What does a new mesh body need to take off?

[Persephone Emerald]

1 hour ago, Ceka Cianci said:

What I think happens with the short arms and the wide hips nowadays is, other than it probably being more of a type of look people prefer.. It's something that can't be helped..

With humans we can get more meat  on our hips which make things look like the shoulder joints are in more, where in reality it is just more meat on the bones..

In second life, if we have to move the bones to make it look like more meat in the hips.. When that happens  the shoulder and the hip bones become unaligned..  Then the hands will start to clip into the body.. When that happens  a lot raise the arms up until the clipping stops rather than widening the shoulders.. That or hunt for an AO with curvy or full figure animations..

[snip]

In reality for the most part humans joint and bone wise, front to back and side to side there is more consistency with joint bone proportions, where it varies more and we have more freedom to adjust from head to feet.. Some have longer bodies and short legs, some have shorter bodies and longer legs, some  are more in the middle ans so on..

Rigged mesh bodies we just can't add the meat to the bones so the joints get moved out instead..

[snip]

We can add meat to the bones by adding Muscle and fat by adding Fat. I keep my Hips around 50 and add to the Saddle value to make my hips look fuller. I hate the thigh gap, which is unrealistic on a body with more fat, and increasing the hip value tends to increase the thigh gap as well.

I haven't bought an AO for a fuller figure, so I'm stuck with my hands going through my hips. 😕

Maybe my avatar just has big pockets? 😆 

Edited December 31, 2023 by Persephone Emerald

[Ceka Cianci]

28 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

We can add meat to the bones by adding Muscle and fat by adding Fat. I keep my Hips around 50 and add to the Saddle value to make my hips look fuller. I hate the thigh gap, which is unrealistic on a body with more fat, and increasing the hip value tends to increase the thigh gap as well.

I haven't bought an AO for a fuller figure, so I'm stuck with my hands going through my hips. 😕

Maybe my avatar just has big pockets? 😆 

A lot of animations can  be doing doing that also,especially if they keep your arms straight rather than riding the hip line.. But  Saddlebags usually add mostly to the upper hips and just under the waist not as much at the hip joint.. Unless the saddlebags expand out  like on on some of the curvy design bodies  where it almost makes a straight line from the hip joint to the waist..

That's when forearm and hands clip then.. hehehe

Most times it is just a matter of lining the shoulder joint with the hip joint.. Not the edge of the arm,  but more in the middle of the upper curve of the shoulder and arm right before the seam where they meet.. that usually works for me if I don't have blown up  upper hip and waist area.. hehehe

 

[AmeliaJ08]

Kinda on topic: I would love if we had an expanded shape system with 'advanced' controls for individually moving, scaling and rotating each bone. Would definitely cut down on the number of deformer attachments many of us are using! and as far as I know wouldn't really be that hard to implement.

I just think with finer control a lot of bodies would seem a lot more universal, imagine if you could scale the thigh bones independently of the calfs (calves?) etc. Right now the shape system has controls that adjusts many bones at once, giving a more advanced fine control that is currently only possible by using deformers would be very neat and cut down the niches that bodies currently fill.

Should I put in a pointless feature request?

 

[Ceka Cianci]

2 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Kinda on topic: I would love if we had an expanded shape system with 'advanced' controls for individually moving, scaling and rotating each bone. Would definitely cut down on the number of deformer attachments many of us are using! and as far as I know wouldn't really be that hard to implement.

I just think with finer control a lot of bodies would seem a lot more universal, imagine if you could scale the thigh bones independently of the calfs (calves?) etc. Right now the shape system has controls that adjusts many bones at once, giving a more advanced fine control that is currently only possible by using deformers would be very neat and cut down the niches that bodies currently fill.

Should I put in a pointless feature request?

 

like poser but with shapes and we can save them.. hehehe

Edited December 31, 2023 by Ceka Cianci

[AmeliaJ08]

3 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

like poser but with shapes and we can save them.. hehehe

Exactly!

I should probably be wary of saying this but on a technical level it's really simple, if you open up a deformer .dae file you can quite easily see in human readable format what is going on. Even if this wasn't done by expanding the shape system a viewer that could let you move bones and then generate a .dae deformer that you could then upload and use would be neat, currently this is quite easily done using blender but if it was possible in viewer that would be cool.

