Introducing Senra Avatars... what do you think?

[Zilly Whiskers]

Could just be a human in SL thing but all the shapes for the male(ish) avatar I tried defaulted to collagen lips or like I'd been smacked in the mouth and really miserable turned down. I had to edit the lips to be much thinner and less full and turn that frown upside down.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Zilly Whiskers
typo

[Hunny Bunny]

I think...

[Persephone Emerald]

5 hours ago, Ted McGregor said:

I think such request could be pressed for faster with a JIRA.

However, I see issues with such a request. If Avatar Customisation is implemented like this, how far do you permit this as an interface for existing users ? Do you want this Customisation - window to scour through the Library only or through all of your inventory ?

If it's the latter I'm sure, for the sake of latency, LL will decline such a request to implement.

6 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I'm hoping a similar functionality will be added into the next SL viewer update.

I said "I'm hoping". I didn't request this "similar functionality" for the viewer. Patch has hinted at something that content creators for the Senra avatars would be very happy to have.

We also know that our Inventories are supposed to get the ability to have pictures of what's in our folders, similar to that Wardrobe thing, so maybe similar to how IMVU shows clothing? There is already a visual display for other starter avatars in the LL viewer. I don't think it's a huge leap to imagine the way clothing is displayed for starter avatars on the website could also be added to the SL viewer for other Library content. I don't expect or really want the viewer to do the same thing for the rest of our inventories.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Persephone Emerald

[Ceka Cianci]

I keep seeing Sansar instead of  Senra, every time i see this thread title.. hehehe

[Persephone Emerald]

2 hours ago, ChinRey said:

 

...The mesh clothes that comes with the Senra avatar don't fit if you change the body shape. Seems to be some seriously poor rigging here. If that is indicative of the quality of the dev kit, it may be a good idea for clothes designers to skip it, avoid the license agreement and figure out the rigging themselves. I don't know but I doubt LL can enforce the no reverse engineering clause for people who haven't signed up for the kit, especially since a correct rigging is bound to be quite different from the one they used for their own mesh clothes and probably included in the dev kit.

[snip]

From a technical point of view: about three times as many tris as it should have. There's lots of room for improvement there but then again, all commercial mesh bodies I know of are even worse. Add to this that it doesn't have any alpha cuts and we should expect the Senra avatars to be far less laggy than commercial mesh bodies.

I agree that the clothes should fit better when people change the sliders on their avatars.

I don't think the complexity is that bad, though I don't know much about creating mesh. My Senra Jamie with clothing was around 25,000 (under 30,000 at least) for complexity as measured in the Firestorm viewer. That's comparable to my Belleza Freya with the onion layers stripped off and then wearing mesh hair and clothing. Most of the other of avatars I see are over 100,000.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Persephone Emerald

[Tayt3rChip]

My thoughts currently : 

- Please fix the ears... what on earth happened  there ? 

- Please sort  out the skins. A good skin can work wonders, so please ensure that the skins are nice and the darker skins  don't look grey or ashy... 

-Edit : When I pose her, her  limbs look distorted which is really bad for photography.

-  All my other  opinions  about what I dislike are a matter of personal preference

    - The pointy chin.     - The nose shape    - They eyebrows  - The hair options  - The clothes   - The proportion of the legs , it just keeps getting thinner as it goes down 

Overall it seems ok, I'm sure people will be able to get very creative and  do wonders  with them. The create a sim style interface looks pretty ok too. Offers users a more predictable interface in terms of character customization. 

Here you can see what I'm talking about with the ears .  I posted more pictures of Sergeant Jamie Senra on the ' How does your Senra Look ? ' thread. 

Edited August 2, 2023 by Tayt3rChip

[Persephone Emerald]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I wonder if "Senra" is supposed to evoke "Sanrio"? (Or just a coinkydink.) I'm not exactly getting a "Hello Kitty" vibe.

I can has furry mods?

Patch has said there will be some furry attachments for the starter avatars, but I think that might just be ears, tails, and maybe heads? I'm not expecting changes to the legs, since this would further limit the ability of users to use the included clothing. 

