Now that Linden Lab has launched the beta version of its Senra mesh starter avatars, I decided to take a stab at creating a comparison chart, comparing and contrasting six options for free or inexpensive (L$250 or less) female mesh bodies. (I will probably follow up with a similar chart for free/inexpensive male mesh bodies, female mesh heads, and male mesh heads.)
The six seven mesh bodies I have chosen for this chart are:
Senra Jamie, by Linden Lab (UPDATE March 16th, 2024: These are now out of beta test, and finalized to version 1.0)
Erika Zero X, by Kalhene
Atenea, by LucyBody
Classic Meshbody (often referred to as TMP)
eBody Classic (free version)
eBody Curvy (free version)
UPDATE Aug. 4th, 2023: After some hemming and hawing, I have decided to include the open-source Ruth 2.0 mesh bodies in this spreadsheet. You can find a list of vendors for Ruth 2.0-based mesh bodies here (scroll down to the Ruth2 section). While clothing specifically designed for Ruth 2.0 bodies is limited, with a good set of BoM/system alphas, some Maitreya Lara clothing and standard-size clothing does fit.
UPDATE March 15th, 2024: You used to have to pay to join the Erika Mesh Body group to pick up the free group gift of the Erika Zero X mesh body, but you can now join the group for free! I have updated my comparison chart to version 1.3 with this updated information. This is a lovely female mesh body which responds very well to the body sliders, allowing you a wide variety of body shapes, from thin and slim to “thicc” and curvy!
Please note that I have deliberately excluded some mesh bodies, for example, the free Altamura bodies you can pick up at various locations (because you cannot change the skin, and you cannot use Bakes on Mesh with them). I have also left out those bodies which have poor or even non-existent third-party designer support. An example of this would be the Ultra Vixen mesh body, which is now only free to avatars under 30 days old and—as far as I am aware—only has clothing that fits it, which is made and sold by the body’s creator.
Looking forward to hearing your comments and suggestions!
Be sure to watch the YouTube video linked below to learn how to get started.
One of the biggest problems Second Life has had to face in its now 20-year history is a high level of user turnover. Literally millions of people have signed up for an SL account over the years, and then most of them bailed soon afterwards because of the relatively steep learning curve (or for other reasons, like the fact that the platform is open-ended, as opposed to a game with a pre-set play structure).
As avatar technology has evolved over time, most veteran Second Life users opted to upgrade their default classic, system avatars with mesh heads and bodies, sold by any number of vendors seeking to capitalize on the universal desire to look as good as possible in the virtual world!
I thought for sure that it would take no time at all to upgrade his avatar from the classic, system options to a fully-mesh version. How wrong I was. And the experience was a real eye-opener to me, and illustrates what is still one of the biggest problems in Second Life: setting up a mesh avatar is an exercise fraught with confusion and frustration, and it’s just too steep a learning curve for people (even metaverse experts!).
So, in an ongoing effort to make things easier for new users, Linden Lab has provided what we call starter avatars: you can make a quick selection from a menu (either while creating your account on the Second Life website, or later on when in-world), which gave newcomers a choice of a variety of curated looks and outfits, to help them get started in their first few days of wandering and teleporting around the grid and meeting new people.
And yesterday, on August 1st, 2023, Linden Lab announced a new line of fully-customizable mesh starter avatars, called Senra. (Note that this is not he first time Linden Lab has released mesh avatars; there was a failed attempt back in 2014.* It would appear that the company has learned a few lessons from that failure in this new launch, such as including a decent-sized capsule wardrobe for these new mesh avatars, and expressing a desire to work with fashion designers to create apparel.)
First, before you do anything, please watch this well-crafted, ten-minute YouTube video by Boston Blaisdale, part of the Second Life University series, explaining how the new Senra line of starter avatars works, and how to easily get started. Please note that the instructions are different for people setting up a brand new account from scratch, as opposed to those who have already set up an account!
