Can Second Life Compete With Modern Metaverse Platforms? Top SL Content Creator Brilliantly Explains Just the Avatar Challenges Ahead

Now that Philip Rosedale's back advising Linden Lab, challenging modern metaverse platforms like Meta's Horizon, can he help fix Second Life's complex avatar system? I asked that question last week and a pretty amazing reader conservation ensued -- culminating in this excellent rant by the excellently named content creator Allegory Malaprop, of the style brand Schadenfreude:

I desperately desperately desperately want Linden Lab to come out with a new avatar to put an end to the avatar wars. I might actually make clothing again if I wasn't reminded every time I do that it is the most horrible tedious thing on earth to try to re-fit and re-rig and re-fit and re-rig and re-fit and re-rig and I'm just going to cry now and never do this again.

With Meta and the hype, now is the time. Now is past the time to be able to scream to the hills "Hey you get no feet and you can't actually get anywhere near people there [in Meta's Horizon], come here look at this!!! Also we have cookies/amusement parks/dance clubs/cheese caves*/sex dungeons/probably anything else you could want already built and ready for you to check out."

Now is the time to be easy to sign up for SL [and] ...to have an avatar that just works. AND works without the whole very super obvious us vs. them you're totally a n00b (or backwards mainlander with your 2005 blinging shoes and of course people are going to divide into their tribes and their snobbish preferences but let's not make it THAT easy, ok?) divide.

Even getting SLers "up to date" is a massive headache that takes literal days if they haven't been following along the whole time. (I've helped walk a few [of my store] returnees through it lately, it's awful, and that's WITH people holding their hands AND having an idea of how a lot of it works). And even if they have, once the new thing comes out, and how many times have you personally had to explain BoM to someone again?

It's too much of a pain in the ass to think anyone who is coming in from zero, who is not already invested, is going to put up with any of this.

Except...how are they going to fix it?

Ms. Malaprop proceeds to dive deep into the SL weeds on the problems facing Philip. Buckle up:

The "original" (Ruth, I'm not talking primvatars) SL avatar was/is a lumpy mess, low poly, poorly rigged in spots and what is going on with the random spikes on the hands, LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID TO THAT THUMB, that don't seem like there are there for any actual reason other than sloppiness? and also incredibly flexible. Massively, amazingly, astoundingly flexible: the same mesh does everything. The same mesh does men, women, huge torpedo boobs, flat chests, pecs, skinny, fat, super tall, super short, butts of all sizes- it goes from "realistic" (we'll use this term loosely) to crazy over the top. Squint a little and it does pretty much everything a human could be shaped like and then a whole bunch of cartoony no-you-couldn't's.

Philip is super proud of all that the sliders can do, and he should be. We started out with a beautiful spectrum of customization.

And we want all of that. We want ye olden days of you wear some texture clothing and it's just there, it's on, it'll fit, and boys can wear dresses too. Anyone could wear anything, unless you expressly choose to set yourself outside the "standard" market. (No comment on no mod attachments and not being able to make your jellyfish skirt fit, that wasn't the system, that was someone's misplaced paranoia.)

We were lumpy and misshapen, especially if we went far off the "intended" shape (nevermind boobs, look at the men's neck/shoulder/hump area...), and it was what we got, so we liked it. Until we got custom mesh (until we got sculpties, let's be honest, starting to mainstream goodbye flipper feet was the beginning of the end), we accepted it and didn't even really notice how rough it was.

But lumpy and misshapen had a few huge advantages.

If it's all a lil bit abstract, you don't have to hit the target as well. You can push those sliders all the way out (or in) and sure, there's some bumpy, and maybe that isn't as well defined as you want, but hey, it works! When you start getting into realism, you start getting into the way bodies are assorted stretchy bags and ropes and muscles and bones and fat and then there's this layer draped on top that sort of moves and stretches and softens it out a little bit but it's still all kind of there to be seen: muscles deform the undercarriage in a different way than fat, knobby bony bits just under the skin, and that's not even getting into all the different ways a nose can be shaped, nevermind sized. There are defined parts and squishy parts and parts that totally change how they look when they are in clothing (and back to boobs: look at the various boob styles of bodies. Some bodies are made to never wear a bra, or any clothing, and without entirely covering up that whole area and just starting over, you aren't going to hide that fact).

