Dem Bones, Dem Bones!

In the 3rd year of the almighty, wonderful and charming Ebbe Altberg (a k a Ebbe Linden), CEO of Linden Lab, the creative gods at the lab have - in close cooperation and collaboration with SecondLife content creators - achieved the revolutionary Bento Skeleton.

Both Linden Lab and Firestorm have now released viewers that are Bento compatible.

Bento is an extension of the SecondLife avatar skeleton whereby we get dozens of new bones to support rigging and animation and new attachment points.

The new skeleton, which is compatible with existing avatars, rigging and animation, gives creators the power to build more sophisticated avatars than ever before. The skeleton extensions include:

• 11 extra limb bones for wings, additional arms, or extra legs.
• 6 tail bones
• 30 bones in the hands (all 10 fingers!)
• 30 bones for facial expressions
• 2 other new bones in the head for animating ears or antennae
• 13 new attachment points associated with the new bones

What all this means is simply that our wonderful SecondLife content creators have gotten more and better tools to make things look, move and appear better and a greater range of customization to your own preferences and individuality. 

For example, if you get a Bento compatible mesh head you can easily personalize it (using the sliders) and avoid looking like everyone else who has that same mesh head. You also get a greater range of animations and everything will move in a more natural way. And that's just the start of it, I cannot wait to see what our many talented creators will achieve with this new development.

All pictures in this post are from http://avastar.online/knowledge/the-sl-skeleton/