Severed heads? An open discussion topic around avatar creation

#1

What are the percieved pros and cons with having ones head as a separate model to ones body vs having a single model?

eg:

  • From a content-creation/maintenance perspective, I can see a separate head could make maintaining a range of bodies (eg, different clothes) easier since you don’t have to update multiple copies of ones head each time you alter it!

  • Separate meshes may have increased chances of becoming worryingly disassociated/dislocated in the event of network/server issues.

Related: If a separate head mesh is used, tricks for making it seamless with the body mesh.

eg:

  • very very careful alignment (including weight-painting - eek!) of meshes relative to skeleton. (Apparently won’t work due to how general 3D shaders operate, not a big surprise). So…

  • hide the seam under clothing (collar, scarf, etc.)

#2

Been using this trick for quite some time :slight_smile: especially when expermenting with the foxbomb I made (the avatar is made out of multiple attachments)

The only down side for having a separate head is getting everything looking nice even if aligned, and Maintenance. You will also need to have all of the skeleton done, also including other bones others may want to use (such as, tails, etc): basically

It only works if you pushing things under clothing. Otherwise you will have issues with the shaders making creating clear points where the head starts and the attachment end in different lighting, regardless of how closely they are aligned. This is just because the way how the shader works with near model changes.

Best practise is to make a couple of versions of the upper body. One that is the entire upper body, one that is just chest up, and another that is just neck up. to create variance.

The down side if maintenance or changes, if you want to do any any adjustments, you will have to do it on all of them, or adjust each part individually. And you will need to strategically hide seams under clothing.

#3

Aye my current judas avatar is just a head and hands. following the kurtis robot method
everything else is soft attachments
this has the benefit that i can hack up the avatar in different ways without breaking the blendshapes that control the face
with the wardrobe script it seems fairly easy to use
plus u can completly remove any parts of the avatar that arent visdible rather than just hiding them second life stylee

#4

As a side note a fully native implementation is currently being supported via the next update to the Avatar bookmarks as soon as the update is released with it.

This will save the Avatar settings file separate of interface settings. Which can also be backed up separate.