Body and 'mod'.

[Anna Nova]

Is there a succinct meaning to 'mod' when applied to bodies?  I am a long-time Lara user, and also use Lucybody a lot since BoM.  But I am thinking that the new Belleza might be good, but only if I can make it fit my huge wardrobe.  So what does 'mod' actually get you?

[Ze Helix]

It is still rigged mesh, so mod isn't going to really help you fit it to clothing made for another body. Mod allows you do to do things like change materials, contents (especially to add and remove scripts), change the textures, glow and full bright. Link and unlink parts.

[Rita Takeda]

Thanks, that's what I thought....

Okay, stick to Lara and Lucy.

[Anna Nova]

Thanks @Ze Helix.  Like Rita, I'll be sticking with what I know.

[Teagan Tobias]

4 hours ago, Anna Nova said:

Is there a succinct meaning to 'mod' when applied to bodies?  I am a long-time Lara user, and also use Lucybody a lot since BoM.  But I am thinking that the new Belleza might be good, but only if I can make it fit my huge wardrobe.  So what does 'mod' actually get you?

 

I have said it, I have heard it from others, and now again in this thread, I have invested in my wardrobe and I’m not changing bodies.

I have one body, Tonic Fine, and I’m not starting over, clothing is expensive.

Will Second Life reach a saturation point of bodies where it just cant take any more?

 

[Spiffy Voxel]

1 hour ago, Teagan Tobias said:

 

I have said it, I have heard it from others, and now again in this thread, I have invested in my wardrobe and I’m not changing bodies.

I have one body, Tonic Fine, and I’m not starting over, clothing is expensive.

Will Second Life reach a saturation point of bodies where it just cant take any more?

 

I'm in a similar position, I have a Lara body and lots of clothes and accessories for it, those won't be going anywhere.

I've also got PsiCorps' Astra Nova Androgynous body and some alternative hands and feet from another store (whose name escapes me). I'm going to (re)learn Blender so I can design my own outfits for that combination, but those will be in addition to the Lara-based appearances I've already put together. I've already gotten the hang of creating custom skin textures for my current avatar setup, and plan on trying my hand at material appliers soon.

I've no idea what will happen with the current market for mesh bodies, some have fallen out of favour over time and more will follow, but with Kalhene, Legacy and Inithium joining the fray over the past few years, plus established players updating their lines, I don't think we've reached saturation point yet.

Edited October 1, 2022 by Spiffy Voxel

[Ceka Cianci]

The only time you really should switch is, if your body somehow got broken by changes to SL and it won't work anymore, or  If you find something you like better that, say's to you, I really want that..

Honestly, Any new body coming out.. I'd wait a year to really see how they do.. Because if they haven't gained any ground in that time, they probably won't ever.

[Maitimo]

I love mod bodies, and almost certainly won't ever buy another no-mod one.

See my right arm in this pic...

This is Belleza Freya. I rezzed the body on the ground, unlinked the three parts of the right arm and deleted the rest. Linked the arm pieces back together, re-texturesd them with a fancy gold metal, and I wear it as an attachment. I can't do anything like that with Maitreya.

 

[Ceka Cianci]

2 hours ago, Maitimo said:

I love mod bodies, and almost certainly won't ever buy another no-mod one.

See my right arm in this pic...

This is Belleza Freya. I rezzed the body on the ground, unlinked the three parts of the right arm and deleted the rest. Linked the arm pieces back together, re-texturesd them with a fancy gold metal, and I wear it as an attachment. I can't do anything like that with Maitreya.

 

Ya, the new Belleza Gen X curvy..  Unless my eyes are playing tricks and I'm just not seeing it in the folder. I don't see a Mod version of that body..

I didn't get the fatpack, so I don't know if they get one in there. But I didn't see one in the single curvy version.

 

ETA:  I spoke too soon.. Blaise just told me a mod version is coming in an update..

Edited October 1, 2022 by Ceka Cianci

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

8 hours ago, Maitimo said:

I rezzed the body on the ground, unlinked the three parts of the right arm and deleted the rest. Linked the arm pieces back together, re-texturesd them with a fancy gold metal, and I wear it as an attachment. I can't do anything like that with Maitreya.

This is also how I attached 'fat tids' to Freya, and my faun look's "faun /satyr' legs. I've done the same with tails too.

For the 'fat tids' - I removed several parts of Belleza and put in a whole new chest - thus greatly reducing the amount of 'vertices' I was carrying around.

