“Pies, para que los necesito si tengo alas para volar?” ~ Frida Kahlo

Although the holiday season might seem like an odd time to be talking about bare feet, the opportunity is simply too tasty to ignore.

Recently, Slink came out with their rigged mesh bare feet and mesh static feet which are a direct competitor to Maitreya‘s sculpted feet. Of all the things I have been awaiting since the launch of mesh, bare feet are near the top. J’s started the prim foot revolution and several other worthy lines have taken that innovation to the next level (it’s worth noting that J’s still has their own offerings). In my opinion the front runners of sculpted feet /shoes have been Maitreya, Slink and Pixel Mode. I’m sure there are others who feel passionate about other brands, but I consider those three to be the ones currently worth watching. I hope that GOS, Ennui, and Zaara will be making open-toe offerings into this arena soon and the oldbie in me is always hoping Fally throws her buckles back into the basket. So far, however, when it comes to prim toes and open-toe mules, the big three I mentioned still hold. (In the interests of fairness, I suppose I should mention, Stiletto Moody‘s store is still out there with those heart-vandalized stripper shoes, so if that’s your thing, don’t forget those).

Amusingly, when I went to get the Slink feet I discovered I had been banned from the SIM. Me. Banned. How hilarious is that?

I assume this is due to bruised ego hijinks that started with this post and ended for me with this one. I have never, to the best of my knowledge, been banned from anywhere, so it took me a few teleports to understand what was happening. Then it took me a little bit of head-scratching to IM a friend and ask them to go purchase the product for me as a gift. The purpose of making me spend 20 extra minutes of someone else’s time to get a product that is available to the open market is anyone’s guess. But it was a unique experience.

I feel that to evaluate the Slink Rigged Mesh vs Maitreya Sculpts, we must explore a couple of factors. First I’ll compare rigged vs static attach points, then I’ll talk about the texture differences and blending methods of the various products before presenting the benefits and downfalls of sculpt vs mesh for feet.

Rigged Mesh Feet vs Sculpted Feet

Rigged mesh, for those who are fuzzy on the term, attaches mesh objects to a fluid skeleton point, enabling more natural posing and positioning that may not be viable with static attachments (including mesh objects that have static attach points).

Take the above examples. The left two show how the feet are positioned with rigged mesh. The center is Maitreya‘s static tip toes and the right is Maitreya‘s static flat feet. All of these use the same poses, but, as you can see, the feet behave very differently. With rigged, the pose decides if the feet are flat or pointed. With static attachments, the attachment is not flexible and holds its shape, regardless of the intentions (and natural flow) of the pose.

Look carefully at the far left pose and compare it with the center tip toes. With rigged, the feet are flat as they should be, but tip toes static positioning overrides the intention of the animation. The same is true with the second image from the left and the pose on the far right. With the rigged mesh, the toes are pointed as they should be. But with the static flat feet attachment, the shape of the feet takes the place of the pose intent.

If all of that has only served to confuse you more – let me make it easy. Rigged attachments will position and move your feet the way they would be if you weren’t wearing prim feet at all. They will conform to the same behavior of your system feet. Static attachment prim feet will stubbornly keep to their own shape which will often go against the intentions of animations and can frequently end up in unnatural positions.

When it comes to wearables — especially hands, feet, and other body-based objects — rigged really has the advantage over static attachment points and the more you move through the virtual world, the more obvious this will be.

Slink Mesh vs Maitreya Sculpt

Okay, now let’s talk about texturing. It will confuse you when I say that the above photo shows the two competing products using the same light settings and both blending into the same skin. They so clearly have different shades, so how can that be?

Well, the processes for blending these products are completely different. Maitreya‘s feet blend directly into the leg, so the RBG value of the bottom of my calf is the same as the one I enter into the foot. For the Slink product, the creator has added an extra step, providing a tattoo blending layer. For the Slink, I used the “light” blending layer and entered the RGB of my calf into the tint of the blending layer which created a slightly more red-based RGB for me to enter into the foot.

