See More Avatars from: Tokushi

16 Nov 09 | List Price: L$

The sixth in their lineup, and a first for Tokushi to venture into a popular species that numerous other creators have recreated, the Tokushi Dragon avatar faces a challenge to set itself apart in an increasingly competitive market.  In this review, we take a look at whether Tokushi has made a Dragon that will stand out, or fade in with the rest. Read on to find out.

Out of the Box

• 2 tail poses or flexi tail with wagging.
• Sculpted eyelids including 4 optional states of open
• 3D eyes with changeable colors.
• Random and set finger positions
• Open and closed, flight functional sculpted wings with built in flight AO
• Moving jaw with typing and speech detection
• 7 eyebrow expression options
• Custom Heads Up Display offering:
  • Positioning controls for the wings, hands, mouth, and tail.
  • Recoloring controls for eye color selection.
  • Selection controls for dragon breath.
  • Expression controls for the face.

Measurement	Value
Script Time with HUD	~0.225
Script Time without HUD	~0.185
Avatar Rendering Cost	~1320

Build and Skin

As with previous Tokushi avatars and those following it, this avatar is made almost entirely out of sculpted prims. The textures, while not scaly, are quite detailed, and still quite reptilian looking. The avatar also includes a number of optional parts, and built in customization options.

Scripted functionality is similar to their Griffin avatar, and thus includes multiple wing, tail, and hand positions. As a result, there are more expression combinations due to the additional muzzle poses.

This avatar marks the first time that Tokushi had included a notecard listing the typed commands to activate the scripts. To some people, this may have seemed redundant as the included HUD is intuitive and does an excellent job of controlling the avatar’s features and options. For me, this was exciting news since it allows the creation of Hotkey/Keyword Gestures for the avatar. Over time, we have seen Tokushi, as well as other creators providing text commands with their avatars. I have since found a number of the text commands are universal to all Tokushi avatars, so any gestures one makes are likely to be usable on other Tokushi avatars.

As a dragon specific feature there are three different dragon breath attacks, Fire, Ice/steam, and user selectable color. Tokushi has also included optional parts for the avatar such as a longer necked version of the avatar head, and a Flexible version of the tail. Since the avatar’s head is very differently sized and shaped, we do not see the oft used method of attaching the eyes to the shape eyes underneath the head. This is the first case with Tokushi using eyes that moved on their own without the head underneath. To maintain this movement of the eyes, scripts were added to make the eye prims move in sync and look in various directions. Over time, this would become standard for the company.

The change to randomly moving eyes is one of the few things I remained particularly unsure about the avatar. While the eye movement scripts work well, they still just move the eyes around at random without any real control. This makes the avatar eyes have a shifty nature to them which can be quite distracting at times. This is a shame, since this problem could have been easily remedied with an option to turn eye movement on or off or set the eye position. Fortunately, Tokushi realized this in the time since this avatar was released, offering just those options with their avatars. For this avatar specifically, the scripts can be removed from the eyes to stop the random movement.

The other noticeable problem I encountered was that the, tail, hands, and wings again use the method of changing a prim’s transparency to switch between their separate poses. While this may be the easiest method to do,  it can cause problems, such as more lag caused by the avatar, and in the case of the wings, problems selecting and clicking on other objects past them. This problem is more noticeable with this avatar than earlier winged Tokushi avatars (e.g. Griffin) due to the dragon avatar’s larger and higher set wings. This avatar is a reminder of the problems that transparent wings can cause in daily Second Life living, but acts as a marker for the development of wings attachments in newer avatars such as the Tokushi Corvids.

HUD

The HUD looks pretty much as the HUDs included with previous Tokushi avatars. When inactive it looks like an artistic dragon icon and when clicked, opens up into a menu system with controls for the Head, Muzzle, Hands, Tail, and Wings. In addition to what was found on previous avatars, there are controls for:

• The aforementioned dragon breath in the muzzle section.
• The wing section has an option for burnt or regular membranes on the wings.

Overall its look is consistent and works well for all functions. In my opinion, for its time, it is certainly one of the better HUDs out there.

Customisability

In the avatar’s default configuration, pants and shirts aren’t that usable due to the digitgrade legs and wings but the avatar can easily wear shorts. Also this avatar’s head is extended atop a the prim neck, and as such, is taller than a default human or furry avatar. Therefore, anything attached to the head attachment points will need extensive repositioning. All parts of the avatar are modifiable though, and thus can be reshaped and rebuilt by the user to their choice and thus can be modified to be able to wear anything.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed this avatar.  It’s well made and  scripted, and is currently priced in the lower range of comparable dragon avatars. While It does have a few minor issues, I have yet to find any avatar that doesn’t have any. The Tokushi Dragon is certainly worth considering if one is looking for a quality dragon avatar.

This review was written by Zoren | Filed under Avatar Reviews, Tokushi
Tagged dragon, european, gallery, mythical, reptile, Tokushi.