On Saturday Maitreya announced it will be releasing a body update that will be free to current Maitreya users.
“When we created the Lara Mesh Body over 8 years ago, she was ground breaking and soon became the most popular body on the second life grid. Originally it had been our goal to stay close to the default Second Life avatar (Ruth), so that everyone could still enjoy their sl wardrobe with their Lara body,” Maitreya said. “In recent years that restriction has been lifted more and more. Due to the effort of thousands of content creators in second life, who make their mesh in various mesh body sizes, a mesh body can now look any way we want it to.”
Maitreya explained that they’ve received a lot of requests for a Lara mesh body update. “When we asked people what it was they were hoping to see in an update, most people replied they were hoping to see a more curvy or more detailed Lara with better weights.” Maitreya’s solution is to improve Lara with smoother weights and more detailed mesh, and to give the next generation of Lara X as an extra in their next update.
“An extra, not a replacement. So that no-one will lose anything and everyone will only gain!” Maitreya said. “This means that every Lara mesh body owner or buyer will receive Lara X for free and also still the original Lara body, to wear with existing Lara wardrobes. You can switch between them effortlessly if you wish so.”
I don’t pretend to understand what it takes to create a mesh or the weights Maitreya mentioned in their announcement. That’s creator talk, and I’m just a regular user who chose Maitreya because I want a slim and less curvy body. This release is an add-on and not a replacement, so I’m grateful we won’t lose our existing clothes. I just hope clothing creators don’t start focusing on curvy looks now. I’m happy with Maitreya just the way it is.
I think if they really wanted to do something to improve SL they’d open up their dev kits to everyone – maybe the other mesh bodies would follow suit. This is just another body clothes creators will have to jump through hoops to get a blessing to make clothes for and ultimately improve the value of the body, because no one wants a mesh body with no clothes to choose from.
mesh bodies are nice and all, but the fragmentation and closedness makes them suck, and it looks like LL’s own meshbody will be no different either.
I am happy that the creator has decided to update her current body and add a new layer for those opting for a curvier look. I had heard she would not perform any more updates so this is really good news. Thank you for bringing it to us.
This concerns me for two reasons.
The shift to ‘curvy’, unrealistic and bizarrely-shaped bodies that other mesh body creators have driven is having a hugely negative effect on the availability of more conservative and conventional clothing, and with Maitreya now jumping on the bandwagon, clothing creators are naturally going to focus their efforts on where the money lies, limiting availability further. It’s short-sghted – not so long ago, we had the fad of horse-riding hips and upside-down mouths, now it’s big butts, boobs and hips – it’s just a trend, cynically focussed on making money. When the next new trend is forced upon us – and I dread to think what abomination that will be – everyone will ditch their fat, plump, juiciness and spend a fortune on the new one. Rinse and repeat. Unfortunately, this is the state of affairs ever since mesh resulted in the creation of clothing falling to the few with the ability and resources to do so, rather than anybody who wished to, as had previously been the case. A small minority now control the SL clothing industry, make all the money, and dictate what is ‘fashionable’.
Secondly, Maitreya has always been one of the least-optimised mesh bodies available, typically around 80k polygons at its most basic, but once you start to add in all the additional layers built in to the Maitreya system – many of which avatars will be wearing, but never actually use – that complexity increases incrementally. The result is that when groups gather together, the more complex the bodies, the greater the impact on performance. Frame rates drop, lag increases, the work the processor has to do do shoots up dramatically. Of course, everyone blames SL, but most of the problems arise from poorly-optimised mesh bodies. It worries me that Maitreya say that X will have a more detailed mesh – more detailed means even greater complexity, which is just going to make the problems worse.
As far as I’m concerned, this is a backwards step.
s. x
It’s interesting you say maitreya is the least optimized – when i switched to maitreya from legacy perky my avatar complexity went down by at least 10k.
You can please some of the people sometimes, but not all the people all times. Thanks for the effort to update. I am sure it was quite time consuming!
Je suis heureux que la créatrice ait décidé de mettre à jour son corps actuel et d’ajouter une nouvelle couche pour ceux qui optent pour un look plus courbé. J’avais entendu dire qu’elle n’effectuerait plus de mises à jour, c’est donc une très bonne nouvelle. Merci de nous l’avoir apporté.
I hope they fix the legs. The knees are atrocious.
the lag in SL is definitly due to the avatars and being in an are with a full sim. We need to do something about it and yes the shape and fashion fads are extreme and will always will be. We can be anything so why be laggy sucking black holes one by one. sucking in everyone FPS by the gallons?
get a better pc lol its 2023 not 1995
as far as I’m concerned I have a legacy body and also beauty and the maitreya .. I play in a combat sim and the complexity of maitreia is the lowest but other than that … it’s the body I prefer, I find everything and without difficulty and.. I love it