NUX Avatar

[Casidy Silvercloud]

Maybe I'll go around wearing that cardboard robot av forever, it is kind of cute. I sure hope that senra is more simple than the other mesh bodies I've tried between last night and today. They were all free ones, had promise but failed to deliver. My hopes were too high, or maybe I wasn't high enough. Either way, I gave up already. I'm a quitter lol. I have faith  in you LL, you can deliver! Save us system people from our own selves, please! 

[Ayashe Ninetails]

6 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I agree in general with everything you say, and feel your pain, although of course the main issue is that avatar customization (and most innovations in that regard, the singular exception that I can think of being BOM) has been driven not by the platform (and LL) itself, but by individual creators, all creating their own standards and approaches. From what I understand, LL didn't even intend, initially, that mesh should be applied to avatar bodies and (eventually) heads, and were caught a little by surprise when that started to happen.

There are two slightly conflicting goals here: the first is, as you say, to make customization as easy as possible for noobs within their first hour in SL. For that something like the centralized, well-organized, and intuitive "character creation screen" that you see at the beginning of so many games is obviously the route to go. I don't know how difficult that would be to add to the viewer code, but I'd imagine it wouldn't be easy. BUT you could produce a sort of cheat version using well-designed HUDs, I think. Think of the inventory and wardrobe organization system that's quite popular -- I've forgotten what it's called. Something like that, except simpler to use.

The system would never become universal, because a well-designed HUD that allows you to change your appearance comprehensively likely wouldn't be adopted by creators who are making only one element in that appearance. LeLutka is not going to design a system that allows you to easily and intuitively change your hair, for instance. And the idea of creators here standardizing is frankly pretty laughable: they're too busy trying to one-up each other with sparkly new innovations.

But the second goal, teaching noobs how to use the systems and mechanisms that are in practice already "standard" in SL requires an instructional approach that doesn't provide a single, simple, and intuitive system because, as you note, that's not how customization actually works in SL. A simple customization system at the beginning does nothing to prepare them for the grim realities of actually using commercially-available parts and elements.

Maybe something like a two-level approach might work? Provide them with the option of using a simple system straight off, or of learning how customization works "in the wild" through a more complicated, but hopefully well-explained, approach?

Fully agree! And to clarify, I don't blame LL for the convoluted system we've got now in the third-party market. I do think, though, that they should capitalize on the fact that some of us are exhausted and want something easier to play with sometimes. 😩😄

I do find myself sometimes wishing we had standards. Yeah I know, standards are impossible, but we did it for the neckline! It's difficult these days to buy a random head that doesn't use the SLUV neck (or work with neck extenders that do). Why not body standards so clothes just FIT? Yeah yeah yeah, wishful thinking. 🤣

[KathrynLisbeth]

2 hours ago, Orwar said:

   I won't pretend to understand the theory behind it - but I think it should!

The Gray ear thing (EvoX).  If not wearing a universal layer at all,  face will appear gray.    If wearing a universal layer with NONE set as the texture option for that channel,  object will be clear / invisible.   I think of it as grey = undetermined,  none = none

1 hour ago, Marianne Little said:

I think I have read that to make the universal layer work with a tattoo, the skin under has to be made using left and right arm first.....I do not remember the technical reason why it is so.....

For bakes on Mesh purposes, The way I visualize universals, tattoos, and clothing layers, as well as body skin, system eyes, system hair / hairbase is:

They are Containers for the 11 possible Bake Channels, and can hold one texture per channel slot.  Only the universal contains all the slots, so the other layers are more limited in scope.

In an idealized setting (like a universal layer), think of a Layer as an image with a singular function.  This image would be divided into the component textures assigned to the relevant channels.    Those then are ready to be worn/added and 'broadcast' to an object face.

The object face itself is the item that 'decides' what channel to grab.  The object face itself is the item that 'instructs' the How the texture will map (paint) the object. 

So that means one needs to mod the left arm to grab the left arm tattoo channel,  and one needs to have a layer that holds the relevant textures in that channel.

