NUX Avatar

[Innula Zenovka]

3 hours ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

I'd want a HUD for feet height and nail lengths and other fine details. You can't omit them if you want anyone to use the body beyond the first three or four months - and if people are going to abandon it ASAP, what's the point?

I'm really not sure it's safe to move from "I wouldn't use the body for beyond the first three or four months without this feature" to "People in general won't use it for longer than that without it."  

The point of the NUX body, as I understand it, is to give people a reasonably decent-looking mesh body, head and wardrobe to start out out, which they can later replace with a more versatile and fully-featured body if they find they enjoy tweaking their appearance, or they can stick with it  if their interests lie elsewhere.   

In the meantime, they've got something to learn on, as they explore the mysteries of changing their appearance and outfits without having to buy L$, then find and buy a mesh body and some clothes in order not to look like obviously new accounts.

If it gets people to stick around long enough to consider buying a fully-featured mesh body, then it'll have served its purpose as far as LL is concerned, I would think.  

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by Innula Zenovka

[Ati Thei]

Not only 10 years too late but not even close to 3rd party solutions. A multi million dollar company can't afford professional grade 3D artist?

Also this doesn't appear to be an entirely new body system but just a mesh worn on top of the system body.  I don't see this dealing with the whole body clusterfudge mess that currently is.

If it's even technologically possible, I'd much rather to see some kind of compatibility layer. Every year a new body comes out, and old stuff don't work because nobody will update  tens or hundreds products.

[Theresa Tennyson]

9 hours ago, Cinos Field said:

Why a HUD instead of simply attachable, different parts? It's a senseless waste to have three or more nail lengths and foot positions always glued onto the body.

There are two basic approaches to dressing ones' avatar. You can either set up outfits in advance or dress your avatar on an a la carte basis each time. I use saved outfits heavily; I greatly prefer worn alphas and removable body parts. People who dress their avatars with individual pieces generally prefer the alpha HUD system and switchable feet.

This is also getting into the "Babs, there is no farmer" zone, as BOM will make it quite easy to just wear feet and shoes as a single unit which means that "foot heights" won't really matter.

[Lewis Luminos]

26 minutes ago, Ati Thei said:

Not only 10 years too late but not even close to 3rd party solutions. A multi million dollar company can't afford professional grade 3D artist?

A commercial-grade perfect body is literally the LAST thing they should be doing. It would kill avatar commerce in SL stone-dead, and without avatar commerce, there is no SL.

The starter body should be exactly what it is - a decent (but not perfect) avatar that's good enough to achieve user-retention in the first few months, and a stepping stone to a full-featured commercial body without the horrendous learning curve that new users currently have to fight through.

With the NUX body they can get used to what a mesh body and head are, so there's less of a technology leap when they finally decide to get something better.  And this way they can go a few months so they can learn properly,rather than shreiking in horror at the classic avatars and wondering why they can't look like the avatars in all the pictures without spending L$10,000 or more. It's no wonder so many new users give up and quit within a month.

30 minutes ago, Ati Thei said:

Also this doesn't appear to be an entirely new body system but just a mesh worn on top of the system body. 

Which is exactly what commercial mesh bodies are and what any future mesh body will be. However perfect the mesh body is, the system body will still be there underneath. You cant change that without rebuilding SL from the ground up ditching SL altogether and building something different from the ground up. And we already saw what happened to that idea, with Sansar.

33 minutes ago, Ati Thei said:

If it's even technologically possible, I'd much rather to see some kind of compatibility layer. Every year a new body comes out, and old stuff don't work because nobody will update  tens or hundreds products.