Overall, I found the Slink feet, blending layers, etc to be more red-based. This is excellent for people who wear skins from Redgrave and/or Curio et all where the flesh tones have a pinker base. If, however, like me, you prefer LAQ with the more yellow/beige base, you’re going to find your results to be a bit more rosy. It’s unlikely you will notice unless you have them side by side like I do above, and I suspect the results would be more similar if I’d used the white/gray blending layer instead of the light (but I haven’t tried that yet). If you follow the instructions step-by-step, you will be happy with the outcome, and I have it on good authority that the creator does offer help to those who have difficulty with the product (assuming you aren’t banned from her store).

What should be noted, however, is that the texturing on the Slink feet is more airbrush style than Maitreya‘s photo-realistic lean. That is purely a preference. I prefer the Maitreya texturing with the tone variations and highlights. But the smoother airbrushed look of the Slink product is well in keeping with the products preferred by many others I know. I find airbrushed skins and products to appear…rubbery, whereas some people think the more realistic products I prefer are creepy in an uncanny valley sort of way.

That said, there is no comparison to the “physical” benefits of mesh vs sculpts for this kind of product. You may not see the differences in the lighting above, but we do not exist in an SL with only bright studio lighting. Once we introduce shadows, the benefits of mesh become obvious (and, let’s face it — what’s the point of having cute bare feet if you’re not planning on taking a moonlit walk on the beach with someone).

Lighting Used For Examples

I used three different lighting settings to demonstrate the differences of mesh vs sculpts when it comes to SL lighting. The above photo shows the overall effects of these settings which are, from left to right:

AnaLu *studio* 5 | AnaLu – outdoor city | Midday 4

I recommend using AnaLu *studio* 5 or a similar light setting when going through the process of blending your feet tones to your skin. Using a brightly lit setting that mimics natural light will give you a far more dependable outcome. This will provide more consistent results no matter what kind of atmosphere you find your avatar in.

Now that we’ve established control with the light settings, let’s see what shadows do to these different offerings.

Slink Mesh Feet - Various Light Settings

Above are the Slink rigged mesh feet. As you can see, if you follow the directions, the seam is near-invisible in the studio lighting, and even with shadow play, the seams are only visible if you are zoomed in and looking for them. But the important thing is that the seams only exist where the product combines with the calf. There are no seams where the toes meet the foot because they are part of a solid, fluid single prim.

And if you’re really worried about the seams on the calves, just go anklet shopping. Earthstones has their darling little Christmas bell anklets out, so that’ll cover you for December.

Maitreya Sculpted Feet - Various Light Settings

As you can see in the above photo, this is why sculpted feet are doomed to die a horrible death in the wake of mesh. If we skipped through a fantasy world that only consisted of bright studio lighting, sculpts might still be competitive. But shadows are unforgiving things. Not only do they highlight with hideous intensity the areas where the prim ankles meet the system leg, but also where the toe sculpts tuck into the foot sculpts. Yee-ouch. They also betray the places where the sculpts warp at their vertices, creating the unnatural blurring and twisting that textures do across sculpted objects in areas where the shape has been abused into the desired mold like so much silly putty.

This is a killer for me. I prefer Maitreya‘s style of texturing. I prefer their square toe nails to the round ones so often found in prim feet. But sculpts are the past where wearables are concerned and my toes will currently be all Slinky. A good mesh product that I mostly like has full advantage over an outstanding sculpted object I would otherwise love.

There really isn’t any contest here. If you’re looking for the best prim foot, Slink‘s rigged mesh are the high mark to beat for all competitors to come.

As far as other considerations, they’re about even. You can’t resize meshes yet, so you may have to slightly alter your leg muscle settings for the Slink‘s, but they come in five sizes, so you’re likely to be very close to one of them (I seem to be a small/medium in most mesh products). The nail-tinting options are pretty even. The Slink nail tinting is a two part process and as such might seem a little more complicated to newbies.

Neither of these have a good stocking feet option. Hopefully with mesh someone is working on that.

Stellar Mesh Schoolgirl Skirt & Boho Baku Blouse

Oh, and if you’re at all interested in the outfit I’m wearing, the tartan skirt is from Stellar and is the Schoolgirl mesh skirt in red (dear designers: it’s the holidays, will you get your butts in gear on the red tartan offerings, please?). This mesh skirt comes in two sizes (which basically means how big do you want your ass to be) and provides the necessary alpha layer. It is partnered with a forgettable top and a nice shrug. The shrug has a sculpted turtleneck collar and sleeves and even a cute little sculpted necktie if you’re looking for that sort of outfit.