The Senra line consists of two completely mesh bodies: the masculine Blake, and the feminine Jamie. Both bodies, from head to toe, use Bakes on Mesh (BoM), which gets rid of the need to use Omega or another kind of applier system. Both Blake and Jamie come with six different skin tones (with matching short fingernails and toenails), 11 different colours of eyebrows (including a tintable version; these are found in the hair folder), plus your choice of 10 different eye colours.
Each body comes with a complete capsule wardrobe, consisting of a variety of tops, bottoms, dresses, footwear, and hairstyles to choose from. All apparel comes in multiple colours and/or textures, and each item comes with an alpha for your avatar to wear, to hide any part of your mesh body which might poke through the clothing.
I started with the Senra Jamie female mesh body, and I picked a somewhat curvier shape from the six included female shapes as my starting point, picking out some canvas shoes, skinny jeans, and a Senra-branded white T-shirt:
Here’s a closeup of the face. This is a definitely an improvement over the old classic, system avatar head! (I would probably fiddle a bit with the eyebrows, but for something straight out of the box, it’s beautiful.)
Here’s a dressier look with a different hairstyle (there are nine of them in total, with hairbases and/or mesh hair in nine styles, 10 colours each):
There’s a (tintable) bikini/underwear top and bottom in the skins folder, as shown below (I gave up on the included female animation override, which had too many poses with arms raised, replacing it with a less model-like AO from my inventory):
The hands, feet, and head are particularly lovely, and the six starter shapes give you a number of starting points in customizing the body to your liking; I find this body adjusts well to the body sliders, although I must confess I wish I could get a bit more arm fat/muscle on Jamie! I could take this starter avatar to any beach in Second Life, and she would fit in very well amongst all the other store-brand mesh bodies catching some virtual rays and waves!
Now on to the Blake body. Here’s what he looks like:
The male skins are serviceable. but still a little too unblemished and “pretty” for my tastes (there are no facial hair options, a surprising omission). I was also unhappy with the rather soft look to the default male head and face shape, so I spent a lot of time fiddling with the sliders to make it look less rounded and more angular, with some success:
Again, this starter avatar would fit in well in a crowd of brand-name mesh bodies at any SL event.
Now for the fun part: all of these outfits, plus many more options not shown here, plus all the footwear and all the hairstyles, are unisex! Yes, even the dresses. So, for fun, I had my test avatars switch outfits:
These starter mesh bodies let you express your gender in any way you want—especially since you can play around with the body sliders on both the male and female bodies to get just about any look you can imagine! Here’s the same two Jamie and Blake bodies as pictured above, but with completely different shapes and animation overrides (it is possible to set the sliders on Jamie’s breasts down to zero):
Now, keep in mind that the target audience for the Senra line of mesh starter avatars is Second Life newbies who are just getting started, not those of us who are more experienced users. Jamie and Blake are bodies intended to make new user set-up as painless as possible, while still giving them a modern, fully customizable mesh body with a capsule wardrobe. It is expected that most new users will eventually want to move on from Senra mesh bodies to other brands of mesh bodies on the marketplace, with much better feature sets and even more options. As an example, there are no HUDs that come with these bodies, like most name-brand ones have.
Also, all the footwear options for both Jamie and Blake are for flat feet. NO HIGH HEELS! If you want that right out of the gate, then Senra is not for you. Likewise, there are no facial hair options or tattoo options in the starter package. The starter AOs, particularly the feminine one for Jamie, are just okay, but nothing special. Again, please remember, these are intended for new users.
We’re excited to announce the launch of our new Starter Avatars! These avatars, called Senra, are a fresh mesh take on the classic Second Life avatar, with a customizable modern and stylish look. These avatars will give new residents the opportunity to get started with a mesh body and personalize their own unique look the very first time they log in to Second Life and get a taste for the endless possibilities of avatar customization available to SL Residents.
