Tuesday, February 14, 2012

More Mesh Avatar News

The other day Bart Seymour was kind enough to chat with me about mesh avatars and show me what he was working on. Today I went to his store, and he has models out so the general public has an idea of what's coming:


The sign reads as follows:

New Mesh Body Shape, Coming Soon
No more tinting, one texture for the complete body, matching clothing that can be wrapped around the body. Allowing clothing like slingshot bikinis.

Perspective here exaggerates the difference in sizes, and I am sorry to say that mesh avatars, if I understand rightly, have skeletons with the same limits as the stock avatar shape, so unless I'm wrong or something changes, it won't be possible to be 5+ meters tall. (Darn it.)

UPDATE: I am happy to say that I am wrong; be sure to read Aliasi Stonebender's comment!

I believe the coloring of the figure at the right shows the components that make up the mesh avatar. They have no heads; perhaps that means the alpha mask won't hide your head. That would certainly be a simple way to make sure the head is as configurable as it is now, because it would be the current head! I'm just guessing on that point, though--so I hope that Bart will comment on this post with any additional info he might wish to mention or any necessary corrections if I've erred.

Bart intends to make it possible to change breast size and hip/booty size--and  I've definitely seen some impressive examples of the latter!

I very much look forward to seeing what he comes up with. I have to think that the man who made the third-party prim breast-friendly clothing market possible will want to preserve that, but we'll see.

Jamie Schnook at Wet and Wild has also been busy creating more mesh avatars (NSFW picture behind a page break; shame on me for forgetting this when I first posted):



I especially like the "Why so big? Because it's in demand, and mesh can." I hope to be able to talk with Ms. Schnook about her mesh avatars to learn more, but I think that Wet and Wild is the only source of clothing for the mesh avatars they sell.

2 comments:

Aliasi Stonebender said...

Actually, as my avatar pictures demonstrated, it's ENTIRELY possible to make a giant mesh avatar. The main issue is most of the folks pushing mesh avatars are keeping them human-sized; it's actually quite trivial to resize them. It's not perfect - you jump around a bit with a large Z offset - but the main reason it's not being done is because people haven't asked.

While detailed texturing is beyond me (I've stuck with resizing my SL avatar mesh and some simple skinning via Sculptris' paint mode)I've done quite a few giant avatars at this point. In combination with your favorite prim boobs you could easily have a giant-chested giantess; alternatively one could stretch out the SL avatar beyond the ordinary limits in that region by hand.

(Since I'm still working on perfecting the process, feel free to shoot me an IM in-world, Melissa, if you'd like to be a test subject. :) )

Kaseido said...

I'm finally catching up on a couple weeks of interesting things: thank you for this post! It's fascinating, and something I'm eager to keep an eye on through you.

I've let mesh pass me by so far: I haven't wanted to invest in a new wardrobe, and since I have enough issues with clothes fitting my shape as it is (actually having a waist and hips!), it just didn't seem worth the bother.

But putting an end to the skin-matching issues, and having a broader range of clothes that fit, would be awesome.

I'm eagerly awaiting further news from you!