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[Idea] HOA - house of appliers


Nathron Anatra
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I have noticed there are as of now almost an inumerable amount of system clothing availible for the classic avatar as mesh is a more recent development. With the advent of the Omega system and most human mesh avatars being compatible with it on some level or at least complient to the extent of clothing. I'd like to offer a service which basically takes any system clothing previously purchased and converts it to an omega compatible applier. With regaurds to freebies I'd like to offer these as well at least the high quality ones as appliers if the textures are availible for free if I need to enhance them to high res at cost, what are the sl users thoughts on opening a store that basically makes these availible. If clothing designers want appliers created or want to sell their appliers in the store. The price would be set by them, I'd eventually like to expand this to all skins/tattoos currently availible.

The idea came to me when I was searching for clothing/skins/tattoos for both the aesthetic body and ADAM as well as helping my wife find good skins for her genre of style and compatibility with slink/mayeitra (sorry if i spelled the latter incorrectly). To my dismay I found many older outfits while high quality in appearance we're unusable because nobody had created appliers for them. This is my suggested remedy to that situation. I'd also like to propose in an effort to make this a reality that from now on if appliers are not provided for use with mesh bodies, creators release copy/mod/no-trans copies of all their textures with packages.

For instance I buy a system outfit, I'd expect to get the textures for the outfit with the package if it lacks appliers this way the users of this clothing could use a simple script to create an applier config notecard/script for the omega system via drag and drop onto a prim much like the ADAM applier creation kit works.

Skin creators have a couple extra steps to follow that are not difficult in the least reproducing textures with no nails on them and applying a simple mask for neckfix textures all of which is an extra 20 minutes of work at most.

The idea is an eventual outcome and I'd like to start smaller with simply enhancing the currently availible freebies and making them availible in applier form. Id like to see this be a collaborative effort between designers so that no potential customer is left behind so to speak when they want to try a different outfit.

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i dont mean to discourage you but textures is what makes a outfit an outfit. Quality textures make quality outfits. Without textures, mesh is pretty much lumps of plastic

am not sure that any of the quality texture makers are going to give out their textures copy/mod to do exactly what you intend. Which is take a texture and mod/copy it onto any and all other mesh garments that the user wishes

they might but I think the users be looking at substantial higher prices for this

2 * mesh + 2 * texture = 2 garments = 2 sales for the same creator

N * mesh + 1 * texture = N garments = 1 sale for the same creator 

+

other thing that you might want to check is with the creators of the 'freebie' textures. Lots of what we think of as freebie resources inworld are actually rips. Not all, as there are some actual freebies legit released as such. Just not as many as we might think sometimes

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I can see how you have come up with your idea, and I also do not want to be discouraging, but the last thing I am going to include with anything I make are the textures.  I take hours and hours getting a texture to work just right on any system clothing I make (and yes I do still make new system clothing) and I do make the appliers for these outfits.  I have also began to remake some of my older system clothing, update it and make the appliers for those.  I have been making clothes in SL for over 10 years,  I am not one of those mega stores but I do take pride in everything I create so of course I prefer not to release or share any textures with anyone.

I do howerver, share the frustration of a lot of us when it comes to skins and appliers.  Skin appliers for women are a lot easier to find than ones for men.  My husband, got a mesh head, but has not got a mesh body yet because there are so few male skin makers who do appliers, and virtually none that do skin appliers and include the head.  I love my skin, but don't have a mesh head as my skin maker does not do appliers for heads...  and trust me trying to match a mesh head with an existing skin using the colour sliders is pretty much an impossible feat, and even then you end up with facial feature changes which I don't want.  If the skin maker did heads this problem would be eliminated.  

Just so many changes some of which are really good, and some have created headaches for creators lol.

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If you offered some sort of appliers service, the permissions system is such that it would force creators to give you their textures with full permissions. That's the only way you would be able to sell it or give it to someone else. Not ideal, but unfortunately the creators (or very trusted business partners) pretty much have to be the ones to take care of it.

There's also the matter of whether the clothing textures (and/or creators) are even in SL anymore. Lots of reasons why that sort of situation might occur, especially for things which are no longer supported (i.e. set out for free).

I guess it probably matters more where there is a romantic relationship and a partner to get attached to the beloved's appearance, but IMO the simplest and best solution to the not mesh compatible problem is to keep a classic av in inventory as well. In other words, use whatever is best for the situation at hand.