Now in actual practice it is a bit more jumbled.. but that is another story.

2 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

It is very logical, LL will not kill business for all the mesh body and head sellers.

Ruth 2.0 with interchangeable / separate object feet has been available for years.    It's free.   That and the 1$L and 10$L versions don't appear to have caused that much damage.    

Of course Most of the why to pick a body type is going to be artistic esthetics of the whole body.   This is what drives the desire to upgrade / change / spend money.

It is more that one can consider interchangeable feet as the lesser option to 'automagic flipper feet' as found in the high end bodies.    Since is not automagic and uses up an additional attachment point or two.    

Edited July 19, 2023 by KathrynLisbeth

[Scylla Rhiadra]

33 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

And to clarify, I don't blame LL for the convoluted system we've got now in the third-party market.

Oh, I do.

LL's hands-off approach to innovation within the platform has produced a lot of really cool stuff, but overall it has produced an absolute mess. It is not impossible to enable a competitive and creative environment for individual innovation while still enforcing some basic standards. As you note, the new standard for neck sizes is one example (although not, I think, originating from LL? And certainly not universally enforced).

But an even better example is BOM. LL created the standards by which this would be applied by individuals because, well, they had to for it to work at all. I see no reason why a series of standards fir things like mapping and HUDs could not be applied, although they might be difficult to enforce.

Right now, it's a bit like the early days of railroads, where every individual railroad company was using its own gauge of track, and so travel across and between different rail networks was impossible. This is not an insoluble problem.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Scylla Rhiadra
Missing Word

[KathrynLisbeth]

6 hours ago, Patch Linden said:

 Remember, these are for new users, they don't even know how to change shoes yet!  😁   We will either tackle that later, perhaps on another body, or leave it to the creator community to come up with something cool!  

Of course they don't know how to change shoes.   It is actually technical.   Would need mentoring.

The creator community did come up with 2 somethings:  interchangeable / separate object feet  or 'High end' automagic flipper feet.   

While the option posited by Theresa Tennyson works.  One can have a foot replacement built into the shoe and use an Alpha layer to negate the existing foot.  There is an erratic bug where if object face is set to Alpha Masking or None & a transparent texture (or transparent composite texture) on the face,   because the 'phases of the moon'  it just up and reverts to Alpha Blended and Breaks it.  Is why I forgot about that mechanism earlier in the thread.

Edited July 19, 2023 by KathrynLisbeth

[Ayashe Ninetails]

3 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Oh, I do.

LL's hands-off approach to innovation within the platform has produced a lot of really cool stuff, but overall it has produced an absolute mess. It is not impossible to enable a competitive and creative environment for individual innovation while still enforcing some basic standards. As you note, the new standard for neck sizes is one example (although not, I think, originating from LL? And certainly not universally enforced).

But an even better example is BOM. LL created the standards by which this would be applied by individuals because, well, they had to for it to work at all. I see no reason why a series of standards things like mapping and HUDs could not be applied, although they might be difficult to enforce.

Right now, it's a bit like the early days of railroads, where every individual railroad company was using its own gauge of track, and so travel across and between different rail networks was impossible. This is not an insoluble problem.

That's a good point, though I do understand their general aversion to getting involved in...let's just call it "third-party affairs." Body wars, head wars, all that stuff. It's messy, and yeah, if they implemented some type of standards now, it'd wreck, oh, everything. Speaking of - I have no idea who started the standard SLUV neck thing. It wasn't LL, though.

Could/Should they have made a NUX many years ago? Yup! Long before the list of bodies being worn reached comic levels. Do I blame them for avoiding doing that - not really. I wouldn't want to take that on, either.😄

That said, do I think they should go full yolo NOW and make something so easy for new users and so solid and cute and easy to support that it does *not* need upgrading to a third-party system down the road? Um...yeah? It's time!

 

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

😩😂 Body management system. Documentation. Instructions. Layers.

Buzz-words, yay!