Don't know what you mean by a "compatibility layer" but deformers are definitely possible. For example, Signature has a new body, David, which is more muscular than Gianni, but it includes a defomer so it will fit with Gianni's clothes. This is a genius move. Legacy did the same when their female body was first released, with a deformer that allowed it to wear some other body's clothes (I think it was Maitreya but I'm not 100% sure). I don't think it's really needed any more with the support that Legacy has now but for any new body, being able to wear clothes that are already out there is pretty much a necessity now.  Failure to do that and you'll end up with a body that no-one will use because there's nothing to wear, and clothing makers won't start supporting a body that no-one is using.  You have to break that deadlock early on, or the body is doomed to fail.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Ati Thei said:

Also this doesn't appear to be an entirely new body system but just a mesh worn on top of the system body.  I don't see this dealing with the whole body clusterfudge mess that currently is.

If it's even technologically possible, I'd much rather to see some kind of compatibility layer. Every year a new body comes out, and old stuff don't work because nobody will update  tens or hundreds products.

I think this is the best solution to be honest especially from an end users perspective.

We keep the legacy body intact so no old content is lost.

There is no confusion with two types of built in body.

This can be used as an entry point into the SL fashion and body ecosystems and allow those to be taught as part of the new user experience, it should even get decent 3rd party support if we get a blender dev kit.

It's going to be a game changer for new people entering SL.

[Mollymews]

it doesn't have to be an either/or situation

Linden (if they don't have the time in-house to do it all themselves) could commission an addon/plugin as a work-for-hire for both Maya and Blender.  The commissions could be done independently by different work-for-hire developers with a Linden person coordinating the projects

not sure how the Avastar, MayaStar, others? developers would be placed to take on such a commission if this were to happen.

also never know, Patch Linden might decide to make Moles out of those interested/capable of doing this

[Love Zhaoying]

On 6/26/2022 at 10:48 AM, Drayke Newall said:

When I said old BoM i meant system layers and am hoping that the new NUX body wont be like current bodies where it goes over the default body and hides it but an entire replacement of the default mesh aka not BoM as we know it now but solely system layers as it was pre mesh bodies.

Agree 100%!!

[Lucia Nightfire]

16 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Maitreya may do something different (make the layers whole separate attachments? certainly possible), but at least Jake's onion layers are separate links so with the Mod version it's possible to just unlink and delete all but the ones you want. (They have handy names so it would be easy to do it with a script, but I did it by hand as "editor therapy.")

I'd removed all scripts by then so can't say whether they'd "find" the remaining links and still work.

It's quite astonishing how little difference this makes to rendering complexity as reported by the viewer. I understand the viewer really does not render full alpha textured attachments, so maybe that's more legit than it seems.

Most people are not going to bother. It is a PITA to separate the mess. There are third party scripts to do it if people bother searching or are lucky enough to stumble upon them.

Not counting towards complexity is one thing, not counting towards downloading/bandwidth is another.

I talked with the creator them self. They gave every excuse under the sun, that pretty much translated to "Don't make me do anything, I just want to hear cha ching all day while I recline in my chair." They seem to not actually be in control of design at all. They cited various people who actually do all the designing and scripting changes of the body, skins and HUD and are mostly just someone who has to wait on them to become available to be hired to make changes. It's a joke, but I'm not laughing.

 

[Ezbeharra]

2 hours ago, Lewis Luminos said:

A commercial-grade perfect body is literally the LAST thing they should be doing. It would kill avatar commerce in SL stone-dead, and without avatar commerce, there is no SL.

The starter body should be exactly what it is - a decent (but not perfect) avatar that's good enough to achieve user-retention in the first few months, and a stepping stone to a full-featured commercial body without the horrendous learning curve that new users currently have to fight through.

With the NUX body they can get used to what a mesh body and head are, so there's less of a technology leap when they finally decide to get something better.  And this way they can go a few months so they can learn properly,rather than shreiking in horror at the classic avatars and wondering why they can't look like the avatars in all the pictures without spending L$10,000 or more. It's no wonder so many new users give up and quit within a month.

