Another year, another wave of surveys sent by creators towards their respective customers. But there is only so much each creator can gather through their own fanbase, who are usually leaning a bit towards whatever releases the store has anyway. There are neutral surveys of course, but those usually lack enough answers to paint a good picture, and there is always a chance for skewed results. Strawberry had some amazing ones before being snatched from us by LL!
So why wait for people to fill surveys?
My friend Morri, the creator behind Decima, started working on a shiny new tool after getting tired of seeing so many inaccurate results. After some debugging and figuring out how to track the data correctly, our group launched into scanning as much of SL as we could!
Each of us searched for whatever came to mind, leading to somewhat organic choice of sims. Stores, shopping events, roleplay sims, hangouts, clubs, and other popular sims are covered for sure. We haven’t barged into people’s homes, so anyone who always sits in their home in a low populated area won’t be noticed.
While this is by no means perfect due to a limited amount of data, it should illustrate the distribution of bodies and heads on Second Life more accurately than ever before.
We gathered 12007 unique results. As we gather more data (20k, 30k and so on) I will be revisiting some of these. Here’s all the body results in one image:
There is plenty of information on here, given that there is 12007 avatar samples. I’ll separate them into 2-3 posts instead of overwhelming you right away. So let’s start with today’s big topic.
Female Bodies
| Maitreya | 5189 (57.5%) |
| Legacy | 1449 (16%) |
| Inithium | 523 (5.8%) |
| Belleza | 505 (5.6%) |
| none | 371 (4.1%) |
| Slink | 289 (3.2%) |
| TMP | 239 (2.6%) |
| V-tech | 149 (1.6%) |
| ebody | 122 (1.4%) |
| Utilizator | 98 (1.1%) |
| Lucybody | 82 (0.9%) |
| Other | 16 (0.2%) |
Maitreya
5189 (57.5%)
Maitreya is still the undisputed Queen of mesh bodies. 399 out of 5189 are with the Petite or Flat variant which have been released somewhat recently.
With the simplicity of buying, a reasonable price tag (2750L$), ease of use, and the mainstream appearance to appease almost everyone, it is no wonder Maitreya still dominates SL despite some developers finding difficulty using their mesh devkit.
Legacy
1449 (16%)
Legacy has fired to the top of mesh bodies, rapidly gaining popularity due to the quality of its body and next-gen materials. Even with some minor gripes that people have with the HUD and the high price tag (5000L$), it is firmly seated into 2nd place.
Thankfully there is BoM now for wearing skins and tattoos easily on your body, cause I still have nightmares of working on TMP installers. There have also been sales of the body, allowing it to more easily compete against Maitreya.
Legacy’s distribution is: 1040 for Legacy, 386 Perky, 23 Pregnancy.
Inithium Kupra
523 (5.8%)
Inithium Kupra is the newest big body on the market, and surprisingly already high in popularity, taking down Belleza from the 3rd spot it lead during the majority of our gathering. Coming from the creators of Sking at a price point of 3999L$. As long as they don’t start creating too many variants of their body might as well become widely supported.
Currently the check doesn’t distinguish between Kupra and Kupra Kups variants. But in the following updates it will. On its release there was a sale, helping Kupra enter the market with a splash. And now more and more creators are flocking to create items for it, but there have been some concerns due to how drastically different it is from other bodies.
Belleza
505 (5.6%)
Belleza was leading for 3rd spot for a long while before Kupra eventually surpassed it by just 18 more users, and has proven to us that creating too many variants of a body doesn’t pay off. The distribution? Freya 445, Isis 45, Venus 15.
Too many variants of a body appear to be way too much work for creators to incorporate into their items. While Legacy Perky only adjusts breasts which makes it easy, Isis and Venus completely change the body leading to far less support.
…And then each of them have 3 different breast shape options.
On top of that, Belleza only supports BoM in a bandaid fix instead of having it integrated in the HUD for the ease of use. For 4499L$ Belleza was the choice for people who wanted a different body type when there were only Maitreya-Slink-Belleza choices, but that time is fading away.