The shape system can do something that normal deformers can't though: scale bones, that would be the big trick that could only be implemented with an actual shape.

 

 

Edited December 31, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Marianne Little]

19 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Despite spending the majority of my time in SL as primarily non-human and often some variety of creature/animal, I'd actually hate to see more bodies specifically made for alternative  avatars.

--------

I'm not in the anime community, so I don't know how they'd feel about having bodies made for them and what specific quirks exist in that market. If anything, I'd guess they probably want a greater assortment of updated heads. From what I've seen on Flickr from those using the Utilizator heads, they're primarily wearing the usual bodies - Maitreya, Legacy F, and Reborn.

I cut some parts here, I will reply:

The human bodies is used by (almost) all non-human avatars. And anime/loli use the human bodies we already have.

Everything is covered. The market is oversaturated.

What a new body would have to do, is to win people over by making them belive this is the perfect body for them instead of the body they already have. So marketing would be it. Massive marketing, and the big guns in that community would have to create for it. Show the body in all the ads, have the big influencers talk about it. Everywhere people go, they see it.

Make people believe they need it.

[AmeliaJ08]

17 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I haven't bought an AO for a fuller figure, so I'm stuck with my hands going through my hips

I have the opposite problem, the Rebornification of SL means a lot of the animation makers (which I love) have started pushing the hands out so usually my hands lie 2-3" away from my body, you used to always get a standard and curvy version of poses but they seem to be disappearing again and I think curvy has become the standard for a lot of places.

[Persephone Emerald]

1 hour ago, Marianne Little said:

[snip]

What a new body would have to do, is to win people over by making them belive this is the perfect body for them instead of the body they already have. So marketing would be it. Massive marketing, and the big guns in that community would have to create for it. Show the body in all the ads, have the big influencers talk about it. Everywhere people go, they see it.

Make people believe they need it.

Maybe they could give the body & the developer kit to popular skin & clothing makers (esp. lingerie) on the condition that they'll show it in ads and hype it. Isn't this partly what Maitreya did when they made LaraX with Velour skin tones? or when Kupra, Reborn & GenX were marketed by clothing makers? 

People kept hearing about these new bodies and seeing that clothing designers were designing for them - designing, not just using pre-made templates. The accidental release by Velour about LaraX ahead of schedule really stirred up interest too. This chatter makes people want to try a new body. Then if it is actually good and interesting, they convince themselves that they need it.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

2 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

I cut some parts here, I will reply:

The human bodies is used by (almost) all non-human avatars. And anime/loli use the human bodies we already have.

Everything is covered. The market is oversaturated.

What a new body would have to do, is to win people over by making them belive this is the perfect body for them instead of the body they already have. So marketing would be it. Massive marketing, and the big guns in that community would have to create for it. Show the body in all the ads, have the big influencers talk about it. Everywhere people go, they see it.

Make people believe they need it.

I'd actually go in a different direction and say given the way things are now (with how many bodies there are and how many designers are rigging for), a brand new body would have to win creators over, first - ideally before its full public release. I've seen some new releases that customers absolutely loved, but went unworn due to lack of available products.

In my own personal case, Anatomy fell into that category for me. I was ready to switch day 1 and we were all pretty hype in the Discord, but I can't consistently build the varied wardrobe I get with Legacy, so I haven't yet invested. Still holding out hope, though, because it's got every single feature I could ever possibly ask for (even body GLITTERRRRRRRR) and some fun shoe designers that adopted it alongside Maitreya, Legacy, Reborn, etc.

A body really needs to give creators a reason to adopt a fourth (fifth, sixth, seventh ack) rig into their workflow. There are already way too many bodies to rig for. Even just on the consumer side, I'm looooong over the way the body system works in SL in general (everything else I play gives you a single body that's highly flexible and everything just fits - so nice), so I would imagine those making clothes might get a bit burned out from time to time, too.

[Ceka Cianci]

20 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Exactly!

I should probably be wary of saying this but on a technical level it's really simple, if you open up a deformer .dae file you can quite easily see in human readable format what is going on. Even if this wasn't done by expanding the shape system a viewer that could let you move bones and then generate a .dae deformer that you could then upload and use would be neat, currently this is quite easily done using blender but if it was possible in viewer that would be cool.

