Mesh Avatars Demos Out

Listening in the Mesh Volunteers Group I heard someone has mesh avatars ready for sale. You can get a free demo (L$0). Visit Yabusaka to find them. Walk straight in the main door and past the teleport sign and group join. You’ll see three mesh avatars that will be for sale.

Free Mesh Body Demos

For now these are demo versions only. For SIM’s sake do NOT rez them in the sim. You will probably break them and have to get another copy. Take them to a mesh sandbox to try them out, which means you MUST BE in the Volunteers group to get into the sandbox. You can avoid joining that group by teleporting to NEO Aquel, which is a regular region that is mesh-enabled. Since these mesh avatars are already uploaded, you do not have to be mesh enabled. ALSO… you must have a mesh capable viewer. You can download that from the Volunteers’ page (236285).

There is a newer viewer that appeared Sunday. A post by Nyx Linden points to it. PostViewer Download (237157) It is not clear which one Mesh Volunteers should be using. I am going with the newer one. I wrote this article while using the older one. As I was finishing, the post popped.

WARNING!!!

There is a bug (236321). When you are changing mesh body parts DETACH them. DO NOT… DO NOT replace them by wearing something else. I lost a hand and my head. The replaced items do not return to inventory. I’m not sure of this is a viewer bug or a sim bug.

Even being careful I lost some more body parts.

Second Life 2.8.2 (236321) Jul 20 2011 15:27:29 (Project Viewer – Mesh)
Second Life RC Mesh 11.07.27.237002

WARNING!!!

Remember. When you uninstall a Linden made viewer, it can wipe the settings and logs for all versions of the viewers that use the folders. It is often better to simply delete the program folder: C:\Program Files\SecondLifeViewer2 or C:\Program Files\SecondLifeDevelopment or whatever version or project viewer you are uninstalling.

What You Can Learn

My New Look - Full Body Alpha

Wearing a mesh avatar body and clothes is different from wearing a regular SL avatar. As much as I’ve thought about mesh avatars there are some things that did not occur to me. Putting on a mesh body was an experience.

Shape Sliders

Only a few of the shape sliders work, as in have an effect on the Third Party Mesh Avatar (TPMA) body. None of the face sliders work. The avatars made by Yabusaka Loon come with lots of parts. They are needed.

Hands do not change… grip… I suppose. The mesh hand is in one position. The SL Skeleton does not have bones in the hand and fingers. So, there is no way to animate the hands. At some point the Lab may add that. For now Yabusaka has apparently decided to include 3 sets of hands; relaxed, fingers spread, and fist or grasping. I missed this restriction in my thinking.

Facial emoters do not work. A mesh head has a set expression. So, there are three heads with different expressions.

To compensate for this loss of features Yabusaka has made a HUD and Head and Hand OL types. These are a combination of the three sets of hands and heads. The HUD changes which is visible and provides a type of animation.

Enhanced Physics

In the current mesh avatars the jiggle is gone. No bouncy boobs, bellies, or butts.

Glow

This should be a fun new feature in clothes. In regular clothes it is not possible to turn on glow, AFAIK. With mesh clothes all the features of prim textures are available. That includes glow, which is part of Yabusaka’s HUD for the mesh avatar.

New Clothes Templates

Templates

If you notice, there is a free clothing template for Yabusaka’s mesh avatars. This is something I pointed out in earlier articles. Existing clothes are not going to work well with new mesh avatars, if at all. Yabusaka’s jeans look very nice and there is not the usual distortion of the texture in the crotch as I move around.

By giving the template away, Yabusaka is allowing others and you to make your own clothes for the avatar. I think that is a smart marketing idea. We’ll have to see how many follow Yabusaka’s lead.

Skin

Depending on how the mesh body’s permissions are set and whether you have access to your skin’s textures, you can put skin textures on the mesh body. They may not work well. It depends on how close the mesh body is to the SL Avatar’s mesh. But, it is possible.

Inventory Lag

Inventory lag in the 2.8 viewers is a delay between your clicking or scrolling and seeing something actually happen. It averages about 2 or 3 seconds.

Mesh Body - OMG Ears

Another horrible problem is when changing an outfit, the entire viewer goes unresponsive, my screen sometimes goes black, and it takes the outfit minutes to start to appear.

With mesh bodies when one replaces a mesh outfit and body with a non-mesh outfit and body there are all sorts of mess ups. Do yourself a favor and take off everything in the mesh outfit. Then put on a new outfit.

Summary

Wearing Mesh will be a new and different experience. There are limits with mesh bodies. Some of those will change as the Lab adds more features. Some limits will persist and be noticeable with human avatars. But, the possibilities for non-human avatars has greatly increased and should be interesting. I am curious what Gendels’s will do with mesh and looking forward to new dragons, furries, wolves, and on and on I could go.

Mesh is a big deal for SL. But it will not be a fast deal. Even with the time we have had to play in the Preview Grid mesh is new to most SL users. Few tutorials are out. So, it is going to take some time for the ‘mesh’ infrastructure to build. Once that happens we will see more mesh coming into SL at a faster pace.

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