LaraX?

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

I feel like I should know the answer to this, but what is meant by "better weights" and "smoother weights"?

 

[Fionalein]

14 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

I feel like I should know the answer to this, but what is meant by "better weights" and "smoother weights"?

 

 

the body will react "better" and "smoother" to shape sliders and animations, ... whatever that means - as both terms are subjective it just translates to "Nanana, that's what you get for investing in our brand - we'll make you work to recreate your look" to my also very subjective mind LOL

[AmeliaJ08]

42 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

I feel like I should know the answer to this, but what is meant by "better weights" and "smoother weights"?

 

So I'm pretty much a layman so I may be completely wrong here but I believe when discussing 'weights' in the context of a body you mean the way the mesh (that we see) is 'weighted' to the bones in the skeleton (invisible but they're there). That is to say every single little vertex of the body is weighted to a certain bone, that's how the visible mesh we are wearing can move and deform when we move our skeleton.

I don't know from experience but I have heard people say that the way Lara is weighted is a little difficult to work with, I can't say what that means specifically but creators are often moaning about how much effort it can be to get something to fit nicely given how Lara is weighted.

Clothes are also weighted so they move with your skeleton too, you probably want a body that acts predictably and is weighted well to make this job easier otherwise you'll have a lot of unexpected problems with body clipping through clothes etc.

Just my layman's thoughts though, someone with experience might chime in with a better answer.

[steeljane42]

8 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

I've just had @Gryphon Ronas the CSR of Maitreya say in group chat that she doesn't know why UV map changes are being discussed as the new Lara X will be SLUV.  That's in my opinion is a good thing.

Might have something to with an X in its name. /s

I mean if it was just a next major update labeled as Maitreya Lara 6.0 or something like Lara 2.0, then some people would still guess what is new, but adding that "X" to the name given how EvoX and Gen X both include new UV, even if the latter only optional one for the feet, is just asking for speculations about the UV changes.

I'd say it's a missed opportunity if they'd kept the original SLUV like Lelutka did with a simple toggle in the HUD. But oh well.

-----

As for the rest... Good for some Lara users I suppose, but I'd be way more excited about a new body instead. Especially since some(?) clothing is not expected to fit with those new changes. I suppose shoes might still fit, but they could fit on a completely new body as well (unless it's Belleza that never did a single thing right, including this). So it's essentially a new body as far as clothing is concerned, but also not really new at the same time. Being a free update is a great way to introduce that, though.

That said I do feel for creators getting swarmed with update requests on the very day it's released. Way more than it has been with people wanting something updated for the newer bodies. Given what I see around big shopping events on the opening days (and it's mostly Reborn and Legacy users) most who wear those newer bodies also want newer things, so might not be very interested in most older clothing updated to begin with. But those loyal Maitreya only users who might have accumulated a very large wardrobes will want to wear those things on the "better version" instead of swapping to included older fit version.

[Violet Vanilla]

Difficult to gauge how this will go, if it works with the majority of older clothes and such, I think it will be fine. If not and requires rerigging, then I don't see the point of this update. The changes seem minor overall and it's just adding another body to the mix that creators will have to decide to incorporate or not.

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

41 minutes ago, Violet Vanilla said:

Difficult to gauge how this will go, if it works with the majority of older clothes and such, I think it will be fine. If not and requires rerigging, then I don't see the point of this update. The changes seem minor overall and it's just adding another body to the mix that creators will have to decide to incorporate or not.

Unless clothing creators stop rigging for the current one because the new one might be easier to rig.

I have a huge maitreya wardrobe, but if new stuff I want is only rigged for LaraX, I'll switch.

[TheSarali]

My big question and hope is that they'll finally make it modify.  It would be a great thing for them to finally do so and help keep SL as creativity friendly as possible.  Other bodies do it, and with a major update like this it's the perfect time to update their no-mod restrictive permission too.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

17 hours ago, Honey Puddles said:

I think that a lot of the concern of old clothes not fitting is largely overblown. SUPER TIGHT fitting clothes, lingerie, stockings, leotards, etc may have trouble, but a lot of sweaters and jackets look like they'll continue to fit just fine. Especially items with some body clearance, or items that needed alpha cuts in the past, largely may continue to look just fine on this new body.