I opted for a sweet little texture-only blouse from Boho Baku called the lil lace boho crop top. In this day and age its lack of prim collar, sleeves, ties, etc make it a bit of a throwback, but the texturing is delicate, feminine and charming. I recommend it highly for something to wear under a prim sweater or jacket.

Where Does She Get Those Wonderful Toys:

Womens Natural Barefeet (Mesh Rigged) – L$675
Slink
Creator: Siddean Munro

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sanctum/84/94/503

Maitreya Gold Bare Feet (Flat or Tip Toes) – L$675 each
Maitreya
Creator: Onyx LeShelle

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Maitreya%20Isle/207/165/26

Schoolgirl – Mesh skirt – L$299
Stellar
Creator: Lexi Morgan

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Rigby/163/211/24

Lil lace boho crop top – L$124
Boho Baku
Creator: Twill Tymets

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Kierman/215/219/21

“I am my own heroine.” ~ Marie Bashkirtseff

Fantasy Heroines

I have a friend who has long made the case that Twilight is an abstinence-supporting conspiracy to turn young girls into brooding, swooning extras from 80s horror movies that trip over tree branches while running from the serial killer as punishment for having dared to have sex.

I don’t know about that. But I do know the chick in the movies isn’t my model of a fantasy heroine. By a long shot.

“The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors’ works have survived even in part.” ~ Richard Stallman

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. ~ Warren Buffett

Yesterday I followed a tweet concerning what Philip Rosedale is up to these days and it led me to watch the following:

My first thought was “now I understand why Second Life has, from its very start, had such a terrible position on privacy. If this is the meat of Philip’s mind, it would never have occurred to him to include privacy in his model for virtual utopia.

My second thought was not a thought, but a feeling of what can only be described as revulsion.

I want to be able to step back and slip into a mindset I used to call up regarding business matters — the mindset where I can casually break people down into currency and value and speak about them like the blue and pink pegs that fit into your car in The Game of LIFE. I don’t know if it’s something about getting older, or getting more empowered toward my introverted nature, but I can’t break down humanity like that anymore. Logically I understand that if I want there to be more products and services that cater to introverts, that there is certainly a place for those who cater to extroverts. I do not begrudge Philip that, nor do I think there’s anything inherently wrong in his concept of having people demonstrate value for their share of facilities. It feels icky to me – but that’s an emotional response that has a lot to do with my personal values. In the neutral territory of my objectivity, I understand there’s nothing wrong with this. Although I do see such a potential for abuse that it makes me edgy.

There is certainly an appeal here for the network-hungry young coder who doesn’t mind having their personal information harvested, displayed, and distributed in exchange for a power outlet in a goldfish bowl workspace. But there’s no room in this idea for the introverted code monkey. They have no value in this model. And that feels like a misstep.

I know a lot of coders and the vast majority of them are introverts due to simple survival (granted, I tend to be drawn to other introverts and so my experience may be tainted). Coding is about defining a problem, wresting with complex tiers of information to solve it, breaking that solution into fluid patterns, optimizing those patterns into the most elegant configuration possible, and then following the exact syntax to render it into code. Then you go back and fix all your mistakes and generally rewrite the whole thing (because by the time you get to the end you’ve thought of twenty different ways to do it all better).

Few people have the talent to do this casually. I’ve known some and the ones I’ve known honed this talent largely by learning to shut out the things that would distract them from their tasks. JTL was probably one of the most gifted coders of his generation. He could do the kinds of things instinctively that other coders take weeks to figure out. And he could write code on the fly that was flawless. The exchange for this was the need to be able to focus — which is why working in offices in general was frustrating for him. The simple act of someone coming in to ask a question or share the joke was an interruption of the flow.

Most extroverts simply don’t realize the imposition they put on introverts by forcing themselves upon us. It feels so natural to them — as well it should, for they blossom when engaged.

Coffee & Power plays to me like a perverted wuffie experiment combined with a casino model where the house vig decides who matters and who doesn’t. Like a casino, as long as it’s all above board and stated openly from the start there’s nothing wrong with it. But it horrifies me that the cafe model of the future is nothing more than a boiler room with laptops.

I don’t wish Philip to fail, but I do hope his idea is more a successful novelty than a trend.

