Orwar

The brains do not 'do' anything, a certain brand (or possibly brands) of head(s) have them. They contain no specific scripts as far as I know, apart from those mesh heads' scripts in general. 'Extras' should never be worn when not in use, and obviously only be used in appropriate circumstances, but people are morons, for which there's unfortunately no easy fix.

😯

Yeah, I mean, if someone wants to hire my services for my RL profession, it's $100 per hour + 25% VAT + material costs (and 25% VAT on them, which I've usually already paid for). That'd be what, L$25,000 per hour, give or take? I charge a tenth of that for a profile shoot + editing which can easily take 1-2 hours (if not more because people show up unprepared and have to try on every hair and accessory in their wardrobe on the spot whilst I twiddle my thumbs). And most people think that I'm "too expensive". I'm guessing you're not going to hire me to spend 10-40 hours renovating an object out of your personal collection of antique books, then.

As you zoom out, and meshes are moved further away from your camera, they will begin to be drawn using their lower-poly models to improve your rendering performance (or 'deform'), how exactly this looks depends on whether the mesh actually has a lower poly mesh model or if SL draws one willy nilly when you upload the mesh (some creators just put their full poly version as the 'lower' level and call it 'HIGH LOD' mesh - this is generally bad for performance, especially if the mesh is too complex for SL to begin with; i.e. the creator either doesn't know how or care to actually create virtual assets). A way to increase the distance of which things begin to deform, you can increase your LOD factor, but this may have adverse effects on your performance overall (Firestorm has a LOD slider in the 'quick preferences' menu, allowing you to increase or decrease it whenever you like; 1-2 is usually what people have by default, but a lot of people tell you that you should always crank it up to 4, or even use debug settings to crank it up to 8). So in short, find new hair and ears that are actually made in a way that works in SL, rather than just looking good in the close-up advert to cash in on people's ignorance and vanity. Or always stand eerily close to people and hope that they don't zoom out.

🖤

For which you could get another, better body, sold by a business that isn't ran by crooks.

It's not really a question about how much 'creators' make, but rather how much you make, and where in the world you live. It doesn't matter how much big brands like Blueberry or FashionNatic make, or Dictatorshop - you can't really compare their income with your expected income for a business selling a completely different type of product. I'm not sure what the 'biggest' brands are for skins or makeup, but even if you made products as good as theirs, you'd have to build your brand name before expecting any consistent income from it. There have been a handful of 'SL-made millionaires' (Anshe Chung), but she made her first million around 2006 - and whether her SL income is still as high as back then we don't really know - but her company moved on to invest earnings made in Second Life in other games and Internet business. If you're serious about starting a business in SL, money shouldn't be the incentive, and absolutely not a reason to quit your job. Running your SL business should be something you're passionate about, and if it grows to the point that you can reduce your RL work time to spend more time on your SL business, then that may eventually lead to a full time SL 'job'. By then, you will be the one to know whether it's viable or not.

Flickr is fairly easy. Throw likes at everything and everyone you see, comment on everything you see, spam your Flickr links into every Discord and in-world group you can find, cram your images into as many groups as you can - and then after a few days, carpet bomb all groups and Discords again just in case someone missed it. As for the meaning of life ... I go by the 'Three T's'. Tea, Tobacco and Titillation.

Who do you think I am? Of course sourdough. Life is too short for inferior bread.

Raw shot, the lighting on the RP sim is a little bit wonky, but eh - Neph having at some potions class!

... ... But are you allowed to eat roasted marrow on toast?

'Missing'? You don't wear underwear with a kilt, that spoils the whole thing.

A bit rushed, so I didn't have time to find a shirt I'm afraid.

Ponders for a moment. Yeah, I'd say that description is fairly accurate.

... Yes, I do say that with some frequency, don't I?

Since I got into SML with Neph, I've seen a lot of people wearing bodies I'd never heard of, the Dev bodies and Sking ones mainly. There's a mall at one of their home sims which has like 2-3 creators' stores, and that seems to basically be 'it' for what clothing is available. ... Suffice to say there are a fair amount of nudists or semi-nudists.

The apocalypse happened. We're just forum ghosts, all in-world stuff we do is just dreaming. Please help us.

Yes, but the question is how one would go about that. The blogging scene is pretty cliquish, and I suspect most users don't know or care much about things like VRAM or script usage, or even BOM - a lot of people still use non-Bento mesh heads. I think that going out with the mindset that 'I'm going to create the new Maitreya-killer', you're setting yourself up for a whole lot of hard work and disappointment - it'd have to be a project of passion. And who knows, there may well be some bodies that are capable of most of the things we sit here dreaming about, but never heard of. Even as a Signature user, who's in their Discord channel, and allow notices from the group, I didn't find out there was an Alice until I accidentally spotted it when I browsed the update notes for my Gianni and scrolled a bit and saw 'Alice x update'. That's not to say that the body 'failed', it may well take off as time goes on. I'm certainly curious about it and will be playing around with shapes for the demo for a bit whenever I find the spare time to do so, and if I do get it and then go buy some of the clothes made for it, and start wearing it when out and about, perhaps someone else will get curious about what it is and go try it out for themselves, and tell a friend. *shrugs* I don't even have any solid suggestions for how Signature should go about advertising it. A Signature event, for creators catering to the Gianni, Geralt and Alice? Exclusivity deals? Ad boards around various clubs? Flickr competitions? Carpet-bombing populated regions with notecard leaflets? Just look at the things Legacy have been doing lately - competitions where they give away tons of free bodies and offer discounts, and make exclusivity deals with creators to try forcing attention and demand to their product. Still not as big as Maitreya. And just one more reason to hate TMP, because it again shows just what kind of greedy, double-crossing pieces of carp they are.

