Reverting mostly because of the texture asset files that got committed and cause grief with the 0.7-post-fixes branch. But also because I'm going to go at those mantises in another way.
This reverts commit e47608fc62.
These are appropriately licensed and include plant, tree and miscellaneous textures (face target crosshairs, etc).
Many thanks to Nebadon for sourcing and packaging these.
I don't think this is the only problem with avatar appearances though, as I've still seen the puffs of smoke even with that texture set correctly. Seems that anytime where before you would have seen a grey ruth, you now get a puff of smoke. So looks like a urgent drive is needed to fix the avatar appearance system.
Diva Canto