[Tohopekaliga]

Hey everybody! As promised A week and a half ago, I have a preview for my planned big update to the Avatar Editor!

And it's 90% functional! The only missing features are things that the current standard editor already doesn't do, so it's not a step back. I just don't want to make it official until I've had time to get feedback about styling, and make some proper (non-generic-icon) button symbology.

Oh yeah, and make sure more items sort properly into their categories. I'll primarily be focusing on that a bit for a while next.


The Avatar Editor

It has a different (less strange) url from the original editor, so if you want to compare this with the old, you can just click your avatar up top.


Main implemented features:

• Shares all inventory display logic with the standard (new) Inventory page
  • Searching
  • Find any item with a hat (or anything else), not just commons
  • Items are grouped as they are in shops, and duplicates stack.
  • Equipped items show up as separate entries in the inventory list, are marked, and show what pose they are using.
  
  
• Outfit closet
  • At present you may save up to 4 outfits in your closet, which you can put onto your working avatar at any time.
  • Each outfit also saves gender, skin color, and facing data
  
  
• More streamlined gender + skin selection

Planned features:

• Avatar facing: Choose face in (default), out, always left, or always right. This was done in the WIP editor I had made a while back, and is fully supported in this editor, I just don't have the UI configured for it yet. Implemented June 11
• Body slicing: Hide arms, legs, torso from your selected base skin. Make it easier to use body mods!
• More closet slots: Slots will be purchasable with aurum or runes. The first 4 are free. Cost TBD.
• Search by tag
• Customizable filter tabs
• All free items will be automatically present

Known Issues:

• A fair number of headings lack styling (too small, too plain, not clear)
• The placement of buttons around the working/preview avatar is a bit off
• The closet doesn't allow renaming outfits currently
• Many items don't currently appear in the Body, Gear, and Scene categories
• Several visual components have issues with their styling (such as the separator bar that just stops at some point)
• Header avatar doesn't refresh on save (Have to hit F5/cmd+R to see change)
• Layer manager doesn't show specific pose icons

My current intention is to have both the Editor and Inventory pages complete and launched as the official versions on July 1.


I am, of course, happy to hear feedback, suggestions, and ideas regarding the editor, be it styling, implementation details, or just idle thoughts. :D

[Merskelly Metalien]

This is...WOW. 8D <3

[Stabbsworth]

stuff feels way too blurry. idk if it's a browser issue, using firefox.

[Tohopekaliga]

Can you show me a screenshot? It should not be blurry. Firefox is my browser of choice, so it's not that specifically.


If you can, I'd like a screenshot, as well as what OS you're using, and what screen resolution (since it's a graphical issue).

[Biomecha]

On mobile, I am unable to move the page around while zoomed when trying to drag the page in the thumbnail portion.

Also, something that I am probably the only one that does this but...I often will save the topmost item image that is equipped within the editor so that I can use it with items I haven't purchased yet. That way I can do experimentation with it using a photo editor. Basically, as a way to try on items before buying with items I already own. It's not necessary to keep, because you can still grab the image from the other preview methods. But it would be nice to keep. The new editor doesn't seem to allow image saving, at least on mobile when you long press.

[Tohopekaliga]

The avatar in the editor is rendered using a Canvas object rather than a whole bunch of image objects stacked on top of one another. That happens to mean you can copy the whole image of the avatar at any time, but not an individual layer. Unfortunately, I don't think I can support doing that in the editor.

I'd suggest using the Item Viewer or Inventory for that, as they work by putting the item's image directly on top of your avatar, and they don't load as much logic or data so end up being quicker things to pull up.

[Tohopekaliga]

Was just checking it on my phone. I plan on making it arranged a little better for that format... But that inability to scroll/zoom over the item list is strange (I see it, so I know what you're talking about).

I'll look into that.

[Coda]

Originally Posted by Tohopekaliga

The avatar in the editor is rendered using a Canvas object rather than a whole bunch of image objects stacked on top of one another.

