I would get one from these shape :D

Astounding CG work :D one of these days i oughtta play with 3D!

Well done. Look forward to updates.

=p i think I saw that floating around during the first few months of the Mesh Beta, that or someone else model that looked suspiciously similar. good model but I hate the LOD system of SL because as users we have absolutely no control over the fall off distances and they end up noticeably popping in and out. good start though and fairly conservative for a level 2-3 I'm curious what the higher levels look like (assuming this is low end because I saw your UV tutorial which was good BTW). can't wait to see what it looks like when she's finished ^^

side note, modular breasts. its easier to customize gender if you can bulk out the figure with sub-mesh "coats". plus it would be cheaper to upload a series of parts that would add an extra layer of customization to the AV using basic viewer tools.

good luck and Happy modeling!

I've passed this around on SL among a few colleagues and friends. I've been consulting with  orange04 on avatars as well, so you may have seen it around their sim, as well as Olds AFB/Undine State.

The LOD system is similar to others I have had to deal with in different Game engines back int he day, so it's not an ugly Show stopper, it's just annoying. I am thinking that if this mesh is 2k there abouts, the full top LOD is 8-10K, with the highest and next highest duplicated on import. Also for highest there may be an attempt at "fin and shell" fur treatments of the cheek and neck ruffs. Creating the higher levels of LODs will be the subject of the next tutorial, as we uprez the mesh first by hand, and then with a "smooth" option.

Modular breasts? Urr I think not, as it is, I am making a separate Male figure. The intent of these figures is to bring the "Asheru's Journey" Aesthetic to Second Life. As it is, I may have to detach the head, due to the inability to rig the jaw to move, other than a ventriloquist's flappy dummy jaw. We'll see. The Customization plan is to release the UV layouts so people can apply their own pelts or modify the existing ones. Also these will be released with limited clothing to start, but I plan on making outfits and armor. The cheek ruffs, and neck ruffs are detatchable (not shown on this model) to allow for style variations.)

Scott

The lindens need to update the problems with the alpha before I'd consider hair cards. They haven't updated the alpha code since the viewer first came online and that was back in the golden years of Quake. Translucent opacity combined with a low priority to alpha sorting in the hard coded shading networks causes a lot of flickering and layering artifacts. Flexy tails are nutorious for proving this point.

Back to the point about modular breasts, its really about modular in general. Mesh suffers from the artists flaw of “artistic vision” for our assets. Most modelers are hung up on the awesome fact that we can import full on piece figures into the grid without considering what makes AVs popular or useable to the residents who use them. This makes them very useable to us because we know how to go back and add that patch of fur in Maya but SL residents on the other hand would be turned off by how rigid the AV design is.

I can use the analogy of a GI Joe figure to demonstrate this and Sculpties are a good comparison to consider. If you have a collection of Joes and Copra figures you really can't make changes to them unless you are a decent sculptor however you have 10-15 spare figures you can take apart and mis match the limbs to make your own Joe-bra.

Sculpties where an extension of the Prim system and allowed residents to customize the AVs that came from them. Point is that Mesh doesn’t have that ability unless we as artists make a little effort to accommodate a little post purchase modifications. The easiest way to do that is to break things down into smaller and smaller components until the resident who buys the AV gets to the fine level detail where Prims are more efficient than asking the artists to chop off the hands and fingers to slip a ring over a sausage.

Bla bla bla, I think I'm preaching to the choir so I’ll stop before this crosses the 1 page mark. I think you get the gist =P I blame the rant on a lack of sleep ^^; on the internet no one can see the bags under your eyes...

long story short, an AV is more useful when the resident who buys it doesn’t feel like a minor variation in a larger generation of clones.