How do we donate avatars?

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Snoots Dwagon
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How do we donate avatars?

Post by Snoots Dwagon »

At the last Kitely meeting we discussed donation of quality avatars for inclusion at the Kitely Welcome Center and on the Kitely Registration page.

How do we go about making such avatar donations? What are the requirements? Thanks you! :)
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Re: How do we donate avatars?

Post by Ilan Tochner »

We'll discuss them in this week's Kitely community meeting Snoots.
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Re: How do we donate avatars?

Post by Snoots Dwagon »

But... but... what if I takes a nap and misses meeting? :shock:
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Re: How do we donate avatars?

Post by Chris Namaste »

:)
is there,for people who cannot make,it to the meetings
can it be explained here please
since i'm one of them volunteers to do that? (make ava)
thanksies
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Re: How do we donate avatars?

Post by Ilan Tochner »

Here is a non exhaustive list of guidelines for submission:

1) We can only accept content that you created yourself from scratch (not from someone else's template) or that has been listed as public domain or CC0 by its original creator on their own website. This can't be content you just found somewhere (online, inworld, etc.) as a "freebie" or content that you acquired as full permissions from someone. We need to know who created it and have their explicit permission for it to be freely distributed by Kitely. Please note we are a commercial entity so creative commons content that prohibits commercial use can't be used by us.

2) Kitely needs to be able to distribute the content freely without any limitations on how we do so, where, when, to whom, etc. If there are any sorts of limitations then we can't accept the content as it may be distributed to anyone who uses our services and we're not going to enforce or be held accountable for any restrictions people place on that content or what is done with it.

3) The only limitation we can accept is for content to be non-exportable from Kitely and even that just to the limits of our ability to enforce non-exportability. In other words, if you want, we can make your contribution non-exportable so people won't be able to teleport with it to other grids, save it to an OAR file or have people from other grids take copies of it (this can't prevent copybotting, as that can't be prevented on any grid regardless of object permissions). This option can be useful if you intend to sell exportable versions of that content in Kitely Market so that people who do want to be able to take it elsewhere will need to purchase it from you first. To be clear, this is just an option, you can keep your contribution exportable if you wish, we're not requiring you to make it Kitely-only.

4) Avatars we give out in Kitely Welcome Center have to have a General maturity rating. See the specifics of what this means here: https://kitely.atlassian.net/wiki/space ... Guidelines

5) Please take into account that not all contributed content will be included. If you're going to become upset if your contribution isn't included then please save yourself and us from having to deal with that potential grief and don't contribute to this community project. We appreciate your willingness to help Kitely and the people who use it regardless of how you do so. Please don't feel pressured to contribute to this particular project.

Some notes on what we're looking for:

1) Avatars that enable people of all ages, genders, and cultural backgrounds to find an option that they can identify with. These don't have to be human but they should be inclusive and non-offensive.

2) Outfit options for avatars, the options we have now are almost exclusively old Linda Kellie ones and we could use some options that are newer and more distinct.

3) We need to organize all the contributions and integrate them into complete avatars with distinct looks (we don't want them all wearing the same outfit in different colors).
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Re: How do we donate avatars?

Post by Snoots Dwagon »

Thank you Ilan. How do we make the donations, in what form, and whom to? : )
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Re: How do we donate avatars?

Post by Ilan Tochner »

People can list what they want to include in this thread, including an image. We'll give it a week and see what people are willing to contribute. Once we get feedback about the contributions in this thread, I'll need to see things inworld then give the relevant people instructions for the next steps. I don't want anyone wasting time creating the additional images we'll need unless we're sure their contribution will be used.
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Re: How do we donate avatars?

Post by Ada Radius »

I won't be at the meeting today, and I'm not sure which avatar I want to donate. Maybe leave deadlines for any donations open-ended? Then use them as ad copy, e.g. "Geeky Mesher has donated a chic monster robot avatar for the Welcome Center, please stop by and take a look".

Maybe reward and recruit avatar makers by offering some kind of ongoing marketing? Or pay for them, as Kitely is a commercial enterprise. Or both.