Imagine plugging into wifi at your local Starbucks and seeing your name and profile flash up on the big screen. It shows the people you’ve worked with, the companies you’ve worked for. It shows your dating status and how many days it’s been since you changed from “in a relationship” to “single.” It shows what kind of coffee you ordered last time you were there and the fact that you got that brownie and cheated on the diet you’ve been blogging about. It shows that you’re a social liberal and/or where you went to high school. It tracks what you’ve spent at the last few places you’ve been and can figure you’re only going to spend $10 during your stay, so you’re only entitled to 2 hours of power.

Sure, for the moment, Coffee & Power is asking you to volunteer your info in exchange for a place to work for a few hours. Will other places ask, or just pull from your public profile and social networking information?

Wet, soggy, horror.

“There is no failure except in no longer trying.” ~ Elbert Hubbard

Note: I wrote this entry a few months ago and abandoned it, but did not delete it. Sometimes, despite recognizing the need for critical evaluation, it’s exhausting feeling trapped in a cycle of negative feedback. However, I remain firm in my belief that in order to support a person, product, platform, or service you have to hold it to the highest possible standard. In this, Second Life and Linden Lab continue to fail in critical ways that harpoon their potential longevity. I want Second Life to evolve and endure, but I don’t see that happening with the sycophantic and sentimental input that seems to predominate the other voices that often speak about it. The tightrope is taut between the walk from objective critic and caustic loon. That is why I always try to take some time before posting something of this nature. I did it with fashion posts — I do it with every post. This post was kept as a draft and unintentionally published the last time I came back to reconsider it. Rather than remove it and the comments, I will leave it as-is and add my thoughts on four and five as time allows. Generally I only like to make minor grammar revisions once a post is live, but as this one was published while incomplete, I’m making an exception.

1. Search
It is nearly impossible to find anything in SL if you don’t know exactly where it is to begin with. Why we have a search field at all is bewildering. You might as well just have a rollover that says “use Google to try and find a blog that wrote about what you’re looking for and good luck to you.”

Search is the one thing on this list that has actually gotten worse since I joined SL and that’s why I’m placing it above Communication. Let’s put aside the fact that the search mechanics are antiquated enough to make you miss Asking Jeeves. On top of poor search-ability that doesn’t seem to have any effectiveness with partial words or common misspellings (or capitalization or punctuation…), SL search results are easily gamed, poorly sorted and offer no value. This state of affairs is frustrating for users, but it’s devastating for mid-level storefront shops that don’t have the time to flog all day and spam all night (or the money to outbid the stores who produce poor quality crap, but know if they pay enough to get their stuff at the top they’ll be able to perpetuate their mediocrity). This is discouraging to new businesses who have few means of getting their products noticed or even shuffled fairly into the mix, and it’s crippling to event hosts and planners who have to spend insane amounts of time, effort and lindens in the hope that their event will generate enough word of mouth to make a dent in the noise.

What is most dismaying is that there’s really no motivation for Linden Lab to fix search as its constant failure assures them that more and more consumers will lean on the Marketplace to find things, which, of course, generates more income for Linden Lab. Unlike many others, I don’t think this situation was arrived at intentionally via conspiracy (when you have incompetence and indifference firmly in place, conspiracy is unnecessary), but it does seem like search is doomed to be kept low on the priority list totem pole.

2. Communication
So you want to develop a social platform? Excellent. Step one, make sure there is no easy way for people to communicate with one another.

Oh? Is that wrong?

YES! Yes, it’s wrong. Dear code monkeys: group chat has been broken for years now with constant lagging chats, failure to connect errors and other oh-so-fun hijinks.

For years. We could have connected every SL user to one another via tin can telegraph by now.

On the communication front, we have open chat that is limited to ranges land owners have no control over, voice chat that only works for Linux users if you offer up your first born to the dark side, (where we can disguise our voices — thanks for making that a priority), instant messaging that doesn’t allow for off-grid communications in any meaningful way, and the previously mentioned group chat that barely works for anyone. As for conference calls, I haven’t been able to make one of those work in voice or text since Halloween two years ago.

And then we have the clusterfuck that happens if you put too many avatars in one area together so they can communicate in the same place at the same time.