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Bitsy Buccaneer wrote:

If you offered some sort of appliers service, the permissions system is such that it would force creators to give you their textures with full permissions.

just about the full perms.

i think OP is proposing that if own the applier and the texture, then the person could put the texture into the applier and then apply to any mesh that they own. In which case the texture wouldnt have to be Transfer

on the surface is a good idea from the users pov. Just not sure how many texture makers would sell their textures on this basis. Would be some I think, just not sure how many makers would, and what the cost of the textures might be to make it financial worthwhile for the texture maker

 

eta: i just add for clarity. Am pretty sure OP is talking about a applier system for own personal use, and not for resale items

 

 

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i think the plan is that somebody makes a texture then sells it to a customer No-Trans

the customer can then as a contract condition: Export the texture, convert it to fit another mesh, re-import into SL and apply to the other mesh. The condition is that the re-imported texture is also no-Trans (perms-wise it isnt, contractually it is)

OP's idea is to provide a service to do this. Is doable pretty seamlessly as a TPV mod this

a downside is that the converted texture wont bear the original artist as the SL named creator. It would bear OP (or surrogate) as the SL named creator, and the customer would receive the converted texture from OP as No-Trans. We are excluded by ToS to upload stuff into SL in another accounts name

the converted texture would then be a derivative work created by OP. Which is where I think it gets expensive for the customer to buy the original texture

it also leaves OP in RL possession of bunches of original textures, even tho OP is morally and/or contractually bound not to do anything with them, other than for the stated purpose

altogether while is a good idea for customers, and for OP, I am not really seeing anything much in it for the original texture maker

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I think I followed that. :matte-motes-smile:

But no trans textures can be downloaded from SL? I thought they had to be full perm. If they can, then they are effectively full perm anyways. The risk is so high. It could end up being easier for creators to mod their own stuff instead of having to keep an eye on the applier-ers.

Can't see many creators being happy to let someone else modify their babies either. Could be tricky to do without the layers anyway, depending on what changes are required.

I still vote for keeping a system av on hand. :matte-motes-smile:

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Actually no you cannot download textures from SL to your computer unless they are full perm .. I know because a few years back I bought a pack of textures to use for Halloween items,  and all the textures in the pack were full perm except one, and it wa mod, copy,  but no transfer .. the no transfer prevented me from uploading it to my computer.  

And I can't stress enough that as a creator, no I am not about to release any textures for any reason, with one exception..  If an alpha for a mesh outfit doesn't work well and the person who bought it tells me they can fix it to fit in photoshop or gimp themselves then I will as a courtesy send them the alpha textures so they can work on them..  But never my design textures..  Yes Bitsy they are my babies, hours of work .. not about to risk someone messing with my work.

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I agree that no clothing designer is going to give you their textures. 

Perhaps a better plan is to open a store where designers can place their own prims for sale that contain appliers grouped by the body or bodies they work for. Then customers could come to one place to shop for applier clothing.  Then you could cover many different mesh bodies, even those that don't use the Omega system.

As a service you could also teach classes on how to make appliers for those designers that would like to but have no idea how to do it. 

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Bitsy Buccaneer wrote:

Can't see many creators being happy to let someone else modify their babies either. Could be tricky to do without the layers anyway, depending on what changes are required.

 

yes agree

i think OP be better off entering into RL contracts with texture makers to port the textures to other meshes, outside of SL

Given the ever-increasing number of different mesh bodies and specific made garments for each body then could be some advantage for a texture maker in this. To employ somebody to do the conversion work, allowing the texture maker to focus on design

anything other than this is just a hassle for texture makers I think. Even with full perms texture sets supplied inworld, there is still a lot of hassle with copyrights, derivative works and so on

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Bitsy Buccaneer wrote:

 

But no trans textures can be downloaded from SL? I thought they had to be full perm. If they can, then they are effectively full perm anyways. The risk is so high. It could end up being easier for creators to mod their own stuff instead of having to keep an eye on the applier-ers.


Any texture can be downloaded to your computer directly from the CDN if you know the texture UUID, which is pretty trivial to find no matter what the permissions of the texture.

For applier systems like Omega, you just need to know the texture UUID to create your own omega applier.  Possesion of the actual texture is not required.

 

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Whirly Fizzle wrote:

Any texture can be downloaded to your computer directly from the CDN if you know the texture UUID, which is pretty trivial to find no matter what the permissions of the texture.

