KZK has re-released one of their oldest avatars, the Dazzle Bat! After being discontinued for years, this bat makes a colorful return to the Grid just in time for the holidays.
We would like to make a note here, as clarified in a notice in the KZK group shortly after the Dazzle Bat release: The Dazzle Bats are not going to replace the original bats; they are a separate avatar entirely.
Also, note: KZK has announced this is the last avatar they will be making mostly out of sculpted prims – all future avatars will incorporate mesh.
Out of the Box:
Features:
| Features | Specifications |
|
|
Skin and Textures:
The skins and textures of the Dazzle Bat are of usual KZK quality. The fur texture is very visible in some spots, especially on color borders and on the belly, while the rest of the fur is smooth. There are places where the fur texture abruptly stops and becomes smooth, such as where the wrist meets the arm. There are also spots on the face where the textures on the sculpts don’t line up perfectly, but these aren’t very visible unless zoomed in to a fair degree.
Each skin has a design on the shoulders, right upper leg, both ears, back, and forehead. These are not optional. If the wearer wishes to remove them, they must be modded off.
There are three skins included with each bat: male PG, female PG, and female mature (Warning, Link is rated mature). Each of these skins display appropriate anatomical differences, with the female being slimmer and smoother and the male being more muscularly defined. Both shapes accurately depict their genders, with the male being tall and somewhat lanky.
The texture on the wings is, by default, semi-transparent. This can cause problems with the tail and other wing folds, since alpha layers still tend to clip each other. Also, parts of the body that glow – like the nose – have separate alpha prims on them for the textures that glow, which can also cause a problem.
Overall Build
As with the skins, the sculpts are of classic KZK quality – smooth and flowing well together. However, there are a few places on the avatar where the attachments do not line up as perfectly, most notably on the wrist-to-hand joint (some of the mesh hand peeks out from this joint).
The fur on the chest and hair look like a collection of separate prims, but are actually bunches of fur tufts in one sculpted prim. This saves some load time and can be helpful when modifying the avatar.
In-Depth Body
The bat feet resemble generic digitigrade paws, aside from a few things: the giant claws and glowing pads. The claws are nearly as long as the toes themselves, appearing quite menacing just from a glance. Underneath some fluff are the glowing pawpads, one of the many parts of the avatar that can be modified through the HUD to color change, glow, or be full-bright. These pads clip through the foot texture a bit, leaving some black in the top corners, but this can be fixed by simply moving the pads forward a bit.
As we move up the legs, there is some very noticeable fur shading, not only on the color borders but everywhere. This stops at the very last stripe on the digitigrade leg, then moves to simple shading. The legs are striped starting at about midway up the digi-foot to just below the knee, alternating your choice color and the base color.
The tail is similarly striped, with a stripe of fuzz hanging from the bottom of it loosely. There are two tails included with this avatar – flexible and sculpted – and they do behave differently, despite being styled the same. The flexible tail can wag, but cannot custom pose. The hanging fluff and main tail prims tend to come apart, but this is to be expected of two flexible prims. When sitting still, they fit together perfectly. The sculpted tail cannot wag, but can be posed up / down. The tail lags a little when changing positions, but the two sculpted prims fit well together regardless of pose.
The wings are attached to the wrists, like on the original bat and several other winged avatars. These wings are very bat-like, with a touch of fantasy to complete the Dazzle Bat style. Several wing textures are included, changeable with the HUD (solid, lightly torn, heavily torn). All of the textures are partly transparent, which can cause issues with other alpha prims (especially the tail). These wings auto-detect when you’re flying, but you can turn that off and open and close them manually through the HUD. The outer and inner wing textures can be color-changed separately, also through the HUD.
The wings lead to the hand-paws, which are simply designed – three fingers, long claws similar to that on the toes, and glowing pads. The right paw joint needs to be realigned a little to hide the basic hand mesh, since it peeks through a little (many avatars do this).
There’s a gratuitous amount of chest fuzz included in this avatar. The fluff on this attachment is made out of one sculpted prim per four or so fur tufts, totaling 37 prims. This fluff can be easily removed with no ill effects, revealing another Dazzle Bat mark on the back.
In-Depth Head Summary
Probably the most noticeable feature on the Dazzle Bat’s head is its nose. Similar to the leaf-styled nose on the original bat, the front of the nose can be color / glow / full-bright changed via the HUD. This means there’s an alpha prim on the front of the nose, which can cause some problems if you stand in front of another alpha prim.
The ears are similar to that of a fennec fox’s – very large and very fluffy. The ears have four poses – perk, up, down, back. The ears cannot be individually posed, though. Each ear has the Dazzle Bat design on the back, and just below that, you can see the small pinch mark that marks the top or bottom of a sphere sculpted prim. This can be hidden by some poofy hair, but overall, it’s not very noticeable, especially if you have a dark-based avatar (black, like most of the Bats).
The fuzz on the ears and cheeks follows that of the chest – it’s made of a few torus prims, but mostly of several-tufted sculpted prims.
There is some heavy fur texturing around the mouth and muzzle. The jaw attaches seamlessly to the head, but the top muzzle, smiling or not, clips into the head somewhat.
There are three styles of hair – male, female, and mane. The mane is a simple continuation of the chest fur, whereas the male and female hair are more stylized and more “hair-like”. Both the male and female hairs are spiked forward, but the females lays down more for a more feminine look.
Finally, the eyes. These eyes can be re-colored like normal, with two tones in each eye (cannot recolor individual eyes), but not only do you have that option, but you also have the option to switch between slitted eyes and round eyes, and from there, three extra patterns from the first page of the HUD. The first option is your normal eye, and the second inverts that pattern and makes your pupil colorable. The third pattern, with the swirls, does not change the pupil of your eye – it just adds the swirl around your pupil. The last pattern changes your pupil to a star or diamond shape.
Features and Heads-Up Display (HUD):
The Dazzle Bat has all of the features of a normal KZK avatar, and then some. Take a glimpse at the HUD for some of the basic commands.
Furthermore, the commands can also be sent via chat line – see the included notecard for further information.
Customization
This avatar does come with copy and modify permissions, so you are free to modify the avatar! Always keep a back-up in case something breaks, though! It’s happened to the best of us.
Many parts of the avatar are color / glow / full-bright changeable via the HUD. You can change the preset colors on the HUD through build mode or by holding the button down while you have a color selected.
Base textures and templates are not provided with the Dazzle Bat. If you wish to modify the avatar, you will have to texture the avatar from scratch.
Conclusion
Many users should be pleased at the Dazzle Bat’s return – it truly is an individual design and users are sure to like the contrasting colors and style. Couple that with its built-in customizability and this avatar is definitely going to keep peoples’ attention.
Pingback: Flame soulis | Ugogaming