awfully independent "teach myself to" person with not a lot of patience, except when it comes to the obsessions that sometimes have attached themselves to me, almost against my will (bot hunting, ghost hunting, and trying to decipher the Fantasseria code most recently).  I had a go with a head last week and have not even the vocabulary to describe the thoughts that went through my head. Like angry wasps though. And no one needs that in their leisure and pleasure time. 

Now you know though that you don't need to be beating yourself up about not getting to grips with this. In your own time you will. We all will. I am sure.

 

 

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18 minutes ago, Lauren Delvalle said:

Ayashe, you are such a sweetheart. Your advice to Marigold touched me, I couldn't agree more. And it was some earlier advice from you that helped send me down this path of advanced avatar customization..lol. It really has opened up a whole new world, experimenting with the fantasy/sci-fi themes. I appreciate your offer to help. I think just giving it a little rest is all I need to get my information straight. Hopefully attempting again with a fresh set of eyes will clear things up. Maybe I've just been trying too hard, like information overload. On the other hand, I do agree with Sid, it does seem like improvements could be made to these systems to make them easier (and more fun) for people. Early on I realized that I was never going to pursue building, because I was not willing to apply myself to learning how to make mesh. It just became a little out of reach for the casual player. So, having resolved myself to making use of all of the amazing things others have created, I've been happy just putting various pieces together and expressing myself that way...but it's becoming so cumbersome that it is getting overwhelming, like the idea of building. Okay, maybe that's not quite a fair comparison but just saying...does SL want to appeal to the average casual player anymore? Why am I playing a game like it's my job?! LOL.

Also, thanks Paulsian! I appreciate the pointers and I like your suggestion about how to organize the body and head folders. My inventory is a mess of failed "outfits" right now and that's also confusing matters.

Awww, Lauren, thank you for the compliment! I'm so happy you've started trying new things out, and I agree - some time away can definitely help. I also agree with you guys 100% that there really needs to be a way to streamline the process. It's just kind of difficult to do that now that there are so many different unique heads and bodies on the market.

When you're ready to go back to it, maybe watch some YouTube videos explaining how to set up your head and/or body etc. Some are fantastic at showing off the features and hud functions. And if you find yourself really stuck, my in-world IMs are always open, or you can start a thread in the Your Avatar section and we can help you out there. 

 

36 minutes ago, Marigold Devin said:

Ayashe's words touched me very much too. Her avatar is always fantastically put together, and different just about every day.

You guys are making me blush! Thank thank thank you ❤️ 

 

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2 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

I also have a soft spot for classic avatars.  Sometimes the people behind them are the most interesting folks.

This is quite seriously true. I think because their focus is so often on the people, rather than the mesh wrapping.

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5 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

I also have a soft spot for classic avatars.  Sometimes the people behind them are the most interesting folks.

I created a new alt today - name of BaggyStringer - and tried on all the library avatars. Some mesh, some classic. Some I'd never seen before.

I know we all have them in our inventory - what a waste of space though if we don't ever use them.

I am sick of seeing the 1970s dude carrying the radio though! 

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On 1/6/2022 at 7:24 AM, Marigold Devin said:

Next week I might be a piece of furniture and go hang out in people's homes just for the larks. 

There's actually a fetish about this, called "objectification". People get their kicks by being turned into, and treated like, a statue or a piece of furniture.

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2 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

There's actually a fetish about this, called "objectification". People get their kicks by being turned into, and treated like, a statue or a piece of furniture.

Hmm, where can I find these people? I need a new kitchen table. 😩

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57 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

There's actually a fetish about this, called "objectification". People get their kicks by being turned into, and treated like, a statue or a piece of furniture.

Forniphilia is the fetish in question, it is often paired with BDSM themes and may include objectification (literal and metaphoric).

In SL .. this could mean twisting your avatar into a chair or table, or literally swapping your body out for something else entirely. Toss in a little RLV and traps and ... SHAZAM ! YOURE A LATEX TOASTER .. F O R E V E R 

I can't say I get it .. but being somewhat involved in RLVa development and having waay more patience for support than kitty, has introduced me to so many .. um .. things.

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