NUX Avatar

[Drayke Newall]

2 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I'd heard about the 2048x2048 textures but they were always described as ancient—and I arrived in 2006 so they must have been really early-on.

2048 textures were removed completely in 2006 (around mid-late 2006 from memory). The lag was bad from them as, like people still do with 1024's, they used different 2048 textures for each face and they were causing crashes for many video cards.

I also did hear back then when they removed them that any existing 2048 texture had been resized to 1024 automatically, however, the labels were not changed and so they still read 2048. Could be wrong about this though as I dont have any full perm 2048 textures anymore to export them out to verify. There were a few 2048 textures in the Linden Library but they seem gone now as well.

[ChinRey]

16 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

I also did hear back then when they removed them that any existing 2048 texture had been resized to 1024 automatically,

One way to find out...

/me logs on to the beta grid, rummages through her inventory and finds the 2048x1024 she had kept just because she's an incurable packrat.

Apparently not. I tried to download it and it's still at that resolution. I don't have a 2048x2048 or anything bigger but I would assume it's the same with them.

 

3 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

I'm pretty sure it was baked at that quality because those clothing items looked far better.

Texture quality isn't only about resolution and it's not at all unusual to see 512x512s that look sharper and clearer than 1024x1024s.

One very important and always overlooked factor is the scaling algorithm. Nearly all textures we see in SL have been resized at at least one point during the creation and/or uploading. Take a look at this wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_gallery_of_image_scaling_algorithms. It only illustrates a few of the algorithms that exist and don't include the ones I would usually recommend for SL textures but you get the idea.

SL uses a lossy texture compression and that also affects the actual resolution. For some textures the loss of details  is barely if at all noticeable for others it can be very significant.

Then there are lots of tricks good texture artists use to make their texture look sharper and more detailed than they really are. It's hard to quantify and explain, it's all about intuition, experience and attention to detail. But take a look at Crazy Mole's Nautilus textures or Hattie Panacek's Ex Machina and (especially) Rampart Castles ones. Those are two of the greatest texture artists SL has ever seen and it's amazing how much they can squeeze out of a pixel. They can make a 256 look better and sharper than most of us can manage with a 1024.

Edited July 23, 2023 by ChinRey

[Gabriele Graves]

8 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Texture quality isn't only about resolution and it's not at all unusual to see 512x512s that look sharper and clearer than 1024x1024s.

One very important and always overlooked factor is the scaling algorithm. Nearly all textures we see in SL have been resized at at least one point during the creation and/or uploading. Take a look at this wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_gallery_of_image_scaling_algorithms. It only illustrates a few of the algorithms that exist and don't include the ones I would usually recommend for SL textures but you get the idea.

How well a texture handles compression is also important. SL textures are heavily compressed. For some textures the loss of details that causes is barely if at all noticeable for others it can be very significant.

Then there are lots of tricks good texture artists use to make their texture look sharper and more detailed than they really are. It's hard to quantify and explain, it's all about intuition, experience and attention to detail. But take a look at Crazy Mole's Nautilus textures or Hattie Panacek's Ex Machina and (especially) Rampart Castles ones. Those are two of the greatest texture artists SL has ever seen and it's amazing how much they can squeeze out of a pixel. They can make a 256 look better and sharper than most of us can manage with a 1024.

Yes, I'm aware of all of the above but in my opinion they were still baked as 1024x1024 and not 512x512 and I believe I remember that this was general knowledge at the time.

Thanks for coming along and confirming the info about the 2048x2048 textures.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Gabriele Graves

[Drayke Newall]

7 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

One way to find out...

/me logs on to the beta grid, rummages through her inventory and finds the 2048x1024 she had kept just because she's an incurable packrat.

Apparently not. I tried to download it and it's still at that resolution. I don't have a 2048x2048 or anything bigger but I would assume it's the same with them.

Thanks for confirming. I was sceptical of it as the wiki has always maintained that 2048 textures do exist, but it wouldn't be the first time the wiki was wrong either. Good to know they still exist. Shame LL dont use the 2048 terrain textures they had in the library on the only thing they should be allowed on. Terrain.

[ChinRey]

5 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

Shame LL dont use the 2048 terrain textures they had in the library on the only thing they should be allowed on. Terrain.

Oh, don't get me started on terrain! This is a thread about avatars and you don't want a long off topic rant from me here!

[Zalificent Corvinus]

5 hours ago, ChinRey said:

One very important and always overlooked factor is the scaling algorithm. Nearly all textures we see in SL have been resized at at least one point during the creation and/or uploading. Take a look at this wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_gallery_of_image_scaling_algorithms. It only illustrates a few of the algorithms that exist and don't include the ones I would usually recommend for SL textures but you get the idea.

SL uses a lossy texture compression and that also affects the actual resolution. For some textures the loss of details  is barely if at all noticeable for others it can be very significant.

