Appearance Editor API?

[Sirrella]

I'm new to Second Life and am finding I'm actually not bad at creating good face shapes. I would like to sell these face shapes, customised for different heads. I'm a reasonably competent coder and LSL looks accessible.

 

My immediate thought is to distribute face shape scripts which automatically update the required Appearance Editor slider values. However, I cannot find an API for the Appearance Editor, not in the standard API docs nor in the RLV. Maybe there isn't one.

 

So, option two is to save out a shape object and distribute that.

 

Two problems with this:

First, if I create my shape on, say, a Genus head, the original creator remains Genus and the properties are locked. I could maybe get round this by creating my face, noting the slider numbers, manually applying them to a default avatar, then saving that out as the shape object.

 

Which leads to the second problem: I only want to change the shape of the face, but the shape object contains dimensions for the whole body. I can't script something that reads the end-user's existing rest-of-body dimensions at runtime because.... there's no Appearance Editor API.

 

But people do sell face shapes. How are they doing it? 

TIA

Edited January 23, 2022 by Sirrella
Correct tag typo

[Mollymews]

as you have found there is no LSL API function to modify the avatar shape

as you point it would be great if Linden were to create a head shape asset that could be merged with an existing shape. This is a often repeated request from residents/users

at the moment all we can do is make the shapes independently as a whole and sell them this way

 

[Quistess Alpha]

21 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

at the moment all we can do is make the shapes independently as a whole and sell them this way

Technically it's possible to export the shape xml, which means that if if someone were comfy using outside-SL tools, it's technically possible to separate head and body parameters of a shape and recombine them, but nobody provides an easy to use tool that would do that, and even if they did, explaining to an average resident how to do a shape import is no small feat.

[Mollymews]

1 minute ago, Quistess Alpha said:

Technically it's possible to export the shape xml, which means that if if someone were comfy using outside-SL tools, it's technically possible to separate head and body parameters of a shape and recombine them, but nobody provides an easy to use tool that would do that, and even if they did, explaining to an average resident how to do a shape import is no small feat.

yes would not be simple

another issue that adds to complexity is permissions compliance. One example amongst others:

if I gave a body shape asset to you with no-modify permissions then by the rules you would not be allowed to merge it with your own shape

or if it were possible to bypass this part then the rule would be that the merged asset would also have to be no-modify (the most restrictive permissions of the two assets)

if not then the CMT permissions system as we currently understand it, would be broken

 

 

[Sirrella]

Thanks for responding

So how do people do it then? I mean, I see lots of just heads for sale with different faces? Or are they just meshes cunningly designed to look ok on the default base avatar settings?

Edited January 24, 2022 by Sirrella
typo

[Quistess Alpha]

2 hours ago, Sirrella said:

So how to people do it then?

In my experience, I've seen shapes (with both body+head parameters) that are modify but not transferable, so that people can write down slider values and manually copy them over. This this means that anyone who uses the shape can "steal" it by putting the values into another shape that is transferable however.

[Sirrella]

OK, that's an interesting approach. But as you say, a bit too easy to pirate.