 

I also do this to all of the 'onion layers' - again giving me a boost of anywhere from 10-20 FPS by doing just that alone.

 

[Nika Talaj]

I use Lara, and am having trouble figuring out why I would need a mod body.   My most frequently used avatars are humanoid, and for the occasional cyborg, faun or animesh moments I just alpha out the relevant parts of Lara (I have no problem making custom alphas to wear) and wear attachments. I have some skin PSDs that I can use to make custom fantasy skins, if I need to.  I use BOM, so never wear an onion layer unless I have a particular applier that I REALLY need to use.  Lara is around 180K tris - I can live with that. 

If I wanted to do the gold mod Maitimo did, frankly I would either do it on a skin directly or make a system glove and top that was mostly alpha.  Maybe I would need to wear a cuff to hide the seam at the wrist ... maybe not.

I may eventually get the new Belleza body just to have a more rounded look and the freedom to add scripts, tho I'm having trouble figuring out what scripted thing I would want to do!

Or maybe materials ... are any bodies materials-ready?  I wouldn't want to walk around using a skin with materials, but for the occasional photo it could be very cool.

Hmmm.

Edited October 2, 2022 by Nika Talaj

[Theresa Tennyson]

32 minutes ago, Nika Talaj said:

I use Lara, and am having trouble figuring out why I would need a mod body.   My most frequently used avatars are humanoid, and for the occasional cyborg, faun or animesh moments I just alpha out the relevant parts of Lara (I have no problem making custom alphas to wear) and wear attachments. I have some skin PSDs that I can use to make custom fantasy skins, if I need to.  I use BOM, so never wear an onion layer unless I have a particular applier that I REALLY need to use.  Lara is around 180K tris - I can live with that. 

If I wanted to do the gold mod Maitimo did, frankly I would either do it on a skin directly or make a system glove and top that was mostly alpha.  Maybe I would need to wear a cuff to hide the seam at the wrist ... maybe not.

I may eventually get the new Belleza body just to have a more rounded look and the freedom to add scripts, tho I'm having trouble figuring out what scripted thing I would want to do!

Or maybe materials ... are any bodies materials-ready?  I wouldn't walk to walk around using a skin with materials, but for the occasional photo it could be very cool.

Hmmm.

I take it you don't use outfits and/or don't switch between bodies with outfits. I do.

If you use outfits Maitreya bodies constantly get caught in race conditions meaning that clothing shows up before the body and the auto-alpha script won't fire properly. Even worse, if you use the "Petite" attachment it often arrives before the body, meaning you have to detach and re-wear it to turn off the part of the body it's supposed to be hiding. If it was up to me I'd rip out the autohide scripts and permanently link the Petite attachment to the body after taking out the unused sections.

[Nika Talaj]

You're right, I don't use LL's outfits.  I put together my own outfits, which I "add" to whatever body I'm wearing.  So changing clothes is usually 2 steps instead of one:  1. "Replace" whatever I'm wearing with a nude body that also has default makeup etc., 2.  Add my "outfit".  So body upgrades have been painless, and I can wear most of my wardrobe with alternative versions of my avatar without much fiddling. .

Custom body shapes for individual outfits work fine when "added", which kind of surprised me.  In a few cases I also need to make adjustments - e.g. remove physics, turn off BOM - and I either make a notecard saying that or, occasionally, I make a big box part of the outfit with hover text telling me what to do. I do what it says and detach the box

I was thinking of getting a Maitreya Petite body, not knowing how they'd implemented it.  Your comments convinced me to just stick with that avatar's slim shape for Lara, thanks!

[Rick Nightingale]

I have been doing similar things with my Aesthetic since it came out.

• Rescripted the Aesthetic Enzo hands (pre-Bento) to have automatically animated hands. That was my first big seller on the MP. Could automatically grip when a pistol was held, for instance. (yes, now we can do that with Bento).
• Removed the onion layers for lower complexity. Occasionally added multiple onion layers for special effects.
• Made skin features that cannot be done with any no-mod body that I've seen, like metallic skins, bioluminescence and ghost-like translucency. Was doing fancy effects with materials before such control was available on most bodies' HUDs.
• Scripted skin effects like animations (without having to wear a 3rd-party mesh 'overlay').
• Merged it with assorted non-human body parts.
• Even converted it to BOM (because everyone said it couldn't be done), but doing so reduced the graphics resolution and needed custom skins, so was no use commercially.

If Lara was mod, it would be much easier to do some of the humanoid avatars I do with my wife.