And then how you even actually MOVE that lumpy misshapen around: shape keys, I do not want to deal with all those shape keys, no one wants to deal with all those shape keys. Ruth uses shape keys to shove bits around, there's a slider for everything that has a "start shape" and an "end shape" and it interpolates in between those. The mesh itself is moved around to target for each shape key and hoo boy are there are a lot of those. Hand positions? More keys! (Don't miss those, thank you bento, THAT is one thing that's more-or-less better done the other way entirely.) Turn those flipper feet into something that will fit IN shoes, or hey! BE shoes? More keys! And THEN you get into this muscle slider and that fat slider. Nose keys! Eye keys! These arm keys and THOSE arm keys and hey there are probably some more in here. Hit that "male shape" button? ALL THE ****ING KEYS! It's like redoing mesh to each body, except you're doing it in sections, for so many bodies, so so many bodies, and each and every single one has to be done all over again every single time. You don't have to re-rig it all, but you do have to move it for even more spots. p.s. Rigging of Ruth is as bad as it is because it's all rigged the same regardless. I mean, it's also bad on top of that, but that's gonna mean it's never going to be pretty because you can't have the same thing work in every situation.

And stretching that clothing layer t-shirt over those melons still shows signs of "stress" aka deforming in ways you really really did not want especially if you move the cleavage that way instead of that way and no, I totally did not design that for that much sag, come on, lift those up in utter defiance of gravity with that other slider and THOSE OTHER SHAPE KEYS.

(And feet. Insert a very long bit on feet and flipper feet/bare feet/sock feet here. I'm torturing you enough already if you're reading through all this.)

But wait! "I can resize my mesh body!" you cry!

Yes, but under completely different rules. We use Volume Bones (or collision bones or "those vertex thingies with the capitals except when they aren't" or whatever you want to call them) that's another full skeleton (more or less) tacked onto the avatar skeleton.

It's like a nesting doll of skeletons, seriously, even aside from extra secret bento centaur legbones you've always got hiding behind you, it's like we have bones within bones layered on top of each other, different sets do different things. The Volume bones scale and move themselves depending on your sliders but not the same way the system avatar does.

This is why Standard Sizes were a thing, you could try to aim for making it fit certain bones at certain sides, but then (back to boobs) your boobs are going to move...inwards and sideways and wait, no, why do they move that way? No, seriously, I'm asking, they move that direction until the slider gets to there, and that makes sense but wait, why did you decide to make a 90 degree turn there and go a different direction entirely now???? and aside from the perplexing choices and they are, oh, they are (why do the butt cheeks clap when you use those bones? In/out, fine, but in AND out at the same time and then they move towards each other but also straight out backwards huh? Did you do that entirely so someone would ask you what is the sound of two cheeks clapping?), Volume bones that scale and move around can't deform mesh into different underlying shapes as elegantly as actual shapes.

And so, the effective workaround is....more mesh bodies. And parts of mesh bodies.

Flat chest AND petite because those alternate shape-key-deform into actual different underlying base shapes, as well as going smaller more elegantly than current bone controls allow and better than any ever could even made by the most skilled bone deformer of all time because the system simply...doesn't give that much control. Vague overall size and placement can be jiggled, but that's about it. Don't get me wrong, there's some impressive jiggling to be done, especially if you get into the animation deforms you can lift this and move that with on top of the body (also see: your fingers clicking in and out of place when it's updating positions inherited from your body), but it's still "move and scale" not "completely redesign this entire section."

I'm just going to yell "Belleza" and run the other way, and if you know, you know. Especially Jake. Though hey, the Blender kits FINALLY actually just work for all that now, so get an updated kit. Still the pose thing to deal with, but the shape stuff is now actually possible without 7 versions of Blender and hoping you did each part in the right one.

There's already the Maitreya camp vs. the Legacy camp vs. the curvy body du jour camp (I'm behind, Freya and Hourglass, I was up to there, but is it still split between eBody and Kupra now, or has it changed since yesterday?) and of course all the "but those aren't it for me I prefer ____" camps (which is actually me, and yeah, it sucks that I don't like certain shaped features on the popular options and you can probably even guess my least fav shaped body part), and Ruth could, more or less, satisfy all of them: but there are so many bodies for body types now because you can't satisfy them all with the current tools, entirely aside from the body brand war. Also, hey, we get to be picky once you open that door, and picky we shall be.

So yes, please, give us a new standard avatar that gives us a standard but also while you're at it, fix all those technical limitations and come up with an entirely new system we actually can use and make things for that is not insane and does not make us want to die, because we won't switch- and we won't stop sneering at n00bs- unless we can have our cake, all our cake, our male and female and androgynous cake, our fat and skinny and muscular cake, and eat it too. p.s. let's just do away with the male/female toggle while we're at it and let people do shapes all through in between there, eh? So many men shapes were "technically" female because you chunked that up too much. Also poorly, but just...too much, unless that was what they were really going for. Poor lanky boys.

And if you've read this far, you deserve a cookie and/or sex dungeon, and you can find many of them in SL already, still sucks to be you, Meta.

*p.p.s. The cheese caves are in the Destination Guide under "Strange & Mysterious".