I'm innocent. ... Pulls the tarpaulin tighter over the backyard fog horn.

Adblockers may be the culprit. Pro tip: don't name your advert image 'advert'.

I think this is the main problem, really, because there isn't a good way to reach 'all' people with an advert - Signature does have a handful of official bloggers that all use the Alice and advertise it regularly, but I suspect that the majority of their followers don't even realize that it's 'not a Belleza', and even then they only got a small clique of the Flickr crowd, and far from everyone in SL is on Flickr. Signature also has Geralt, which, although some creators cater to it these days, far from all who rig for Gianni rigs for Geralt as well, even if it is a body shape that I believe may well be more suitable for most people looking for a male body (as it's not as 'beefy' as Gianni). I have both, and whilst I enjoy both I prefer Geralt - but I barely have any clothes for it, and can't really find much that is both rigged for that specific body, and suits my fashion sense. In a way, it's a bit like Belleza's 'other' bodies, such as Isis; a lot of people tell me that they love the Isis and want to use it, but that there simply aren't enough clothes.

Yes, but thus you made your choice of body based on what you felt was important, in this case access to the widest possible variety of apparel. Someone else may put more weight into the body's appearance and go with Legacy or HG, or are super-nerdy about the lag and go with a barely supported Signature Alice or Ebody, someone else maybe doesn't want to spend any money at all and get a free mesh body from Altamura, and someone may just really, really want to be a she-hulk and go with a Sking, or have a plump avatar and go with the Piggu. So yes, the choices are being made for us, in a sense, but ultimately we have the choices before us and can choose how to approach it. What's the ETA on the [Rhiadra]: Übermensch? It's the same question as I (and several others) have been asking for ages - why isn't anyone making nice-looking, decent menswear? It takes skill, time and resources (although granted, once you've got the hardware you don't really 'need' to buy anything to make it happen). I unfortunately don't have the skills or the time required to make apparel or mesh bodies, and even if you did make a new body you're up against some pretty stiff competition, and even if you're successful it's going to take time before clothiers begin to produce stuff for it. And to be fair, I think many believed that Legacy -was- that body, and by this point it feels as if people are pretty much sick and tired of new stuff in flashy packaging that promises the world and more, only to find out that they've been deceived (fooled twice, even). In my opinion, a very strong candidate would be Signature Alice - but that body is pretty much a 'C-list' body at the moment, with no support to speak of, which few people seem to even be aware of (and personally I'm not overly keen on the shape - but the polish of it is on the same level as the other Signature bodies, and that's not a low standard!).

There are a couple of different body morphers around that can mitigate the shoulder area (and the thighs or belly) a bit, but you're right, for it to look proper the mesh would require remodelling - however, any remodelling would require all apparel made to fit to be re-rigged to the new model or they'd float over a shape that's no longer there (depending on the design of the apparel, of course). If you make a shirt, jumper or jacket that fully encloses the shoulder area though, you could very well model it to look better (which is often the case, at least by some of the craftier designers - same idea as making a tight corset and just alpha'ing the body beneath it). Another possible solution would be to make 'shoulders á la V-tech' add-on, that could at least be worn with strapless apparel such as tube tops, or with apparel that has a rigging option for the add-on (just as apparel that comes rigged for both Maitreya and V-tech). The 'thing' with mesh bodies at the moment is that whilst there are several options out there, none of the bodies have all the features and capabilities you might want, Maitreya's popularity is both due to the fact that it's a good body (even if it's hard to say it's the 'best', objectively), and because it's relatively affordable. It's also one of the lightest bodies, with a VRAM that sits at 1/4.8th that of Legacy (which is what most seem to compare it to) - the Slink Redux bodies and Signature Alice are the only other bodies which have comparable features and a competitive weight (there are lighter ones, but they either have less support or just look blocky). The 'dream body' which would have the mesh polish of the Legacy (without the insane VRAM), the support of Maitreya, the features of Belleza, the BOM-mindset of Slink (and maybe their hands / feet), and the shape of <insert favourite body shape here>, just isn't probable to be anything we'll see anytime soon (unless someone is currently developing zhe NextGen übermensch body in a dark cellar, cut off from the Internet). Which body one ultimately decides to go with is up to one's own preferences - I'd might consider one of the Bellezas if I had the time and money to sort through and update my wardrobe and stuff, and if their BOM update is nice. We'll see what the future brings.