I feel that this really makes the point well but I want to call out the thing that I feel at least some people in this discussion know but are avoiding, and others may be missing entirely. A large portion of the SL population, both established and incoming, is made of people here for lewd purposes, either entirely or at least to some extent. I am not ashamed to count myself among this group. Well, maybe a little ashamed, since I did make this alt specifically for it. But anyway, when people like me are being "meshist" as I've seen one blogger call it, it's not because we think someone's flipper feet or telltale linden mouth shape invalidate their opinion of Proust or whatever.

Even for people who aren't here for that, I think the possibility of it is still tantalizing. It's appealing enough that they want to feel like it's accessible to them, even if they choose not to engage with it. It's exciting to be hot, or to at least think you are.

This, to me, is something that really sets SL apart from Meta and other sexless dystopian nightmare simulators. In those things, the body is minimized, largely abstract and symbolic, a place to which you can affix brand identifications or maybe some kind of identity symbols, and otherwise serves only as an embodiment of your buying power in a techbro consumer hellscape. But SL, largely in spite of LL rather than because of it, celebrates the body, not just sexually but in all kinds of physicality. People want to be part of that. People want to look cool, look hot, look sexy, look awesome. They want to engage in a virtual social presentation of self that mirrors the physical world's social presentation of self, extended by being freed of all the limitations the physical world imposes.

Dragging their feet on upgrading the basic avatar has always felt like a kind of denial on LL's part, like they don't want to admit that SL can be (and often is) sexy, and I'm not even talking about the adult content here. This announcement seems like a certain degree of acceptance that people really do want to have a body here, and all that implies, not just a costume, not just a collection of brands and logos and identity symbols. I'm not saying we're all gonna wanna jump its bento bones but it will definitely create a better experience for the new user going to the nude beach and not looking like something that washed up on it when they stand next to someone decked out in all the latest. 

The NUX avatar doesn't have to look as good as the person who dropped L$10K+, it just has to not look like someone should be calling security or an ambulance when standing next to that L$10K avatar.

[Persephone Emerald]

19 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

I'd argue leaving the V6 "BOM" body in onion layer form factor and not separating it like Maitreya did was another thing they got wrong.

It doesn't matter that the Belleza layers are not separated. because they include a modifiable version that allows stripping off the onion layers with a simple script available on MP . Once the applier layers are stripped off the Modifiable version of Belleza bodies, their ARC drops to about half of that for a Maitreya Body with it's BOM layer.

Edited June 30, 2022 by Persephone Emerald

[Persephone Emerald]

1 hour ago, Ezbeharra said:

I feel that this really makes the point well but I want to call out the thing that I feel at least some people in this discussion know but are avoiding, and others may be missing entirely. A large portion of the SL population, both established and incoming, is made of people here for lewd purposes, either entirely or at least to some extent. I am not ashamed to count myself among this group. Well, maybe a little ashamed, since I did make this alt specifically for it. But anyway, when people like me are being "meshist" as I've seen one blogger call it, it's not because we think someone's flipper feet or telltale linden mouth shape invalidate their opinion of Proust or whatever.

Even for people who aren't here for that, I think the possibility of it is still tantalizing. It's appealing enough that they want to feel like it's accessible to them, even if they choose not to engage with it. It's exciting to be hot, or to at least think you are.

This, to me, is something that really sets SL apart from Meta and other sexless dystopian nightmare simulators. In those things, the body is minimized, largely abstract and symbolic, a place to which you can affix brand identifications or maybe some kind of identity symbols, and otherwise serves only as an embodiment of your buying power in a techbro consumer hellscape. But SL, largely in spite of LL rather than because of it, celebrates the body, not just sexually but in all kinds of physicality. People want to be part of that. People want to look cool, look hot, look sexy, look awesome. They want to engage in a virtual social presentation of self that mirrors the physical world's social presentation of self, extended by being freed of all the limitations the physical world imposes.

