In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, Bakes on Mesh support is in the latest version of Firestorm. I’m not game to wear an outfit relying on in out in public yet, at least until more people update to the latest viewer, but let’s see an example of how well it works. Here’s an old favorite lingerie set from Carrie’s that is (mostly) system layers, but using BoM, we can now wear it on our mesh bodies!
In these photos, I’m wearing my normal Lara mesh body, with Slink hands and feet. One of the shortcomings of BoM is detail for fingers and toes, so if you have mesh enhancements for hands and feet (obviously Lara comes with both, although I prefer my Slinks for the number of appliers I have) you should keep wearing them.
All the lingerie is system layers, with the exception of the hands and feet which are done with Omega appliers. I’m wearing an undershirt for the bra, a shirt for the corset, underpants for the panties, and gloves and socks for the gloves and stockings. And the skin you are seeing is the system skin (not as you may think, the Omega applied skin on Lara). I hope you didn’t throw all your system skins away!
Currently for Lara, you need a BoM relay to get the bakes on mesh textures onto the body. You can grab the relay from marketplace for free. To use, it’s literally a one click and you’re done. Take off your full body alpha as BoM automatically hides the system body parts you wear a layer for, and wear the system layers you wish. That’s all there is too it!
And you must admit, the results are pretty good. The huge advantage with this is that multiple textures are reduced to just two at most for the body. So for example, if you want to wear a shirt, undershirt, and a tattoo, without BoM that would be potentially three 1024×1024 images you’d have to download to view. With BoM, that’s reduced to a single texture, saving download bandwidth and video memory. Win-win!
If that’s not enough, one of the limitations of mesh bodies was that you could only wear one thing on one layer. For example, you could only wear one tattoo on your upper body. With BoM, you can wear multiple, as the bake server will automagically combine them all for you into a single texture!
Eventually, Maitreya have said that they’ll release a new version for Lara, doing away with the need for the BoM relay. I expect they may also do away with a couple of layers on the body too, reducing its complexity, for yet another win!
So, while you can completely ignore BoM if you like, and continue using appliers, in the right situation, everyone wins with BoM. And of course, you also get all your old system lipsticks back (which I have a ton of!) as BoM will work with mesh heads too!
- Lingerie: Val by Carrie’s Lingerie (marketplace link, item unavailable)
- Body: Lara by Maitreya
- Face: Jennifer by GA.EG
- Hands and feet: Slink
- Shoes: Maze by Like Design
- Hair: Zuyu by Monso
