Nonbinary avatar shape (and just more dynamic base avatar shape settings)
in progress
Zoren Manray
As many of us know there is a huge variety of avatars in Second life. It’s a wonderful part of the platform that just allows unlimited expression. However something very old remains from history, an unspoken unnoted legacy setting. Despite all the advancements over the years, the base/classic avatar shape setting still only allows Two Binary options: Male or Female.
This hasn’t fully limited expression though, many creators have found workarounds over the years. Many workarounds just involve setting the base avatar shape for non-human and gender neutral/fluid avatars to female as it allows more variety in size and structure due to odd bulkiness of the SL male avatar. And while it’s all good and fine they are still just workarounds for the lack of a gender neutral base shape. It also leads to one of the ways scripts can try and guess a users chosen gender (OBJECT_BODY_SHAPE_TYPE) to end up with the wrong result and misgendering users in many cases.
If it was just a hard system limitation that would be extremely hard to fix this would be understandable why it’s left this way. However again looking at (https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/OBJECT_BODY_SHAPE_TYPE) it seems to indicate it’s a RANGE from [0.0, 1.0] which if true means the base avatar system from the beginning has always supported a Gender range from Female to Male and yet the shape editor in the viewer still only allows only two options… Again the question is why?
Thus I propose a third gender neutral option combining mostly based on the dynamic range of size of the female avatar for backwards compatibility with the non overlapping male avatar sliders unlocked. This would solve the issues of a binary choice and allow even more customization of the basic avatar shape.
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Darling Brody
From a scripting point of view the male/female test is about the base body shape and was/is intended to allow scripts to cater to the differences in the male and female shapes. It is mostly pointless now that everyone wears a mesh body that has parameters well beyond the original two avatar shapes from 21 years ago.
I really do not want to see additional gender shapes continuously added because it will just keep breaking existing scripts every time they add a new shape. It would be much better to have a new field in the profile where people can choose from a wider list of body types and introduce a scripted function able to read that. This way both scripts and people viewing your profile can correctly determine your gender without needing the break any existing content based around the older functions.
I would suggest a new llGetObjectDetails() param of AVATAR_WOKE_GENDER or similar name to distinguish it from the legacy gender information. The rest is just a extra bit of information after your name in your profile to specify your gender/specie/etc.
Zoren Manray
Darling Brody you do have some valid concerns and arguments but the point I did make was OBJECT_BODY_SHAPE_TYPE has been a ranged value since the beginning. It is only the viewer that has been making it be binary. As to the concerns of breaking scrips: it's just bad programming if they break if a ranged value is not 0.0 or 1.0 . More than likely older scripts will just see anything less than 1.0 as Female. It's not going to be adding new gender shapes, the hope was to unlock the range the existing base shape can do as for non human avatars the female base shape is a bit too petite but used more for versatility because the male shape is way over muscled. While mesh covers most of that up it still requires workarounds for how the bones are associated to the mesh that a neutral shape would make easier.
As for Pronouns, yeah that should indeed be separate and a new parameter of more reasonably: AVATAR-PRONOUNS would likely be a good longer term fix for that issue.
Darling Brody
Zoren Manray When you say a "ranged value" do you mean an integer? All boolean values in SL are integers. Programmers use the wiki's description of the field's valid values to write their scripts. If the wiki says the valid values are 1 and 0, then it is NOT bad programming to treat the integer as the boolean value it has been documented to be.
It is poor program design to appropriate a boolean value and start using it as a non-boolean 21 years after it was implemented as a boolean value. If you want to define other values you will need to add a new field that is specifically defined to supporting those new values. You will also need to document what value will be held in the legacy field when the new field is anything other than male/female; most likely the legacy field will hold a female value for anything other than a male value in the new field to maintain comparability with 21 years of existing scripts.
Neither AVATAR-PRONOUNS or AVATAR_WOKE_GENDER is a right fit for this. It should instead be AVATAR_BODY_SHAPE so it can be used for animals, aliens, and humans of all types. It could be an open standard designed to be expanded on so that creators can apply to have their new mesh body types added to it too.
Spooky Pumpkins
I'd love to also just see the inclusion of a groin/coin purse slider on the female shapes. I create rigged mesh that primarily is sized for female avatars, and I am constantly being asked to include sizes that allow a bulge. I think having that slider available would open up a lot of customization to androgynous and non-binary users, and it would take a huge weight off of the creator's shoulders just knowing they have to include a weight on the rig to allow users to have control over that feature.
This would require a re-work of the pelvis weights....and possibly increase the weight limit from 4, but it would help out tremendously.
Darling Brody
Spooky Pumpkins I think that can be done using animations etc placed in the purse, as deforming the avatar is possible using scripts.
Spooky Pumpkins
Darling Brody Not on a female shape - the slider/bone does not exist.