If one sticks to mostly human avatars and doesn't get too adventurous making stuff, then mod perms is likely no benefit to you. But if you like to experiment, mod is really essential.

Edited October 2, 2022 by Rick Daylight

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

4 hours ago, Nika Talaj said:

I use Lara, and am having trouble figuring out why I would need a mod body.

I wish I had mod on Maitreya.

• I used a breast attachment for it. That meant doubling my upper body complexity because I couldn't mod away the built in chest.
• I also used a genital prop. That meant doubling my waist / hips complexity because I couldn't edit away the existing pubic area.
• My Faun avatar had faun legs. That meant doubling my leg complexity because I couldn't edit away the built in legs and feet.
• I have human looks. That meant tripling my feet complexity because I couldn't edit away the medium, flat, and high feet on different copies and instead had to wear all three at the same time for every outfit I had.
• I never use Omega or layers. I add things like tattoos and skin tints with BOM. Maitreya DID finally put out a version that had "MOST" of the onion layers removed. But it's still more than just a basic skin layer.
• I had a Na'Vi look. She should have bioluminescent skin. As in her skin layer should actually be a 'light' that glows in certain spots. But because it's not mod I couldn't edit the skin and set it to emission mask. So my 'Na'vi' looks "flat" like everybody else's also does and was forced to do before some recent bodies became mod. Meanwhile I have a 'mod' extremely cartoony kobold furry look that has a 'na'vi' skin that actually does glow in bioluminescent lines and patterns. It looks AMAZING.
• I was into Cyberpunk Roleplay at one point. I wanted robot skin. On my copy of Belleza I edited the materials layers and put on a 'circuit board' texture for my shine, gave the skin a tiny amount of glow, and can put in emission masks. I can't do that on Maitreya so that alt can't be Maitreya.

 

Oh... on my copy of Belleza V6 I edited away the scripts and other things inside, and set in some basic animations that run for things that aren't bento like an old pose that lacks hand animations. I also store the animations for 'non human ears' inside there. I haven't yet - but could place my entire AO inside the body rather than as a HUD, and script it to run off of chat commands. I just thought of that - so that's my "next project" as soon as the mod version of Belleza GenX hits.

  

4 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Even worse, if you use the "Petite" attachment it often arrives before the body, meaning you have to detach and re-wear it to turn off the part of the body it's supposed to be hiding. If it was up to me I'd rip out the autohide scripts and permanently link the Petite attachment to the body after taking out the unused sections.

This is why on Belleza V6 where I used Fat Tids, I edited the body and linked it in, then deleted the Belleza parts for the same area. Not only that, but it gave me much lower complexity as fat tids was built better...

So much so that if I wanted a small busted look, I might just keep fat Tids and lower my breast size in the shape dials. Unless of course, I end up making the move the Belleza GenX "fulltime" - that will depend on how well it turns out over the next few days / weeks.

 

 

Edited October 2, 2022 by UnilWay SpiritWeaver

[Maitimo]

On 10/2/2022 at 9:02 PM, UnilWay SpiritWeaver said:

This is why on Belleza V6 where I used Fat Tids, I edited the body and linked it in, then deleted the Belleza parts for the same area. Not only that, but it gave me much lower complexity as fat tids was built better...

 

I tried to mod my Freya body to reduce the complexity, but when I did so, the nail polish appliers stopped working. Is there any way to remove parts of the body whilst retaining this function? Or will I have to repeat the process with a fresh copy of the body for every set of nail polish I want to wear? 

[Nalates Urriah]

On 10/1/2022 at 4:04 AM, Teagan Tobias said:

Will Second Life reach a saturation point of bodies where it just cant take any more?

I think of 'saturation' occurring in two areas; social and technical.

Social being about what people will buy and use. I can't see any limit to our interest in better bodies. We are seeing some resistance to changing bodies because of the cost of clothing made for a specific body. As time passes that resistance will increase as people invest more in their clothes. For me that would mean I would have to see a really SIGNIFICANT improvement in a body before I would abandon a body and all the clothes I have for it.

Technically there is no limit to how many bodies the SL system will support. Some years ago the asset database was 200 terabytes. I am sure it has grown. There is no limit to the size of a database. Think of the database behind Google Search...  A viewer only has to render the bodies visible to your avatar. As the system limits us to a max of about 100 avatars in a region, that means even if there were a million bodies in the system we would only have to deal with 100 at any one time. So... no technical limit.