OpenSim Avatar Design Guide

Shork Industries Links:
-:- Shork! Avatar Series -:- Avatar List -:-

OpenSim is, to simplify it, noncommercial Second Life. For creators this has advantages but also drawbacks.

OpenSim runs on the technology platform developed by LindenLabs for Second Life, called OpenSimulator. It equals Second Life in most regards, just that its development progresses slower and that some commercial, license-requiring or closed-source technologies are absent.
Like, when Second Life would equal ARPANET (military network from which we got the internet), OpenSim would be the Internet.
For avatar development and design, you can usually refer to the resources LindenLabs offers for the Second Life platform.

There are several methods that are, as of 2022, most common for avatar design:

To give users of Shork avatars the greatest possible flexibility, we prefer the option of the Mesh Component Avatar. This means that our avatars consist of mesh components such as head and tail, a skin texture and a system default body shape file. Thus, every “Bake on Mesh” compatible mesh body that adjusts to a standard shape file - which are most of them - is instantly compatible with a Shork avatar and thus allows you to pick the mesh body of your choice in case you want to use one.

Whilst our avatars resemble various avatars from Second Life, they are complete new creations. New meshes, new textures, new scripts, all was created from references from FurAffinity, Inkbunny, and, yes, Second Life. The latter primarily to reference the construction concept and the 3d structure as, yes, there are still people out there believing that fingerpaints in your face make you a descendant of another evolutionary line (We're looking at you, IMVU!).
That is “apply fingerpaints to your face and you have canine DNA in you”, also known as the “IMVU Fallacy” or the “flat face issue”.
The creating artist for the Shark avatar for example didn't knew Second Life and thus had no idea how an avatar for it was made up, yet - which is why choose him - made proper snouts for his models.

Many things bothered us over the years about SL commercial avatars, but with those the Shork Cafe used, it was always either that important parts were no-mod, scripts were broken and the creators had left SL years ago - or were unwilling to support their old creations and their new creations not meeting the Shork Cafe's requirements. So, yes, there are similarities. There's only so many ways you can make a white boulder. And whilst there's a few more ways to make a cute shark, lion or crocodile, the references from FurAffinity ( with artists such as Zeusdex ) and various artists from Second Life ( AVEntity group, the Bento designers, Luskwood, Kinzart Kreetures, … ) were conceptual guides for the commissioned artists.

The Shork avatars are published under a Creative Commons “Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported” license. There may be a script one day in some components with a limitation in that it is not modifiable by others. However, as an object we shall try to keep it copyable and usable in other places within the above mentioned license.
If the fact that it cannot be modified is a violation of the license, that is something we'd like input on.
For the moment, our avatars do not contain anything that is not full perm. In case you encounter anything, notify one of our members and we'll try to fix it within our abilities.
Once we have a better qualified clarification than our own gut feel , we'll update this passage here as needed.

Many of the older avatars in Second Life and OpenSim were made from Prims - geometric primitives - and build wholly in-world. They work reliable, are easy to modify and maintain, but look often like avatars from the early 2000s. Because they are.

The more advanced avatars are using Sculpted Prims, which allow for more refined looks. However, “Sculpties are harder to make in-world, and were usually made using external programs - and with that need the same tools like when creating mesh components. They are easy to maintain, but harder to modify and adjust. But if well made, they can look stunning even today, although they are 2010-Technology.

The next level of development were the aforementioned full mesh avatars, completely built outside Second Life / OpenSim. They need skills both designing the full body, rigging a skeletal system for the body and then rigging that model with it skeletal system to the Second Life / OpenSim “Bento” skeletal system. They are hard to maintain, hard to modify, but can look stunning.

We want the middle ground. As such, Shork Avatars, of which you were hired to create one, use the “system default body” of Second Life.
The body itself is a set of parameters forming a shape. It exists “not really” on its own. However, here you can grab the female avatar:
Avatar Workbench
Best to grab the Blender and the DAE format file from there. Or:
We had the Blender file from that ressource fixed to show the three distinct textures - and at the correct positions:
Fixed female body by Dakota
The female body uses the exact same textures as the male body, as long as you don't go into adult details.