Zoren Manray
Spooky Pumpkins Yeah exactly my point of just having a neutral shape with all the options unlocked. Most likely all those values are there for all avatars it's just the viewer settings limit what the values and ranges that can be set biased on the binary Male/Female option presented.
Sammy Huntsman
I think another big thing to this, is to enable Male shapes with breasts and even flat-chested female shapes. Among the many types of bodies out there.
Darling Brody
Sammy Huntsman Nope! This stuff has long been sold by creators of mesh bodies. Linden Labs should not be displacing creators by duplicating their work and providing it for free to people who otherwise would have purchased it from the creators.
Zoren Manray
Darling Brody really that's a poor argument. You essentially seem to be saying a tool should be left locked out of tradition, because some creators have figured out a rough workaround that others should have to pay for if they want it.
Darling Brody
Zoren Manray You don't understand my point. If LL release for free what creators have worked hard to create SL will be over. SL only exists because we the residence built the world and were able to make money from our creations.
Honey Puddles
This may also be worth a look, along a similar vein.
Signal Linden
in progress
Thanks for write-up, Zoren Manray. This has been a longstanding feature request. We actually just received an open source contribution that may address this, which has been pulled into an upcoming maintenance release.
Darling Brody
Signal Linden Please ensure the open source contribution wasn't taken from an existing paid product. Also please be mindful that every time Linden Labs introduces something to the viewer that was previously a paid product LL puts a creator out of work. As the landlord and owner of marketplace it is important for Linden Labs to avoid cornering all markets if they want creators to stay and keep making new stuff. Without us creators SL would look as baron as facebook's meta!
Zoren Manray
Signal Linden I continue to be happy to see this continues to be in progress and hope it will able to finally be implemented soon. as I had written it will hopefully fix a few of the base shape shortcoming's that have required some unnecessary complex workarounds from mesh avatar creators for quite awhile.
Zoren Manray
I just want to additionally stress again and repost the image from the LSL wiki: From examples I referenced it seems there is already a range built into the backend from the begining that we just cannot access due to binary [F or M] client settings alone. This option possibly might not require any restructuring on the database or server side. It appears to me it might only require the clients to be able to set the value other then [0.0 or 1.0]. How that will actually show up in world is another question, but IF it has always been designed to have a range it likely will still work as seen in the example. The positives being not having the choice of either a super light female or super heavy male base to then hang mesh avatars off of.
Vincent Nacon
I'm afraid that LL won't touch this because of the classic Ruth avatar. They won't ever touch nor make any update to it.
As for making dynamic range... I also have a feeling that someone will complain about it because some part of the sliders fell under their range, even if it's just a portion of it.
Zoren Manray
Vincent Nacon yes backwards compatibility means not too much can be done. However, I also make that point above in that the basic ruth avatar apparently has a range value already really at the least if there was a setting that could set OBJECT_BODY_SHAPE_TYPE to even 0.1 and give access to all the sliders that don't overlap with each other that would be a nice improvement because there's some deform settings you can only do with a male avatar and some that can only be done with a female.
Vincent Nacon
Zoren Manray I don't think we should be getting gender data from avatar's shape, because there are cases where someone may not realize what shape they're using as they switch between different outfits. Instead, it should be coming from their profile data, but not everyone want to provide that or have it shown in public. It does need a careful rethought on this matter, balancing between personal preference and proper form of coding.
Zoren Manray
Vincent Nacon Well Yeah, I would also love to see an option in profile or elsewhere where someone could specify their pronouns as Neutral, Female, Male, etc. for the preposes of LSL scripts that might want to use that. if people don't want to provide that it isn't terrible as it could just default to neutral.
VespertineAspergerianNincompoop Resident
Zoren Manray Enby here- I think I would personally like to keep pronouns tied to shapes or outfits rather than profile, but make it so that pronouns don't actually change the shape in any way. Have it as its own option, and have a different slider that controls the body shapes for masculine/enby/feminine bodies.
There are a couple benefits to doing it that way...
- Every avatar that you have could have different pronouns, allowing for more gender fluidity between different outfits or characters.
- The old scripts still work, but now the player gets to choose their pronouns rather than being gendered based on their body type.
You could still have pronouns on your profile as an entirely separate feature, but having a greater degree of control over the pronouns for every avatar would be extremely helpful.
(At least in my personal use case... since some of my avatars are they/them and others are she/her, and I try to give them a range of body types which rarely correspond to their pronoun choices.)
Ziel Omizu
VespertineAspergerianNincompoop Resident There are no built-in pronouns? Some scripts (mostly old or adult scripts) use body shape option (female or male) to
assume
an avatar's pronouns, but there's no LL user-based profile, outfit, or clothing setting for pronouns otherwise.Pronouns listed in profile info is completely optional. Users do it themselves as a way to share identity or show solidarity, but it's not necessary.