Parts with 0 density attached to another just aren’t physically simulated. Parts can’t be 0 density attached to another.
Yes. A suit of armor and/or a large weapon made out of a lot of parts still has noticeable weight when being physically simulated. Even if its parts have a density of 0.01, the character may lose a stud of jump height (may make certain parts of the map inaccessible if they require a tight jump to get there) or their CoM will be visibly offset from their HRP and cause the character to rotate around some arbitrary point around their character (yuck!).
Your suit of armor example will be impossible, then.
Also, the Plastic material has a density of 0.7. A Character would probably have ~13 studs^2 worth of parts, so that comes up to a total mass of 9.1. If we add an equivalent volume of 0.01-density parts, we would add 0.13 to the total mass, which is a mere ~1.48% increase. I highly doubt that’s enough to decrease the jump height by a stud, given that there are hats that are heavier than that.
EDIT: Also, with this update, why not just attach the suit of armor as an accessory?
Just to give you a sense of scale, A 1x1x1 part of 1-density is equivalent to a part with ~4.6x4.6x4.6 part with 0.01 density. A 1^3 part wouldn’t bother your character, so a 4.6^3 part shouldn’t, and I can’t think of a case where a tool is at least 4.6^3 in volume.
parts may extend through the body to cover both sides instead of creating a hollow shell
The body’s surface is covered once
I may have the base platemail, and then another layer of it for detail (sigils, embroidery, etc)
There are no extrusions
Pauldrons, shoulder spikes, etc
Not sure about the others suggesting this, but I have personally dealt with models where 0.01 density is not enough to make mass negligible. I encourage you to review the previous posts and reflect on the effectiveness of 0.01 density in light of multiple developers saying it doesn’t suit their needs.
Armor maybe, but this wouldn’t work for weapons/equipment.
Nowhere in my post did I make the assumption that the armor was hollow. If anything, I assumed that the armor occupies the entire volume of the character.
Again, are you absolutely sure that it isn’t negligible?
All the developers that have commented so far have yet to present a concrete example, only hypotheticals, and neither have you. Here are extreme, concrete example I made myself.
Light is a tool with a density of 0.01, Heavy is a tool with a density of 0.7 (Plastic). Nothing is the control. Blocks are 2x2x4
Another example, (EDIT: 100) random protrusions on one side of the character as long as 5 studs, originating from the center. 0.7 density vs 0.01 density.
And lastly, I’m not arguing that 0.01-density will eliminate all negative effects of having large parts sticking out of your character, but in any practical example, it gets pretty darn close at doing so.
They tried shipping this update earlier, but I ended up having to make a bug report thread because my character models were getting launched with infinite velocity, so whenever a morphed avatar jumped or even rotated a bit too fast, their CFrame was set to an unreal value.
You’re right, which is why the part would be in no way physically simulated. I think @EchoReaper might have touched on this, but to be explicit, zero density would require cancollide false. This is the nature of these parts for the sole purpose of vanity.
For the same reason CSG hasn’t been removed in favor of meshes (and is still being actively worked on). 3D modeling software has a higher learning curve (mostly due to its interface) and so not everyone uses it.
There are also reasons you want a model to be broken up into a few parts rather than one huge mesh. For parts that you do want to be physically simulated, large complicated meshes will often have poor collision fidelity, so you might want to break it up. You may also want special parts that are distinct from the rest of the model so you can put particle emitters or lights in them, change their color, listen for touched events on them, etc.
That’s an ugly workaround, and I couldn’t even call it a workaround. The same thing occurs with wedges and flat-angled surfaces. It never used to do this until recently.
It will affect the perceived mass of an avatar with accoutrements. We did have an initial issue with this feature where the correct mass was not being reported to the lua code so devices like the hot air balloon and the anti-grav gun wouldn’t function properly.
That has been fixed and the feature should be coming on again soon.
If your body mover takes mass into account and provides a consistent behavior for all masses it should be fine. If you count on accoutrements to weigh down a character, you may have to use a different approach.