Nargus Velociraptor (Series 2)

Nargus offers one of the most detailed lines of prehistoric reptiles in Second Life. We have had the pleasure of reviewing one of his latest releases; the Velociraptor; a completely sculpted, animated, and feature-filled avatar that seeks to bring these long-extinct saurians back to life in the modern age, Jurassic Park™ style.

Out of the Box:

• Full-prims, Full-dinosaur, Utahraptor/Velociraptor AV!
• ANIMATIONS override : Over 20 animations cover most standard raptor movements
• BLINKING eyes, MOVING jaw, and head gestures : Talking-as-you-type!
• CUSTOMIZABLE color and texture : Select from one of 16 millions colors available! (You DO NOT NEED mod permission to choose color!)
• FULL-SCUPTS avatar!
• FREE raptor sound bundles, pounce and dance tool, obtainable at:
• NOTE: Because complexity of this AV, there is NO MOD permission on this AV. A MOD version is also available.
• NOTE 2: Because this is Full-prims AV, normal clothings and hair will not work with this av

Right off of the bat, there is a lot of material from which to start the review; as a full-body avatar, it required more than a little work than usual bipedal avatars. Animations, textures, invisiprims (to hide the actual avatar) were all needed to complete it. A different formula than usual will cover the avatar.

Build and Textures:

From the start, the avatar is impressive in structure and form. This avatar does exactly what scientists and artists alike have had to do; imagined what these animals looked like from scratch. Keeping that in mind, Nargus has offered exceptionally detailed skins that border on extremely realistic as opposed to the solid green-scaled dinos we’ve seen in the cartoons many of us watched or read. From the tip of the head down to the toes, you can see the blood vessels in the eyes, and the many creases and patternings in the skin of the reptile. The structure of the avatar is a combination of true prims, sculpted prims, and flexis, used wherever each could be used to enhance the organic look to the creature and bring it to life.

Animation Overrider:

The avatar comes with its own full-fledged Animation overrider, so you’re not left walking around or standing like an incomplete idiot. The avatar has a speed-booster for when you run, so you actually mimic the speediness of a Velociraptor. The stand includes feral head movements from side-to-sides, and even have the short Raptor arms scratching at the neck of the avatar idly. Definitely some thoughtful animation went into this avatar!

Heads Up Display (HUD):

The Heads Up Display (HUD) allows you to

• Change colours and textures for individual body parts
• Change overall themes for the entire body
• Use assorted poses with the avatar
  • Lying down, Pounces, Sleeping, Rearing up, etc.
• Do brief assorted actions
  • Headbob, Look up,
• Send comments directly to the creator
• Export skins to a preset notecard
• Backup your HUD’s settings
• Get Notecards that will provide help

Customisation:

FIrst of all, this avatar is no-mod. However, this is more than made up by the options and expandability offered by the avatar and its HUD. Having the avatar being no-mod is important especially when one considers that modifying even one piece the avatar in any way will completely mess the entire thing up.

Compared to other avatars, this one comes with colour patterning built in. Each colour setting actually doesn’t mean it’s merely the same texture in a different shade; the skin and patterning are different with each option you select, whether it be “Factory Reset,” “Realistic Female,” and so on.  People still get to keep a good degree of customisation, you can drop your own textures into the Heads up Display (HUD) and apply them to different parts of your avatar. The HUD also allows one to add glow or shiny effects to their avatar.

Given how it’s important that we raise any possible issues with the avatar that might irk customers, perhaps the only major issue is one of the avatar’s strengths; the options and features that it offers. It may become easy to become lost in the HUD; it attempts to make everything very streamlined and user-friendly, and it achieves that to a certain degree. But with so many options, buttons, and switches, as well as an aesthetically complex control center for the avatar, the learning curve is somewhat steep. Fortunately, however, many, if not all of the functions of the avatar are manageable through voice commands on channel 44.

Conclusion:

Fantastic avatar filled to the brim with features. Nargus did not spare any thought about this avatar, pushing every amount of detail he could into each and every part of the avatar.