[Love Zhaoying]

14 minutes ago, KathrynLisbeth said:

flipper feet.   

Flipper feet, for Mer-people!

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

I'd actually wear that hair in the picture.  Unorthodox has something similar called Scalpz which I love.  It's a skull cap you set to the Lelutka head you're wearing and then apply different hairbases that are made specifically for it.   I just don't think calling it Hair on the NUX avatar is ideal.  It's confusing.  It's a hairbase if anything.  Women are going to put that on and say, "WTF?"

I assume you called it right - it's really a "hairbase", but following the standard Library convention, LL just put it in the "Hair" folder.  "README" notes sure would help, or sumpin'. Or if "hair" designed to just be "hairbases" had a different icon, etc. 

[KathrynLisbeth]

23 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Flipper feet, for Mer-people!

And with all the flippers,   TURBO SPEED.

[Hunny Bunny]

26 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Flipper feet, for Mer-people!

Actually this is a great idea.

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Hunny Bunny said:

Actually this is a great idea.

Thanks, I thought so too!

[Katherine Heartsong]

2 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I have done this in hundreds of other places outside of SL and it's never needed anything more than 2 minutes if you aren't the type of person to live in character creation (up to 2 hours if you are...just sayin'...). I guess I'm not understanding why things function so differently here.

This.

There is a massive gap between the way every other really good, modern character creation (aka avatar customization) system works and SL. And I do mean massive. This is also an expectation gap ... players come in here thinking it'll be just like every other game they can customize and avatar in and boom ... it's not. Expectation != SL reality. It disappoints new users. That's not a good thing.

Whether you want to spend two minutes just changing your outfit and your height, or two+ hours tweaking every little thing and seeing what every toggle/button/slider does in every other those better avatar customization systems, they are always far easier than SLs and make us look like something 20 years out of date.

I get that SL is now at a point where we have head and body and shape and skin sellers galore so if we did change this, every body and head place would go out of business tomorrow and therefore SL will never change. Ever. The golden goose and all that. The long-term people here would howl with rage (me included, since I spent 10s of thousands making Katherine just perfect).

And to @Scylla Rhiadra's point ... it's because it's in the hands of individual (often amazing) creators and not the designers of SL (LL) that we got here, for better or worse.

But if y'all don't see that character customization in SL is one of the major problems attracting new gamers (yes, I said gamers) to this platform, and one of the most frustrating and difficult things to do for your avatar for new players, I can't help but think you're being deliberately naive and stuck stubbornly in the past.

I showed a friend, btw, the hurdles you have to jump through to customize your avatar. They laughed and went back to the Sims. I took less than 5 minutes to make a stunning avatar in the Palia alpha test. All those other platforms have SL character customization beat hands down and out to next week and back.

I can't even imagine what the next five years will bring to every other platform in terms of character customization user experiences.

I'm with @Ayashe Ninetails ... I think LL should bring a full avatar customization engine into the game that will allow a user to create an avatar that would be on par with those being sold by the major vendors. Why not? They want users attarcted to the platform and reduce the disconnect from their expectations? Do it.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Orwar]

1 hour ago, KathrynLisbeth said:

The Gray ear thing (EvoX).  If not wearing a universal layer at all,  face will appear gray.    If wearing a universal layer with NONE set as the texture option for that channel,  object will be clear / invisible.   I think of it as grey = undetermined,  none = none

   I found what the problem was, had a second universal layer on waaaay down in the inventory for tinting my skin tone. But then, that means that you can't both have a universal layer to add, say, a tattoo, and then a second alpha layer to act as a mask for, say, a tight sleeve. If it's just a question of 'on or off' on the whole face, that's .. Hardly a substitute for an actual alpha where you can draw what stays and what doesn't. 

11 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

There is a massive gap between the way every other really good, modern character creation (aka avatar customization) system works and SL. And I do mean massive. This is also an expectation gap ... players come in here thinking it'll be just like every other game they can customize and avatar in and boom ... it's not. Expectation != SL reality. It disappoints new users. That's not a good thing.

