Orwar

The first thing I tell new people in SL to fix isn't their avatar's appearance, that's a project to put a lot of time and thought and testing into - but put -something- in your profile, that isn't: Dating profile one-liners (i.e. 'I like shopping, the beach, and hanging out with friends' - that information is useless). Brainy / inspirational quotes (the ability to copy-paste something Einstein said doesn't make you appear intelligent, it makes you appear unimaginative - and misinterpreting Horace makes you appear an outright idiot). 'BDSM test scores' / limits (firstly, this makes you appear like you're in SL only for zhe pixelbumps, and secondly, it makes you look like a completely amateurish fast-food kinkster). 'Brat' (whatever dynamic you have in a relationship, or want to have in a relationship, is completely irrelevant for anyone who isn't part of you relationship - if you think that being a brat means that you can act like an entitled b*tch towards anyone and everyone you meet, you ought to be sterilized). 'I luffs muh famyluh, meet my mom, my other mom, my dad, his nephew, my gran, my nan, my sissy's pootang, my drunk uncle and my favourite grandchildren' (I'm not looking at your profile to find out about other people). ' ... And if you mess with them, I'm gonna hurt you' ( ... Okay then). 'Put this ASCII dog in your profile to show you're against animal cruelty' (is this your profile, or pop-up spam?). 'Hi, I'm a furry child avi, please keep things PG!' (you got it - but also, why are you wearing a high-scripted attachment called 'lady bits'?).

To be fair, if my wife walked in on me I'd probably be gone for more than 15 minutes ... ... Because I'd have a heart attack or mental breakdown if suddenly I just had a wife pop out of thin air. Possibly both.

Did you just tell a woman to smile?! Like, oh my gosh, that is so uhm, like not okay and stuff, right? How very dare you! (Disclaimer: Zhis ist ein SARCASTIC massage, und zhis disclaimer ist also SARCASTIC, for the benefit of zhe peoples whose doesenknots knows zhe SARCASM vhen zhey sees its. Ve at Furlgrimr Entertainment *trademarked, copyrighted, incorporated, tickled and bandaged* does nots takes any responschubilitiez for zhe hurtinks of zhe butts of zhe peoples whose knows nots whats is humors, and furzhermore thinks theys stupids.) ... In all seriousness though, yeah, your avatar doesn't look particularly approachable with the whole 'I laughed once, didn't much care for it'-expression.

... ... I hate it when people say they 'like tea', and drink the tea dust swept off the factory floors and stuffed into teabags, that's been artificially flavoured with all sorts of synthetic nonsense. And green tea, and 'white' tea. Go Orwellian or go home! And 'red tea'? That's not a thing; rooibos makes a nice beverage that's suitable for an evening drink as it contains no caffeine (if you can't stomach the real thing, that is) - but it's not 'tea'. "Fourthly, the tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right. In a time of rationing, this is not an idea that can be realized on every day of the week, but I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but a little stronger with each year that passes - a fact which is recognized in the extra ration issued to old-age pensioners." - George Orwell

It's okay, I'll just make sure you aren't wearing too many additional attachments. Grins.

It also has 4.5 times the VRAM compared to Maitreya 5.0. No wonder the mesh freaks out an an altitude and starts literary bursting apart at the seams.

I was doing a shoot with a model, and as we were finishing up I just noticed my contours in the shadows off the scene - it felt quite fitting.

Huh, never noticed this, but yeah, I appear to be having the same thing. I can't come to think of a solution off the top of my head, other than using the 'show all' on the HUD as you suggested. Hopefully Maitreya are listening to feedback on the update and will tweak it ..

They're pretty easy to use: Rez a save stick from the body's folder on the ground. Rename the stick so that you know which one it is (i.e. for which outfit you'll be using it). Pick the stick up (right-click and take), by default it'll end up in the body's folder - I'd suggest making a separate folder for them. Add the stick, it'll end up on your HUD by default (which is where you'll want them). Use the Maitreya HUD to pick which alpha cuts that you want to use. When your alpha is complete, click the save stick and 'Save All'. Add the stick to your saved outfit. Whenever you switch outfit, the save stick will appear as a HUD - just click it and 'Load Alpha'/'Load All'. When your alpha is loaded, detach the stick from your HUD. You now have unlimited save slots, compared to the 5 save slots on the old body.

That's what the save sticks are for.

I disagree with the phrasing here, and the concept. If you go into Second Life thinking 'I want to make an avatar that looks exactly like Hugo Weaving', then yeah, you'll probably have a hard time getting there. If you make the concept more abstract and just think in terms of 'I want to be tall' and 'I want a pointy nose', then it's immediately a lot easier. Making an avatar look good isn't about emulating a specific look (which is subjectively attractive to begin with), but by taking care to balance the features and fine-tuning them, and to work with the materials that you have rather than working against them; if you've got a skin with a six-pack, don't make a shape with a pot belly, if you've got a shape that's petite, don't get a skin with baked shadows that emphasize your curves - it looks BAD. Creating your avatar is one thing, it's something you should sit down and just push through - and ask for help or input if you need it (there are a ton of resources available on the topic). Going a few weeks and then realizing 'Hm, my nose could be a little larger' or 'I should play around with the sliders to see if I can make my eye shape look a little different', that's something that takes time and reflection, trial and error. Alternatively, just go buy a shape, and purchase the body, skin and head in the style card - ta-dah, you've got a platform to build off of, then start adjusting things from there. Even bringing TMP up is a bit like advising someone complaining about a stomach ache to drink bleach. It's an objectively bad body, and it's made by a creator whose business practices are absolutely egregious. There are two viable options for men's bodies at the moment, Gianni and Jake. If you can't get a look that you like between the two of them, then it's not another body you need, but to spend some time figuring out how sliders work. The tertiary alternative would be either Geralt or even Slink Physique Male - but neither of them are anywhere near as well supported. Heck, I'd recommend Aesthetic before I'd recommend Legacy. Or Piggu's Jonathan. Or a Dev body. Or just using a system avatar. Or a prim cube. As far as heads go, you've got a few more options. Catwa, Lelutka, GA.EG, etc. - pick whichever one you have to deform the least to get the shape that you want. For wardrobe, there's not really a correlation between price and quality. You can buy good shirts fairly cheap, and you can buy terrible shirts in flashy packaging for hundreds if not thousands of L$. The only consumer advice there is to try the clothes on, if you like them and feel they're worth the price tag, get it - if you dislike them or think they're too expensive, well, don't. As a male in Second Life, expect to grow sick and tired of the fashion available and the long time between releases, don't expect to have a new outfit for every day for very long. If you want to consume fashion, make a female avatar.