Hm. I had intentionally not used canvas when I started this project because I was concerned about pixel accuracy issues between the editor and the actual backend save function. It's entirely possible that my fears are misplaced, but I remember seeing some halos around edges at some point in the past on high-DPI displays.

Originally Posted by Tohopekaliga

That happens to mean you can copy the whole image of the avatar at any time, but not an individual layer. Unfortunately, I don't think I can support doing that in the editor.

Long-term, of course, we have plans to make that irrelevant, so you don't have to use an external image editor to do that kind of thing.

[Tohopekaliga]

From my research on the topic, canvas can have render oddities if you are scaling it after the fact, or skewing it in some way. Since this is taking images and rendering them 1:1 onto a canvas that shares the aspect ratio and size, the image should be consistent.

I will keep on the lookout for oddities, though.

[Coda]

It's the other way around. Scaling it after the fact is safe, because it's already been composited. The issue arises when the source images are scaled before they're applied to the canvas. High-DPI displays don't map 1:1 between device pixels and "pixel" measurement units, so historically there has been some iffiness involved, and the canvas spec doesn't technically offer a way to control this, although vendor extensions will let you turn off antialiasing, which helps.

[Tohopekaliga]

Aha, I see... Well, I'll look into that. I haven't noticed any problems with my Pixel 4 or iPad Pro, and those are both pretty high DPI, but I'll definitely give that another look.

[Tohopekaliga]

Some updates today:

• Avatar facing UI is implemented, has poor color choice, please forgive me (it'll be changed later)
  
  
• Made some updates to styling which applies to both the new Editor and new Inventory, reducing the item tile size somewhat and making the quantities more clear.
  
  
• Replaced the Item Viewer with new code. Looks the same, but uses different logic to display (it's the same logic that the Editor & Inventory use). As part of that, I finally fixed a bug that's existed for a while: You could never link items like Éléphant dans la Pièce

[Tohopekaliga]

Today's Updates:

• Fixed the rarity colors not showing. I'd rearranged the styles and didn't check properly. They have colors again.
  
  
• Added a new Advanced Option to not hide opposite-gender items. You can already put male items on a female base and vice-versa. Figured having a switch that you can flip to not have to swap would be useful. Note that Male & Female items don't perfectly line up, so mixing and matching can make some weird lines if you're not careful.
  
  
• Styled the advanced options box a bit more.

[Tohopekaliga]

Some more updates:

• Went through the commons (not manually, there are more than 10k of them) and ensured that they should all appear in roughly the right place in the editor & inventory. Some may get sorted into weird places, especially some of the older body mods, but I shuffled things as I could.
  
  Naturally, I will be glad to get reports of items that are sorted in places they shouldn't be, or ones that don't appear where they should. If there's one, there's usually a dozen.
  
  
• Renamed the "Scene" filter in... "Scene" to "Background," because that makes more sense.
  
  
• Added a "Tattoo" filter in the Body tab, because it didn't really make sense to lump those in with accessories (and tattoos are something we've been tagging for a while)
  
  
• Adjusted some styling in the editor

[Tohopekaliga]

Today's updates:

• When you save an outfit to the closet, it'll ask for a name. If you don't set one, it just keeps the same name it already had.
  
  
• Fixed loading a closet outfit not properly marking equipped items in the inventory
  
  
• Made a backdrop to popup windows (layer manager, pose picker, closet, etc) so that clicking/tapping outside of them dismisses them.
  
  
• Added Item Viewer links to items in inventory & editor, so it's easier to say "THIS ITEM" to someone.
  
  
• Added a loading indicator to the picker box, and also made it not be so tiny in some circumstances.
  
  
• Working on tagging more stuff. This'll be a journey, and it will continue well past the (still on course) July 1 "launch" date for this.

[Tohopekaliga]

So that was kind of a big deal update today. It took a while to decide exactly how much to offer, and for how much.


The next thing I plan on doing is making an update to the Shops, to unify styling a bit more between them and the editor, as well as improve our ability to offer up old, impossible to find items on a rotating basis.