So BOM questions... I'm a bad content creator and I hate sitting through video tutorials. Am I understanding this whole thing correctly, you need to start with a BOM skin? You can't just bake what sits on top and then add that to an applied skin?

exactly, the bom layer is the full avatar texture so your skin needs to be part of it.

^ BoM takes your old school clothing layer skin, all of it, and makes it into one texture. by the nature of clothing layers, that layer is solid- there are some minor spots that aren't (eyelashes), but remember back in the SUPER olden days, under your skin is a skin! an awful skin, but a skin, and that is still there in the bottom of the stack.

so your base BoM layer always has to include the _bottom_ things you are wearing, especially at the very bottom, your skin! the applier layers over it are doing the same thing they used to- using extra mesh layers "onion skinned" over the base layer to apply partially transparent layers to, to sit on top. appliers cannot be added to the BoM stack (and

while the omega person is trying to get it added, i would find it HIGHLY unlikely that it ever will be, and if it is it will not be any time soon, for multiple reasons), they are using the same existing applier system entirely. it's just that we have the layers and we are used to the system, so for now at least, we're using it as a hybrid to keep using all

the things we've been accumulating for years, until everyone makes the transition back to clothing layers instead.

ugh, kind of sucks that it HAS to include the base. I wish it wasn't set up that way

Allegory : Alaska : I also heard that you have to check special permissions or something like that to enable BOM? Why is there not like a straightforward written guide? I really don't retain info well when I'm talked at, part of why I hate video tuts and it's all I can find so far.

because most of the special perms and shit are exotic and it's kind of assumed it you're doing it, you maybe know it's already. unless you are _making_ the mesh object it applies to, that doesn't matter.

making clothing layers/makeup/tattoos/etc? just make clothing layers. wear them. you are done.

technical side on the mesh end, now that's a different story.

it's something I saw on a message board, maybe they just changed how it was going to be done in the end? or misinformation or something

ty for answering!

BoM used special UUIDs to objects (do you remember invisiprims? it's like that. to make an invisiprim, you applied a special weirdo UUID to an object to make it a different thing)

each BoM section has a particular UUID- head has one, upper body, lower body, etc (plus 2-4 special alternates. i say 2-4, because 2 are left arm and left leg/foot, except they implemented those REALLY POORLY so no one will use them. the other 2 are "free". these layers work mostly the same as clothing layer layers...but not 100%, they don't do alphas

the same way, which is their make particular failing, but yeah, know they exist, also know they are fairly exotic and you're unlikely to see them in a use that _matters_ to you on the technical side, at least for now, though they might eventually because the same issue as bento wing bones with conflicting items)

so, you set your mesh object face to use that BoM UUID. anyone wears it and BAM now it uses that clothing layer stack for its information. now, clothing layers ALSO have alpha layers, which you also remember using beyond just oh hey i need to hide my body to wear my mesh body now.

as an aside: BoM layers ALSO automatically hide the entire clothing layer they are set to, the UUID says "hey, send me that texture and by the way, also hide that entire thing yourself" because the BoM layer also says "oh hey, you're hiding that part of that texture? cool, i will to"

this is where one of the issues comes though- there are 3 alpha modes for a mesh object. blend is gradual transparency. it's what we've had all along, with alpha flicker and all. a BoM layer set to blend? hello there hole in my body because my hair has a transparent texture (rigged mesh's answer to alpha flicker, because alpha flicker has some

performance issues with things that are moving that much)

mask lets you pick your cutoff. everything is either "on" or "off" but it figures out what percentage of grey in your alpha mask and says "ok, that's on now, but you lower the number here and that will be off" (it's a sliding scale 0-255). mask works the way alpha masks worn as clothing layers work, but you can also fudge the numbers (slink lets you fudge

the numbers yourself with the HUD on the redux, so you can have fuzzy edged alphas and adjust to what really hits the right cutoff point). mask is what all BoM body parts REALLY REALLY REALLY should be set to.

the last option is none. have you turned red with a BoM body part when you're wearing an alpha layer? that's what none does. none screws you. most body parts were originally set to none because why not- it removed the alpha channel info from an item entirely, and you didn't WANT it. i would assume THAT is what the permissions thing is talking about- no

perms on your body part mesh, no ability to set that correctly when it was set wrong, and just using the omega hack relay won't fix it, as that's not something that was already built in to control- because again WHY WOULD IT BE? because there was no reason until they added the super weird "feature" of turning shit red.

OhCecilia : until everyone adjusts to it, BoM is going to be awkward. skinners will update and release new clothing layer skins, and in 6 months to a year it'll all settle into the new system just fine. right now we're in the shitty transition period.

(and i know that was a lot of technical talking at you, but if any of it doesn't make sense and you want it to, obviously ask for clarification!)

i can also pontificate on why i think they screwed themselves on as much adoption by not doing the left arm/leg correctly, what they did do and why it was wrong, and how they should have done it =p

re: information- LL was always bad at updating their help docs, putting info you wanted to find where it was findable (i literally had to contact support and explain to them for an hour that the option they were telling me to click to fix a land issue... was no longer in the viewer so i could not access it and THEY had to fix it for me instead, because the

CS person was using the outdated help docs), but i have found info on BoM to be especially hard to find. i actively had to hunt for the UUIDs in beta...and COULD NOT FIND THEM for most of the entire beta, couldn't find anywhere that clued you into where they existed, nothing. finally found one forum post that mentioned them when they changed them.

and i'm still not sure what the changed UUIDs can DO with the clothing layer layers but i guess eventually we'll see? they added alpha channels to the UUIDs so the alpha mode gets more confusing- technically if the base skin wasn't there, it probably would let us layer BoM OVER applier skins, but it's there so....it's useful for the aux layers but random

otherwise? well, and necessary for skirts (and eyelashes assuming anyone would ever want to use that but they do not because they suck). but still, they changed them all and some of those layers can't do alphas because they have solid bases, so it's just kinda...weird.

the alpha mode stuff is mostly random people figuring this shit out on their own and posting in the forums to say "hey heads up if you do this, this happens"- the documentation is, at this point, atrocious, and 95% user made.

Allegory : I semi understand enough to know I don’t care to try to figure it out just yet

OhCecilia : mostly what you need to know is that system layer stuff works again the way system layer stuff used to- it just does exactly that on your fresh new fancy mesh body instead. and if your mesh body part is set wrong, welp, nothing you can do because none of them are mod.

saving this plurk to re-read later

cause i don't have the time or patience to sit through video tutorials either

things are...messy at the moment, as not all mesh body parts have updated for it fully/properly (slink has, maitreya is using a temporary hack, legacy is...i don't know if legacy will ever work the way it's supposed to, they don't seem to want to even though that team ASKED for exactly the features they are avoiding in a jira years ago- but they decided to

go their own way on the base UV on that one instead of keeping up on knowing the new feature was coming), so for a while implementation is going to be half a hack and confusing as things don't work consistently. eventually the standards will either be adopted...or avoided, as the mesh makers decide they don't like the way it is supposed to work.

even slink decided that their left arm "solution" was shit and didn't bother even trying to use it, there's an entirely applier based arm replacement instead.