Question to all skin creators (related to fake feet)

[Monti Messmer]

We all know that the standard Avatar feet are no good for barefoot, sandals or "open" shoes.

Now my wicked idea.

Could skin creators just remove the feet part, maybe up to the knees, put them in a separate file and maybe release this to shoe creators or give them the UUID so customers could select their skin from a menu in the shoes.

It´s just an idea maybe someone knows of a better way but that would remove the mess in adjusting fake feet to skins.

What do you think ?

Monti

[MuffinUnsane1488303563]

Many big shoe designers have the perfect match for popular skin choices.

 

I disagree with the removing of below the knee skin. Often I just pad around shoeless with disregard to mutant feet. That, and even if you did have the skin file it would still be wonky in certain windlight settings.

There's also the fact that the skin is made using the avatar template. For your idea designers would have to get the foot scuplt and texture that along with making sure it matched up to the skin.

 

Sorry if I'm rambling, rather late here. Or early haha.

[Nalates Urriah]

The avatar is going to remain 'the avatar' for the forseeable future. The Lab has talked about and SL users have wanted a better avatar for some time. But, any change or update of the avatar runs afoul of the cardinal Linden Rule to not break existing content. Changing the avatar would break a HUGE amount of exisiting content.

But, creators have already made sculpty feet and toes. You can find a load of them in the market place. However they have a couple of problems. They tend to have seams at the toes and ankle. They do not bend so they can only replace the ankle and lower leg if one is willing to give up the ankle flex.

Mesh creators have made feet and toes that extend up the leg. When the mesh foot is made as a rigged mesh it will bend at the ankle. I don't know all the details of mesh render. But, it seems there are some differences between how prims and mesh are rendered. The differences seem to help with color matching. This difference seems to allow the seam between the avatar mesh and the foot/leg mesh to be well hidden.

In writing on my blog I use feet and toes to who how the coming Mesh Deformer is working and its effects. See: Mesh Deformer 0.2 Update for the latest info on that. In an article titled: #SL Bare Feet you can see the difference between sculpty and mesh feet.