All-in-all this seems like a positive reworking, and while it's hardly a big flash change, I think it will be appreciated by people who already own and love the Maitreya Lara, and the changes are subtle enough that the large library of existing clothing content may well work just fine.

It's not appreciated by me that's for damn sure, the "subtle changes" are guuaranteed to break about 70% of my Lara fitted inventory.

Not appreciated at all, this is an "Over-Priced-Feet Inc F you customers your working body wont be supported any more, welcome to the noting  fits body you never asked for" move.

17 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

The rigging has changed as well though.  The Maitreya CSR herself said this will mean that some existing clothing will not fit.  To what extent we just don't know yet.

Yuup, new rigging, new weighting, different damn basic mesh shape, most things in my inv totally broken, and the butt physics? Since the clothes are not butt jiggle rigged, turning on butt jiggle in the body means youur ass will shake it's self right through your clothing.

 

Epic Effing Disaster.

17 hours ago, Honey Puddles said:

Assuming the images are using exactly the same shape and pose (and they seem to be), the rigging changes are represented in the differences between the two images.

It's still very subtle. I'm not trying to indicate that your personal favourite skintight leotard will continue working, but I'd be willing to bet that 70-80% of everything I own for Maitreya (particularly the 'looser' stuff like things from Blueberry for example) will probably keep working just fine. Anything you had to 'hide the shoulders' on, to get to fit, is probably gonna keep fitting very similarly.

It looks like they went to great pains to maintain support for existing items where possible.

Every change you've mentioned BREAKS support for existing Lara fit itemss, there is NO effort here to maintain support. None.

 

The LaraX F**kup-date destroys any Brand Loyalty I might have, forever.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Zalificent Corvinus

[Zalificent Corvinus]

10 hours ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

I feel like I should know the answer to this, but what is meant by "better weights" and "smoother weights"?

 

Basically, weighting is how the mesh bends when your bones move, swing your leg forward, how does the shape of your hip/thigh area change.

 

Practical meaning...

 

All your clothing is weighted the old way, the body is weighted the new way, so the clothing will no longer move the same way as your body, Entire wardrobe rendered broken and useless, wait 5 years to rebuy/redeliver (assuming it ever gets updated at all) everything, or decide to stop shopping in disgust.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

6 hours ago, TheSarali said:

My big question and hope is that they'll finally make it modify.  It would be a great thing for them to finally do so and help keep SL as creativity friendly as possible.  Other bodies do it, and with a major update like this it's the perfect time to update their no-mod restrictive permission too.

You do know that most mesh body users

a) Don't NEED mod rights on a BoM compatible body

b) Wouldn't know what to do with them if they had them and

c) Really don't care

 

It's mainly the Fursona market that demands mod perms.

[Kristy Aurelia]

34 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

You do know that most mesh body users

a) Don't NEED mod rights on a BoM compatible body

b) Wouldn't know what to do with them if they had them and

c) Really don't care

 

It's mainly the Fursona market that demands mod perms.

So what? All it takes is just a single checkbox to make the ones who do care about mod happy.

It would enable so many options, certain items that need to hide body parts could come with their own custom scripts, no more equipping a dummy box that holds an alpha script. Want to apply tint - well you can enter an exact RGB value instead of fumbling with a HUD.

Making an item mod takes no extra effort for the creator and enables so many extra options for the end users and other creators. This may not apply for a this specific body, but for example, if you look at LeL heads, the teeth and piercings that come with the head are separate parts, Evo UV head is linked too - if it was mod, I could remove Evo head, I could link teeth to the main head object as well as piercing and braces and that would save me whole bunch of attachment slots.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 minute ago, Kplh said:

So what? All it takes is just a single checkbox to make the ones who do care about mod happy.