The shape system can do something that normal deformers can't though: scale bones, that would be the big trick that could only be implemented with an actual shape.

 

 

there would probably be a lot of back and forth from poser to sliders, unless they somehow added a page in the sliders for poser where you could save and move to the poser page, save and to the sliders page..

It would be a pain in the but if they weren't right in that same tool area..

[Marianne Little]

21 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Maybe they could give the body & the developer kit to popular skin & clothing makers (esp. lingerie) on the condition that they'll show it in ads and hype it. Isn't this partly what Maitreya did when they made LaraX with Velour skin tones? or when Kupra, Reborn & GenX were marketed by clothing makers? 

People kept hearing about these new bodies and seeing that clothing designers were designing for them - designing, not just using pre-made templates. The accidental release by Velour about LaraX ahead of schedule really stirred up interest too. This chatter makes people want to try a new body. Then if it is actually good and interesting, they convince themselves that they need it.

 

19 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I'd actually go in a different direction and say given the way things are now (with how many bodies there are and how many designers are rigging for), a brand new body would have to win creators over, first - ideally before its full public release. I've seen some new releases that customers absolutely loved, but went unworn due to lack of available products.

In my own personal case, Anatomy fell into that category for me. I was ready to switch day 1 and we were all pretty hype in the Discord, but I can't consistently build the varied wardrobe I get with Legacy, so I haven't yet invested. Still holding out hope, though, because it's got every single feature I could ever possibly ask for (even body GLITTERRRRRRRR) and some fun shoe designers that adopted it alongside Maitreya, Legacy, Reborn, etc.

A body really needs to give creators a reason to adopt a fourth (fifth, sixth, seventh ack) rig into their workflow. There are already way too many bodies to rig for. Even just on the consumer side, I'm looooong over the way the body system works in SL in general (everything else I play gives you a single body that's highly flexible and everything just fits - so nice), so I would imagine those making clothes might get a bit burned out from time to time, too.

I used the words "big guns in the community create for it", it was taken as bloggers when I used "Influencers" after?

I meant creators. I am not sure if a free creators kit would be enough.

The big and powerful creators rig for the top three- four bodies and release news often. And add-ons like Juicy. They have to be in every event and every sale.

Is it a benefit for them to start with a new and unknown body? It takes a lot of work.

I think creators have to be paid to do it.

At least expenses covered, and a free stall in events for the new body. If the designers have to pay for it themselves, I think many will wait and see if the body takes off. And then the small amount of content strangles the body. People who want it, say they will wait and buy it when they see they can get content, creators wait and see how many people will buy the body... beep... dead. 😩

One thing that would help would be to get the body out to as many as possible, to a low price. So that is why I said earlier, you have to be rich in RL, because this will be a money out operation, not a money in. People do not change body as often as they change head. If I won the lottery in RL, I could roleplay SL business. I could not live on what I earn on a new body. I think that time is over.

Start with a low introduction price, give out a body to group members monthly, give out a free body in Flickr contests etc. Those who win a free body and already have it, name the avatar they want the body sent to. And maybe a free body for newbies? Let us say that newbies under 30 days get the body for free. Include a small pack of clothes. Of course this would be used to outfit a lot of alts, but who cares. You are rich and don't need to earn money. Let people make 100 alts and pick up your body. You could also have prices where they can win gift cards for clothes. Gift cards from the creators who create for your body.

* you = general you

[elleevelyn]

a way could be to make a whole bunch of template clothing and hair for the body and drop them on the marketplace, full-perms and free. Materials incl. in the template pack

and just keep doing it. Every about 3 months, drop another template pack

Edited January 2 by elleevelyn
drop

[Anna Salyx]

On 12/26/2023 at 8:14 AM, Katherine Heartsong said:

LaraX will overtake Lara eventually because it's easier to rig clothes for, so that's part of the success equation. The other part of Maitreya's successful launch of X? You got the upgraded X free. I wonder if Belleza is regretting their decision to initially charge 5,000L for the new body for existing and loyal customers?

Coupled with that, new users just buying into the Maitreya verse with LaraX also get the 5.3 (OG) Lara as a free add in. This is a functional backward compatibility with an extensive catalog of existing clothes and accessories with minimal effort and zero cost (for the body) involved. This can be a tremendous lure for new customers to the line, now and in the future.