The Senra avatars come with a variety of body shapes, skins, and hair styles. We’ve also created a whole new wardrobe of clothes that are specifically designed for these avatars. There are more than a billion possible combinations, so you’re sure to find the perfect look. The Senra avatars and clothing have been designed so that any avatar looks great with any clothing. Mix and match to your heart’s content!
We’re also pleased to announce that we’ll be providing dev kits for creators to make their own clothes for the Senra avatars. That way new and established residents alike will have plenty of ways to express themselves and create amazing new looks for the Senra avatars.
If you’re new to Second Life, or if you’re just ready for a new look, we encourage you to check out the new Senra Avatars. We think you’ll love them!
As I said up top, I think that Linden Lab has learned from their previous mistakes in releasing a set of failed mesh starter avatars several years ago, and it looks as though they have put a lot more thought and effort into launching these new starter avatars, and creating an ecosystem so that content creators can make skins, clothing, shoes, etc. for them.
Best of all, they’re free! So try them out, and let me know what you think about them.
P.S. I forgot to mention that I have not yet had an opportunity to test out mixing and matching Senra heads and bodies with other brands of mesh heads, mesh bodies, skins, makeup, etc. My friend Dreamer Pixelmaid did report that she was able to pair a Lelutka head successfully with the Senra Jamie body, however, so it sounds promising! Here’s a picture she shared with me (see image, right):
*A little bit of SL history: the 2014 mesh starter avatars which Linden Lab launched were so bad, that many new resident welcome areas warned newbies not to use them! One glaring flaw was that you were pretty much stuck with the clothing they came with, as nobody else made anything that would fit these bodies! They died a slow, lingering death, and were eventually quietly dropped completely by Second Life, to live on in horror stories told by oldbies to newbies while roasting prim marshmallows around the pixel campfire … 😉
UPDATE 3:15 p.m.: In their official announcement, Linden Lab refers to the Senra mesh bodies as “beta,” which I assume means that there will probably still be some tweaks and adjustments made in response to user feedback. There has been much discussion about Senra on the Second Life community forums already, including a growing thread of images.
Speaking of images, Dreamer Pixelmaid has started a brand-new Flickr gallery for people to post pictures of avatars wearing the Senra Blake and Jamie bodies. You can visit it here.
UPDATE Aug. 4th, 2023: I have spent the evening playing around with some of the older skins in the inventory of my oldest male alt, and I gotta tellya, some of those old male Belleza skins look really good on the Senra Blake body! Here’ s one avatar look I was quite happy with, using the Belleza Ewan 0 tan skin with a black hairbase and some free hair I picked up years ago (click to see these images in full size):
And the second problem? When he blinks, the eyebrows get slightly deeper, LOL! Something you can’t tell from my still photos… 😉 but overall, I am very happy with this final result!
HOUSEKEEPING NOTICE: I am off sick from work today, treating a pinched nerve in my neck with rest, heat, some strong painkillers, and muscle relaxants, which is another reason why I have gone missing from this blog. My body is a bit of a mess right now, folks! Working at a keyboard (both at home and at work) makes it worse, to the point where I have numbness and tingling along my right arm and hand.
So I have been visiting my local physiotherapist once or twice a week over the past month, and I have received some daily exercises to stretch my tight neck, shoulders, and back muscles. I’ve also bought a new mattress, new pillows, and a new backpack, and I also had a professional fitting for a new, ergonomic desk chair for work, which I hope will arrive soon.
Thank you for your patience. I currently have about 20 draft blogposts in various stages of editing, on a variety of topics, and I hope to be back sooner rather than later.
The White Pearl Salon (which I wrote about here) has thoughtfully provided this splendid Barbie box photo prop for Vanity Fair!
Unless you have been living under a very large rock (or perhaps somewhere in a dark cave), you are probably aware that there is a Barbie movie being released today. And—let’s face it—a lot of what I, and hundreds of thousands of other people, do in Second Life is play with digital Barbies of various kinds. (Hey, no judging; we all have our weird, obsessive little hobbies that help keep us sane! I still get a lot of personal satisfaction from completely styling a wide variety of Second Life avatars from head to toe, as I have written about before on this blog.)