It would enable so many options, certain items that need to hide body parts could come with their own custom scripts, no more equipping a dummy box that holds an alpha script. Want to apply tint - well you can enter an exact RGB value instead of fumbling with a HUD.

Making an item mod takes no extra effort for the creator and enables so many extra options for the end users and other creators. This may not apply for a this specific body, but for example, if you look at LeL heads, the teeth and piercings that come with the head are separate parts, Evo UV head is linked too - if it was mod, I could remove Evo head, I could link teeth to the main head object as well as piercing and braces and that would save me whole bunch of attachment slots.

First off, mod clothingg so you can add auto-alpha scripts, hell yeah, but we were talking bodies.

 

Second, doing what you describe to a mesh head would almost certainly break the majority of its hud features, click the hide ears button and your teeth vanish, etc.

Like I said, most people wouldn't know what to do with a mod head/body. There are more important things to worry about than "is it mod" such as "will it break every single item I purchased for it"

Priorities matter.

[Ze Helix]

Wow I love this. I never thought I would see the day. Lara needed an update, she was falling behind in quality but still so popular, and the fact that this is free is just awesome. I expect creators will probably just stop rigging for the old Lara. I don't mind if old clothes don't fit the new body. If I want to wear old clothes, I still have the old body for that. Really, for any fixes to be useful it had to happen that way. If the changes were so small that everything fit perfectly it would be such a disappointment. I have barely been using Lara for the past few years now, I'm looking forward to using her again.

[Fionalein]

1 hour ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

The LaraX F**kup-date destroys any Brand Loyalty I might have, forever

It's brand suicide, I agree.

1 hour ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

All your clothing is weighted the old way, the body is weighted the new way, so the clothing will no longer move the same way as your body, Entire wardrobe rendered broken and useless, wait 5 years to rebuy/redeliver (assuming it ever gets updated at all) everything, or decide to stop shopping in disgust.

Which basically is no difference than slowly migrating to another brand's body. No one knows how much Lara stuff there will eventually be or how many creators even will be allowed to have a devkit. It's never been easier for costumers to break away. "Huge selection of available content?" Poof! All smokes and mirrors.

It will also be a pain for creators who get the new devkit because guess what? If you don't continue Lara support you'll loose my future sales, and I doubt I'm alone on this one.

 

And of course the blogger infobubble is all "Happy, happy, joy, joy" ... companies would be wise not to listen to them however. They get their stuff for free. Those of us you depend upon for income however - we actually pay for our stuff, we might have a different opinion.

[Kristy Aurelia]

1 minute ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

First off, mod clothingg so you can add auto-alpha scripts, hell yeah, but we were talking bodies.

 

Second, doing what you describe to a mesh head would almost certainly break the majority of its hud features, click the hide ears button and your teeth vanish, etc.

Like I said, most people wouldn't know what to do with a mod head/body. There are more important things to worry about than "is it mod" such as "will it break every single item I purchased for it"

Priorities matter.

Sure, but if you want hidden ears, just make a second copy of the head with hidden ears, equipping a different head is easier than looking for the option in the HUD - you can save different versions to different outfits. I've done it with some of my hairstyles, where I combined the main hair and bangs together, removed scripts etc. If I want a different colour, I can unbox a new copy and use that, and if I want, I also have an option to modify a second copy in the same way.

To elaborate more on the custom alpha script: I wouldn't except 'the certain 3 letter brand' to be able to script it properly, but you could throw in an extra script in your body, and enable RLV items show/hide arms and such. Obviously, it would be nicer if the alpha script API was public, but that does actually require more effort from the body creator compared to just ticking a checkbox (unless they just make all the script mod too, but... that would allow stolen meshes to reuse original scripts, and also intercept applier texture UUIDs. In that regard, making scripts mod, does actually have downsides, unlike meshes).

Also, if a HUD is scripted not to rely on link numbers, but on names/descriptions, it would still work.

