Monday, February 17, 2020

Adventures in Mesh Bodies: Part I

I'm not a luddite. Really, I'm not. I'm just dilatory.

Being mostly out of the world for the past few years made it easy for me to avoid the issue of mesh, and especially mesh bodies and heads. But I'm hanging out in Second Life more again, and it's getting just stupid to not look seriously at a mesh avatar.

My system avatar has been great for 13 years, but let's be honest, system avatars bend in strange places, and the hands and ears and especially the feet are a mess.

The original avatar bone system didn't have a sufficient number of attachment points, which limited avatar motion and attachments. Now, thanks to Project Bento, there are many more bones and joints. This allows, among other things, sophisticated hand motions, but requires rigged mesh hands. These hands (and feet) typically come with mesh bodies, but can be worn separately.


Mesh bodies overlay the system shape, with the system avatar rendered invisible with alpha mask. Prim attachments are still visible, but system the system avatar and clothing like blouses and skirts don't show. The illustration above shows system icons for underpants, pants, shirt, and jacket. There are also icons for hair, socks, shoes, and, I believe, undershirt. Even when worn, none of these are visible when the mesh body is worn. Prim attachments, however, do, so hooray, at least, for that! The Amazed outfit, by the way, was a freebie, one of the first, if not THE first, outfit I picked up when I first logged onto Second Life.

I might never have gone for a mesh body, but the Lindens' devaluation of invisiprims wrecked my extensive collection of prim and sculpted shoes. My feet show in unattractive ways through most of my outfits. Only the outfits with boots are spared. This is no way to live, and so, mesh body.

I asked friends for recommendations, and it seemed Maitereya's Lara was the most popular body. Maitreya is a brand with longevity and I always liked their products, so after checking out the Lara demo I took myself to Maitreya the other night and bought the mesh body for $2750 L.

No comments: