Nika Talaj

I don't understand this? You mean, facial slider control of mesh heads?

Re: expressions -- With petites (small mesh humans), they handle eye blinks and smiles by actually wearing 3 heads simultaneously, and juggling position and visibility under HUD control.

Adeon Writer

Someone a while back demonstrated that rigged meshes could be made that obey ALL appearance sliders That could include the face. This is different from Qarl's deformation project but it shows promise, too.

Qie Niangao

Right. Facial shape. Otherwise it's the Agent Smith Effect where every instance of an avatar type looks just like all others. (Which isn't a problem if one makes one's one mesh head model, but I meant mesh avatars as commercial products.)

With expressions, the particular challenge I was muttering about was knowing when to trigger them, not with a HUD, but to coincide with the playing of the system express_something animations. AFAIK, there's no way for a script to detect their occurrence, but of course there's scripted content aplenty that pushes those animations, however ugly they may be.

Come to think of it, I've not been paying much attention, so dunno if the mesh deformer(s) is(/are) supposed to respond to those expressions anyway.

(Eye blinks I know nothing about. The glimpse I long ago took into a furry eyeball script* seemed to use a several second random interval, but maybe there's more pattern to them than that.)

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*as opposed to a Hairy Eyeball script, or a hairy script for eyeballs.

Adeon Writer

From what I've understood, Qarl's deformer code copied the hand and face expressions, as well as avatar physics, with no real specific instruction to do so, he just kinda got it for free due to how it he coded it, so it will follow hand expressions unless he specifically told it not to do that. I don't know if he made the exception or not.

Gabriell Anatra

My current profile pic has me with my toungue sticking out.

The smile expression is nice. I've a little script that makes me smile from time to time and it went over pretty well.

Nothing that I couldn't stand to lose but it would be a loss.

Clothing would be a bigger problem. None of the mesh avis I've seen appeal to me so I'd likely end up having to roll my own. That would be a problem for clothes. I'll likely end up having to go non-human and lose that altogether anyway, deformer or not.

Oh well.

bubblesort

Too bad about the clothing layers not taking more advanced materials. Even being able to put just a little subsurface scatter on the skin material would go a long way.

Has anybody heard anything new about the redpoly deformer? It generated a lot of buzz when it came out then just kind of fell off the radar.

Alternative to Mesh Deformer?

Leah Mayo

"Frown" expression is decent as well.

These three, and sometimes the "bored" expression I play with my own script in an additional prim of my ZHAO-II.

Darien Caldwell

Avastar just released a new version that adds support for the "redpoly" style deformer. I have been too busy to give it a whirl, but I intend to next project.

Read down the page here about "Volume Bones":
Avastar-1-dev-625 is available «

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[H]arsh Styles

Aribeth Zelin

It works great for clothing, outside of the breast slider problem. But it doesn't seem to work on facial features, sadly.

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Faerycat Designs In World -Marketplace 1- Marketplace 2

Adeon Writer

The RedPoly deformer will do wonders for fitting male clothing, which is good, because ATM it's even worse than all the feminine meshes in terms of finding something that fits. (female avatars seem to have become far more standardized whereas male avatars have sliders all over the place)

Aribeth Zelin

It also will allow for males to get nice clothing when they use a female base - since its just modifying a few settings.

Adeon Writer

The furries will be happy.

Aribeth Zelin

So will a few non-furries, I think - the male shapes I've made for myself and a few friends all use the female base - the faces are so much easier to work.

Adeon Writer

I'd bet. Got any pics of the results? I'd be worried they'd look a bit too feminine for my use.

Are there any creators who sell skin/combos of male avies using female base? I'd like to see the differences.

And possibly get some.

Aribeth Zelin

Let me go and take a pick of my male alt with shirt off.

Aribeth Zelin

Here - he's a little feminine, but that's partially because he does have one of the Nomine Andro skins, so...

He's another faerycat, except he usually has elf ears.

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Adeon Writer

Thanks for the pics.

Aribeth Zelin

No problem.

Daring Destiny

So, how long until I have to replace my wardrobe again?

Aribeth Zelin

I don't think its a matter of replacing - I still wear some of my older system clothes. But it makes it easier for people designing, since it means less sizes [well you need multiple sizes for breasts, but... ]

Darien Caldwell

Funny, but every time I've met a RL woman playing a male in SL, their avatars always seemed a bit feminine. I've always wondered if that was on purpose, or if their aesthetic just leaned that way subconsciously. It would be a fascinating psychological study methinks... hmmm...

Aribeth Zelin

I know my mind leans that way, but to be fair I've also made andro females a time or three. But he was originally made as a test to see which of my RL friends, used to how I play my characters, could figure out it was me. Only one did.

Oddly, when I was playing him, his girlfriend was played by my rl SO. It always made me think of how my parents used to reverse dress for halloween and octoberfest.

Andromeda Rage

Yeah, my buying of system layer clothing is slowing way down. Wading through the slap-dash, cranked-out template-made mesh clothes gets a little tedious sometimes... but, what's kinda nice is, providing demos for all this stuff is still widely a common practice. It's somewhat rare that you can find demos of system layer clothing, and that led to a few "argh, but it looked so good on the vendor pic..." moments for me, lol.

Qie Niangao

With materials coming, I'm unmotivated to buy mesh clothes, either, even when they're not just the same old templates recycled, so I'm mostly wearing pre-mesh system rags.

Also I have the idea that current mesh clothes won't "just work" with a deformer, "deform to avatar shape" not having been specified at upload. (But I really have not been paying attention, so maybe that's wrong.)

Nephilaine Protagonist

thats right qie, no currently existing mesh garments will work with the deformer, it requires a re-upload of the item.

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