As you said, people who don't care won't touch it anyway, but they are not losing anything either, and those who do touch it, know the risks and how to work around side effects. Creativity should be encouraged on a platform like SL, an encouraging items being mod, and people learning how to take avantage of mod items is great. This is way off-topic, but Senra bodies not being full perm and the license agreement being more complicated than just "I agree not to use this for antyhing ouside of SL" is not helping either.

To put it simply: making any mesh item mod only has additional benefits for those who know how to take advantage of it, and has no downsides to the creators or the ones who don't want to mod it anyway.

Quote

will it break every single item I purchased for it

Yes, I agree, it is important to know how much the shape will change and if existing items will fit the body, but it doesn't affect mod/no-mod what so ever, just because something is more important, doesn't mean that less important features should be ignored, especially when the less important features take no effort to add. Think of it this way - if you wanted to buy a black car, and they only made pink cars - and you ask the salesman, "Hey can I have a black one?" and they said "The car drives, and it has great fuel efficiency", yes, indeed - the car actually working is the most important part, but that does not invalidate request for different colours.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

5 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

And of course the blogger infobubble is all "Happy, happy, joy, joy" ... companies would be wise not to listen to them however. They get their stuff for free. Those of us you depend upon for income however - we actually pay for our stuff, we might have a different opinion.

That's the thing isn't it, the Blog-Wh*res who don't pay for endless new clothes for endless new bodies screaming "I cant edit my shape worth a damn, add more blubber to dat ass, also, the shoulders don't look so nice with my 15 year old system avi fashionista pose pack, fix them" get listened to, and those of us who pay for clothing, are told "F you, all your content is now dead, welcome to NOT-The Body-you bought-anymore"

 

I'd have been ok with "We decided to make Lara a sister with a fatter ass and skinnier arms and weird shoulders, welcome to Laura 5.4", I might even have bought a copy, just for tyhe hell of it.

But "We decided  to destroy Lara because we listened to effing morons, so screw you and your years of shopping for Lara", thats kiss of death.

 

I used to shop for Lara, then I picked up the Belleza Triplets fatpack on sale, and shopped for Lara and Freya fits, then somebody gifted me a body as a thankyou for helping them out, and I shopped for Lara/Freya/Kupra fits, then I got a rez day gift, and shopped for Lara/Freya/Kupra/Legacy Perky fits, then I splurged on a Reborn during a sale for the hell of it, and the list was Lara/Freya/Kupra/Perky/Reborn.

 

I more or less stopped using the Kuupra, and the Perky, the Freya was only for special occasions looks, so my shopping was Lara/Reborn, and if it came with freya/kupra/perky, that was gravy.

 

This will kill off Lara fit, nobody will make new items for a body that doesn't exist any more, so now the only body I will be shopping for is Reborn.

 

I'll certainly be spending a lot less on clothes in SL now.

[Kristy Aurelia]

3 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

I'd have been ok with "We decided to make Lara a sister with a fatter ass and skinnier arms and weird shoulders, welcome to Laura 5.4", I might even have bought a copy, just for tyhe hell of it.

But, isn't that's what they did? The update will contain the existing Lara 5.3 and Lara X and it is a free update.

[Gabriele Graves]

1 minute ago, Kplh said:

But, isn't that's what they did? The update will contain the existing Lara 5.3 and Lara X and it is a free update.

Actually, they are updating the existing Lara 5.3 as well as adding the Lara X - no sure with what yet, perhaps the petite and flat options.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

Just now, Kplh said:

But, isn't that's what they did? The update will contain the existing Lara 5.3 and Lara X and it is a free update.

Read the posts... rumour is you get LaraX, but it has an EVOX style "classic lara hud button" so basically you are wearing TWO copies of the body at the same time, the LaraX and the Lara, and show/hide swap between them, that's lag inducing stupidity, 

In addition even the Lara-Classic option won't fit in Lara clothing because, NEW EFFING RIGGING.

