As you will have seen this week through the vString
updates, I have... grudgingly, folded to the requests coming in from customers
and finally release the project that actually led to the X_X Evos.
Namely, the XL and XXL Evo 3.5 update.
The history of this goes back over a year back to the
initial first looks at what eventually became the more natural sized Evo models
when I was toying with the ideas behind doing a rigged mesh XL breast that could
work using the SL avatar upper body texture – a project which has previously
been documented as a failure and with good reason.
Firstly the Rigging was a mess due to things I have
previously talked about such as the pancake and elevator door syndromes when it
came to shape files.. think about it and you will understand what I am talking
about, and it was also the major reason I moved away from rigging them.
The secondary issue which was less well documented though
was relating to how the SL upper body and texturing works that caused me to
grumble quite a bit.
When it came time to release the Evo models, I had made a
significant decision based on observations in world – only the X_X was, quality
wise at least, capable of handling the extreme “torsions” being put on the
textures as technically in sheer surface area, they were small and could cope
with it. By that very same virtue, this should also preclude doing the XL or
XXL.
However, what many people don’t realise, is just how
little texture space we are talking about, and a worse secondary factor that
the SL body texture on the breasts is asymmetric.
How little are we talking about here?
A Standard SL upper body texture is 1024 or 512.
Using a 1024 high def texture that verotic uses...
Firstly, we need to 1/4 the texture = 512x512.
Not very large
However... sorry, but that not the end of it. The area
which is actually used is way smaller.
In fact, the total size of that area is only 440x 295.
And that covers the upper chest, collar, both breasts and
the inner, outer & lower side chest areas.
Its fair to say though that this, still isn’t the end of
it as you need to look at relative surface area on the meshes compared to their
pixel maps.
At that size, the upper chest, and inner, outer &
lower chest sides are pretty much in proportion to the SL body, therefore they
are as accurate as you can be with them.
Where the real major area of texturing is though is the
actual breasts themselves.
Stripping this back and cutting back to 1 single breast
by area, what you find is a scary fact.
Its 185x185 pixels. Texture wise, this is a postage stamp
really
And please, remember. I started with a high definition
texture. The vast majority of SL skins even today, are just 512x512.
Yeah. That means the actual texture area for the breast
on a regular resolution skin, is 92x92 pixels.
Realistically, thats about the same size as a thumbnail
in your photo album.
Now perhaps you see why I was very hesitant about looking
at the XL model for Evos.
On the X_X, stretching the postage stamp over the breasts
surface are was pushing things and you can see the result of that in the
surface texturing.
So to pull it off on the XL, let alone the XXL was going
to be a nightmare.
Oh.. Did I mention this texturing gets worse?
Well, to the untrained eye, the SL upper body texture
looks like any boob. However a much closer look reveals a oddity. The breasts
are actually not centred. They are Asymmetric.
By this, what I mean is, looking at the right breast, the
nipple is not placed in the middle. Its placed to almost a 1/8 the way to the
right, squishing the right outside edge of the breast up. So in the inside has
more texture space than the outside does.
Ironically when you are looking at large, heavy cleavage
style breasts, you want more on the outside and on the inside cleavage its
actually hidden.
So, not only are we dealing with a postage stamp, but
actually lopsided postage stamp that we are struggling the wrap around what is
a double decker bus in surface area.
In fact its fair to say, the XXL Evo are included as a
bonus feature to be used at the users discretion, not as a selling point. They
can look very good but they arnt perfect.