This is why I find people who go on about how they make their textures at "super high quality 8k resolution", then resize them down to 2k resolution, then upload them to SL which auto resizes to 1k resolution, and then saves in a LOSSY compression file format (if i remember right, default quality/compression setting in jpgs generally is 80/20 hence "jpeg vision")., which further stomps on quality, and THEN they complain their textures look bad in SL and wonder why.

 

Think about it, you lovingly paint a 64 pixel 8x8 square detail into your 8k texture, when you resize to 2k, that's averaged out into a 2x2 block of 4 pixels, how much of your "8k quality" do you think that will leave?

Then SL mangles that down to a single pixel, and THEN doesn't even save that properly due to bad compression.

 

Making originals at 8k is a total waste of time and effort.

[Bloodsong Termagant]

so there was a good point made for the NUX/Senra library items to be no transfer, to prevent people from throwing them into their marketplace listings and ripping people off.  seems fair.

 

i'm against no-mod library objects.  : /    but that sounds like tilting at windmills, so onward!

 

DEVKIT LICENSING  QUESTIONS:

what will one be allowed to do -- and NOT do -- with the devkit?

can i edit the avatar body mesh and reupload it as something else.  for example, change the uvs?  can i make a petite version?  what about a giant?  can i make teen/tween/child avatars out of them?  halfings, dwarves, elves, faeries, pixies?  taurians?

can i rip off the arms and chest, then sculpt it and add cuffs and collars to make a shirt that is weighted properly?

 

[elleevelyn]

6 hours ago, Bloodsong Termagant said:

DEVKIT LICENSING  QUESTIONS:

what will one be allowed to do -- and NOT do -- with the devkit?

we just have to wait and see

probably what would kill it dead in terms of people building add-ons for the commercial market would be if Linden apply a Creative Commons license, which has been the general license (to date) for Linden content other than full permissions

Creative Commons license can be justified if Linden is clear that the Senra Dev Kit is only intended as an aid for people to learn how to rig. That anything produced can be transferred (sold even) but the same license applies to the production

and once that people have used the kit to learn then the stated goal is for the people to move on to creating their own commercial products not using the Senra Dev Kit

 

edit add

suppose this license was to happen then we probably see a uptick in free to  under 30-90 days products inworld, as a giftee for new people. And were this to be the case then most Mentors would have a folder of Landmarks to the venues providing giftees. Similar to the landmark folders that  Mentors had back in the day to free product inworld

Edited July 23, 2023 by elleevelyn

[StrykerHawk]

Does that mean we won't  see any more goofy hair, clothes and strange AO from Freebie Galaxy?

 

 

[blissfulbreeze]

Gahhhh, I missed all the excitement! I've been away from SL and logged into the forums to see this thread. I realize NUX avs are not officially released. I did browse through some of the recent pages.

I agree with Patch on this is a focus for new people, not us oldbies. We can't look at it from a 100% oldbie perspective. We have to look at it as brand spanking new thing that one joined called Second Life. Sl is hard enough to learn as it is, let the newbies have easy things!

Just like in other business marketing, they lure you in with freebies and such. Then once you become familiar with the product/company, then you start upgrading/investing.

An upgrade from the awful default hands and feet are a gem of their own! Think positive!

 

*ducks from the tomatoes being thrown*

Edited July 24, 2023 by blissfulbreeze

[Marianne Little]

6 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

I'd suggest that "Mentors" handing out LM's to "cool stores with gifts for you Mr. Noob" should be a code of conduct offense resulting auto-punt kicking from the Mentor Program.

Otherwise, you'll see them handing out LM's to the stores "with gifts" run by their friends, and ALTS.

And this is why I would prefer to see a Senra gift shop in the Welcome Hub. When the newbies pick up items and go to a dressing room, they see what they like or not. If they like it, they can use a Landmark in the gift folder. No pressure.

I would also like a form for quality control, so it will not be items from the freebie galaxy. 

 

 

[Persephone Emerald]

7 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

And this is why I would prefer to see a Senra gift shop in the Welcome Hub. When the newbies pick up items and go to a dressing room, they see what they like or not. If they like it, they can use a Landmark in the gift folder. No pressure.

I would also like a form for quality control, so it will not be items from the freebie galaxy. 

The next time LL rotates the shops in the Shopping region, they could have clothing stores. They don't have any currently. These clothing stores could all have gifts for the Senra avatars. If they have some skin and makeup stores, they could have gifts for the Senra avatars too.

[AmeliaJ08]

4 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

The next time LL rotates the shops in the Shopping region, they could have clothing stores. They don't have any currently. These clothing stores could all have gifts for the Senra avatars. If they have some skin and makeup stores, they could have gifts for the Senra avatars too.

Suspect this might be part of the 'extra' that Patch mentioned in a previous post.

A Senra-only shopping region would make a lot of sense and could tie into reworked tutorials on how to navigate, use vendors, use/manage inventory etc. I don't think there's much benefit in throwing noobies into the mess of decades of free content that may or may not work with their avatar so I'd hope the opportunity would be taken to push them into the entirely new Senra content ecosystem by way of a new mall or something.