Dragging their feet on upgrading the basic avatar has always felt like a kind of denial on LL's part, like they don't want to admit that SL can be (and often is) sexy, and I'm not even talking about the adult content here. This announcement seems like a certain degree of acceptance that people really do want to have a body here, and all that implies, not just a costume, not just a collection of brands and logos and identity symbols. I'm not saying we're all gonna wanna jump its bento bones but it will definitely create a better experience for the new user going to the nude beach and not looking like something that washed up on it when they stand next to someone decked out in all the latest. 

The NUX avatar doesn't have to look as good as the person who dropped L$10K+, it just has to not look like someone should be calling security or an ambulance when standing next to that L$10K avatar.

Second Life, we don't just have feet - we have sexy feet!

[Anicha Heartsong]

4 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Second Life, we don't just have feet - we have sexy feet!

Hey, Lindens, this should be the new strap line.

[Qie Niangao]

6 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

It doesn't matter that the Belleza layers are not separated. because they include a modifiable version that allows stripping off the onion layers with a simple script available on MP . Once the applier layers are stripped off the Modifiable version of Belleza bodies, their ARC drops to about half of that for a Maitreya Body with it's BOM layer.

That saved me writing it myself, which I literally was about to do after reading Lucy's post until seeing yours. And fortunately the scripts in Jake are competent enough to keep working even after the other layers are removed. (At least the ones I tried, which are the only ones I use; presumably the "Layers" tab is pretty much a no-op at this point.)

Also, you're right, it does have a significant impact on complexity. My measurements are too messy to report, but consistently substantially lower for the layers-removed Jake, reducing the reported complexity by almost half. (To be fair, though, even the layer-lathered Jake is far from the most extravagantly complex male body out there.)

--------------------

My main hope for these NUX bodies is to raise standards for third party bodies, which I think are dreadfully disappointing at least among the high volume models, all due to stupid decisions by the creators (or perhaps their half-witted marketing advisors). But I've already griped about that in this thread; I'd just add that the NUX bodies must achieve some level of success, and be retained by users for some interval, in order to apply that much-needed pressure.

And, of course, they must not make the same unforgivably stupid mistakes: At a minimum, they must be modifiable and provide all dev kit materials to anybody who asks. That is, they must be in the spiritual tradition of the original system bodies in terms of creative openness—which is to say, the polar opposite of mainstream mesh body makers who imagine every eyelash a proprietary triumph to be protected at all cost.

[Mollymews]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

I'd just add that the NUX bodies must achieve some level of success, and be retained by users for some interval, in order to apply that much-needed pressure

am pretty sure that it will come down to how many skins and clothes compatible for the body is going to made available for sale by creators

if there is not much stuff to obtain/buy for it then people will move to the 3rd-party bodies

[Phil Deakins]

14 hours ago, Lewis Luminos said:

A commercial-grade perfect body is literally the LAST thing they should be doing. It would kill avatar commerce in SL stone-dead, and without avatar commerce, there is no SL.

Yeah, just like there was no SL before mesh came in 🤣

[Love Zhaoying]

30 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

Yeah, just like there was no SL before mesh came in 🤣

Back then, instead of "avatar commerce", we all just sold each other Prims!

No mesh, no sculpties - everything was a Prim! House? Prims! Avatar? Prims! Attachment? Prims!

And to all of you who say, "But, we've got to have mesh!" I say, "Get off my lawn!"

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Mollymews said:

if there is not much stuff to obtain/buy for it then people will move to the 3rd-party bodies

Out of context, this sounds like a description of OBE's!

[Ezbeharra]

2 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

My main hope for these NUX bodies is to raise standards for third party bodies, which I think are dreadfully disappointing at least among the high volume models, all due to stupid decisions by the creators (or perhaps their half-witted marketing advisors). But I've already griped about that in this thread; I'd just add that the NUX bodies must achieve some level of success, and be retained by users for some interval, in order to apply that much-needed pressure.