It is inexcusable that entertainment venues have to set up obnoxious relay chat devices with public channel listening scripts so that their guests on one side of the room can chat with people on the other side of the room. As a parcel or SIM owner, we should be able to set the range of our communications based on the purpose of our build. It’s shameful that our only means of cross-sim communication (group chat) fails a majority of the time and lags the rest of the time. Most of all, there is the format-sinking fact that nearly all communication seems doomed to being limited to SL-only. By now, there should be some way to incorporate tweets, facebook, skype and/or gchat to or from the grid as a matter of course. How can you have a metaverse hub that doesn’t communicate with the rest of the verse?

If we were just starting out and it was 2003/2004 and social networking was still making the rounds okay, but it’s 2011 and this isn’t working. For anyone.

Finally, as communication goes, we have the uberfail of ways to get messages/notifications when we’re offline. Those of us who are members of any active groups either have to turn them all off when we log or awake to a mailbox full of spam that caps our offline message limits. If you’re a marketplace seller, there is no way to turn on/off sale notifications per item which means that freebie you put up to be a nice person has become it’s own personal spam gift from the interwebs. Why can’t I opt to get only personal IMs when I’m offline?

And why in 2.0 can we not turn off group chat?

3. Privacy

I’m trying to think of a social networking tool on the internet that doesn’t allow you to go invisible, and I’m coming up with nothing. Oh wait, there’s this one, it’s called Second Life. In Second Life, despite eight years of users requesting and requesting and requesting the ability to work or play without being stalked or harassed by others, there is nothing.

If you intend to have any time to yourself in Second Life, you must start your store or blog or whatever under an alt. And once your alt puts something out on the grid with its name on it, you will then need to start another alt. Because there is a segment of the human population that will suck the light from a firefly if they think they can make themselves shiny and they don’t care what it says in your profile or how much you beg them to let you get back to them tomorrow. They spent thirty-two cents on your sofa, damn it, and they messed up the texture when they tried to edit it themselves without taking a copy first and IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO HELP RIGHT NOW!!!!! And because these types of people have spent what I can only imagine are entire lifetimes being avoided, they have figured out all the tricks to make sure they won’t be ignored short of boiling your bunny rabbit (and that’s only because they can’t mod-boil a no-transfer bunny). They know how to find your UUID. They have those attachments that show when someone’s online, even if their preferences try to block visibility. And they take great pleasuring in telling you that you can’t hide from them. And all of these people use the browsers that have these features built into the UI because “if everyone else is going to have it, I should, too.”

Then we have the merchants who collect your UUID from their vendors and add you to their non-group spam list which you cannot unsubscribe from. You get lovely little message all the time telling you that their newest piece of retextured junk is now ON SALE!!!! and when you IM them asking to be removed, you get dead silence. For some reason muting these people, their items, their dog and their grandmother doesn’t seem to help. Ways to combat this in SL? Zero.

I know that these are all communication issues, but privacy is a communication issue on many levels, so let’s just let them be different, mmmkay?.

4. Interface

I have tried for over a year to force myself to get used to the v2 interface. I have moved to exclusively using Firestorm when I log in these days, unless the repeated crashing makes it impossible and then I revert to Imprudence. The fact remains that despite the supposed performance improvements (which cannot be proved by me or most people I know) the SL v2 viewer interface is a clunker. Certainly part of this must be considered personal opinion, but there are also simple objective factors. On average I find that things which used to take me one or two clicks now involve more interaction. Dropping an item on a friend is frustrating. Organizing multiple IMs and dealing with group notices is a menace. Building is just a hassle.

I am the first to admit that my methods of using my camera controls is short bus, so I don’t include that or similar issues which I know are based on my lack of affection for hotkeys.

Although there is good reason to improve interfaces, they should be improvements to the existing structure, not change for change’s sake. The focus of changes should be ease of use and customer immersion, not sleek design over form and function. Most good interface architects know that you also make allowances for previous customers and existing users by providing revert mechanics to allow people to adapt over time.

I applaud the new features Linden Lab has been trying to provide. New LSL functions like TextBox are great. Being able to attach multiple objects on one slot is a great boon.

But the interface remains a clumsy fail, and Linden Lab seems content to allow TPVs to fix those problems rather than hammer out what their customer base really needs to be friendly with the main viewer.

5. Pricing