Real life Avatar wanted

don't know why but last section i posted this in, i couldn't bump/edit it, and people couldn't reply. hope i'm not doin something wrong by posting this. will try once more though.

hello all. this must be such a frequent request around here, and i know that i've seen an ad for this type of thing here very recently, but i can't find it and search doesn't seem to want to help me either lol.

i'm looking for somebody who can make an avatar that will look like my real life self (i will supply pictures when necessary). mod/copy/transfer are a must, as i would like to create my own varients.

eyes, skin, shape and hair (might have to build hair with prims, its gona be a tricky one) please. a quote would be nice too.

can anybody point me to the service i require please?

This is the exact right place The section you posted in before is for people to advertise products they have, so doesn't allow responses.

You are probably thinking of the CyberExtruder "machine" at Avatar Island, a doohicky created by the folks at Cranial Tap that can clone your RL look. Their ad is below.

There are skin creators who will also create a custom skin that looks like you, but it's not cheap. On the order of a few hundred US dollars.

Good luck!

------------------------------------------------------

Face to Face With CyberExtruder
Posted Saturday, August 18th, 2007, at 10:12 pm Eastern by Aleister Kronos
Tags: avatars, Second Life

Are you a Second Life resident who is fed up with your appearance? You’ve scoured the shops, looking for an avatar face that would be unique to you; something that captures the very essence of you — or at least, the persona you wish to project in Second Life. But you just can’t find it. Frustrating isn’t it?

You could opt to make your own, but most of us lack the skills to create something convincing, realistic and actually worth showing in public. Now, though, this need not be a bar to personalising your avatar — after a fashion. CyberExtruder provides a quick and relatively easy solution to your personalisation dilemma. Using a passport-style photograph, their automated conversion software will generate a realistic Second Life face in about a second. Whether you opt to use a self-portrait, or an image of someone else, is entirely up to you, though you might want to think carefully before pursuing the latter route.

The CyberExtruder service is a nice convenience for SL residents who want a more photorealistic face for their avatars, but the results can sometimes be a bit startling. (more…)

http://www.cyberextruder.com/[/QUOTE]

I could do skin and shape for $1500 USD. See
http://www.throughlinedesign.com/secondlife/Ingrid.jpg for a sample of my work.

Also see Namssor Daguerre's http://www.secondskinlabs.com/start.html

I believe he does the head only for $395 USD.

wow, that knocked me off the chair a lil!! (well tbh, when i asked my friend how much this sort of thing might cost, he said 10kL, THAT knocked me off my chair lil but THIS!!?? wow!)

i wasn't expecting that sort of pricing at all!! i thought i had left Entropia Universe lol?? (tbh its even worse than that because whenever i bought something in EU the item retained its value, which isn't whats going to happen in this case).

could i ask why its so expensive please? i prolly guess because of the time and skill required to do this sort of thing, but if i understand correctly some people use software? (which reminds me - yeah, i've checked out avatar island thanks but i require more than just a skin, and tbh i don't think its too realistic - its more of just a "resemblence" avatar, judgin by the examples avatar island provides - i couldn't see anywhere that indicated a price though - i'd still be interested to hear how much they charge though).

it looks like obtaining what i want is going to take a lot more investigation than thought.

could i ask, how many people actually go for these products you supply? i only ask because i can't see that many people going for such high prices for a virtual makeover.

also, are there any other alternatives? (not especially cheaper ones, i'm willing to investigate everything and everyone that offers this sort of service - apart from being downright shocked, i'm actually quite intriqued about it).

Edit:
i've downloaded some things from the secondskinlab site, and i don't know what to open them with - can anybody help me with it please?

Making a skin is extremely labor intensive as any skinner will tell you. The photosourced skin I made for myself took me 150 hours. 150 x $10/hour is how I came to that price. The kinds of paid work I do in second life (custom and items for my store) are animation, sculpties and clothes. But I do have the skill to make photosourced skins and this is the price that makes it possible for me to spend the time needed to make a quality product.

I use Zbrush which can project a photograph directly onto the avatar but only from one angle. I do perhaps a dozen projections from front, side, back, hands, feet. Then these projections all have to be patched together in Photoshop and corrected for differences in lighting, skin tone distortions and so on.

It would be great to feed some photographs and the avatar model into some software and press a button and get a skin. It doesn't work that way.

No, people aren't lining up for my photosource skin service. But there aren't many skinners that will even do custom skins as I'm sure you are finding out, so I wanted to let you know what I could offer.

It looks like you need Photoshop, or something that can open a Photoshop file for the skinlabs downloads.