Luckily a lot of stores still have Belleza Freya support, ensuring that the users will have plenty of choices, but the future is still a bit uncertain.
None!
There are 371 (4.1%) users without a recognized mesh body. Some are wearing full-covering outfits and have detached their body so they are skipped. Also this category includes mesh bodies that aren’t detected correctly, either due to lag or due to the mesh body not being registered in the scanner itself. Most of the bodies would end up in the Others category due to the low number of users.
Surprisingly we have noticed that some people are still not using any kind of mesh body. Some do use mesh hands or feet, but we didn’t mark those as wearing a full mesh body, so they also fit this category.
If there is some notable brand missing, please let me know in the comments! We’ll try to include everyone.
Slink
289 (3.2%)
Slink. What to say? The first store to create mesh feet and popularize them, and probably the first store to break 1 million USD in profit in a single year (~2009) due to that same reason. Among the first to update to support BoM and Bento. Yet now falling from the top 3 and declining due to new trend of thicker and curvier bodies.
Their shopping experience is confusing with body parts offered separately, but the bundle with everything included is priced about the same as Maitreya. Their mainstore certainly needs an update in layout and visuals. Splitting their body in two variants (Hourglass 237, Physique 52) made sense initially while the support for both was heavy, but since then the support for Physique has been dropping. Slink bodies are still good with one of the best optimizations on the grid, and many creators are still supporting Hourglass due to its continuous maintenance.
Hourglass remains as one of my old favorites, the owner is releasing some tutorials on how to work with her devkit which is great to see to encourage support for the body and help people create their own items. I’d love to see some big updates from them or even a brand new body, and I am surprised they didn’t expand their team through all these years.
TheMeshProject
239 (2.6%)
TheMeshProject is surprisingly still used despite being closed. 209 ‘full’ versions and 30 updated free ones. It was heavily discounted and even given away at the end of its lifespan, never truly leaving ‘beta’ state. Legacy currently gives away 1L$ updated version of TMP and sells a version with advanced material editor, but you cannot update your old purchases into it which places it into a weird position.
The arm positioning on it was the main reason it was strange to work with for mesh items as it was at different position than every other body, and TMP’s server side installers were a redundant nightmare that turned creating an applier into a ritual of boredom.
V-Tech
149 (1.6%)
V-tech is an addon for Maitreya and Belleza Freya. Now heavily focusing users of Maitreya, with 147 counts for it, and only 2 for Freya.
ebody
122 (1.4%)
Abar ebody is not someone I expected to see on this list! With distribution of 96 for Curvy, and 26 for Classic. Not much to say except that I am curious to see if they can grow, as they have been prevalent on marketplace but with only a limited support from clothing creators.
Utilizator
98 (1.1%)
Utilizator Kemono is also very present, while we have not focused on exploring anime and furry sims, in the future I do want to check out some more as Utilizator seems popular with certain groups on Second Life that support it.
Numbers: Kemono 98, Avatar 2.0 with only 7.
Lucybody
82 (0.9%)
A body I never heard of before, but apparently it has BoM and while it costs 2999L$ normally, it can be obtained for free in-world if enough people sign it up for it. You still need to buy the HUD which is 197L to get BoM and alpha cuts you want. It is mostly compatible with Maitreya clothing and Slink shoes, but your results will vary per item.
Other
16 (0.2%)
Others – Rebirth Eden, ilrune body, Signature Alice, Sking Katena, take the rest of the cake. 9 users!
Worth repeating is that we had 371 null results, meaning that we could not detect their body. Either because they were not wearing one, or they had a body that is not on the list.
Curiously, there’s a few people wearing two bodies. We didn’t count them for this (approx 10), but it’s worth nothing that some have combined the bodies through alpha. While others just… never noticed they are wearing duplicates? Or maybe we caught them mid-change? Who knows!
That’s it for now!
I’ll be writing up next article tomorrow. Stay tuned for a look at Male Bodies, and after that Female and Male Heads!