For which I'd suggest using a BOM-compatible body and head with a system skin. I don't know about Jake, but Signature's bodies have had BOM for a while now. As far as heads go, I have no idea. Haven't gone fully BOM myself yet. If a skin creator doesn't sell system skins by now, well, go with a brand that does, or you'll find yourself looking at a new skin soon enough anyway.

Hm, haven't had any problems with this on my end .. Unsure of what might cause it.

Are you using one of the 'special' skins? If not, all of their skin tones are available in both applier and system versions. My skin is from PF too, and this is what I'm using: PF <Vamp> Morgana (system skin using BOM for my head and body) PF <Vamp> MAITREYA Lara applier (for the neck fix - what I previously used for my body before the 5.0 update; don't normally use this at all these days) PF <Vamp> BOM Hide Fingers/Toe Nails - Maitreya (tattoo to remove the nails painted onto the system skin)

To compare, this is what it looks like without any neck fix, and neck size - body fat set to 7:

Hm. Okay, so, this did work for me - I applied the applier version of my skin whilst wearing the neck fix, and then I went and put BOM back; however doing this will require you to have both an applier and system version of your skin. But it also shows why I never liked them to begin with ...

Not really. I've never had a shortage of means of communicating with my friends in SL outside of SL; Skype, Discord, these forums. Besides, sometimes it's healthy to actually go offline.

It's not the amount of space, but the stuff and people in the space. Club-goers on average tend to wear a lot more scripts than they need to, and have little regard for avatar complexity and texture usage, especially since people (in certain types of venues more often than others) choose to just hide bits they aren't using and wear the HUD (as I wrote in the script statement of my sister's club: "Did you know that your genitalia can have more lag impact than your dance partner?"). Likewise, a lot of furniture contains a disproportionate amount of scripts, textures and triangles to what they add to a place. Poorly optimized mesh with high-resolution textures for minute details (just the same as many clothes and accessories) all add to the performance of the people who have to load or cache it all just to see the club. A very popular furniture brand in SL has teacups with more than 16,000 KB of VRAM - to compare, the sofa that I have in my house has 4,200 KB (can't remember what the TMem looked like, but the teacup had 12 faces, my sofa has 2). If your venue is sharing region with another venue with a lot of script lag, there isn't all that much you can do about it (unless you're renting the land and the landlord has a policy on script limits). You may also be in close enough proximity of high-poly stuff that's heavy to render - reducing the draw distance so that your club is covered but that you have as little overlap as possible with neighbors' builds may help, but again, this is on the user's end. There are a lot of things you can do to optimize your venue's performance, both by looking at the stuff you've put in it, and by asking your patrons and staff to be mindful of others (and themselves). If you have neighbors who cause a lot of lag, either approach them and see if anything can be done about it, or consider moving.

Hm, could you show a picture perhaps? I don't remember whether it's usually the bodies or heads that have the fitting options, but sometimes you'll need to fiddle with the neck options a bit to get it to look good - for Neph I went with a higher body fat option than I actually have, as that made the two overlap to a point where the seam turned pretty much invisible. There always will be a seam though, and how pronounced it is will depend on your graphic settings and the lighting (both local and WL) - so in essence, anyone else who looks at your avatar may see things differently.

I don't know if it's all their system skins, but I picked up the old system version of a skin I used for my mesh body, and paid L$1 for the BOM fix for it, it was very cheap (can't remember how much exactly).

... ... Yes. Yes! What we need is a Latin taxonomy, á la Linnaeus. As a Swede, I believe the duty is mine - let's see ... Skin applier: 𝕬𝖕𝖕𝖑𝖎𝖈𝖎𝖕𝖚𝖘 𝕯𝖊𝖗𝖒𝖆𝖋𝖑𝖎𝖈𝖐𝖎𝖇𝖚𝖘 ... This would probably be easier if I'd actually studied Latin at some point ... Promptly throws in the towel.

I mean, perhaps they were closet-nekos?

Nah. I mean, old-timey avatars weren't always all that simple either, there were features I didn't know about for ages before someone pointed them out (like, system layer order). The learning curve for new things in SL is often steep, and sometimes as new features are made possible, it's something we all have to go through. By the time I got my first mesh body I was fairly on board with most things of the old system avatars, I think - and then I had to start over, but with it being a new thing it wasn't difficult finding help. New people in SL finding mesh stuff 'difficult' to work with, well, they never had to deal with the old stuff that was often as difficult, if sometimes not more so. The amount of people showing up at Oxbridge wearing 13 pairs of shoes and 8 hairs all attached to their butts back in the day ...