You might be interested in looking at the files that make the default skin which are in you SL install. Look for a folder called character and look at the .tga files.

You get out what you put into it Zammy.

Cyber extruder maps the face with some information wrapping to the sides. This will provide some realism from a front view of the face if the source material is good. A drivers license photo will produce poor results where as a professionally lit, or naturally lit outdoor photo with good resolution will get you much better results. Still, Cyber Extruder is not going to map the back, top of the head, under the chin, or blend the neck seams very well regardless of what source material is provided. It is designed by a company that specializes in facial recognition software. Cyber extruder is an adaptation of that process, not a complete custom avatar service.

As Sylvia mentioned, full photo projection custom skinning requires many angles or original reference shots to successfully blend a detailed homogeneous skin tone. I do the entire head with a minimum of eight reference shots. If true bilateral asymmetry is required then eleven shots are the minimum. A full skin requires approximately 40-50 reference shots at high resolution (to allow for image distortion/manipulation). Sylvia's quote is extremely reasonable for an entire skin with full permissions. I can't imagine doing the work in much less time, and that's just for the skin, not the prim hair, shape, and reworking requests.

I've done several custom heads mapped onto my existing skins and each job required my artistic skills to pull my way out of the uncanny valley. It is always initially shocking for the customer to see thier own head texture for the first time on an avatar mesh that is rather crude by comparison. I have come to expect that once the initial skinning work is complete, the job is only half done. Reworking the texture and shape, after customer input, is the second half.

You're right about the sticker shock though. If I didn't have the skills and tools to do the work myself, I'd probably settle for an off the shelf photo realistic skin and call it a day.

CyberExtruder does a pretty good job, and does actually do it's best to map the back and top of the head based on hair color and skin tone. The biggest problem I have with CyberExtruder is that the face looks *too* realistic, that is ends up looking more fake. This phenomenon is known as the "uncanny valley", and you can read more about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley

Still, very, very cool software that they've developed. I had to make four avatars (for a concert) that were as close as possible to real life. They actually came out very well, but I hired an top-notch Second Life shop-o-holic to do them, Nethermind Bliss. She did a great job, without it being too ultra-realistic that they stood out from Second Life avatars. Compare:

RL:


SL:


Curly hair is tricky, heh. Just some food for thought - your mileage may vary! Cheers.

Regards,

-Flip

ok, when you put it like that, i suppose those amounts of money start to make sense. perhaps i should try a diy before i start to pay for professional service.

the thing is, the skin isn't my main priority (it seems to be eveyone elses though, which is confusing to me) - the shape is. i would like a realistic appearance, and before i start uploading the very spots on my face, i want to get my basic general shape up. the body is easy, doesn't have to be too detailed, its the face that gets me. there isn't a lot that you can do with some parts of the face - i couldn't do my nose, and you can't do enough with the ears - i need to move them a lil and i can't. i'd say that ~50% of looking like ur RL self is in the shape - and only when the shape is right, will everything else (skin +prim hair etc) look "right" on u. well imo ofc, i don't have any experience with this sort of thing.

are there any specialist people that work with shapes as well as skins?

Yup! Take a look at this short thread, it has two active forum members who sell shapes posting on it. They both have PM's turned on in the forums ...

/327/5e/180051/1.html#post1485849

Entropia lol

If you're looking for a custom skin of your rl self, then expect to shell out a few hundred bucks. SL skin makers are rare and talented and their service is in high demand. Rockwell Maltz does some custom skinds.

To open those files you probably need PS3 (Photoshop 3)

The problem I found with extremely detailed realistic skins is that none of the hair in SL looks right. You have this amazing avi skin that looks lifelike, and then you put a cartoon hair on it. So I had to go with a less real looking skin. Now if someone can make hair to match that would be ideal for me.

the nice thing about cyber extruder at avatar island is you get the skin textures (they do all 3 pieces now so they match, and decent quality too)

I have been working on one in photoshop, that I did through them, using a random (freeware) photo of a female (I did not want to use my own face) hehe

this is what I have so far

(I am planning to sell the skins I make, using them as my base skins)

yes you can do that, the skin textures are yours to do what you want to do with them

Really cool part is if I wanted a tattoo on my skin I can put it on the skin layer hehe

(of course you need to have some kind of editing program and the desire to do this)

I work at avatar island, as a greeter for them, so if you have any questions just give me a shout.

Also they recently added a free try before you buy option, you can upload your image (on their website) and see a 3d version of what you will get in SL.

PS edited to add, the shape is my own work as well (talk about original LOL, my own shape and skin LOVE IT)