The Beauty of the Reborn Mesh body and Modify-able objects

This is probably gonna be my only page on SL like this.

I will assume for this page you know SL well enough to understand:

how to navigate SecondLife's editing system with key shortcuts
understand how object permissions (perms) work
differentiate what primative (prim), mesh, and fit-mesh objects/items are
differentiate unrigged, rigged bento, and animated mesh (animesh) objects/items entail
understand what a mesh body and how their mods work
understand what deformers are and how they work

If any of this sounds confusing to you, the rest of the page will confuse you further. have fun!

The Reborn Body

The Reborn Body is a versatile mesh body and one of my favorites for 3 reasons:

You can make a curvy avatar or a slim avatar, but they all look like actual humans and not stick figures (unless... thats what you want you can deform them that way )
It has plenty of different addons
ITS MODIFY-ABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What so important about modify items?

The beauty of SecondLife is that with some items you buy, you can modify them. These items are whats worth your linden$, and are your best friend.

With modify, you can:

Change The Textures (usually)
Change the color, therefore color-match all your outfits and items
LINK your items together to make them one object/attachment- You can link your body, body mods, heads, head mods, and related attachments all together
Add scripts as needed

With the amount of mods Reborn has, modify must be required in my honest opinion. Otherwise you'll end up with 50% of your attachment slots being body mods if not lol

Linked Example A. Honya!

[image of Honya's unoptimized, then optimized body here]

Honya's body is almost all one attachment, except for her hair (No-Modify) and ears (Animesh).

This connects: Her Head, Eyes, Lashes, Neck (Unrigged), Reborn Body, Hand-Paws, Feet-Paws, and 2 deformers. Her facial expressions are maintained with a separate HUD.
This starts Honya's base avatar at 4 attachments total

Linked Example B. Naki!

Naki, Unoptimized (14 Attachments)

Demon HORN3
dragon tail
eBODY - REBORN Deformer - Tail Up
Insomnia Angel . Feet Deformer (Mait with Ebody) BOM
M4 AnnieMay - Head (1.0)
M4 AnnieMay - Neck [LL/Normies] (1.0)
REBORN - Juicy Rolls - Addon v1.1
REBORN - Waifus - Addon v1.0
REBORN by eBODY v1.69.6
[LuK] M4 Anniemay Piercings - Nose Pointy / No Ears
[M.O.R] bento demon wings : SMALL F
[QE] Leviathan Claws Reborn
[][]Trap[][] Gelf Ears *mesh new*
[^.^Ayashi^.^] Kimari hair-Boobs

Naki, Optimized (3 Attachments)

Naki Body ++++
Naki's Head +++
[^.^Ayashi^.^] Kimari hair-Boobs

Naki's body is also almost two complete attachments, her head being separate to allow unrigged head parts to attach to her head, and her neck to attach properly with the body. Her hair is the only thing separate (No-Modify).

Her Head connects her Head, Ears, Horns, Piercings.
Her Body connects her Neck (Unrigged), Reborn Body, Waifu Mod, Rolls Mod, Maitreya Feet Deformer Mod, Wings, Tail, and 3 deformers.
Auto Attachment Scripts are used to maintain the soft expression on her faces as well as the animation on her tail and wings so I don't need to wear additional HUDs either :3
This start's Naki's base avatar at 3 Attachments Total

With all these attachments free, it leaves about 35+ attachment slots to add accessories and clothing as I please!

Other Mesh Bodies I've used like Legacy & Maitreya are not modify, so you end up With:

1 Attachment for the Body
1-2 Attachments for Mods
3-4 Attachment for the deformers
1-5 Attachments for the head (Depending on your head)
1-5 for body accessories

[image of Machi's body, which is currently unoptimized.]

You usually want to look for these PERMISSIONS on the items you buy:
COPY, MODIFY, NO TRANSFER

NOTE: You can link most items together EXCEPT FOR ANIMESH. Animesh modify their own bones and play by their own rules- If you link an animesh item to your link set YOUR OBJECT WILL BREAK. ...This disclaimer was written in blood if you can't tell lol

Heads to Pair with Reborn Bodies

Most heads i've come across are also modify-able, so usually you can make your head one object and your body another, and just link those together to make one single, uniform attachment. Rigged means it will attached to the correct bones when added no matter where its put, and Bento means theyre rigged + you can play around with how the head looks with SL's Appearance Sliders

Some I've used:

Tonkati Mitsukiri (Anime, Rigged Bento) - My Go-To anime head as I adore the facial features and the tracking eyes (done by modeling the eyes further back in the models head) but may not be for all as it does not have as many mod support or facial features as the other heads on this list. Lena uses this! Caprise makes lovely BOM skins for TH x Reborn
ASR (Anime, Rigged Bento) -
Tonic Cherry (Anime, Unrigged) - This is an older head that renders all of its assets in 2D. Think Mabinogi where the head and ears are meshed out, but the eyes, nose, mouth and brows are 2D planes. Note: This head is not rigged, so to make it work linked to a Reborn Body, it will have to be modified how you want, de-scripted, and made the first attachment link to attach to the Head spot.
Utilizator (Anime, Rigged Bento) - These heads are not only modify-able, but the easiest to find mods for.
Genus MorphToon (Anime, Rigged Bento) - This head is designed to be different parts you link together.
Happy Paws (Furry, Unrigged or Rigged Bento) - Old and trustworthy mesh heads. A lot of parts designed for these heads are also modify-able, so you can usually link the Ears, Teeth, Eyes, and other furry bits into one solid item before attaching.

Linking the Unrigged

May items and accessories in SL come unrigged- meaning when you attach them to a bone, thats where they're gonna sit and move upon (Or if they've been modified to- where they'll hover.) A lot of head accessories come like this.

Find a sandbox or your land you can set objects down on. I frequent the Timelord Sandbox often.
Make a base prim Usually I go with cubes as they're the quickest to run with.
Set down the Head you will use
Set down the Head accessories
Select ALL the objects.
Shift-click on your base prim to deselect it, then shift-click on it again to select it again. This makes your base prim the first and main prim in your object.
Click "Link" in the edit panel and hit OK.
Take this object back into your inventory AND MAKE A COPY!!!
Attach this object to our Head bone.
Work your way thru editing the accessories into place.
Once your done, detach your object to save it inventory, then re-attach to the head (Or just click Add, it should reattach to your head as before)
Make that base prim small or invisible within your object
VIOLA, you're done :3

Scripts

A lot of times, I use Bakes on Mesh (BOM) skins on my avatars, so the use of scripts for things such as alphas and clothing layers aren't really needed. Once i attach all my mods and detach the pieces they replace, I remove all the scripts from the body to make my avi super fast to load :3 Since Skin, Tattoo, and other BOM layers don't add attachment weight, its essentially free game to how many you can add to your avi.