Creating a Second Life Avatar from a description

[Calartuir]

How would I go about turning the description below into a Second Life avatar?
This creature resembles a gigantic, tremendously horrific shaped blot of darkness, a vaguely humanoid-shaped void that is twelve feet tall that hovers several feet off the ground. It has no features except for three smoking black pits that are in the shape of an upside down triangle on both sides of its head that serve as its eyes and no light reflects off its skin. In place of both arms, it has a knot of flesh at each shoulder, from which three highly flexible prehensile nightmarish looking black tentacles that split at the end, into three radial "fingers" whip out.

 

[Fenix]

You would need to create (or commission someone to create for you) a custom rigged mesh in the desired overall shape of the creature. You would wear this mesh as an attachment while simultaneously wearing an alpha mask layer to hide the default system avatar base. Rigged meshes can be imported with scale offsets to make them appear larger or smaller than the avatar wearing it (I'm not familiar with the exact process). Though it's worth pointing out that most avatars are oversized already - as the height indicator in the viewer reports incorrect information and LSL scripts that can measure agent size only give the bounding box up to eye level. When in doubt, measure yourself by standing next to a prim and noting the prim's size in meters.

Constantly floating above the ground can be accomplished by a generic animation override. You could simply replace standing/walking/running/etc with flying/hovering animations. This can be combined with adjusting your avatar's hover-height attribute to further offset you vertically from the ground.

Coloring the surfaces of your mesh black and turning it full-bright would remove any lighting/shading, though I don't think it'll look particularly nice. You'd stick out quite a bit in an otherwise shaded scene. Worn particle emitters with appropriately textured particles can accomplish the smoking effect.

The most involved part would likely be rigging the extra arms/tentacles and making the animations to go with them. Since you're creating a non-standard avatar shape with two extra sets of arm limbs, you'll need to create animations specifically for that. The avatar's skeleton is now augmented to include bones for wings and an extra set of hind legs (like a centaur), so those are an option. You'll need to have idle animations for them as well as animations any specific action action you want them to do - such as whipping out. Controlling them would be possible via a custom HUD to trigger the appropriate animations for each limb.

Be aware that when reusing skeleton bones, you will probably want to avoid other products that animate those same bones in other ways - as they will not take your avatar's usage of them into account. Things that animate your original arms would follow the more ridged bone structure, but you might be able to counteract that by weighting the arm rigs to be less bound to the arm bones - and as such making the arms appear more flexible. I haven't done any rigging yet, so I cannot say for sure - that's just my speculation.

 

[Amity Slade]

Have you looked through Marketplace to see whether anyone has done something that resembles what you want? I recommend that as your starting point. You might at least find ideas, or even usable pieces, so you don't have to go about creating it all.

 

[Fauve Aeon]

How would I go about turning the description below into a Second Life avatar?
This creature resembles a gigantic, tremendously horrific shaped blot of darkness, a vaguely humanoid-shaped void that is twelve feet tall that hovers several feet off the ground. It has no features except for three smoking black pits that are in the shape of an upside down triangle on both sides of its head that serve as its eyes and no light reflects off its skin. In place of both arms, it has a knot of flesh at each shoulder, from which three highly flexible prehensile nightmarish looking black tentacles that split at the end, into three radial "fingers" whip out.

This guy not gonna b a hit at parties ...otherwise, post a ‘want to commission’ here and on the official forums with what Fenix said.
If it could be run as something that doesn’t need to be worn as an avatar, maybe ask someone working with Animesh about the possibilities?
In either case, adding the D&D reference to your request might attract a fellow game fan who’d be more interested to build it if it will be part of an Adventure?

 

[Calartuir]

Would I better off having something else made instead of the creature I describe?

 

[Fauve Aeon]

I think everyone should make or commission any kind of avatar they want to, and self-expression is king... I just think that part of wearing very non-standard ones is being prepared for the way others might perceive or react to them I guess?
That's my own thought about myself when I wear a more uncommon avatar. I've worn many more tame things than what you described that have given people the creepy shivers...and they weren't shy or slow in publicly letting me know it!

Were I to meet your described avatar without context, my first thought wouldn't be 'oh hey, let's chat them up'...but it really depends on what your goals are.
I think it would make a dandy scary creature for an adventure or useful for many purposes, but if you have any aspirations for social use, it might well be an impediment.

 

[Amity Slade]

Would I better off having something else made instead of the creature I describe?

When it comes to avatar appearance, it's more important to make yourself happy than to try to make the rest of the universe happy.

 

[EmpressOfCommunism]

When it comes to avatar appearance, it's more important to make yourself happy than to try to make the rest of the universe happy.

I wish more people thought like this and were trying to what the OP is doing, instead of automatically going to the prettiest, most expensive, and least optimized avatars.

 

[Fauve Aeon]

In addition to Bento rigged parts, I’m not sure how optimized it will be at first (or ever) or how practical for creating say...those appendages...but I did also read that Residents can attach one Animesh item and Premium Residents, two.

 

[Calartuir]

I figure if nothing else I can have both arms replaced by a tentacle. I know I can finally get to have an avatar that is black in color which has no mouth, nose, or ears just eyes as the only feature on the head.