Maintaining the cartoon-influenced character look of their previous avatars and enhancing it’s looks with the use of Sculpted prims this avatar certainly looks good, however how does it compare to their other avatars?
Out of the Box
- 1200L
- Sculpted Body Parts
- Choice of one of seven different colors
- Available in either Male or Female Versions
- Changeable Eye Colors
- Heads up Display (HUD) that controls:
- Custom Eye color Selection
- Animation Overrider
Build and Skin
The first Sculpted avatar offered by NinjaWeasel Studios, this avatar is constructed of about 80% sculpted Prims, and the textures, while simple, match up well and look good. Also despite it’s Toony appearance, this avatar does closer resemble the anatomy of a kangaroo then other maker’s Roos. This is especially notable with respect to the feet. Additionally, due to the low numbers of Sculpted Prims and textures used, this avatar produces minimal lag and requires less system resources to rez. However, one disappointment is that the ears have no movement, unlike previous NWS avatars.
The avatar comes in a selection of seven different fur colors (with 10 different eye colors options). In addition to the scripted color changing the eyes blink as well.
Animation Override and HUD
The animation overrider (AO) is a modification of the Franimation overrider, which means it is very simple and user-friendly. For the most part however, this animation overrider replaces the default Linden Lab walk/run animations with a Kangaroo leap animation. Sometimes when moving around though, the animation would activate too much or too early.
The Heads Up Display (HUD), while very cute, unfortunately doesn’t do much either. The only options are to turn the AO on or off, and to bring up a script menu to change the eye color. I would have liked to see at least one more option to open or close the eyes or some other options that come standard with most avatars, but they are not included. However, the head scripts are the same as previous NWS scripts so the same text-based commands used for other NWS avatars work on this one. They are found in the well-written instructions notecard that accompanies the avatar.
Customisability
This avatar is modifiable so as usual those with the skills can modify the various avatar parts. However, it must be kept in mind that that since the sculpted muzzle is not constructed for speech/mouth animation, it is impossible to make major structural changes to those prims without needing to replace the sculpt maps. Accessories like piercings, however are still possible. The ears come attached to the prim head of the avatar, rather than to the ear attachment points on the base avatar underneath. This means that the ears will not move; but an intermediate modder will be able to change this without issue. Because the legs are completely covered by prims, keep in mind as well, that you cannot wear pants without major modifications.
Conclusion
While looking great, this avatar sometimes feels incomplete compared to past Ninjaweasel avatars, despite the leap in build detail and quality. NinjaWeasel corrected the issue of lack of features with their Sculpted Rodent. Unfortunately as it currently is, with it’s lack of features and even documentation of the features it does have, I would really recommend this avatar mostly for those who either want a functional, strong kangaroo avatar, or they don’t mind doing some extensive modifications.