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Patch has said there will be some furry attachments for the starter avatars, but I think that might just be ears, tails, and maybe heads? I'm not expecting changes to the legs, since this would further limit the ability of users to use the included clothing. 

Juar saw someone mention the ears - those tiny ears will be easy to cover up with furry attachments!

[ChinRey]

6 hours ago, rasterscan said:

Blends really well skin wise.

Yes, I'm impressed by that too. It's not a mesh head btw so what you see (or rather don't see) is the blend between mesh body and system head.

 

6 hours ago, rasterscan said:

And looks nice too imho although I'd hope its thicker for Blake male

The neck thickness in the picture isn't anywhere near the limits in either direction so that's not an issue. It's the length that is the problem. It's not critical but it's right at the limit of what's acceptable and not ideal. Of course, this and other proportion related issues are less prominent with bigger avatars and there aren't that many people who use RL size avis in SL. But there aren't many who use the goliaths of the past either, most go for something in between these days, and it seems Senra is made specifically for those giants.

(Edit: for reference, my ChinRey avatar is 173 cm (5'8) which is on the tall side by RL standards, very short by modern SL standards and diminutive for an old school SL avi. The shapes that come with the Senra body are actually only 190 cm (6'2) which isn't too tall for a modern SL avatar and rather small for an old fashioned one. They aren't very well proportioned though so we can't really judge by them. It would be interesting to see if somebody could come up with a good looking, well proportioned shape for the Senra at that size.)

Another issue I noticed but forgot to mention is that the UV mapping for the fingers and toes is very different both from the system avatar and from what is common for commercial mesh bodies. That means it'll need skins specially made for the body and I can't imagine anybody would want to keep the poor quality skins included in the Senra package for very long.

 

4 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I don't think the complexity is that bad, though I don't know much about creating mesh.

The Avatar Complexity measurement is just a meaningless number. There are avis with ARC less than 50,000 that can cause serious lag issues and ones with 200,000+ that cause no significant issues at all.

We can however check the two factors that make a difference between different mesh bodies, tri count and alpha cuts.

The female Senra body has a liitle bit more than 45,000 tris and the head a little bit over 15,000. A skilled mesh maker who really tried to make them render efficient would have done it at half so it's not good but as I said earlier, it's still better than any commercial mesh bodies. As for alpha cuts, Senra doesn't have any, commercial mesh bodies have dozens. This is even more important than tri count for lag since each alpha cut requires a separate draw call. So overall, although Senra isn't very well optimized, it's not too bad and certainly far better than any commercial mesh bodies.

Edited August 2, 2023 by ChinRey

[Persephone Emerald]

9 minutes ago, Tayt3rChip said:

- Please fix the ears... what on earth happened  there ? 

- Please sort  out the skins. A good skin can work wonders, so please ensure that the skins are nice and the darker skins  don't look grey or ashy... 

[snip]

Here you can see what I'm talking about with the ears .  I posted more pictures of Sergeant Jamie Senra on the ' How does your Senra Look ? ' thread. 

Maybe it's just me, but I thought the ears were too low. Your placement looks fine, but I thought mine were too low. I think ears are supposed to be on the same height as the nose? 

The darkest skin tone included isn't great. I agree that it seems a bit grey and ashy. There should be at least one more dark tone. All the skins should be better, more detailed, better shaded and highlighted.

[Tayt3rChip]

1 minute ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Maybe it's just me, but I thought the ears were too low. Your placement looks fine, but I thought mine were too low. I think ears are supposed to be on the same height as the nose? 

The darkest skin tone included isn't great. I agree that it seems a bit grey and ashy. There should be at least one more dark tone. All the skins should be better, more detailed, better shaded and highlighted.

I'm not very good with putting things where they should be or proportions in general. I just tried to make the ears as small as possible so I wouldn't have to see them as much. And yup , skins can really make or break a look.

[Whirly Fizzle]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

I don't know how long it took me to discover the "Find original" / "Replace links" magic, but it certainly made outfits a whole lot more useful. Not sure if it originated in Firestorm but it's also in other viewers I use including the Linden viewer.

 

"Find/Replace links" was a Firestorm feature & it was contributed to LL by Ansariel Hiller.

[ChinRey]

4 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Maybe it's just me, but I thought the ears were too low.

