Maitreya Lara Mesh Body – Bento Update

Maitreya recently released their bento update to their Maitreya Mesh Body. If you had purchased the Maitreya Lara body from before, you just have to detach and re-attach it and you should automatically get sent the update. Once you put on the body, you will notice the following changes:

• The hands have been updated and rigged to the bento bones. No other part of the mesh body has been changed in any way.
• The HUD has been expanded and a few updates have been added to the Skin & Options tab of the HUD.
• 14 hand poses have been added that can be combined with all your model poses and AOs.
• Two new nail shapes have been added: Stiletto nails and Almond nails, plus the ability to turn nails off completely.

Those were the only changes that were made to the body. The hands being rigged to the new bento bones now means that they can be animated by using different bento animations for hands on the grid. If you had not purchased the Maitreya body from before and are interested in purchasing it now, it is available at the Maitreya mainstore for L$2750. It was first released in December of 2014 and you can find more information about the body in my original post from back then.

UPDATE April 7, 2017: Two things I forgot to mention before:

1. If you join the Maitreya VIP group (it’s free to join) you will find in the notices a HUD, and if you wear it, it will cycle through the natural hand poses that are in the Maitreya main HUD.
2. For customer support questions and issues, please look up the designer’s profile, her name is Onyx LeShelle, to see how she prefers to be contacted for customer support issues.

UPDATE April 20, 2017: I just learned that there will be an update to the Maitreya body today taking into account some feedback that was provided to the designer. Updates to Maitreya Mesh Body Lara 4.1:
– Re-installed the minimize function by clicking the logo bar
– Added a “cycle natural hand poses” button to the HUD.
– Added an “ankle lock” to correct the heel on the tiptoe feet for poses that break them.
– Added an optional mini AO HUD, with just the hand poses.
– Fixed an alpha auto-hide error
– Fixed a potential issue with nail polish vs gloves (alpha glitch)

I’ve made a little video explaining this bento update, watch it on youtube:
https://youtu.be/3HmjY8TOeDo

In the video I showed these hands working with all different kinds of HUDs and animations from other creators. The only animations that don’t work with these hands are the ones that come with the SLink hands. I was told that the reason they don’t work with the SLink HUD is because the slink animations have bone position translation in them which is a setting in blender that can be turned on. If that setting is turned on, then it can make the animations a lot less compatible with other bento items. Therefore the SLink HUD will not work on the Maitreya or Vista bento hands, it breaks them (which I showed in the video).

Here is a list of other HUDs and animations that I used in my video that did work well with these hands:

• Vista Miriam AO
• Voir Cool Girl AO
• Vista Pulp Fiction Dance
• Pink Hustler Bento Poses
• Hopscotch Handy Expressions

People keep asking me if certain bento items will work with different bento animations and AOs and such. All bento parts should essentially work with each other as long as the animations don’t have bone position translation enabled. However, whenever possible, please do try DEMOs before making any purchases.

I think there is still a lot of confusion surrounding Bento, so I’ll try and explain it once again. Linden Lab has added additional bones to the Second Life avatar skeleton to support both rigging and animation. There are 106 new bones added for Bento and you can see a list of all of them on the Project Bento Skeleton Guide on the Second Life wiki. The avastar website also does a great job of showing them all in detail on their SL Skeleton page. When it comes to human mesh bodies and heads: 46 face bones were added and 15 hand bones in each hand for a total of 30 bones for hands were added. This is why we are seeing mesh head and body designers releasing and updating their mesh heads and hands to bento. What we won’t be seeing are other bento enabled body parts for human bodies. I know there are people selling bento feet and bento internal organs on marketplace, those are most probably a scam so please be careful before purchasing items like that on marketplace without doing your research first. I know there is a bento craze going on these days because bento is shiny and new so people are just adding the word bento to items to get them to sell more. Please do check out both of the skeleton pages I linked above to see which bones were added and how that affects your body parts before making any purchases.

Keep an eye on my Project Bento tag on my blog for all posts I make about Bento updates and also watch my Project Bento YouTube Playlist for all videos I make about Bento updates.

I couldn’t resist wearing this sensational new Breeanya dress from Blueberry. It is one of the most gorgeous gowns I’ve seen on the grid. It comes with a crazy amount of options too. I love the way it clings so perfectly to my Maitreya Lara mesh body! Go pick up a DEMO at the Blueberry mainstore.

The beautiful earrings I’m wearing in this post are from Zaara and will be available at Collabor88 on the 8th of April.

Finally, don’t forget that I am having a giveaway for Powder Pack LeLutka, April Edition. I will be announcing the winners on April 19th at 6am SLT so make sure to enter the giveaway before then!

For more of my mesh body reviews and videos, click over to my Mesh Body Category on my blog and my Mesh Body Playlist on my YouTube channel.

Style Credits:
Shape: StrawberrySingh.com Simone Shape by Strawberry Singh
*Mesh Body: Maitreya Mesh Body – Lara V4.0 by Onyx LeShelle
*Mesh Head: .LeLutka.Head.Simone 2.6 by JadenArt
*Skin Applier: Glam Affair Maria by Aida Ewing (Powder Pack March 2017)
*Eyeshadow: Arte – Sera Eyeshadow by Miriam Lemondrop
*Eyes: IKON Charm Eyes – Hazel by Ikon Innovia
Hair: tram F728 hair by moca Loup
*Gown: Blueberry – Breeanya Dress by Blueberryxx
*Shoes: Blueberry – Iconic Doll – Shoes – Gold by Blueberryxx
*Armchain: Zaara : Raksha arm-chain *gold* by Zaara Kohime
*Earrings: Zaara : Malini earrings *onyx* by Zaara Kohime (coming to collabor88)
Ring: P.C; Golden Wings Ring by Cora Lu
*Background: Rowne.Model – Catwalk RARE by Fashionboi Landar