A separate Second Life / OpenSim component , the so-called “Skin”, gets applied to it to make a visible, extremely basic avatar, the “System Default Avatar”. This skin is what requires 3 textures from you that have no separate component otherwise. For simplicity names such as “Skin Head”, “Skin Torso” and “Skin Legs” can be used to describe these three items.
Information about this system default body - and the three textures needed for an avatar bodies skin - you can find here:
Robinwood SL System Default Avatar.
This system default body is the basis onto which the components you're hired to create get attached to in Second Life / OpenSim. This default body can be modified and reshaped within limits.

For better understanding the components, consider taking a look at the system default avatar mannequin with attached ( not perfectly aligned, though ) lion mesh components: Lioness-Mannequin
Also, take a look at one of the Shark avatars.
Download the mesh part set and look at the components, then one of the texture packs and an “eye” pack.
That should give you a good idea of how a finalized avatar commission looks like.

As a guide for how complex things are usually:

The middle ground is what we aim for.

What is important during design is that the eyes are boulders that will be centered on the eyes of the system default avatar, whilst the head component you'll create needs to have openings for the eyes.
You do not neccessarily need to deform the head component to have its eyes at the same position as the system default avatar. However, when you take a look at the lion parts of the Lioness-Mannequin , you can use the position of the eyes respectively the eye openings in the lion-head as a reference.
When the avatars design needs a special position for the eyes to look good, that takes priority - the system default avatar will be adjusted later on inside Second Life / Opensim to bring the eyes to the correct position related to the head component.

When you try to make the head be as tight fitting to the system default avatars head as possible, that is welcome, as it makes using human avatar hair easier.

The jaw shall be separate to allow being animated for the “jaw talk” feature. As we experienced with the Shork Shark avatar, the jaw needs to overlap with the head component and, too, needs to grow smaller at the end as not to protrude from the heads cheek, especially when moving during talking. Furthermore the inside of the mouth, as formed by head and jaw, shall be designed to overlap, too, forming a closed throat.

Ears shall always be separate. For one, to allow easier individualization via position and pose, but also allow future upgrades through scripts or rigging to the Bento skeletal system.

One often seen difference between human anatomy and animal anatomy is the seemingly inverted orientation of the hindlegs of animals compared to human legs. The system default avatar can have parts of its body made invisible. These two informations allow to be combined to something useful:
Create the feet ( or hindpaws, however you prefer to call them ) and lower legs separately.
Reference: Lion Left Hindleg ; mesh component where lower leg and foot form a single unit; this is an example of how ideally NOT to do it.
The foot and lower leg shall be designed as to either overlap at their joint or form like a ball socket type of joint, allowing the foot to move without visible gaps forming at the joint when the avatar is walking.

Most animals have tails. Where the tail is long enough to visibly take on different poses ( Snowleopards = Yes, Bunnies = No ), a corresponding Shork Avatar shall have two tail files:

• One for standing , which curves downward and then up again, and
• One for being seated, which arches up sharply at the base and lowers toward the end. This version is typically used when being seated on a motorbike for example.

We need textures for:
- All created components and
- the textures for the system default avatars body, which consists of the skin textures for

• the legs,
• the upper torso and
• the “head”

of the system default avatar. Details can be found at Robinwoods Avatar skin/texture informations.

Textures shall not be identical to the references, unless explicitely stated.
The references are used to illustrate concepts, designs, colour and pattern schemes.
When we'd already have a fully textured 3D model, we wouldn't be commissioning you after all.

Also, two approaches for textures are valid:

• Cartoony, that is, mostly flatshade, no antialiasing or made with a limited color palette ( i.e. that future users of the avatar can use MS Paint to to recolor their avatars textures)
• Structurd and Textured, i.e. a texture that includes a visible fur strutcure, has shading and similar artistic details.