It's hard to tell from the photo but it seems to me the lower tip of the ears are about where they should be but since the ears are so small, the top of them are too low.

 

2 minutes ago, Tayt3rChip said:

And yup , skins can really make or break a look.

You can say that again.... and again, and again.

[Blush Bravin]

45 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Maybe it's just me, but I thought the ears were too low. Your placement looks fine, but I thought mine were too low. I think ears are supposed to be on the same height as the nose? 

I too noticed this but once I enlarged the ears just a little the placement looked fine to me.

[Silent Mistwalker]

16 hours ago, Casidy Silvercloud said:

What I won't do, is submit my creations for their review before I can even upload them

I can understand it from a Quality Control point of view but beyond that oh hell no. If I have to get approval from LL before uploading just to make stuff for myself, it's dead in the water.

[colleen Criss]

Before adjustments

 

[colleen Criss]

After some tweaks

 

[AmeliaJ08]

34 minutes ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

"Find/Replace links" was a Firestorm feature & it was contributed to LL by Ansariel Hiller.

Praise be to Ansariel Hiller then. Best feature ever.

Okay maybe Area Search is.. I can't decide, either way whoever made those deserves hugs.

[colleen Criss]

She can clean up

AO sucks. no lashes to speak of. And everything you wear goes to objects folder, that sucks. Can use other shapes, this one is 7DS. kupra physics worked. ears are weirdly placed. not all sha[e sliders on stock avatar work.

 

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Tayt3rChip said:

- Please sort  out the skins. A good skin can work wonders, so please ensure that the skins are nice and the darker skins  don't look grey or ashy... 

The darker shades are unwearable IMO.  This is just like it used to be when I started.   Just darken a lighter skin and call it a day.  That's not how it works.  The behind is especially bad on Senra and the shading on the face is way too dark.  I used another darker shade already in the library so it's doable without spending money, though.

[AmeliaJ08]

22 minutes ago, colleen Criss said:

She can clean up

AO sucks. no lashes to speak of. And everything you wear goes to objects folder, that sucks. Can use other shapes, this one is 7DS. kupra physics worked. ears are weirdly placed. not all sha[e sliders on stock avatar work.

 

At least unrigged bangs might work well for her then...

 

To stop the Objects folder thing copy the Senra folder from library to your inventory, if you add things from library they are auto-copied to Objects or other locations which will get messy.

Edited August 2, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Tayt3rChip]

2 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

The darker shades are unwearable IMO.  This is just like it used to be when I started.   Just darken a lighter skin and call it a day.  That's not how it works.  The behind is especially bad on Senra and the shading on the face is way too dark.  I used another darker shade already in the library so it's doable without spending money, though.

I'm hoping they will add more things now that they have released the dev kits. But we  need  better  dark skins from jump. Ashy is not a good look. I'm also wondering how this will play out once  noobs get into world and realise they no longer  have that easy use interface ... Will we get a bunch of people creating  multiple accounts because they don't know how to tweak the avi they made ? 

[Orwar]

   Played around with Jamie a bit and tried out moving the sliders about.

   Why is this even a possible result?

   That's with the breast size at 19, going lower it just gets worse until they implode into your chest cavity. There's also a whole lot of sliders that do nothing. And whilst that's also true of many branded bodies and heads, it's something that's just going to confuse the hey out of any newbie trying to shape their avi if random sliders just don't do anything.

[Rowan Amore]

23 minutes ago, colleen Criss said:

She can clean up

AO sucks. no lashes to speak of. And everything you wear goes to objects folder, that sucks. Can use other shapes, this one is 7DS. kupra physics worked. ears are weirdly placed. not all sha[e sliders on stock avatar work.

 

What's with that AO?  There is no control so I don't see a lot of males wanting to stand there in a feminine hands behind your head pose.  The walk seems more masculine though.

 

[Tayt3rChip]

4 minutes ago, Orwar said:

That's with the breast size at 19, going lower it just gets worse until they implode into your chest cavity.

Don't mind so much being able to make the  boobs really small , but them imploding into the chest cavity is certainly not right. Having sliders not doing  anything is highly anoying and sure to confuse new ppl