Standing O for Allegory! All her points are so painfully put, they almost cause me joy in other people's suffering. (See what I did there.) Except that I happen to like those people quite a lot.

Imagess from Ms. Malaprop's Flickr.

Comments

[Janet Halley]

Who sneers at noobs..you? I don't. I think SL is fun. I like the variety.

[Dividni Shostakovich]

The heck with the sliders, my favorite and much missed part of the early avatar shape system was the "Random" button.

[Luther Weymann]

What we SL Residents want to be enhanced and what the investment company that now owns SL will enhance are too many financial worlds apart to comprehend. What really has been improved with SL since 2003 that rivals the considerable product progress and product enhancements that other serious software companies have accomplished with their product over the past 18 years? Very little. Phil is back. I think this is the third time. So what? He will leave again soon enough. He always does. And that investment company that owns SL, don't hold your breath for some game-changing improvements. The whole point of an investment company is to maximize financial returns, not pour capital down a virtual hole. Expect very little, receive probably less.

[WestPenn Power]

This is going to boom the future!

[Laben Core]

Linden Lab’s decision to not go with Qarl Linden’s crowd funded solution which began as a campaign by Maxwell Graf is still keenly felt to this day.

Under that system, clothing and whole avatars could be imported completely skinned with only two clicks. Instead LL chose collision bone rigging proposed by RedPoly, who had an agenda of his own - all done to spite Qarl Linden whom LL unceremoniously fired.

The result is the torturous rigging that all clothing designers have come to know and hate. The failure of Linden Lab to follow up with an updated avatar created a vacuum which was filled by a handful of developers. The mass adoption of these bodies has segmented the entire avatar body market and has created gatekeepers for clothing designers. So, not only do you have to repeat the tortuous rigging process for each brand (which may have multiple products in multiple categories) but you must also register for approval to receive the rigging kits necessary to accurately weigh your clothing to their product. This means 4x the work for only a quarter of the profit. One particular popular body developer is known to have a high rejection rate for applicants. Thereby, shutting them out of what is supposedly 50% of the body market for female avatars.

This is the mess that we are left with today courtesy of Linden Lab’s disdain for Qarl Linden. Yet, the Lab refuses to address this several years after the fact citing that we should let the market be the market. Little wonder why the market is shrinking and consolidating into just a few large brands as small businesses close up shop.

[Valentina Kendal]

I am constantly thankful that anyone still designs for SL with all the variables now. Yes, there is money to be made, but she perfectly points out the headaches for content creators. Clothes and bodies have gone through several 'paradigm shifts' over the years, when things get confusing and complicated for the user, let alone creator. Right now things have settled down for the end user, but what a nightmare to make 7 different versions of every sweater. Imagine the tidal wave of creativity that would be unleashed (and you could make money off of on the Marketplace LL, hint, hint) if it was *easier*.

[Eleri Ethaniel]

I *like* my 2005 avvie, with its simple to fit clothing, its hair that doesn't jack my avatar complexity to the roof, and its actual unique shape. I went shopping for a mesh body and skin once, and it was such an amazingly complex chore, that I never did it again.

And I still look 1000 times better than a Meta avvie.

[Nadeja]

I totally wish a well made new default body. With a reworked skeleton and more flexible, even better.

I'd add that in the early days you could also make your own hair style and skin and makeup by just moving those sliders.

However, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Everything has its pros and cons. If you want feet morphing into shoes, you have flipper feet, but then you can't have better looking feet with toes. If instead you want more details, you can't have that flexibility. But you can have a good one.

What you choose and how you balance it depends on what you want:
Roblox? Lego-style parts and limbs are fine.
Cartoonish 2003 SL? That was fine and fun.

But if people want more realistic avatars? I suspect the adult side contributed, see also bouncing boobies and butt cheeks, that was implemented before fitmesh. And now people enjoy to be pretty and to take selifes for Flickr.
Anyway, already in the early days at one point eventually we could also upload better skin textures, but doing so you couldn't customize them as before. Then they made prim, then sculpt, then mesh hair and every time you had something better, but also you had to give up something nice. Prims hair allowed more styles, but then you couldn't use sliders to customize your hair anymore, you had to edit and move every single of those 200+ prims. Complicated and heavier. Mesh hair look much better and all, but then still no sliders and they aren't flexy and don't move unlike the prim ones.

Applier for mesh bodies were a further complication with many limitations and downsides. BOM at least brings back the textures layers you had.

I helped an oldbie just recently: he didn't purchase a BOM-ready body and head, so the difficulty was to explain him how to navigate the HUDs with many options and to enable it. If he had them BOM ready, it would have been much easier. Indeed, once BOM was ready, I told him now he could just put on his old texture clothing layers like he used to do and he did and was happy. He has a better looking avatar and as easy to wear with texture layers as his old one.

