See More Avatars from: Rez Fantazy
24 Apr 09 | List Price: L$
Eager to show that they are capable of better designed avatars, Rez Fantasy has provided me with their Puma avatar. The third in their line of avatars, it is a pleasure for us to investigate one of Rez Fantasy’s more recent offerings and observe their progression as a new avatar creator.
Out of the Box:
- Blinking eyes
- Digitigrade Legs
- Color changing eyes
- Twitching ears
- Swishing tail
- Paw Prints
- Talking Jaw
- Sound HUD
Build and Skin
The textures on the skin of this avatar are simple but effective in getting what they want across. While not as well detailed as some of their other avatars, there is a good amount of shading on the skin to avoid it from looking flat. Of particular note could be the well-defined musculature on the abs of the male avatar. Both the male and female avatar skins have nipples included; though this means that the nipples will need to be covered in places serious about a PG rating.
The quality of textures is maintained throughout the avatar, which is always a plus. Next, we discuss the build itself. The footpaws of the Puma are sculpted and include the option for the wearer to leave behind footprints. Included with the footpaws are sculpted digitigrade legs. At the sides of the feet, (specifically the sides of the toes) there is a slight crinkling of the sculpts which may be more noticeable in certain lights and angles than others. There is still some slight mis-alignments in the leg attachments, however, but nowhere near as bad as previous avatars
The included tail is a flexible tail that swishes from side to side occasionally. The hand paws are a nice add-on, however, they again suffer from a slight bit of crinkle in the sides. One of the avatars I received had a mis-positioned hand-paw, but that was easily fixed by rotating it myself. However, the paws could have looked a little slightly less like the footpaws and more like fingers.
Finally, we move to the head. One focal point is the muzzle; a broad, very big-cat type muzzle with the typical Puma markings on the side. Perhaps the best part of the muzzle would be the nose; it’s sculpted very well and textured to distinguish the avatar’s facial features further. The jaws open and close when one talks, while the eyes are brightly coloured and clearly textured. There is cheek-fluff included to mark out the contours of the cheeks, but some may take issue with how ordered in a row the fluff is. The fluff that extends down the sides of the cheeks seems too thin and short to really give the intended ‘fuzzy’ appearance.
One major issue with the head, however, lies not in the design or the texturing, but the size; unfortunately the head somewhat large and spherical with a ~0.37m diameter comparable to older avatars from the 2005-2006 era. While the larger sized body shape helps to offset the head size, the big, spherical nature of it unfortunately limits the ability the user has to modify the head with their own hair.
For the most part, though, the hair that comes with the avatar, while not neccesarily the best available, serves a functional purpose of making the head appear smaller. However, I have found myself being mistaken for a lion due to the length of the hair looking closely like a mane.
One attribute that separates this avatar from its predecessor is the symmetry; looking at the pictures of the head at the different angles has shown noticeable improvement of feature placement across the skull. Second, in addition to the eyes being larger and more detailed, they have been placed above the muzzle-bridge, which differs from the Ursan and Capran avatars.
Features and Heads-Up Display
The avatar comes with several basic features for the user to take advantage of. Using /45menu, people can access options to change the eye colour, the automated movement of the ears, and whether they want pawprints to show up in their wake when they walk. There is a HUD included with the avatar, but its function is limited to the sound settings. Using the HUD, the user can choose between a Puma roar, growl, or purr.
Conclusion
Rez Fantasy has definitely put an effort into improving their avatars, which shows that they have an increasing potential to release still better avatars in the future. Like their Ursan (Bear) avatar, this avatar suffers from somewhat disproportioned features (i.e. large head relative to the muzzle). Putting present challenges aside however, this avatar is a large improvement over its predecessors, especially the Capran. This progression between avatars shows that the company is not only interested in addressing users’ wants in terms of features, but works to align itself with modern works.
Tagged feline, gallery, puma, Rez fantasy.
Rawr ^-^ *writes a comment!*
But yeah umm just some things I’d like to add to this av review which I didn’t see getting mentioned further. I’ve had a chat(well moreso a few livejournal comment exchanges) with the creators of it in the past.
The thing that simply popped right into my eyes was “hey…It’s a puma..Why does it have a white tailtip?”
Because yeah, Pumas/Cougars/catamounts/Mountain lions/ETC don’t have that ^^
I was explained it was done by the creator’s choice and I can fully understand and accept that.
Just felt like pointing this out to others though, because friends started discussions with me about this av before already. So I’m certain there might be more people out there wondering and acting up that this doesn’t fully represent a puma. But please, don’t go and complain about it. In the end it all comes down to preferences and this feature surely makes this av even more unique. And Anthros leave much room for interpretations anyway. But if it’s really enough to resemble a Puma is all up to you.
There’s another thing I’d like to point out about the pawprint-leaving feature while moving. It’s very nice to look at and the pawprints spawn very well placed and have a nice looking texture. Many people have seen or used a similar pawprint leaving device before, BUT there’s one big flaw about this one. Namely, instead of spawning of the pawprints as particle(-textures) they are rezzed as ACTUAL PRIMS! This can cause a lot of trouble, especially while walking around “no build” areas you’ll get spammed with “can’t rezz object pawprints” messages. Also you can do odd things like walking back and forth and slowly lifting yourself up to the sky this way(because the pawprints always spawn below your paws, and as you step *onto* your former pawprints you get lifted up slightly as they are actual solid prims. It’s a lovely feature, but it might need some reworking in it’s current revision. At least the pawprints should appear phantom and temporary, but better yet this should be solved with particles due to avoidance of “no build” problems.
Just some notes I felt like informing fellow residents about
and maybe help the creators consider some tweaks in the future. Cheers everybody! ^-^ – Pummy – out