When you want to make us super happy, you can do both versions - but contact us about that in case its additional work that we have to pay for.

In case the references you received showed clothes, hair, jewellry, boots or anything such:
Those parts are not part of your commission unless explicitely requested by us. Clothes and hair are available inside Second Life and OpenSim in large amounts.
What you CAN do is try to make the head as closely conforming to the System Default Avatars head.

Now, a few detail screenshots to show where and why Shork avatars differ from their nearest design reference. As an example, and because the Shork Shark was the first finalized avatar, we compare it with the AVEntity sharks from Second Life. The textures are incompatible between the two models. And aside of the similarity that will happen with trying to depict a great white or a black tipped shark in a certain style, the Shork Cafe is trying to commission more shark textures of those sharks that so far missed out on being represented online, such as the chain catshark or the rainbow shark. And we know they're not real sharks, but, we're social animals.

AVEntity Shark

• Arm- and Backfin are notched.
• Armfin is more or less a continuous arch.
• Backfin has a broadened base.
• Backfins base is flat.
• Head has notched earfins.
• Upper jaw has a boulder element for … alignment?
• Upper jaw has only one row of teeth.
• Lower jaw has a rotating element on its tongue.
• Lower jaws teeth are slender and sharp.
• Tail has a rounded base.
• Pectoral fins are somewhat angled.

Shork Shark

• Default arm- and backfin are not notched.
• Armfin is angled.
• Backfin doesn't widen towards its base.
• Backfins base is shaped to allow angling.
  This allows for more and easier individualization.
• Head has no default earfins.
  This allows for more and easier individualization.
• Upper jaw is one monolithic element.
• Upper jaw has two rows of teeth.
  A design difference that is mainly serving “suspension of belief”.
• Lower jaws rear base is shorter.
  Whilst a drawback for individualizing, this is because this way, if 3D printed, it can be glued seamlessly into the head. And, yes, we didn't realize this makes it harder to align properly on the Avatar before we had accepted that component as-is.
• Lower jaws teeth are broader and further to the rim of the lower jaw - this makes them more visible. And we found the impression more “disturbing” as with real sharks. Closed its still as cute.
• Tail has a cylindrical base - actually, that was an accident. The artist normally models printable 3D models and that is the joint used to plug into the body. Once we saw it we decided to keep it, like the shortened lower jaw.
• Pectoral fins on the tail are more rounded - the artist made them that way as we had asked for the armfins to be more angled and thus everything else he made more rounded. Artist minds at work.
• An additional more asymmetric tailfin (Thresher) version is scheduled, but considered low priority until we had sufficient feedback to know what further components people would love to see.
• Transparent rotation elements might be added to jaw and potentially tail and optional ears in the future to allow control script integration for additional features.

Finally, for those that prefer colorful pictures:

That is what happens when you try to apply a Shork Shark texture onto an AVEntity Shark head:
It does not work.
Seriously: Don't complain to us that our textures are not compatible with AVEntity avatars.
Superficial similarity does NOT mean it's compatible and we don't want to be compatible with them.

You got contacted by a Shork Cafe member with a commission? Awesome! When it is an avatar commission, the minimal approach are mesh components for a typical Shork avatar:
Head and Tail.
That is the most minimal setting.

Depending upon your skills, an avatar commission can contain more:

• More bodyparts
• Bodyparts segmented for ease of animation on an OpenSim skeletal model (“Bento”)
• Textures for the bodyparts, maybe animated textures.
• Texture for the body
• Rigged mesh components to directly interface with the OpenSim skeletal system (“Bento”)
• Animations for Mesh bodyparts / Bento skeleton

This is an example list. It really boils down what your skills are, or what we need in particular. When all we need is a new tail, it might be hard to motivate us to order new teeth.

More details you find here:
avatar_commissions