Next in their line-up of avatars, AVentity has decided to release a wolf avatar. While there has been some talk about a wolf avatar from AVentity for a few years now, this one comes to us in the unique new style that AVentity sports. This is also the first review we’ll be writing in our new, simplified format.

Out of the Box:

Observations:

Skin and Construction:

• The texturing that this avatar uses is ample for its purposes. In some places, the transitions between colours are a mere soft gradient, while on other areas of the body, the skin stands out very neatly with distinct markings. We particularly draw your attention to the way that the creator has emphasised fur patterning on areas like the thighs, the shoulders, and the rump. The painted ‘ruffled’ fur provides a sense of fluffiness which suits the avatar pretty nicely.
• The male and female skins are largely similar, though, as to be expected, the males receive a little emphasis on the abs, and females receive less shading on the tummy, and more towards the breasts.
• Build-Wise, all of the sculpts are very clean and crisp, without any sculpt wrinkling on any of the prims. In terms of construction, the build is very sound, with minimal creasing .

Body Attachments:

• The body comes with a few different attachments. Feet, digitigrade leg attachments, a choice between two tails, and fluff prims for the neck and back of the head.

• Starting with the legs and feet, these attachments maintain the standard that AVentity has long set for themselves in lower limb construction. The foot-paws feature 4 toes, thick, detailed black pawpads and prominent claws. The digitigrade leg attachments themselves are correct in adjoining to the feet from the rear-top of the leg, remaining more or less true to the way digitigrade legs are meant to be. Along with the seamless joint, the digitigrade legs themselves are thickly built, and appear stocky enough to support the rest of the avatar. In particular, the textures here make the transition from foot-to-leg and leg-to-mesh-shape almost seamless.
• The only way that the legs could have benefited more would be from Alpha layers, but users with some experience can easily wear a layer themselves and do away with the invisiprims that are fixed to the digitigrade leg.
• Next up is the tail. Users will be able to appreciate that the creators have included both a flexible tail and a sculpted one. To that end, the difference is pretty clear, with the flexible tail being more fluidic in motion, but more prone to alpha-flickering, while the sculpted tail looks very full and much more suited to the avatar’s entire look. Additionally, the texturing on the tail is the best of both tails, maintaining the texture-style of the back of the avatar’s body.
• We’ll quickly note that the sculpted tail comes with three positions; up, neutral, and tucked, all of which were very nicely implemented. To get to these options, you must click the tail.
• This avatar does not come with hand-paw attachments, as such, resorting to painting ‘paw-pads’ onto the palms of the mesh-shape hands.
• The last attachment of the body is the ‘fluff’ on the upper body. To some, this may seem to be a bit much decoration, but it definitely gives the avatar a ‘fluffier,’ more ‘full’ look just around and under the face. To use it or not is really a matter of personal taste, however. In the meantime, because it was constructed from sculpted prims rather than toruses, the ‘fluff’ appears soft and believable. The chest-fluff attaches to the chest-attachment point, but another attachment on the skull attachment-point of the head smoothens the transition from the neck to the head.

Head:

• The head is the centre-piece for this avatar, partly because of the intense glare of the eyes. The eyeballs themselves are attached to the mesh-shape underneath, meaning that they can move as according to the camera. Colour-changeable, the eyeballs themselves are crisply and brightly textured. A small issue we’ve found is that sometimes, the eyes do not pan well when looking in some directions. Sometimes one of the pupils will disappear if rotated too far one way or the next. This isn’t a huge issue, but may prompt anal-retentive users to do a little eye-rotation tweaking.

• Overall, the head is very much canine, and pays homage to the original wolf species from pretty much any angle. This avatar doesn’t aim for too much realism, instead resting in a comfortable zone between realism and artistic styling. Some may feel that the end of the muzzle may appear a bit too slim, and they could be right. Fortunately, this doesn’t present itself as a major issue, and regardless, the muzzle does portray a lupine’s in many other respects. The avatar’s lips are fairly reflective of an actual wolf’s with their dark framing of the mouth interior. The interior of the mouth is also full of a good number of wolfish teeth and a well-sculpted tongue.
• The sides of the head opt for a different kind of fluff to round the head out; instead, going for a couple of large, thick, but stylistically contoured prims to flesh out the cheeks. This form of cheekfloof has worked very well for this avatar.
• Finally, the ears atop the head are comparatively small, but effectively lupine with their concave shape and pointed tips. These definitely would have to be along the lines of the better lupine ears we’ve seen on anthropomorphic wolf avatars in Second Life.

Features and Heads-Up Display:

• This avatar does not come with a HUD. While this can be a draw-back to some, this avatar is not as feature-rich as others that we’ve come to see from other creators. However, AVentity makes sure that people are able to get by with the minimum necessities by text commands included in the Wolf avatar instructions.
  • The following is just a few features offered through the text commands:
    • Eye Colour
    • Muzzle Talking Function Toggle On/Off
    • Eyelid State (Droopy, open, closed, etc.)
• Users can change eye-colour depending on either preset colours listed in the notecard, or RGB (i.e. <0.38,0.69,1.0>). The included technical manual educates the user on how to take advantage of some of the more advanced commands for the avatar with their own scripts.

Customisation:

• This avatar is listed as modifiable, copiable, but not transferable. The head-shape and size allows users to easily apply third party hairs with ease.

Conclusion:

The AVentity Wolf is a very aesthetic rendition of a Wolf, despite the lack of features that some of us may have come to rely on. The 640L price more than makes up for the lack of such features, and the avatar comes with enough options to help users get started on customising the wolf to their own taste. This avatar follows up on the prior released Moray Eel, demonstrating the advances in style that AVentity has made with their avatars. This avatar carries a kind of personality to it that reflects well on the lupine species, and makes it a personable avatar to wear.