 

So in fact  this appears to be "stick with your old 5.3 forever, with no new clothing as Not-Lara 5.4 breaks EVERYTHING".

[Gabriele Graves]

2 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Read the posts... rumour is you get LaraX, but it has an EVOX style "classic lara hud button" so basically you are wearing TWO copies of the body at the same time, the LaraX and the Lara, and show/hide swap between them, that's lag inducing stupidity, 

In addition even the Lara-Classic option won't fit in Lara clothing because, NEW EFFING RIGGING.

 

So in fact  this appears to be "stick with your old 5.3 forever, with no new clothing as Not-Lara 5.4 breaks EVERYTHING".

I haven't read that the bodies will be combined like that.  I think they are going to be separates still.

[Gabriele Graves]

I feel much the same as some of these sentiments recently expressed here.  One of the reasons I didn't move to EvoX and stayed with the SLUV map for the head is it meant no more mix and matching of existing stuff I had.   This is going to be very similar I think.  Not much if any mix and matching except at the BoM layers.  I mix and match a lot.  A top from here, pants, skirt, boots from somewhere else.

We've been told that shoes will work but nobody has official has said whether thigh-high or even knee length boots should work.

It's also going to take a while for new content to appear.  During that time Maitreya will be very vulnerable as creators drop support for the existing body.  There is going to come a point when there is no more new stuff than any other new-ish mesh body.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Gabriele Graves

[Marianne Little]

"Kill off Lara"

"Brand suicide"

Well... I paid every item I have in SL with my own money, and I never heard such negativity. It is like you must stop wearing Lara. Why not continue to wear Lara, and swap to LaraX when it is new clothes rigged for LaraX?

Most of us own more than one body, and we manage to swap Lara with Reborn when we will wear something that's only fitted for Reborn.

I can't imagine why it is so bad to get a free update. This sounds like Maitreya ripped you off, instead of giving you more. For free!

Some people would find faults in everything, and toss out rumors like "EVOX style button". 

 

[Orwar]

4 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

rumour is you get LaraX, but it has an EVOX style "classic lara hud button" so basically you are wearing TWO copies of the body at the same time

   Seems weird if they make Petite its own body (presumably to save on resources?) and then make it a double-body for 5.3/5.X fit .. At this stage I'm still slightly hopeful, but also internally panicking about what option there'd be. Neither Neph nor Mina would look themselves in Reborn (and I wouldn't wear Legacy if I was paid to!). 

[Fionalein]

1 minute ago, Orwar said:

   Seems weird if they make Petite its own body...

Is it really? For those few tech savvy of us who know the arcane art of saving outffits the included autoglitch scripts always left us with clipping chests...

[Gabriele Graves]

9 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

"Kill off Lara"

"Brand suicide"

Well... I paid every item I have in SL with my own money, and I never heard such negativity. It is like you must stop wearing Lara. Why not continue to wear Lara, and swap to LaraX when it is new clothes rigged for LaraX?

Most of us own more than one body, and we manage to swap Lara with Reborn when we will wear something that's only fitted for Reborn.

I can't imagine why it is so bad to get a free update. This sounds like Maitreya ripped you off, instead of giving you more. For free!

Some people would find faults in everything, and toss out rumors like "EVOX style button". 

 

Who are most of us?  How can you be sure of that?

I have just one body - Lara and I've come across many others that have expressed the same over time.

I don't in any way think that Maitreya has ripped anyone off.  They have been brilliant.  In many ways they are a victim of people complaining about Lara over the years and "hinting" they'll drop the body, in conjunction with creators complaining the body is too hard to rig for.  A case of damned if you do and also if you don't.

It's fantastic that that the new body is being given away for free too.

However, it still doesn't mean that Maitreya hasn't made a misstep and we shouldn't be afraid to examine that possibility.  It's not negativity, it's just realism.  The fact is that the mesh body market is extremely fickle.

 

Edited July 30, 2023 by Gabriele Graves