Two more criteria that Ilan and Oren may want to add:
*Creators are responsible for customer support for the donated items.
Note: for some of the niftiest avatar features, such as Fitted Mesh, Bakes on Mesh, non-default creature armatures aka joint edit, and animesh attachments, users may need some help unless the accompanying notecards are very well written. BoM assignments, attachment point assignments, and animesh scripts often need to be reset. Legacy clothing and older mesh attachments may or may not work.

*Avatar complexity below 60K or whatever threshold you think is reasonable. I KNOW avatar complexity is an undocumented calculation. But I haven't found a better number to assess all the components of an avatar, and I know you don't want some of the 300K SL horrors distributed en masse.
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Re: How do we donate avatars?

Post by Snoots Dwagon »

" I KNOW avatar complexity is an undocumented calculation. But I haven't found a better number to assess all the components of an avatar, and I know you don't want some of the 300K SL horrors distributed en masse."
A thought or two on that. When LL first introduced "avatar complexity" as a concept, for some reason there were those of us who didn't trust that figure and wondered if this was just another stunt by the company to blame lag on users instead of where it rightly belonged: badly-written bottleneck code and over-stacking servers. So... we ran a few tests.

We decided on three avatars for the test:

1) My tiny dwagon avatar, appx 450 standard-prims.

2) The most detailed, complex avatar I have ever seen: the Warhammer 40k Chaos Primarch, 1,700 prims of awesome creation, a giant standing a full head above the tallest standard avatar.

3) A standard female avatar with dress, shoes, flexi hair, basic body and skin. Nothing overly-fancy.

These were the figures used in those days. Avatar complexity evidently was calculated differently back then:

The dwagon came in lowest with an avatar complexity of about 1500.

The Warhammer avatar came in next with avatar complexity around 2500.

By far the highest-count avatar was the standard female, which registered a whopping avatar complexity of 6,500.

To test these readings out we set our complexity max at what LL was claiming was "reasonable" and went to a party where numerous avatars were present. Some 75% of the females at the party were jellies.

Our take on the readings from this test: is there anyone who wishes to tell the females on our worlds they can't wear a decent dress, hair, shoes and a nice skin? Is anyone that suicidal? Further, if LL was trying to tell users that a standard female avatar was "too complex"... was that the fault of the users and their avatars-- or the fault of a grid that wasn't efficient enough to handle basic, everyday avatar complexity?

Here's the thing: avatars always impact both server and viewer. They are arguably the "laggiest" thing on our worlds. So what are we going to do, take the stance, "A plain avatar is a happy avatar?" Or be realistic and realize that avatars exist, people want those avatars to be awesome, and live with the reality of such? Which makes more sense?

I'm not sure exactly how avatars are measured today, but I have my avatar complexity slider set on max so that all avatars are visible, and I have attended many parties with 50 or more nice-looking avatars. Sure there was some lag, but that's virtual life for ya. The option is oogly, pasty avatars with equally-oogly painted-on clothing and lifeless hair.

Do I have an answer for all this? A set-in-granite rule I think everyone should use? Only one: live and let live. Beyond that, I have no solutions for a virtual world having virtual residents that are going to be all forms, shapes and sizes. I'm not really sure just how much impact avatar complexity actually has on a world or grid... and how much of that is just LL propaganda that has fed down through the years. I know when we ran and published our original tests on the SL forums... LL had no answer to our statement that the avatar complexity figure was completely bogus. I don't know if that figure still remains bogus at this date and time. I just know it's been a very, very long time since I've seen a region crash because of "too many complex avatars". I believe for the most part, our technology has advanced enough-- in server software, viewer software, and average home computer power-- that we can handle most standard avatar configurations.

I would add to this that testing AO devices might be a very good idea, as it seems that bad scripting on avatars has far more negative impact than the avatars themselves.

These are just my dwagony observations, thoughts and opinions. Nothing etched in granite here. :mrgreen:
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Re: How do we donate avatars?

Post by Snoots Dwagon »

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