   Trouble is, the difference is what makes it so that we can be whatever we want to be in SL; the avatars' components are designed by users. Most video games with good character creation are nowhere near as diverse in the options we have. And if you have to go buy those components before you can add them to your avatar, it's hard to put them in a character editor (unless you want to make a really micro-transaction-looking interface where you'll have buttons to buy L$ to then directly buy mesh bodies and heads and hairs and stuff on the first screen a user sees).

   But it could be worthwhile considering making an interface to set up your avatar before entering world, with just the NUX stuff, if it has sufficient guidance for how to actually manage your avatars' components - what such a thing would require to make possible though, I have no idea. 

[Gabriele Graves]

My opinion on this hasn't changed and especially now after this latest LL mistake and subsequent excuse-waffle about the feet.  New users are most likely going to want to ditch Senra as soon as they are comfortable spending money.  They are going to talk and listen to many other users telling them how basic their body is and that they should upgrade to get a normal set of features.

[sirhc DeSantis]

Fascinating. Not one to get in to the mesh stuff body wise but the 'NUX' stuff was on Aditi on Genesis this morning and on fresh install of SL viewer this evening still. Well done LL. Not bad at all. Easy to chop and change twixt Trixie and the new stuff.

You do all know the Beta grid exists yes?

[Ayashe Ninetails]

8 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

This.

There is a massive gap between the way every other really good, modern character creation (aka avatar customization) system works and SL. And I do mean massive. This is also an expectation gap ... players come in here thinking it'll be just like every other game they can customize and avatar in and boom ... it's not. Expectation != SL reality.

Whether you want to spend two minutes just changing your outfit and your height, or two+ hours tweaking every little thing and seeing what every toggle/button/slider does in every other those better avatar customization systems, they are always far easier than SLs and make us look like something 20 years out of date.

I get that SL is now at a point where we have head and body and shape and skin sellers galore so if we did change this, every body and head place would go out of business tomorrow and therefore SL will never change. Ever. The golden goose and all that. The long-term people here would howl with rage (me included, since I spent 10s of thousands making Katherine just perfect).

But if y'all don't see that character customization in SL is one of the major problems attracting new gamers (yes, I said gamers) to this platform, and one of the most frustrating and difficult things to do for your avatar for new players, I can't help but think you're being deliberately naive and stuck stubbornly in the past.

I can't even imagine what the next five years will bring to every other platform in terms of character customization user experiences.

Yup, and it's too far gone now to change, and that's seriously unfortunate. We'd lose so much money if it did.

As to the bolded, look at Black Desert Online. I'd say that system is far ahead of its time, but you can actually model your face and body like clay. Move the mouse over the face or body and it highlights into a grid of sections. Grab a part - a cheek, eyebrow, chin, lip corner, bicep, and push and pull, twist and slide, rotate and mold yourself in real-time. This also works with the hair - you can grab your bangs or wisps of hair and move them, elongate them, shorten, push them here and there, and adjust the overall volume.

The Sims 4 has a similar system (for face and body...not hair). These will likely get better with time, but most games seem to be doing fine just using the standard "pick a face, now push these sliders around" system, too. Those work because they're easy, fast, and players have seen them thousands of times across a bunch of different genres.

Really - make a character in Dragon Age Inquisition and you'll be able to make one in Cyberpunk 2077. It all translates well.

8 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   Trouble is, the difference is what makes it so that we can be whatever we want to be in SL; the avatars' components are designed by users. Most video games with good character creation are nowhere near as diverse in the options we have. And if you have to go buy those components before you can add them to your avatar, it's hard to put them in a character editor (unless you want to make a really micro-transaction-looking interface where you'll have buttons to buy L$ to then directly buy mesh bodies and heads and hairs and stuff on the first screen a user sees).

   But it could be worthwhile considering making an interface to set up your avatar before entering world, with just the NUX stuff, if it has sufficient guidance for how to actually manage your avatars' components - what such a thing would require to make possible though, I have no idea. 

