Avatar Core

Introduction

What is Avatar Core?

Avatar Core is PsiCorp's foray into the mesh body market. Built from the ground up to be a suitable replacement for the standard SL avatar, it uses the same texture layout as the standard avatar, making it compatible with almost every skin on the market. Furthermore, it comes with Omega Applier support pre-installed, allowing you to start using appliers right off the bat. Contrary to some other makers, we also not only offer both male and female options right from the start, we also created an androgynous option, which can be tweaked via shape sliders to support anything from effeminate males to petite females, filling a gap in the market which we haven't seen covered just yet.

Alongside these features, it also comes with the things you'd expect from a regular mesh body, and more:

• Two clothing layers are included, which can be controlled extensively via the included HUD
• A comprehensive alpha system allows you to hide parts that clip through your mesh clothing
• Included humanoid hands & feet, as well as several nail texture presets
• Support for the SL Bento skeleton on the hands, which include many detailed hand poses
• A special clothing script is included, allowing you to easily configure mod clothing to automatically hide/unhide parts of your body when worn
• An easy to use HUD, designed to be fast and user friendly
• An indepth and very customizeable materials system, letting you change shininess settings on the fly, and more
• Several appliers, both to install a couple of basic skins, as well as an extended applier for custom textures, which comes with pre-installed material presets, allowing you to use materials even if you only have access to diffuse textures
• Full access to our source files. All customers may download the .PSD files used to create our basic skins, as well as our materials to use on their own personal mods, to upgrade the looks of their avatar. Furthermore, for mesh makers we provide rigging dummy files, and on special request, we provide verified makers with a full variant of our mesh for more complex additions that require access to both weights and UV maps

Beyond that, Avatar Core has additional significance for PsiCorp itself. Right off the bat we wanted it to serve as a base for our new avatar projects, so that we can offer high quality mesh bodies both to sell on their own, as well as to use with our new avatar kits, which will provide the required parts and texture appliers in a cheaper, easy to use package. As such, future PsiCorp avatars will require these bodies, but on the other hand, will be offered more frequently, for less money, and at a higher quality than was possible before!

Box Contents

You should expect to find the following items inside your box. If any are found missing, please contact customer support!

• An avatar core body of your chosen gender
• Two hands, either male or female (androgynous uses female limb parts)
• A set of feet, male or female
• An avatar core HUD
• A main store landmark
• Breast physics items (female / androgynous only)
• Two preset texture appliers
• Two custom texture appliers

Using the body

To get started using the body, check the following steps:

• Wear the Avatar Core body object, as well as the HUD
• Optionally, wear the hands and feet. You may also wear parts from a PsiCorp avatar kit if you purchased one
• Find an applier of your choice. Either use the preset appliers to apply some basic skins, use the custom appliers if you have your own textures you'd like to use, or use a third party Omega applier

At this point, you should be pretty much set. Afterward, you may want to shop around for clothing. Be sure to always wear a demo first, to check the fit of the mesh items. Also, if the clothing you wish to buy contains old-style texture clothing, ensure that the creator has an Omega applier available as well.

If you wish to use your own textures and do not have an Omega compatible applier or a PsiCorp avatar kit one, you will need to have access to their UUIDs. This means you'll need to be able to right click the textures in your inventory and select "Copy Asset UUID". If this option is enabled for you, you're good to go!

For obtaining textures, you may be able to ask the creators of the avatars, or see if they provide any source files.

Once you have suitable textures, decide which materials you wish to use. By default, we provide two options, skin and fur. Skin generally works for everything, since it has the normal body and muscle definition, whilst fur also has a subtle fur effect in its materials. You will want to put the applier on the ground or wear it, then touch it to open its menu. At this point, select "Setup Textures" and you will be presented with a set of menus that walk you through the setup process. Here, you'll be able to set your textures, and choose whether you'd like to provide your own materials, use the preset options, or use none at all. Lastly you'll be able to put in shininess settings as well, which however can also be changed via the HUD later on.

Once you are happy with your setup, simply click the "Apply Textures" button, and the applier will get to work and apply the new textures to your body.

Using the clothing script

If you wear a lot of different mesh clothing, then this script may be able to help you manage hiding and showing faces automatically. The sole requirement is that the clothing items you wish to use have modify permissions so that you can drop the script and notecard inside. Lacking that however, you may be able to simply make a little invisible prim with script & notecard inside, and attach it as part of your outfit to handle things instead!

If you do have suitable clothing or wish to use the workaround, simply put on the clothing piece you wish to set up. Then, hide only the faces that this particular clothing piece causes problems with. At the bottom of the body menu, you will find a button labeled "Export". Upon pressing it, you'll see a little message in chat, providing you with a string of text and numbers. Copy this string, and paste it into the notecard that came with the clothing script, overwriting any text that may be inside. Save the notecard, then drop script and notecard into the clothing piece's inventory.

At this point, that's all you need to do!

If you want to tweak the setup because perhaps you noticed a face you missed, simply hit export again, and overwrite the text inside the notecard. Once the notecard saves, the script will automatically update itself with the new information.

Making custom textures & developing for Avatar Core

If you wish to create custom textures for Avatar Core, the appropriate developer files are provided. Furthermore, an easy to use texture applier is included in the extras folder.

You have permission to use these files to create new texture variations for sale, provided they are created specifically for use with this avatar.

You have permission to use these files to create private modifications for this avatar.

You do NOT have permission to use these files to duplicate official variants of this avatar that are currently or have been previously on sale.

You do NOT have permission to use these files to create content unrelated to this avatar.

You do NOT have permission to directly sell the content of these files and / or claim them as your work.

All diffuse maps are provided in this .zip file as PSD files:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l5cr9r39mdd3urz/Avatar%20Core%202.1%20Textures.zip?dl=0

If you wish to create meshes such as clothing or attachments for Avatar Core, the rigging dummies are provided via the link below.

Please be aware that these meshes do not contain UV mapping data. If you absolutely require this info for your projects, please contact Psistorm Ikura directly.

We will request that you verify yourself as creator, expect to be asked to provide us with samples of your work - aka your inworld/marketplace store - since we will only give these files out to trustworthy creators.

Otherwise, you may freely use the provided files here to create content for Avatar Core.

You are NOT permitted to use these files to create your own mesh body or other products that directly compete with our own. When in doubt about your ideas, please message us and we will gladly discuss your endeavours.

All files are provided as .dae files, and will work well for a Blender Avastar import, using Avastar 2.0-28 beta or later.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/u6ht38ki444ijv5/Avatar%20Core%202.1%20Devkits.zip?dl=0