Orwar

For someone who's just trying SL out and don't know whether they want to sink a bunch of money into it ... Possibly, but probably no. It depends on what you want to do in SL, but if shopping for clothes and playing around with fashion stuff is it, then most of those avatars won't get you anywhere. Besides, for as long as Genus has a free head, and all you need to go with it is a Maitreya, you can create an avatar fairly cheaply with high quality mesh, that will work with BOM, that will have the majority of clothes released available for it. For men it's a little more difficult to get away as cheap. If all you want is an avatar that doesn't scream 'look at me, I'm a potato', to do exploring, sailing, socialising, gaming, etc - yeah, that'll work.

Hm, I have two versions on my computer, one is the regular one and one is the 'beta' version for bento. I went to check on their website and it appears the bento one has been taken down, as that part of the site is no longer accessible. That's a shame, I really like how easy and lightweight Qavimator is to work with, never been a fan of using Avastar (Blender's controls being different from SL's, hopping back and forth to adjust a pose and test it in-world feels like a chore). I do remember the changelog's latest entry for a very long time said that the creator simply didn't have time to complete it due to RL stuff. The SL wiki page for project bento talks about Maya and Blender primarily, but those will require Avastar or Mayastar - both of which come with a cost (L$11,000 for Avastar, L$9,000 for Mayastar, not sure whether Mayastar is a single purchase or not, but Avastar is a 1 year license, with a cost of L$5,500 per year after the initial purchase). Both of them are made for rigging mesh as well, which I expect is why they cost as much as they do. I seldom make bento poses, I have hand and face posers in-world that I use when I set up a shot (I do like the versatility of being able to change those things to re-use a pose with a different getup / feel anyway), the few times I've wanted to make one I used the Qavimator beta (and a few times, played with Avastar, but meh, effort).

White cat wants to know why you didn't eat that shrew that was so kindly gifted to you.

Don't have any ugly Christmas sweater ... Mine is awesome.

If you have your own region, knock yourself out with putting whatever you want with it. I was lucky to get a Victorian Linden home pretty early and was very happy with the location - until my neighbors began furnishing their homes. I cammed over to derender clutter several times, yet as they kept rearranging stuff, changing stuff, and one neighbour moved out to be replaced by another one doing the exact same thing, I was just done with it. I lived right next to a car rez zone, and about a short walk from a boat rez pier. A lot of people don't live in a private bubble, but next to popular roads or open water routes, or in neighbourhoods with other people in it, whether it's renting a small chunk of land or in Bellissiera or the old Linden home regions. In my current home, the neighbours are largely the same way, this time around I've just popped a skybox high up to get away from it all. I'm on a .. Let's call it 'fairly decent' gaming PC. Oh and I have an average of 150-180 FPS in my home, in ultra settings, with all the bells and whistles. So, no, that's not the issue. I also have basically the bandwidth to download a double feature film in full 1080p in the time it takes me to go brew a cup of tea. Yeah, that's possibly true - I wouldn't know as I haven't cared to set foot in that store for ages, nor do I feel enticed to do so at the prospect of there being a horde of people there. New peeve: when you have a perfectly reasonable pet peeve that's based very much on just plain facts, and people try to argue against it because they feel as if their world view is endangered by it. Let me hate that trash heap in peace. Geez.

When I saw today's menu I got pretty excited as it said 'Pizza Buffet'. But out of the 8 kinds of pizza they had, all but 3 were random amalgamations of vegan stuff and lactose free stuff, and of the three that weren't nonsense, one kind had bananas and curry on it, and the other had mushrooms, neither of which are suitable for human consumption (which, I suppose, does make them nonsense, too). Well, not cooked bananas anyway. And mushrooms? What absolute freak puts cow fodder on food?! I took a slice of the salami pizza that, unfortunately, was the one thing that didn't have anything repulsive on it. After having eaten it, I figured hey, it's Friday, I got the afternoon off, might as well treat myself to a second slice - so I went back, and when I lift the foil to grab one, I was greeted with salami pizza with banana on it. And you know what? I blame the cloud!

Pet peeve. Creators who become really popular because their stuff looks pretty, when the meshes and textures are unnecessarily complex and high resolution, but people either don't know or don't care. They have teacups that require more VRAM to render, than my entire skybox build. That's impressively poor quality.

It would have been better, if it weren't for the Comic Sans ...

You can make bento poses as well - there is a QAvimator version for bento. But it's unfortunately unfinished, and only has a male model (although the pose will obviously work for a female avi). Also feels a bit buggy sometimes. But it works!

