[sldev] Exporting Avatar Information

Jacek Antonelli jacek.antonelli at gmail.com
Thu May 17 13:02:34 PDT 2007


On 5/16/07, jhurliman at jhurliman.org <jhurliman at jhurliman.org> wrote:
> One quick, somewhat hackish way of saving avatars that
> has been used is saving AvatarAppearance packets to an XML format on
> disk, and parsing through them later for bodyshape parameters and
> clothing textures to export and import an appearance. This doesn't take
> in to account any attachments though.

For body parts (shape, skin, hair, eyes), there is the "Client >
Character > Character Tests > Appearance to XML" menu command, which
dumps all the slider values and texture UUIDs in an XML format. It
seems to save to "Second Life/character/new_archetype.xml". Most of
the slider values are from 0.0 - 1.0, but some appear to be -0.5 - 0.5
(or perhaps -1.0 - 1.0).

It doesn't seem to export any clothing items (let alone attachments),
and I don't think there is any (semi-)official way to import back into
SL (aside from manual data re-entry). So, it's probably not useful for
anything besides quickly making local backups of your avatar shape
and/or easily circumventing SL's permission system to rip off your
favorite shape designer.

It might be interesting to add a corresponding "Import Appearance from
XML" feature. It could pave the way for possible external appearance
editors in the future.


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