Space MMO Preview: 66 Avatar Adjusters, Including Customizable Booty

Space, the upcoming virtual world (and proud sponsoring NWN partner) has a pretty cool feature they're adding to avatars soon: 66 sliders, so users can tweak their avatars from head to toe. So yes, that includes customizable booty. Space leader developer Adam Frisby (who you may remember as SL/OpenSim pioneer Adam Zaius) just gave me more specifics:

• We’ve added an internal array of around 166 body sliders, which get exposed to users as currently 66 controls (some controls can impact multiple internal sliders; e.g. the Size sliders let you manipulate both shrinking and expansion).
• We’ve built a clever little system which applies these changes onto clothing automagically. The clothing creator doesn’t need to do a thing (and if we add new sliders later, they’ll be supported on older clothing too). Meaning good-bye multiple sizes –- creators can make one mesh for all body shapes, sizes and types.
• We also have a built-in skin deletion (our improved “alphas”) and clothing tucking – both of which apply when you save your avatar; and mean if you wear two clothing items, the top one will tuck the lower layer underneath, so you don’t get Z-fighting (doesn’t happen in the outfit window, does happen in-world – it takes a few seconds to calculate the data needed for it, so we can’t apply it instantly).

This is coming soon to a creator preview, then added to the live release soon after that. "It’s the first of a series of avatar upgrades we’re doing – including further changes to default skins, and how skin is rendered," says Adam. "We’re also improving how clothing can be worn, allowing more items to be worn at once."

What other features would you like to see to avatar customization for Space? Please post in Comments, and I'll nudge Adam and his team to make sure they see that feedback!

Comments

[sirhc deSantis]

http://tinyurl.com/bk6ebr4

Miss you, Freddy

[Elendre]

This is great news! As a mesh clothing creator, the ugly avatars are exactly what has been keeping me from creating for Space. I have to say though, good for them for waiting to do it right - just having to develop for one size with auto-rigging and auto skin hiding makes Space hands down the best platform for clothing development right now. It is, indeed, absolutely "automagical"

[Adam]

Thanks Elandre! I've actually got some more video on my twitter feed here: https://twitter.com/AdamFrisby/status/868061752562393089

My goal is absolutely to get this right - so we've got a whole bunch of avatar upgrades in progress. The next thing is fixing our clothing slots system to allow more clothing to be worn at once; then fixing up our new modern skin shader to work on Mac properly (been holding us back from release). You can see a preview of that here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/144994874@N05/33683633442/in/pool-sinewavespace/

That said - the next thing we really need is some more clothing creators (and people who make skins, tattoos, make-up, etc) to help us get some more direct feedback on what they want to see us add; because our end goal is to be the best platform for creators (with the least overhead in terms of design work) - if you're one of those, feel free to reach out to us - my inbox: [email protected] is always open. :)

[Danni]

Great, I like big butts, but it looks very polygonal, you see many peaks in an area that should be round and smooth curve.

[Adam]

Hey Danni:

Yeah - that stretching will happen, the good news is, there's a easy fix. If you use a 'tessellation' shader on your clothing items, it wont become polygonal. A lot of our older items need to be upgraded to the new method, but it is fairly painless for creators to do. :)

We may also investigate some remeshing options as well, but we're going to give this a bit of a test whirl first before looking at the next refinements/improvements.