AvaStar News Week 39

Gaia Clary is working to release an improved AvaStar 1.6 in October of this year. (Reference) An ‘Alpha’ version has been available since June. (Ref) But, it is not recommended for production or new users. The change is Gaia trying to get a better work flow for fitted mesh creation.

"Surrounded by an embrace"
“Surrounded by an embrace”

People are becoming more interested in working with the various mesh bodies. I’m doubting Gaia can do much that is specific to any private brand of mesh body or would want to. I don’t see a necessity to try. We are building better polygon layouts than the classic avatar’s. So, our weighting will be better and likely unique. Plus we will have polygon layouts that vary from the various mesh bodies as the bodies use different layouts.  But, if we have good layout and weights, our stuff is going to work well with most bodies mesh or classic. 

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Comparison: Mesh Bodies

The site MeshBodyAddicts.com has new reviews and comparison charts of the mesh bodies available in Second Life. So, if you are shopping, this is a good source of information. See: Reviews: Isteni, Tonic & Dude SLink! As of now there is no Render Complexity Information in the reviews. With the Complexity Feature on the way … Read more

Second Life: Firestorm a Designer’s Problem?

We still have a debate ongoing in Second Life™ over on SLUniverse in the discussion started by Adeon Writer, Dear Mesh Content Creators: Please stop making your content on Firestorm, continues. I provided my thoughts in Second Life LoD Problems – Is Firestorm to Blame. In that article you’ll see I think designer and consumer ignorance are to blame. I also see plenty of fascist rule makers out proposing their solutions.

I prefer freedom and free market solutions over rules.

SlackGirl - Sue
SlackGirl – Sue by Rehana Seljan, on Flickr

One of the solutions proposed in:

BUG-6243Provide an informative warning when creating sculpts or mesh that may render improperly for others.

That places everything on the designer and provides no incentive for the designer to comply. I prefer something to provide information to everyone about what everything is doing to our render efficiency. That is why I filed: 

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Second Life: Fitted Misconceptions

Second Life™ is technically complicated. Fortunately, most users generally don’t have to deal with the technical issues. We can just cruse around enjoying SL. However, if we make clothes, we are going to suffer from what we don’t know.

Foxes - Fleece Jacket - Grey
Foxes – Fleece Jacket – Grey by claudagger, on Flickr

DE Design has a new post up that appeared in Fab Free. See: Fitted Mesh. There is some good stuff and some tings I take exception to. 

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