Edit: Male mesh body statistics are here!
It’s good to see that everyone has a body for them to use…for all the skinny gals that don’t like to have curves or have noticeable curves Maitreya is the perfect body for this. It’s actually the only body I find that looks good in this form. And the thin model type figure is still an image people seek. But it can’t be curvy, so for that I go to other bodies. I think a big part as of why Maitreya is still popular given that it’s outdated and the mesh/rig isn’t really good is for the simple fact people will never have to worry about the lack of items. Which is understandable. They’re all beautiful bodies for what they’re meant for. And every person has their own idea of beauty.
@ BritishBrit… Actually your information is kind of outdated about Maitreya since they did a massive update last year midsummer. It is now up to 5.3 and one of the most ingenious designs I have seen in a mesh body to date. As for not being able to make it curvy, I do beg to differ… most who use Maitreya don’t want extreme curves.
That said… it is nice to see how the community falls with their choices of mesh bodies overall. Looking forward to seeing the information regarding the Mesh head distributions.
ingenious? more like stupidly confusing but ok
Not sure how its confusing… you wear the body and hud… if you aren’t BoM and use tattoos wear the tattoo layer and apply it. If you like to wear applier clothing choose a layer, make a copy, apply your clothing and drop it in a folder named for what the outfit is that is applied. You can then add it or remove it on the fly without having to reapply the clothing every single time. I have about 50 layers all divided into folders so I know what they are and can swap them with 2 clicks. So pretty ingenious. You can also add materials and they include built in HD nipples and a variety of other nice features.
Maitreya is the easiest to use and I own the top 3 most popular ones. The Reborn body is good to make parody characters though I find.
Sad to see the Piggu mesh bodies not listed. One thing I’ve noticed about SL is that if you’re trying to go for a ‘normal’ chubby or fat body you’re out of luck. SL’s meshmakers are more than a bit discriminatory in that way.
Always disappointing to see how much no-mod anti-creativity bodies have taken over the market. But it’s interesting information all the same, thank you very much for compiling it.
I see one big gaping issue here. V-tech itself is not a body, it’s a body mod. That attaches to the Maitreya body. So I mean like its counterpart the Flat chest body mod, made by Maitreya themselves. It shouldn’t be on there.
V-tech shouldn’t be classified as a female body. It’s completely unisex and I as well as others use it for our male avatars. It’s disappointing that it always gets pigeonholed so male clothes creators don’t think to include us in releases. Please think of putting it on both lists next time.
Will do! It’s been hard to separate some data since anyone with V-tech could be either, next time we’ll add another check and with a better overview of the heads we’ll be able to split V-tech across both male and female users. I might go ahead and add a disclaimer into the male side if I can get enough solid data on what we’ve got so far.
Don’t forget Tonic. It’s also a popular body that is not reflected by the places you surveyed. Granted it will be in the lower tier numbers-wise, but for those who wear it, it remains their go-to body.
Would love to see an update of these statistics soon!
This was quite the research achievement. My hat’s off to everyone who gathered and tabulated the info. I’m sorry to see the writer who’s explaining it is someone who doesn’t know as much about the mesh body market as they should.
They gave SLink the worst commentary due to their lack of updated info, so I’ll start there. They claim the price compared to Maitreya is a problem, but the SLink body bundle is only 100L more expensive. How is that an issue? Their commentary on the price of the feet is out of place as well. She sold those first. She’s maintaining them separately for people who don’t want a mesh body. This makes their pricing irrelevant. Calling the two body varieties “splitting” for SLink and not slapping Belleza for doing three body types smells like bias against SLink. As for why Siddean Munro released two bodies, Physique Original came first (and is the oldest still-available mesh body on the market), then users’ desire to have curvier forms brought about Hourglass.
As for “big updates,” they seem to have missed how SLink was first with Bento support and first with BOM. Everyone else is catching up. Thanks to BOM, the HUD for the Redux versions of her bodies have simple, unified HUDs as well. And you get both BOM and Classic versions in the same box. “Small”? What does that even mean? The full bodies have integrated hands and feet. Pointless to throw in useless material just to fatten things up. The store layout means as much to the bodies’ quality as the color of the sky in Sydney at sundown.