One of the keys to the success and longevity of Second Life, as its blow-out 20th anniversary celebration wraps up, is the lucrative fashion ecosystem which has sprung up around the platform, with tens of thousands of creators selling mesh bodies, heads, eyes, hairstyles, apparel, footwear, tattoos, etc. There are even stores which specialize in fingernails and toenails for your avatar! All this contributes to a vibrant economy with an annual GDP of US$650 million, which is more than some real-world countries (e.g. American Samoa, Dominica, Tonga, and Micronesia).
One thing that I have been paying attention to is that nothing ever stays the same in Second Life fashion. Much like the real world, fashions, fads, and trends come and go. At one time Catwa ruled the mesh head market, but now it seems that everybody you run into is rocking a LeLutka Evo X mesh head. I myself have purchased an Inithium Khara mesh body for my main avatar, Vanity Fair, who normally wears Maitreya Lara (there was a one-hour flash sale at the Inithium Event, where I was able to snap it up for L$1,000, and you know I love a good bargain!).
Vanity is wearing the Khara mesh body in the picture above, along with the Catwa Kimberly head she has been wearing for many years now (some things never change). All I had to do was buy a new, matching Bakes on Mesh skin at Vanity’s skin store, The Skinnery, and she was all set to go!
Anyway, my neck is still bothering me, so I will end this blogpost here. I’ll be back soon, I promise!
UPDATE July 22nd, 2023: I neglected to mention that many stores on the grid are giving away new group gifts or throwing special sales to mark the release of the Barbie movie. For example, the womenswear store Glitzz has a new Barbie-themed group gift out, and they are marking all pink items in the store to only L$50 each, from July 20th to 30th, 2023. If it’s pink, hot pink, bubblegum pink, or blush, it’s on sale! The Glitzz store group costs L$300 to join, but you can pick up many previous group gifts on their generous gift wall:
The group gift wall at Glitzz
The Barbie-themed Baby Set outfit includes the top, the matching skirt, and the (rigged) pink neck ribbon, and comes in sizes to fit the following mesh bodies: Maitreya Lara, Petite & Smash Boobs; Meshbody Legacy, Perky & Push-Up; Inithium Kupra; eBody Reborn, Juicy & Waifu; and Belleza GenX Classic & Curvy.
At the entrance to Glitzz is a large sign announcing their Pink Week sale; all pink items are only L$50 each!I even found a Barbie Dream House for this picture and the next, to show off this Glitzz group gift!Of course, you’ve gotta make sure that your feet are always ready for high heels! 😉
UPDATE July 23, 2023: Another store with a Barbie-themed group gift is Ewa Boutique, which you can pick up if you join their store group for L$300. There’s also numerous other group gifts on their gift wall, plus a Daily Prize Board with a L$400 gift card!
Ewa’s Barbie outfit includes everything you see here: top, skirt, belt, shoes, purse, even the funky hot pink rectangular fur earrings! The purse includes the Bento arm pose shown in the picture. Sizes: Maitreya Lara, Meshbody Legacy, Belleza Freya & Isis, and Slink Hourglass.
Pioneering virtual world Second Life will celebrate its 20th anniversary with events running from June 22nd to July 11th, 2023, spanning a mind-boggling sixty sims! The theme this year is Our Fantastic Future.
As in previous years, if you join the Second Life Birthday group for free, you will be able to access the 24 Shop and Hop sims starting at 9:00 a.m. SLT (i.e. Second Life Time/Pacific Time) on July 21st, 2023.
In addition to the 24 Shop and Hop sims, there are an additional 36 sims for the Second Life Festival, a sprawling and entirely community-built exposition of the best of SL from the past two decades.
