Last year offered a bumper crop of Xmas advent gifts and freebies. This year, yes, as many, but…
It feels to me that the ‘classic’ avatar is rapidly getting left behind in favour of mesh avatars, and many of the freebies on offer, or indeed full priced items all the year round, are rapidly getting left behind.
There’s a steep learning curve to SL, in terms of the controls, and I personally believe that mesh has over complicated things. Additionally, as someone who maintains a ‘classic’ avatar, I believe ‘classic’ offers a greater range of body shaping controls in order to tweak the avatar into a shape you like. I’ve tried mesh bodies, and I don’t like them. At all. I don’t like them because they generally offer a bigger booty than I’d want on my avatar, and those boobs…always too big!
It seems that the variety of shapes possible is being limited by mesh, and that’s not a good thing. We must all now conform to a much more narrow vision of what shape avatars must be. Furthermore, there’s now several mesh body types, Maitreya, Slink, Belleza and others, vying to be ‘the one’. It reminds me of ‘advances’ in the platforms we choose to receive music. CD is better…no, Mini Disc is better…MP3 players are better, no, new vinyl is better. And we end up with a bunch of redundant equipment gathering dust on a shelf.
Apparently video went through the same separate platforms, VHS v Betamax, before VHS won despite, according to some, being an inferior format.
And that’s where we are with mesh bodies. A few ‘giants’ of mesh now locked in a ‘war’ for supremacy, and none of them as good, as flexible, as ‘classic’ avatars.
I’m still scouring the grid for advent freebies I can utilise in a naturist context and share with you, but this year’s not turning out to be particularly rich for them.
Ella
the sl naturist 
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I can’t agree with your comments about mesh bodies. They have just as much flexibility as a classic avatar seeing as how they use the same skeleton, but they don’t deform as much as a classic avatar when they are posed. And you can use the sliders to change any of the physical attributes, so if the legs are too long or the ass or boobs are to big, just go to Avatar Appearance and make them smaller, that’s what I did on mine.
Mesh bodies react to the high end graphics of SL great more easily. Your naked body can reflect the light dynamically, as though you have a coating of sun tan oil. The highlights bounce off your skin in a very realistic easy, unlike those “oil” skins you get with the classic avatars.
But, yes, it’s a steep learning curve to develop a technique for handling them and the clothing is still improving. The choice of the brand is no longer relevant as they all conform to what’s known as “omega appliers” when means that if you buy something (clothes, skins, etc.) they will work with any “omega compatible” mesh body. And that’s most of the big brands names. Besides, many products on the SLM come with multiple copies of the same item, one for each of the big brands.
For an SL naturist, their body IS their clothing, so It’s imperative they look as realistic as they can,
Consider what would have happened is SL had started all those years ago with mesh avatars and now they wanted to phase them out in favour of what we call classic avatars.. I doubt many residents would be too pleased about it.
Thanks Brenda. I’ve never had any luck with demos in creating ‘the shape’ I want, and I wasn’t prepared to fork out a couple of thousand lindens on ‘pot luck’. I’d got a demo of one and just hated the way it looked. Perhaps I just was unlucky with the choice of demo (a couple of years ago) and have never revisited the thing. Boobs and butts, in particular, seemed fixed to a minimum, and I wanted to go beneath that minimum. I’m also put off where I do put on some ‘mesh’ clothing and it then visibly alters the shape of the body entirely. Mostly, given the brief of this blog, and the sims I inhabit, the clothes wouldn’t be vital a lot of the time, but even I need to throw something on to go shopping once in a while! 🙂
Thanks for the input. The cost isn’t a deciding factor. I’d go to L$4-5000 if I had to, but hitherto the lack of adjustment in my experience has been the thing that has me firmly on the ‘classic’ side of the fence. Any recommendations? Once the food’s into the oven tomorrow morning, and the grid relatively quiet, it would seem a perfect time to do a bit of Christ-MESH shopping! 😉
Took the plunge with a Slink demo. As I said in the original piece…too damned complicated (I originally commented on mesh through a newbie’s eyes, which I am in terms of mesh). I’ll stand over that remark : for someone just getting into SL and mastering basic controls (how to walk/fly etc) the mesh system seems like it would discourage many and have them log out, forever! It would have done that for me.
Sure, I’ve no patience…it’s why many hunt items that could have had a naturist element in them have never been blogged on these pages.
From what I could see of the demo worn, it didn’t alter my shape (boobs or butt), so that’s a bonus, but all of those alpha layers for heads, hands, feet as well as bodies are like ploughing through an electric circuits manual in Arabic. AND they then, existing separately, add more and more cost to the look. Once we’re into nipples and nails and such like…the cost rockets. Once again, not something a newbie wants to commit to. I could, theoretically, but I’m not feeling the expense is really worth it.
On the upside, and probably important in a naturist context, the pubic mound area looked much more realistic on a mesh system than it does on classic, but it’s not enough in itself to sell me the entire idea.
Unless there’s a much, much simpler and complete mesh system, I can’t seeing myself making the jump or spending the L$.
To be honest, I felt the same as you. It was just over complicated. But then I discovered a little-known mesh body maker called Tonic that produced a beautiful mesh called “curvy beauty” for less than half the cost of the normal mesh bodies, it also came with the Slink-compatible hands and feet at no extra cost. It even came with a couple of outfits. I would recommend it for anyone wary of doing their toes into the mesh body arena. As a naturist it’s just a case of wearing the mesh body (it leaves your head alone, but the neck join is indistinguishable from the body) and you’re good to go.
The Tonic group have a really good, helpful, friendly crowd who love to help others with the same body.
Here’s what my own Tonic mesh looked like on me, with almost no tinkering.
Thanks for this, Brenda. This is fantastically helpful!
Merry Christmas to you and yours, and I’ll definitely report back on progress!
Call on me if you need any help.
And here’s hoping it’s a happy Christmas and New Year for both you and your loved ones.
Thanks Brenda! And to you and yours.
The mesh advice worked a treat 🙂
https://theslnaturist.com/2017/12/25/what-a-tonic-after-a-complete-mesh/
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