TMP still shows up because the makers of Legacy updated the body and sell it for 1L. I can’t speak to the rigging as I haven’t worn it much, but it’s up-to-date with Bento and BOM. How they missed that news, I have no idea.
Lucybody’s Atenea body is distributed via Midnight Mania, as they almost said. The BOM capacity can only be achieved via a HUD you buy separately for 197L. What you get out of that is a body with both alpha cut and BOM support that is mostly compatible with Maitreya clothing and SLink shoes. Some Mait shoes are good with alpha layers or cuts (and vital if you want anything higher than an ankle boot).
I’ll do some adjustments today based on your comment, some of those are helpful and valid points! Besides that:
Slink falling behind in % yet having higher price than Maitreya doesn’t make sense to me anymore if they want to be competitive. I’m not sure if its historical price has been changing, I’ll see if I can look it up somewhere. I slapped Belleza to the point I cannot take them seriously with their 3×3 combo. But I did forget that Slink was first with BoM, due to Vista coming up with their hands around the same time. Store layout is still important for brand representation even if not body, and that is important in order to increase how many creators will support it. As we have seen since the article, often many just support Maitreya and Legacy and ignore the rest. But I also did forget to mention that Slink is one of the most optimized bodies to date. And ‘small’ means that her Buy button for the bundle is the smallest of all other ones, making for a confusing shopping experience.
TMP is ‘up to date’ with Bento and BoM, and works with Legacy appliers, but that doesn’t mean it’s supported by market as likely no products have been released for it specifically (but rather old TMP items exist) and the TMP installers no longer work as the servers are offline.
I have been in SL since long before the mesh bodies came out. Since my first account, I’ve have a few many accounts…but I decided to slip onto my first account a few days ago and thought hmmm i really need to upgrade her. So, I went in search of a new body and clothes. Being limited on Lindens as well as rarely using this account, I went the ‘free’ way. I picked up the Abar Ebody Curvy. Which…looks great. But, trying to find clothing for her is a huge pain. I visited a freebie store in world. Mind you this store is huge and filled with clothes, footwear, jewelry, and hair. The sad part of it is the fact that 98% is only for those mesh bodies you have to spend a lot for. On my main account I have the Maitreya body and love it. I found a total of 3 full outfits in this huge store, about 10 different jewelry, and 3 hairs I liked. But with the clothes…it had nothing to do with whether I liked the outfit or not…each one stated what bodies they are for. The biggest share were for Maitreya/Belleza/Tonic. A few of them said Ebody. I picked those up before I had realized I needed the ones that says Ebody Curvy. I went home and tried and 80% of what i picked up, had to go right into the trash because it didn’t fit my avatar, didn’t matter if I modded the avatar either. I find it highly unfair. Seriously, if you are going to create a body, to give away free for those who can’t get Lindens, then provide a line of clothing for it too. Because when you think on it…how do you expect anyone to use your products when you product requires you to have other things to go with it in order for them to be used. In this case, a mesh body need mesh clothing. How does anyone expect people to use their mesh bodies when they have no clothes? It would make sense for the creator of a mesh body, to create a line of clothing or at least a few outfits, until the customer is able to get more. And think…when a new mesh body is created…there is absolutely NO clothing for it. Not until it is released and then clothing creators start pushing out the clothes. It would make more sense to correspond with those clothing creators prior to releasing the mesh body…give them time to get out a line of clothing for that specific body, and have it ready to be released when the body is released.
I’m from the future and here to say the Reborn body (which to me is basically the new Freya), has been taking over Kupra’s spot, drastically, since it came out. It irritates me to no end because I wore Hourglass for years. HOLY CRAP the struggle to find content for that body was real! Slink creator and her Hourglass NEVER got the recognition. Not ever. And it’s sad af too because Slink dedicates herself to her customers. Both her and her group moderator. And yes, Slink was the first to accomplish big changes. Who the hell didn’t have a pair of Slink feet and hands before mesh bodies was a thing? Slink did indeed introduce BOM to mesh bodies as well (which some Slink people got all butthurt and confused over but BOM was brand spanking new).