Good points! And that's the tradeoff - we can do just about anything here while other systems do limit you (sort of...there ARE cat people n dragons n stuffs...). But maybe there can be two systems? Something basic aimed at newbies and casual avatar wearers and the one we have now where we can do ridiculous things like give our avatars visible spines...

Hmm...

[Gabriele Graves]

I don't play games and so have no idea about how new characters are created elsewhere.  That said even I can see there has got to be a better way to customise an avatar.  The problem as I see it is that we have the worst of a franken-organically-grown-cobbled together system from spare parts of support that aren't really meant for their purpose.  If there truly was a properly designed and modern system I can absolutely imagine it would blow away what we have today.  That's the difference between having a design and a goal and not having either of those things.

[Orwar]

5 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

My opinion on this hasn't changed and especially now after this latest LL mistake and subsequent excuse-waffle about the feet.

   If I could be bothered to, I'd have at making some foot replacements .. But they'd end up looking like something suitable for a hobbit. 

   .. Hey, there's a product idea. Heeled hobbit feet, perhaps? Or will it put the foot fetishist communities into overdrive?

[Love Zhaoying]

On the plus side, only flat feet can be used to "waffle stomp"!

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I assume you called it right - it's really a "hairbase", but following the standard Library convention, LL just put it in the "Hair" folder.  "README" notes sure would help, or sumpin'. Or if "hair" designed to just be "hairbases" had a different icon, etc. 

No, it's an object like hair is an object.  It's not a tattoo layer like most every other hairbase in SL.  

[Gabriele Graves]

2 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

No, it's an object like hair is an object.  It's not a tattoo layer like most every other hairbase in SL.  

That's just LL showing everyone how to do it properly after being at least 10 years late to the party. /s

[Scylla Rhiadra]

52 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

There is a massive gap between the way every other really good, modern character creation (aka avatar customization) system works and SL. And I do mean massive. This is also an expectation gap ... players come in here thinking it'll be just like every other game they can customize and avatar in and boom ... it's not. Expectation != SL reality. It disappoints new users. That's not a good thing.

I totally agree. I'm not at all sure that, in terms of the economics of it, avatar customization is not even more important than sex in SL!  (*ducks below the parapet*)

Whether it's because you're used to the system used in common FPS games, or because you want to "play Barbies" (as the common expression is), avatar customization is vital. It's even really important to photographers like myself.

52 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

And to @Scylla Rhiadra's point ... it's because it's in the hands of individual (often amazing) creators and not the designers of SL (LL) that we got here, for better or worse.

Of course. I'm not at all in disagreement.

What I'm suggesting, to be clear, is not that LL "take over" content creation. That would be a disaster. Rather, I'm arguing for a set of standards, established in consultation between LL and the larger community of content creators. Much as, I think, BOM was established.

And again, that really needn't infringe on individual creativity. The W3C has established standards for HTML, CSS, and such, but I don't think it has stifled the creativity of web sites. Manufacturers of tools established set gauges for Allen keys, and it facilitated creativity.

And clearly new standards should supplement rather than forcibly replace older practices, so that content isn't broken. I don't see why that shouldn't work -- at worst, it could hardly put us in a more difficult place than the current situation which has made it extremely difficult to find head skins, tattoos, and makeup that are not made for LeLu EvoX.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Scylla Rhiadra
Typo

[Scylla Rhiadra]

23 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

New users are most likely going to want to ditch Senra as soon as they are comfortable spending money.  They are going to talk and listen to many other users telling them how basic their body is and that they should upgrade to get a normal set of features.

I'm pretty sure this is a feature, not a bug.

Again, it's about finding that "sweet spot," providing something that will keep noobs happy long enough that they've decided they want to invest real money in their avatars.

Has LL achieved that? I'm honestly not sure.

[Ceka Cianci]

I haven't read this thread in a couple of weeks.. did I miss something new recently with the NUX avatars?

As active as this thread is right now, it sounds like I might have.. hehehe