Part four - understanding mesh

It was going well so far. I knew that I didn't know very much about Second Life, but I was having fun, and enjoying the social side of things very much. A couple of NCI 'officers' took me shopping in-world to stores/malls. They were very helpful to me. I didn't realise until that point that there was an alternative to the Marketplace. Some items are only available in store, and so the range of goods available expands if you chose to visit the shopping malls. 

I didn't need any encouragement and visiting the malls became my number one activity for a while. Doing this is similar to exploring in-world, but the malls can be much busier, and as they are packed full of merchandise, are sometimes very slow to rezz, and very laggy.  So patience may be needed. I found that I was still engaging in local chat and IM's in the Malls, and was also chatted-up by a few guys along the way. Buying direct like this is either by a left click, or a right click over the item. Left click brings up an option menu, and some stores offer credit. Right click gives a simple 'pay' option. Then top right a window appears and you save the item from that window. Occasionally the item will go straight to your Inventory. From the Malls it doesn't go into received items, but into objects. From there, a sand box to unpack is normally how it works.  As ever, try the demo unless you can afford to waste L$ if the item doesn't fit!

The elephant in the room was mesh, and in particular, mesh bodies and heads. I looked around at the experienced Avatars, and the mesh ones were perfectly resolved with curves and slender fingers, and beautiful faces. I wondered how easy this would be to achieve, and searched on line for some answers. I found a range of opinions about mesh, the technical aspect of which went over my head and still do, to be honest.  Simply put, for clothes,  rigged mesh bends with the Avatar body. Fitted mesh uses more 'bones' and so should fit better. It's a lot more complicated than this!

I wanted to progress to a mesh body, and knowing so little I decided to go to the forums to ask. This was a huge benefit, and I was made very welcome but the forum users, who explained everything to me in detail about mesh bodies, and made it much clearer. Basically, the mesh body sits over the system Avatar, which is masked by a full body Alpha layer, which comes with the new body. The head is not included, and so the new mesh body uses the original system head. I was happy with this, as my system head had the look I wanted and was cute!!  I also discovered that many of the complete Avatars sold in the Marketplace are not mesh. That was useful information as I had been considering a full Avatar thinking that they would be mesh.  The join between the head and body can be adjusted and some bodies will also include a neck fix, to smooth the join.

In the end I played safe and tried the Maitreya Lara body demo, which is only available in the Maitreya store. The help IM there was very good indeed!  I immediately returned to my 'private' sky box, and tried it on........ First wear the Alpha layer, then the body.  Before this I had taken a photograph of my system body, naked. I then took a photograph of my new naked Lara demo body and toggled between the two.  The difference was utterly amazing. The quality and proportions and the overall look was just astonishing. The body comes with a comprehensive HUD (Head up display) and has many adjustments, including body size, and there are Bento hands and feet. The feet have three heel heights, and there are nail varnish options and skin options and so on. The skins are from Glam Affair. I returned to the Maitreya Store and bought the Lara body!  The next few hours were spent tweaking and adjusting my new body until I achieved the look I wanted. 

I was absolutely delighted with how easy this had been, and how amazing it looked. Of course, mesh bodies bring with them the spectre of 'appliers', and 'layers'. More about this in Part five. Other mesh bodies are available from Belleza, and other body specialists so shop around. Obviously I didn't take that advice!!  Without the forum advice, this step forward would not have been possible.