Yet, somehow, the majority of content creators was still in huge favor of Maitreya (with hand tattoos worn as a glove layer, and horrifically missing features Belleza and Hourglass held which shoulda been the standard.), and Belleza Freya. Not to say I couldn’t find anything good for HG..I got tons of outfits and looks out of it. What made it difficult is that way too often that one thing I reallllly wanted for HG was for Mait or Freya only…but were mostly Mait exclusives! All shopping events showed this, vividly. Back then it was Maitreya, Freya, and Hourglass in that order, with Maitreya practically owning the market.
Then Legacy came out and it was the first body that I felt was worthy enough to replace my HG body. Despite it being TMP (they ARE TMP lets be honest MESHBODY). Legacy changed everything! FINALLY the age of “MAITREYA EXCLUSIVES” was coming to an end. We can be bitter about Meshbody/TMP and their practices, lack of insight of promised updates (Legacy X still in the shadows after what 2 years? And SpecialEdition Male is still to this day without the ‘Altitude Fix’, yet Legacy Athletic came out fully updated out the box), but I acknowledge Legacy body was first to end Maitreya’s near monopoly. Some freckin how. It was kinda slap in the face for Slink, too. I can’t speak for her of course, but if it were me I’d be a tad upset by this. I mean, a new body from a VERY controversial brand comes out and already has 3times more support than Hourglass ever did….I had to be free though. Legacy was a worthy gamble. Had a good run with it for 3 years, then I hopped into Kupra.
Now since Reborn came out, some of my fav content creators dropped Kupra for Reborn..and its been leaving a sour taste in my mouth. It’s like HG all over again. Where Maitreya ruled everything. Now it’s Reborn and Legacy everywhere.
Don’t get me wrong, I respect both bodies. Reborn I love because it reminds me of Freya. Neither of those bodies made me feel like “me” though, no matter how many times I tried demos and shaping. Legacy I loved because it gave me freedom and the curves so similar to Hourglass, but better in ways. Smoother? My only gripe was the breasts and main reason why I switched to Kupra.
Seriously. You wanna catch a grasp on how much support your mesh body is getting? Just go to shopping events. Look at all the vendors. Read which bodies are supported. Take note of what clothing sizes are included with the item you bought. Take note of how many creators you shop from have started dropping a body they used to support. Check out the avatars that are around you. Which bodies are you seeing out there the most? Due to my observations, its def been all about Legacy and Reborn. Kupra 3rd or even 4th place now. Maitreya still lingering around like a cancer. No offense. I just could never understand how such a body with so few features has been on top for so freckin’ long! I can only assume the majority don’t care about looking at their HUDs and learning what they can and can’t do with their body, and/or simply don’t want to change. To each their own, but for me the current situation just sucks.
I just hope that one day content creators AND consumers will step up and acknowledge that content should be made for ALL reputable bodies so we can stop this silly mindset of “Which body should I drop because people think it’s no longer new and shiny?” it’s sheer BS and it isn’t right. But what to do about it?? Its a huge challenge. Big brains with big names need to come together on this. Something lol
Legacy isn’t reputable though. They stole so much money from people i the tmp days and I’m pretty sure that body is taken from a place I won’t mention here. People have proven it
Maitreya is still my favorite. Lots of places that rig for multiple bodies always rig something wrong on every body though so sometimes i have to do some magic to re-rig the clothing to fit right. It’s frustrating when places make exclusives and I have to do this. Legacy (tmp) gave me so many problems years ago and took soo many lindens when they initially shut down without any help even to this very week when I type this.
Reborn sucks though for thin girls like myself. It’s the worst body of them all for me. I just buy the exclusives and make them fit maitreya or legacy.
I will be very interested to see where these statistics fall, should this effort be repeated in the near future.