Ok, so I finally got my hands on
the Shops Beta Mesh body and was really excited to try it out. I have the hands and feet and figured hey! they should be a perfect fit with the body since they were created to fit together. Much to my dismay, the hands did not fit. No matter how much I adjusted the size or messed with my body fat, torso muscle, etc. The hands simply are off. Which is odd because they fit just fine when I don't have the mesh body on, so that made it even more frustrating. If they were able to change the size of the actual hand, that would be awesome.
The hands have always given me fits, mostly because they are way too small. Remind me of T-Rex arms with the tiny little hands.. lol! I think for now, I will stick to my Slink hands.
The feet worked rather well, though in some poses they did look a bit off, but much better than the hands at least.
By the way, none of the images have been photoshopped or post processed. Save for a crop, they are "raw" images from SL. I took them on high rez only with a non-shadowed wind light. I wanted to show the body and the tones the way they would look in SL.. or at least the way they look on my monitor :)
The body itself is actually really lovely in design, and I loved how I could make it "my own" so to speak by changing the shape I was wearing. Being fitted mesh, it will change with your body shape. WowMeh does the same thing, but, that is another blog post coming soon :)
The Shops provide you with a hud that lets you adjust and tint your mesh parts. Its intuitive and rather easy to use, and the skin tones fit rather will with most skins out there. Of course, if you have a skin from the Body Co, you are in luck, as it is a perfect match. I just used one of my older Body Co skins, Ivy, in summer tone and it matched exactly to the one of the presets in the HUD.
You can see in the pics how the hands are completely off from the body. If anyone knows how to fix this issue please let me know! You can see though the texture on the skin and how realistic it looks.
I did notice that to make the shape look more realistic, I made the love handles slider go up a bit more than usual to create a more streamlined flow from the torso down to the hips.
And, that booty.. I have to say that was one of my favorite parts of the mesh body, as it was really well done, and the shape and shading look realistic and smooth. I dare say I like it more than the Azz.
Here is another view.. and you can see those pesky hands :( and how they don't mesh well.. no pun intended !
Below, you can see the fit for the neck is not so good in certain positions, but I messed with the fits and realized that the retrofit seemed to work better. In the image below you can see the curve of the bottom, which is really nicely done :) Sir Mix a lot would be proud !
The pic below shows how the feet fit much better than the hands, and really shows off the seamlessness and smoothes of the body too.
And, one last pic to show the entire torso. The boobs are rather fun, and shaped with the correct "hang" so to speak and resize with yours, so if you want to make them bigger, by all means! I kept mine at below 45, and it seemed to fit well with the rest of the proportions of the body.
So, a little recap:
- the hands need improvement, from fit to size, if you are going to wear them with the body. They do fit pretty perfectly on the standard avatar body, which is ironic.
- the feet are really cool. They fit better than the hands. Overall, the details on both the feet and hands are very well done though, just need to adjust the size of the hands.
- The body is well done, with smooth shape, realistic proportions and the seam at the neck can be dealt with if you don't have a mesh head from the Shops. In my pics I used a Body Co skin and it fit seamlessly.
- The body is free. WowMeh is not.
- You will always need to use the Style Hud that The Shops provides, but you will also need to update it by getting the update at The Shops. They won't deliver it or just automatically update. So, with every update, you will have to get to the Shops to get it. No biggie, unless the gregion is full, like it was for me through the weekend.
- Overall, the body is amazingly well done. Just a few tweaks to get a better fit and I think its well worth trying out.
I"ll be doing a review of WowMeh as well coming up soon. I try to be fair and honest in my reviews, understanding that many of the things we find to be flaws are sometimes user error ( seriously, if anyone knows why my hands aren't fitting please let me know!). I am aways amazed by the creativity and generosity of many of the creators in SL, and I respect their hard work and effort put into their creations.
<33 Tessy