Here’a brief overall schedule of what’s going on (thanks to Dreamer Pixelmaid for the information):
Early Shop and Hop Access (via the Second Life Birthday group): Wednesday, June 21st, 9:00 a.m. SLT
Early SL20B Festival Access (via the Second Life Birthday group): Thursday, June 22nd, 9:00 a.m. SLT
SL20B Official Opening: Thursday, June 22nd, 10:00 a.m. SLT
Opening Speech: Thursday, June 22nd, noon SLT
SL20B Music Festival: Thursday, June 22nd to Saturday, June 24th
Live Stage Performances (Over 425 performers on four stages): Sunday, June 25th to Sunday, July 2nd
From June 22nd to the 24th, go on an interstellar journey through sound and emotions, as the crème de la crème of Second Life’s live musicians set the SL20B Mandala Stage ablaze with spellbinding performances!
In the middle of Music Fest will also be a movie premiere! “Made in SL: The Movie” is a special long-form documentary for Second Life’s 20th anniversary, produced by Draxtor Despres and premiering on Friday, June 23rd at 12pm PT at the SL20B Arboretum. Watch the trailer at this link.
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But wait, there’s more! Hold on to your (virtual) hats because the euphoria doesn’t wind down after Music Fest. The SL20B celebrations are set to reach stratospheric heights with a staggering 425+ performers ready to take over four majestic stages! This is not just a party; it’s a festival of boundless energy and musical marvels that promises to engulf your senses.
You can also watch the Second Life Public Calendar for all Linden Lab events and in the next few days, we’ll debut a dedicated Destination Guide category with many event highlights. Look out for entries that will start appearing in the SL20B Destination Guide category later this week and keep an eye on this blog for more information about SL20B coming soon!
I will be keeping this blogpost updated as I receive ore information about SL20B, so stay tuned!
Thursday, June 22nd at 12pm PT – Watch a Lab Gab Special Live at SL20B starting with Patch Linden’s opening speech. Watch it live on the Second Life YouTube channel or live at the SL20B Mandala Stage.
Monday, June 26th at 1:30pm PT – Watch a Lab Gab Special Live at SL20B with VP of Product Operations, Patch Linden. Patch works to bring the best of product and support based decisions on a daily operational basis to the virtual world platform for Second Life, while maintaining oversight on how all of the various teams within Linden Lab can best work together for the highest good of the Residents and the business. Watch it on the Second Life YouTube channel or at the SL20B Arboretum.
Tuesday, June 27th at 1:30pm PT – Watch a pre-recorded Lab Gab Special at SL20B with VP of Product Grumpity Linden, and VP of Engineering Mojo Linden. Grumpity heads up Second Life Product, where she has overseen a shift to growth, a stronger, more balanced economy, a movement towards better community cohesion, and an overall forward-looking approach. With over twenty years of experience in the games industry, Mojo is an expert at building teams and launching groundbreaking games across genres that push the limits of their respective platforms. Watch it on the Second Life YouTube channel or at the SL20B Arboretum.
Wednesday, June 28th at 1:30pm PT – Watch a Lab Gab Special Live at SL20B with the Founder of Second Life Philip Linden, and Executive Chairman Oberwolf Linden. Philip rejoined Second Life in 2022, as Strategic Advisor, focused on helping to shape and build a better metaverse. Brad Oberwager has spent his entire career in technology and consumer focused companies as an entrepreneur and board member. Watch it on the Second Life YouTube channel or at the SL20B Arboretum.
Thursday, June 29th at 1:30pm PT – Watch a pre-recorded Lab Gab Special at SL20B with Chief Marketing Officer StyFy Linden and VP of Marketing Brett Linden. Together they focus on both the acquisition of new users and the retention of existing users for Second Life. Watch it on the Second Life YouTube channel or at the SL20B Arboretum.
SL residents are invited to submit questions to these events, to be answered by the speakers—but you’d better hurry, you only have two days left! 😉 And I assume that the recordings of these talk shows and presentations will remain up on YouTube after the events, so if you can’t be there live, tune in later on, when you do have time.
See you there! I have been told that there will be some special announcements made!