Since July of last year I've been experimenting, tinkering, messing about and generally fiddling with some items I made that have aged rather poorly. They were created in an age where the Second Life avatar default head was the only option. Bakes on mesh wasn't even a glint in a Linden's eye, and rigging was a scary new technology. I looked at them and thought "man, I should update these, how can I do that?" also, "how can I make these better than they ever were?"
This path led me to finally giving rigging a go, learning all about bakes on mesh, spending far too much time messing with UV maps and becoming a content partner with LeLUTKA to bring you yet another iteration of my elf ears.
For something that looks almost the same as the originals, a lot of work has gone into them. I refined the geometry to be more efficient and detailed, and since they don't need separate highlight and shadow geometry they are less than a tenth (!) the avatar complexity cost of the original Sylph ears. Thanks to LeLUTKA's content creator program, I was able to make them directly onto their Evo X heads for a seamless fit . These are rigged, so they will always be in the right position, and you can stretch and resize them using the Ear Size slider in the SL shape editor. They will even react to ear position animations like those from the LeLUTKA head HUD that will let you make them stick out as much as you like, or lie sleekly against your head.
One of the most annoying things with any item that's supposed to match your avatar's skin is fiddling with color matching. Even when you think you have a good match, different lighting conditions will sometimes show a seam. Getting the right color is a pain! So I think the most silly and downright obsessive feature I just had to do was to remap the UV's of my ear's mesh to match with Evo X ear skins. That's right, instead of using my own damn textures like a sane person, I decided I just had to make them match the ear textures that come with your favorite skins. So, if you are wearing an Evo X skin when you wear these ears, they will automatically match your skin. Now, I won't pretend it's perfect, my mesh is dramatically different from a human ear and there is some wacky stretching and odd positioning of details and highlights on some skins. That is why I made separate bakes on mesh tintable highlight and shadow layers that will help add definition in the right places. They come in seven different intensities for a wide variety of skin tones, and you can mix and match them. If that doesn't work out or if your skin didn't come with an ear skin layer, then no worries, there is also a tintable base layer included with them if you need to do a manual color match.
Another must have feature is of course, is being able to wear earrings! I have made sure to position the ear lobes so that they are comparable with the default LeLUTKA human and elf add-on earrings. Rigged earrings made for the LeL ears should work with these no problem. Of course, I have plans to release my own but life is chaos, we'll see.
I've learned a lot from these, and spent far too much of the little time I have nowadays griping out loud asking "WHY is it doing THAT?. With the help of some patient and friendly QA testers who helped me put them through their paces, I'm finally happy with the results. I'm hoping to make more supporting content for these, and now that the hardest work has been done, convert more styles of ears over. However, I don't want to be too ambitious, so I will not say they are definitely coming, but that's certainly what I'm hoping for right now.
These magnificent head appendages are available at the Sugarplum sim at the Halloween Shop & Hop for 20% off, or on the marketplace if you don't feel like teleporting.
