If You're Sick of Juggling Appliers for Your Second Life Mesh Body Parts, Omega Might Be for You

 
Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

One of the worst parts of being a skin designer in SL is the number of 3rd party mesh attachments you're expected to support. There's the mesh butts, the mesh boobs, the mesh hands, the mesh heads, the mesh heads, the mesh bellies, the mesh feet -- and in none of those cases is there one single brand that everyone's united on. It's a pain, plain and simple.

If you're a designer looking to streamline the process, Omega Appliers from Love N Lust might be worth looking into. It's a good option for consumers as well (as Alaska Metropolitan demonstrates in her latest tutorial video above) since Omega offers conversion kits for more mesh body enhancements than I even knew were on the market.

The applier process is a big step up from the days when all we could do was tint our mesh appendages to match the rest of our avatars, but it's still a bit of a mess and long overdue for a slightly more unified approach like Omega. Be sure to check out Love N Lust's blog for more info.

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Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart on Twitter, Iris Ophelia in Second Life) has been writing about virtual worlds and video games for nearly a decade, and has had her work featured on Paste, Kotaku, Jezebel and The Mary Sue.

Comments

[Disappointed In Second Life Overall]

I just posted this in another blog, so I just copied it because I really didn't want to retype and rethink everything:

Why do none of the mesh avatars in SL have built-in genitalia, male or female? They could be toggled on or off as the user chooses. The main failing of SL in general is the lack of interaction between avatars where animations are concerned, but even more is the fact that any attempt to make an anatomically correct avatar or even a fantasy one looks piecemeal at best.

The mesh avatars themselves are are quite well made by talented mesh and skin designers, so it’s really a shame to have this gap.

Also, why not make it so every avatar has a “core set of animation functionality” built in, perhaps to the level of poseballs where you’re locked in with one or more avatars in RLV roleplay. If there were a standard among all of SL/OpenSim, you could do away with the eternally misaligned avatars and constant annoying dialog boxes.

If this were the case, you could have avatars whose hands were “aware” of where the other avatar’s “parts” are located, meaning avatars could shake hands, or sex, or fights without looking so ridiculous and cartoon-like. Hell, even cartoons look more realistic in most cases. It’s time SL graduated from the sandbox and realized it’s full potential.

If it had this functionality, the items would sell like hotcakes!

[Disappointed In Second Life Overall]

I should have specified that the notion of having so many add-ons where the most basic parts are lacking, like heads, hands and feet just seems so piecemeal and junky.

I'm not saying that creators shouldn't be offering those items, I'm just saying I'd like to have the option of purchasing a single male or female avatar that is 100% accurate and anatomically correct that can physically interact with other avatars without looking so clumsy and amateurish. It can be done.