As for going with collision bones I think it was easier to implement, since they were there already, also Oz said it was performing slightly better than Quarl's mesh deformer, but that was a workaround (also collision bones weren't originally meant for that) causing these other issues later and complicating rigging further.
Quarl himself knew that and he was right:
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1716?focusedCommentId=409659&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels%3Acomment-tabpanel#comment-409659
I remember his deformer had some issue and it was taking a while, but I liked it better.

Now if they could also make a serious mobile client, that would be another opportunity for introducing a new base/classic/default avatar 2.0.
I don't expect too much... but I'd be happy if they surprise me.

[Nаme]

There's a lot of fields in which we need LL's governance for the sake of updating SL to modern standards, but it'll mean death for entire markets. We could have proper system foliage, but it means that all the environment artists have to look for a new job. We could have proper weather effects, but it'd mean the same for them particle people, and so on and so forth. Whilst I'm 100% on board with the idea of getting rid of inefficient stuff, I can feel sorry for them people who've been doing their thing for years, regardless of how trashy it is.

[Allegory Malaprop]

I could have been more coherent and less rambly, but rambly's what I do when I just let it run, so there you go. (Also, of course, that was more or less focusing on just that one technical issue- there are more, plus social and economic sides, aka that was only a sliver of rambling.)

Re: sneering at noobs, assuming you were even being serious at ALL- I could say "what rock are you living under?" but in truth, SL is like RL, there are all sorts of groups and tribes and cliques and they choose different ways to define themselves and if you've never been around one of the groups that values "pretty" mesh avs over default avs (there's a lot of overlap with people who value curated estates over mainland- and mainland may have huge areas of meh but mainland also has huge areas of AWESOME), good for them! But then realize that there are groups in SL you don't know about and yes, those exist too. It's an awesome thing about SL, it's got a huge range of diversity of interests just like RL! It's like the wacky subculture highlight episodes in procedural crime tv shows (why do the procedural crime shows tend to be the ones that focus on subcultures/niche groups? I don't know, I guess the whole "we're following this core group but they have to deal with all these new random people each week how do we make the same exact story vaguely entertaining for 12 years?" but they tend to, CSI even had that SL episode) that show "the masses" tiny limited windows into things they never knew existed. Often bad distorted windows because the writers don't get any of it from the outside either- but for good or ill, now they know furries exist.

Yes, rambling.

But the point is: it is absolutely a thing that people, large groups of people, "look down on" the classic avatar. Large sectors of the SL economy run on people buying the newest hotness to dress up their smooth pretty Barbie dolls- and while you can easily get by in SL without spending a single penny, LL relies on that churning economy to keep the lights on. There are also people who look down on those who wear "boring human" avatars. Everyone's got their thing, and a lot of those things often come with being kind of a dick to people who aren't into your thing. You may be able to be a dragon in SL, but you've still got your human prejudice running your brain. Humans can be great...they can also be awful. But it's what we're stuck with, and don't pretend it isn't.

Re: Deformer...that is MY unicorn if you go back to the tldr on the original comment. That unicorn is also well and truly dead, barring a miracle. Qarl was 100% a ****ing genius and if anyone could have made that work (and I am also still bitter he got the boot), he would have BUT even I also looked at that and really seriously wondered how it could EVER possibly scale functionally in SL. It requires a lot of backend calculation stuff (not as much as the "real" clothing physics option but that's REALLY out there) that made me a bit skeptical it was going to ever be a viable option- collision bones are hacky in their own way, but they don't require as much "active" thinking on the computer's part. Plus ESPECIALLY in problematic areas, try auto weight transfer on pants and...there. Aside from "how can the viewer/server handle that load and still let anyone move" that's basically it, and while it never got into real implementation enough to see how good it was, it also didn't get far enough to see how good it wasn't. If you don't weight paint: it's awful and entirely broken to let the computer guess, because it can't differentiate targets close to each other in one pose but not another, as points attach at random to the wrong leg, so you have to go in and fix it. There are some examples in that linked JIRA in Nadeja's comment above showing off exactly that issue and with a diversity of clothing styles (baggy pants...anything not close to skin tight really...suit jackets even) those are the BEST case scenarios, not even approaching the issues that would come up. Automated trusting "smart" computer calculations makes life way easier (and that would have made life SO MUCH EASIER if it had worked it would have been AMAZING AND WONDERFUL AND YES I AM STILL REALLY BITTER) and can do a lot of great things, but it means relinquishing control, and it can do things wrong and then...well...&$%#@&$@#(&0! and also good luck fixing a thing that will not let you touch it. (At least Automatic Alpha Masks can be fixed explicitly when that breaks.)

But they moved in another direction anyway, so we'll never know if that would have worked.