And, of course, they must not make the same unforgivably stupid mistakes: At a minimum, they must be modifiable and provide all dev kit materials to anybody who asks. That is, they must be in the spiritual tradition of the original system bodies in terms of creative openness—which is to say, the polar opposite of mainstream mesh body makers who imagine every eyelash a proprietary triumph to be protected at all cost.

Raising the standards of 3rd party bodies would be a nice secondary effect but I don't think that's the point and I don't think that's how NUX's success should be measured. A couple of days ago, I spent 10 minutes helping a 3 week old account I found standing alone at a sex club switch from a newbie avatar to one of the free Altamura bodies you can get at places like Helping Haven, and this person was absolutely overjoyed. "Thank you for making me pretty!!" Even an avatar with skin you can't change and you can hardly find clothes for was such a massive improvement for them. That's how you measure success for NUX and the bar is extremely low.

As for dev/makers kits, I can't imagine LL is going to gatekeep this, but I will also point out that the mesh makers kit for Tonic bodies has been available to anyone for L$100 and that has done jack all to help more items get produced for those bodies (I am a long suffering owner of the lovely but neglected Tonic Curvy; the struggle is real) or help with their popularity. Maitreya gets lots of love because it's ubiquitous, other bodies get love if the creator is able to create enough hype to get a big clothes maker on board. NUX will be ubiquitous and only needs to be good enough that people are willing to spend a little to hang some clothes on its back.

[Ati Thei]

14 hours ago, Lewis Luminos said:

A commercial-grade perfect body is literally the LAST thing they should be doing. It would kill avatar commerce in SL stone-dead, and without avatar commerce, there is no SL.

The starter body should be exactly what it is - a decent (but not perfect) avatar that's good enough to achieve user-retention in the first few months, and a stepping stone to a full-featured commercial body without the horrendous learning curve that new users currently have to fight through.

With the NUX body they can get used to what a mesh body and head are, so there's less of a technology leap when they finally decide to get something better.  And this way they can go a few months so they can learn properly,rather than shreiking in horror at the classic avatars and wondering why they can't look like the avatars in all the pictures without spending L$10,000 or more. It's no wonder so many new users give up and quit within a month.

Which is exactly what commercial mesh bodies are and what any future mesh body will be. However perfect the mesh body is, the system body will still be there underneath. You cant change that without rebuilding SL from the ground up ditching SL altogether and building something different from the ground up. And we already saw what happened to that idea, with Sansar.

Don't know what you mean by a "compatibility layer" but deformers are definitely possible. For example, Signature has a new body, David, which is more muscular than Gianni, but it includes a defomer so it will fit with Gianni's clothes. This is a genius move. Legacy did the same when their female body was first released, with a deformer that allowed it to wear some other body's clothes (I think it was Maitreya but I'm not 100% sure). I don't think it's really needed any more with the support that Legacy has now but for any new body, being able to wear clothes that are already out there is pretty much a necessity now.  Failure to do that and you'll end up with a body that no-one will use because there's nothing to wear, and clothing makers won't start supporting a body that no-one is using.  You have to break that deadlock early on, or the body is doomed to fail.

No, it won't kill commerce, market will simply adapt. Just like when mesh came out and it killed lots of brands but many new were established. SL hasn't gone anywhere... The only way to kill SL is to try to sanitize it and make it PEGI like they did with Sansar.

Companies going out of business is completely natural. Apple pretty much killed Dark Sky app when they upgraded their own iOS weather app. Does it suck for Dark Sky? Yes. But as user I like that I don't have to install yet another app for basic functionality.

If people prefer something extra/specific which Maitreya offers they will stick to it and the brand will survive.

Also It must be fun for new residents to accidentally detach their head or body and wonder what the deuce is going on...

And by "compatibility layer" I mean system that lets people use Maitreya rigged products on Kupra for example. And no -  deformers are not going to help although they do in the case of Gianni -> David because both bodies are made by same person,  they have the files, therefore can "extrapolate" the values for the deformer.