There once was a person quite tender, who romanced a rusty old blender, but a clumsy caress, made the kitchen a mess, and no more had this person a gender.

14: "Don't argue with trolls - it means that they win" - Rules of the Internet. And that's likely this thread done. Let's see if the moderators are willing to give it a round 4.

The shortest tragedy: "For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn."

Many do, unfortunately. And since in many cases it'll account for about half of their avatar complexity, it's easy to spot who does without even scanning their attachments (I popped mine on just to see, and I went from 70K to 130K - so it's 60K, or 3 Nephs in her undies worth. And that's the 'mainstream' brand). After whining at my sister for ages about how laggy her club is, she finally agreed to let me pop down a script meter and write a statement about lag contribution. I pointed out that a male bit is usually causing more lag than their dance partner is. They're terrible. Women do the same though. There's a game you can play, called 'how many dripping *ahems* at the shopping event'. There's usually a fair few. Nope. The way many (most, I reckon) male bits work when you 'hide' them isn't that they apply an alpha texture or use transparency. The way they'll hide is they'll shrink to the size of a peanut and be moved inside of your body. It's a bit like having your gonads un-drop. Which may well be our best argument to convince guys they should just leave it in their inventory when out and about!

It being your experience, does not make it a 'fact'. People aren't necessarily available only because they are present. Some people want to explore the grid on their own, others park themselves somewhere to listen to a music stream whilst being tabbed out to work or create. It does. About a tenth of the people on my contact list are people I work or have worked with professionally, the rest are family, friends, and acquaintances - and my contact list is highly dynamic; I add a few and get rid of a few on a monthly basis, people I meet through the forums or doing things in-world. Not all are worthwhile keeping, others stick around for years and will probably remain on that list long after I've put SL behind me. Friendship isn't a competition. If you're competing for attention, you will disturb and offend people. Find things that you enjoy doing in SL, whether it's sailing or driving, or playing board games, or role playing - just do that, and do it for your own sake, invite people to join you without feeling offended if they decline. Heck, just take a seat at a Greedy table in a decently trafficked gaming sim, and you'll probably have made contact with several people that will be potential friends in no time. Being desperate, needy, and clingy, basing your concept of friendship on your requirement for social stimuli, is nothing but social leeching - that will turn people away.

It varies from brand to brand, but in short, 'yes'. As far as 'head skins' go, things are simple enough - just include variants for different brow colours and a no-brow option usually (why they don't just make tattoo layers for the eyebrows separately, I don't know!). But when you then add bodies into the mix, things may start getting a bit wild. The skin brand I'm currently using have 4 different types - regular, athletic, ripped, and chubby. Each of them then has 4 options for cleavage shading; regular, dehanced, petite, and curvy. Then you have all of the options again, without *ahems* and *ahem-hems*. Then you have it all over again, with freckles. So, opening the folder for the body skin alone the first time is a bit of a chock if you don't know what to expect - if you then were to multiply it all by 4 again for blonde brows, brunette brows, black brows, and no brows, I expect people would take to the hills. ... And that's all before even going into the different tones! The other skin brand I use do it the other way around. The actual skin contains the body skin plus the 'base' body skin, and then you can add various tattoo layers for the different boobage options, muscle definition, etc. Which I think is much easier. But when people had appliers with dosens of options in them, I guess the skin makers didn't know how to approach it when switching over to BoM. Some succeeded better than others, and hopefully the more successful approach will be adopted eventually by more brands.

You're a lot less furry than I anticipated.

Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur ... ... Scratchy kitty, bitey kitty, grr, grr, grr!

Well. It's not quite the same as Gor ... With BOM, outfitting your avatar works pretty much exactly the same as it did before mesh bodies came around. So. This very much is back to the days of simplicity!

It's almost 1 am, and I'm to hold a lecture in the morning, so instead of doing a shot I'll just do this ...

All right, I'll have to look into those animations tomorrow. For now, I got some deformers. Shoulders down and in a little, stomach in a little, a slightly wider thigh gap (no more thighs going through each other!), and a flatter posterior. Very pleased with it!

Down.

This is always true. I've recently changed my demo routine from 'look at it whilst T-posed to see whether it fits and whether the textures and materials are decent' to 'hop out of the T-pose and move around a little, because apparently people make clothing that isn't meant to be moved in?!'. Oh, I'll have to check those out as well. Just finished doing some shots to compare no deformers vs. Small vs. Eredita .. Only thing I decided so far is 'yeah, I'll want to get some deformers'.

Ooh. Was about to purchase a bunch from the other store - but I'll go ahead and demo some of these first to see which I like best!