Avatar customization is probably the thing that contributes most to SL's savage learning curve, having everything in one place - as much as possible - and an entirely blank slate as far as the body involved would definitely go some way to improving things there.

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[rasterscan]

39 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Avatar customization is probably the thing that contributes most to SL's savage learning curve, having everything in one place - as much as possible - and an entirely blank slate as far as the body involved would definitely go some way to improving things there.

 

Good thinking. I hung at the hub long enough now to know newbies really struggle with their initial avatars. Really struggle. Roll on the NUX rollout. 

[rasterscan]

3 minutes ago, rasterscan said:

 

Mentors help them out brilliantly but it should be easier still. ('scuse double post)

Edited July 24, 2023 by rasterscan

[Marianne Little]

I start to belive that LL will have a Senra market district ready before they release the bodies.

It makes sense - it is really unprofessional when a newbie say: "I do not like these pants. Where can I get other pants?" And the mentors reply: "Eh, we have no stores with clothing yet - but soon!"

So the release went like this: LL staff who never shop for their avatar decide that the Senra avatars are ready, and place them in the Library. And then some who customize their avatar find out and: "But we have nothing for them yet! We agreed that the market district must be finished first!"

I think LL do not bother to remove Senra from the Test grid, because only us oldies has access there. And we had to file at ticket first. So no newbies will go there early on.

[Ajay McDowwll]

I'm glad to hear there's more coming with Jamie and Blake than would appear from their initial presence.  They are 100% an improvement over system avatars (yay!!!), and in order to work for resident retention, they must absolutely be able to be edited in a fashion that incoming people will find aesthetically appealing.  I say this as someone who's visited numerous virtual worlds strictly to experience the new user onboarding process, with a heavy focus on avatar creation. 

I got super bored in 2020.  What can I say?

Over that journey, it was driven home that Second Life's avatar customization options are head and shoulders above the rest with regard to variety and accessibility.  However, that's not something easily achievable for new residents and if people can't make themselves look the way they would like to appear, the majority are going to leave. 

This is not mere speculation.  I came back several times over the course of a few years to one world with a handful of dedicated users, and two of the biggest reasons I haven't been back in ages would be a) the difficulty of creating anything (all creation must be done offworld, and you really need to develop a knowledge of Unity and LUA to do much at all, not to mention using a 3D modeling program), and b) it was horribly difficult to take the avatars any degree past "average," if not flatly impossible.  It's definitely impossible using the out-of-the-gate avatars from that platform.

This isn't just my take; other friends who have visited that world have also left before they could so much as explore what was available because they were so disheartened by the avatar customization options.  The long-time people there are delightful humans, but with no easy way to create and no way to make an avatar representative of themselves (or how they would like to present themselves), new users leave in droves.

I don't want to see that happen in SL with the Senra avatars.  They have excellent potential -- far more so than the world alluded to above, especially with the wealth of creators here -- but the base skins and shapes I've seen shown in this thread are giving me some cause for concern because it appears these avatars, too, will be difficult to take anywhere past "average" at best.  New residents may not have deep pockets nor want to spend money on a virtual world out of the gate, and giving them a viable, attractive option to start with until they decide to invest further into SL can only be a boon to retention.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk/ textwall.

(Patch, I hope this doesn't come across as negative.  I want the entire NUX program to succeed because it could be incredibly helpful to new residents as well as promoting the longevity of Second Life, and I'm hopeful some of the feedback within this thread is taken under consideration or has already been addressed with steps that have not been publicized.)

Edited July 25, 2023 by Ajay McDowwll

[Orwar]

10 minutes ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

Well the mesh body creators don't need to worry about anything.

  Still better colour matched 'bonus bit' than most guys in SL.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

1 minute ago, Orwar said:

  Still better colour matched 'bonus bit' than most guys in SL.

Yeah he's great at wangs

Edited July 25, 2023 by Ingrid Ingersoll

[Persephone Emerald]

11 hours ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

Well the mesh body creators don't need to worry about anything. I wonder if this is why LL has been pretty quiet about it's release. 

[Redacted by moderator]

 

Not bad. You could repost that picture in the Tastefully Naked thread. It's better than some other recent pictures there.

"Adam and Eve in a Virtual New World"

The 2 spheres should be a little smaller though.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Dyna Mole

[Hunny Bunny]

8 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

The 2 spheres should be a little smaller though.

and made of fine brass.

[Persephone Emerald]

3 minutes ago, Hunny Bunny said:

and made of fine brass.

True, but the cylinder does need to be wood.

[SapphireDemonspider]

The bodies are okayish, but whoever made those heads was like:

 

Edited July 25, 2023 by SapphireDemonspider

[Hunny Bunny]

1 minute ago, SapphireDemonspider said:

The bodies are okayish, but whoever made those heads was like:

 

Yeah, seems to be the old move the sliders all the way to the right trick.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

14 minutes ago, SapphireDemonspider said:

The bodies are okayish

We tweaked them as best we could, and both of us are pretty familiar with the sliders. And ended with with okayish. The heads are a dead loss though. 

Edited July 25, 2023 by Ingrid Ingersoll