 

 

[Blaise Glendevon]

53 minutes ago, Ati Thei said:

And by "compatibility layer" I mean system that lets people use Maitreya rigged products on Kupra for example. 

Not possible, and probably not even attemptable without breaking the rights of the creators of these bodies.

[Faenzo]

@ LINDENS 

As a creator for more than 10 years now who has been working with dev kits for different bodies for so long, I must BEG you to let us try creating clothes for the body BEFORE it is released.

Because we have been working with horrible rigged bodies for a long time and nothing could be done because if the rigg were to be updated, all the custom clothing created for it would end being messed up and not compatible anymore. 

So it is ESSENTIAL that we ensure the body is perfectly rigged and tested with real clothing creators because listen when I say that this is what is going to either mark the success or the failure of this program. No one is going to take their time to rigg to another badly rigged mesh body. We're tired and done with that.

So please, in the name of lord JESUS, let us try this before it is released. Do it the right way. 

I was one of the people who has been sending emails for years to Linden Lab asking for this feature because it would be a game changer in bringing in more people and keeping them in here, so just don't mess this up because this is too important.

Thank you

Edited July 21, 2022 by Faenzo
Grammar

[Scylla Rhiadra]

27 minutes ago, Faenzo said:

@ LINDENS 

As a creator for more than 10 years now who has been working with dev kits for different bodies for so long, I must BEG you to let us try creating clothes for the body BEFORE it is released.

Because we have been working with horrible rigged bodies for a long time and nothing could be done because if the rigg were to be updated, all the custom clothing created for it would end being messed up and not compatible anymore. 

So it is ESSENTIAL that we ensure the body is perfectly rigged and tested with real clothing creators because listen when I say that this is what is going to either mark the success or the failure of this program. No one is going to take their time to rigg to another badly rigged mesh body. We're tired and done with that.

So please, in the name of lord JESUS, let us try this before it is released. Do it the right way. 

I was one of the people who has been sending emails for years to Linden Lab asking for this feature because it would be a game changer in bringing in more people and keeping them in here, so just don't mess this up because this is too important.

Thank you

This seems an entirely sensible and reasonable request.

Can I suggest that you send it more directly to LL somehow or another? IMing a Linden, for instance? There is a good chance that no Lindens are going to read this far into this thread.

[Lindal Kidd]

4 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

There is a good chance that no Lindens are going to read this far into this thread.

...they will if someone Reports the thread...

...tiptoes away, chuckling evilly.

[Coffee Pancake]

4 hours ago, Faenzo said:

@ LINDENS 

As a creator for more than 10 years now who has been working with dev kits for different bodies for so long, I must BEG you to let us try creating clothes for the body BEFORE it is released.

Because we have been working with horrible rigged bodies for a long time and nothing could be done because if the rigg were to be updated, all the custom clothing created for it would end being messed up and not compatible anymore. 

So it is ESSENTIAL that we ensure the body is perfectly rigged and tested with real clothing creators because listen when I say that this is what is going to either mark the success or the failure of this program. No one is going to take their time to rigg to another badly rigged mesh body. We're tired and done with that.

So please, in the name of lord JESUS, let us try this before it is released. Do it the right way. 

I was one of the people who has been sending emails for years to Linden Lab asking for this feature because it would be a game changer in bringing in more people and keeping them in here, so just don't mess this up because this is too important.

Thank you

@Linden Lab @Patch Linden

THIS . ALL OF THIS

 

 

[Mollymews]

6 hours ago, Faenzo said:

@ LINDENS 

I must BEG you to let us try creating clothes for the body BEFORE it is released.

i am supportive of this approach as well

i think that Linden could maybe do a NUX Beta Release

set up a JIRA for the technical people.  Knowing that for the non-technical people there will be a  forum thread about the Beta also

then after getting the feedback, do the formal release