Merging shape assets
Nyx Onyx
When having bought a new head, keeping the body - or having bought a new body, but want to keep on using one's head, it is often recommended to use the shape asset that comes with the parts.
It would simplify things if we could merge shape assets, as in, selecting two shape assets, choosing "create merged copy", and then select categories and / or values from the one or the other to keep in the new copy.
This should of course respect the permissions from the most restrictive asset chosen: no-mod, as well as no-copy shape assets cannot be merged at all. If any of the shape assets have no-trans, the resulting shape asset will also be no-trans.
Possibly related posts, yet not quite the same thing:
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Beatrice Voxel
People have written tools to do this, but it involves exporting shapes to XML format and then importing the 'combined' shape back into SL.
Allowing the viewer to do this (perhaps on the Developer menu) would be useful. I can think of a bunch of use cases where I currently use the external tools.
Milisandre Wicken
My own similar suggestion got merged into the second link thread there. I like the suggestion you have made also, so getting upvote.
Zinbaco Kattun
so yes - a great idea
Xiu Crisp
All my votes go for this idea.
PuppySleeve Resident
If I am understanding things correctly then I have had this feature working since 2018. You can select individual shape sections to import or export, so for example you could swap the body but keep the head, or transfer the nose from one shape to another, etc. If it's something LL can add I can give source, but will try to make the time to compile a usable public viewer.
DavidMSteele Resident
Revolutionize Second Life Creativity & Building! , but we need better definition of just what your saying and voting on here.
AlettaMondragon Resident
I think your idea might be actually better than those previous ones. I don't like to have to go through all the sliders to set up a new shape when it would be enough to go through the body only or vice versa, but I also don't like to have to think about the "brow shape" being controlled in the base hair asset.
I thought moving every head value to a head shape asset instead of the original hair asset would be a good solution, leaving the body shape in the body asset, but then you would still have to set up two different files when changing head and body values at the same time.
Your idea to merge (and then also to separate) select parts of these assets seems great to deal with this issue. Even if it wouldn't change the structure of editing shape, if this could be done when exporting and importing shapes, as well as having an overall reliable system for that, it would be a big improvement.