– The M4 Bento Anime Head –

The long awaited M4 Bento anime head is here! and now you can be one of the cool kids are riding the bento craze wave.

– What is bento and why does it matter? –

For those of you who still dont really know what all this bento hype is about, Bento is a new set of bones that LL has recently implemented into the game, such as face bones, wing bones, tail bones, finger bones and some other bones. These bones are used to animate specific body parts such as the fingers on your hands or the expression of your face, and is what this head uses to animate its face.

The main advantage of using bento bones for anime heads is that there is no more need to have a bunch of invisible meshes for every face expression, using just one mesh to do every expression instead. This in turn greatly reduces the render weight of your avatar, on top of that, anyone can now make expressions and face animations, so you are no longer limited to what is in the HUD.

The disadvantage is that since the head is rigged, it can no longer be positioned and face expressions are sadly somewhat limited due to the way bento bones work, meaning some expressions are just not possible to make without looking really weird or deforming your face

– Features –

• Full mod – Edit it, link stuff to it, rip or replace its textures, go crazy with it but make backups before you do!
• In depth customization with lots of options – Customize your head, choose its eye styles, colors, skin color, ear and nose types, add custom textures and specular maps. 2 types of ears, noses and eye shapes to choose from.
• Full facial control – Eyebrows, eyelids, Eyes and mouth can be controlled separately, mixing and matching different positions to create your own expression.
• Smooth animations and built in AO – eyes blink, look around, the mouth moves when you type or talk on voice chat, emotes as well as 3 different face AO styles.
• And more!

The head is also compatible with existing M3 eye, eyelash and blush textures.

 

– known bugs and limitations –

Due to technical limitations, the kemono, avatar 2.0 and LL necks dont join right and you will occasionally see seams from some camera angles.
changing the head’s default attachment position will mess up the facelight, right click and choose add to attach the head.
No rikugou compatibility mode yet (will be implemented later)
No asymmetrical skin support yet (will be implemented later)

If you find any other problems not mentioned here, please report them to us.

For texture mod creators we already got appliers too.

Next is the M4 Chibi Head which if all goes right should be released this month, if not than the next one.

That is all.