For applier systems like Omega, you just need to know the texture UUID to create your own omega applier.  Possesion of the actual texture is not required.


 

 

 

This is correct, to make any applier the UUID is always used,  but I would hope that not just anyone can find the UUID's for my textures.  It is my understanding that you have to own the textures before you can copy the UUID.  Otherwise there would be a whole lot more content theft going on!

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is just one of the things that nothing can be done to prevent it, the way SL is currently built

is a way to recode how SL handles UUIDs, I just dunno if LL have given it any resource attention yet. I think they maybe thought about it already tho, given the CDN hole that Whirly has mentioned, which is a newish thing

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Nope, there's no protection at all. The textures are downloaded to each user's cache, the filename is the UUID. There's a nice downloadable cache viewer for anyone that cares to look.

 

A while back, the standard viewer would even show the UUID of texture on prim objects in the texture inspector, not sure if that got changed?

 

Good security is not based around obfuscation! SL has no security around texture whatsoever.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Also to wherorangi's post above willing to work something like that out as well.

 

This alternative is a good idea, as for the owner of the texture being changed this would not happen at all unless it needed to be enhanced in that event provided the creator is still around the grid. I could easily pass the enhanced version back to the clothing owner to be re-uploaded however, classes on creating a higher resolution version of any image based on a lower resolution one and use of color correction techniques to fix glitches from the resample process is another option to allow the creators to have an easy to use workflow. Other options include creating photoshop/gimp scripts for recent versions of these packages that simplify the process automatically. As most of the steps involved in providing a quality resample from a lower resolution image using recent software techniques are quite a bit simplified from even a few years ago.

 

Resample Bicubic antialias edge 1024x1024 lock aspect ratio do a color correction and maybe some adaptive sharpening and that reduces the artifacts to almost none getting really into it fixing the remaining glitches include a content aware smoothing brush or clone stamp at pixel level to smooth the same overall pixel pattern across the glitched area. The latter method takes a while longer but can still produce better results than a purely automatic method. However most images if they are created with care as I'm sure most clothing makers try to produce the first 4 steps are usually enough. If the image turns too blury simply duplicate the layer and overlay it with whatever method of blending brings out the details the best. Easy enough to script these steps into a one step operation with exception to the manual tinkering some things will invariably need. As for the textures themselves they are not really required as part of a package only the UUID is neccessary to most appliers.

As for permission issues themselves with regaurd to textures I would like to see a sanctioned scripting method to spawn a texture with a different uuid to track customer licenses. In the current model that would dig into ll's pocket so I doubt that will ever happen either as they miss out on reupload fee's but still could aleviate some creators misgivings. In the current system it's possible to track the object containing the applier script as it will have a different id for each issuence not as good as tracking the texture asset itself but a way to reign in folks trying to steal somebodys work. Still with the holes in ll's permission system stealing is far too easy to accomplish to eliminate it completely.

I know this kind of collaberation must be undertaken by the creator community as a whole and as for a single person being in charge of it I don't see any reason why it could not be a consortium of designers so that it's more of a way to keep people honest.

The work itself of converting textures for use with mesh anybody with a little time and patience can do this pretty easily it's just the extra time involved in updating older works that pushes many designers away. Maybe in providing easy to use tools to make most of the work painless and providing a more centeralized place for people to obtain the items they want as a way to increase convience for the designers and the customers. I certainly don't intend to be in charge of anybody elses property just to make it easier for designers that don't have the time so that customers don't have to worry so much about weather this or that will work for them.

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For me the bottom line is this:  I consider the layer clothing I make for SL to be my art work.  Would an artist hand over a painting to be reproduced and perhaps altered to someone else?  I doubt it.  If and when I want to update my older files I will do it myself and make the appliers.  I have already done some that I deem worthy of taking the time to do.. Under NO circumstances will I ever freely give any of my textures to anyone!  Yes there are ways to get them illegally anyhow, I am aware of that, but trust me if I ever see any of my work copied and being sold,, there will be a violatioin filed immediatley!  Trust is not something I have a lot of when it comes to some folks in SL..  

Your long explanatin of scripts etc.. just goes way over my head and does not influence me in my thoughts at all.  I am a long time Photoshop user, and digital art creator (not just in SL)  and am very familliar with how to use resolution, colour correction, enhancement etc. 

Sorry to say but this is one creator who won't be involved in what you are propsing..

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