Photo Face On Avatar

One of the great things about SL is that, if you are prepared to put in the effort to learn building/scripting, you can do virtually anything!! Like a house? Build it, dont buy it!! Like a hairstyle, clothing, furniture, car, plane? Build don't buy!!
However, recently I came across a service offering to take a photo of a RL face, and paste it on to an avatar. It works very well, and the end result is very good!
My question is..how do they do that!! And how can I do it instead of paying L$2700!!

start in the texturing tips forum, READ THE STICKIES, and take the advise of people that know (Namssor does this type of work). actually 2700 L$ sounds like a steal even at lower quality work.

Yeah...Second Skin Labs (Namssor) offers the service, but for much more (about $400 US). And you have to send them a whole lot of photos, not just one. They create a custom shape AND a custom skin. He has some amazing photos on his website.

If you really want your avatar to look as much like the real life you as possible, it's worth every penny. There was a picture in a recent thread that shows how horrible a low-quality attempt at this can turn out. (/327/97/242373/1.html , see post #26)

Me, I think my av looks better than her RL alt.

I don't wanna! *pouts*

even though I modeled my av to look something like me, she blows me out of the water. dizamn.

This really should be in Texturing Tips, not here.

Anyway, the answer to how you do it is carefully, with artistry, experience, and skill. Good tools help also, of course. If you're very good with Photoshop, you can do it entirely there. But adding in programs like Zbrush can be very beneficial. Zbrush in particular has a good cloning tool, which allows you sample a 2D photo, and paint it onto a 3D model.

Good source images, with even lighting on them, are a must. Not just any old photo will do.

I'll agree with what others have said that L$2700 is dirt cheap for this sort of thing. It can take days to get a face to come out photorealistic on an avatar. I certainly wouldn't do it for so little. I'll also agree that the quality of work that Namssor does is more than worth the money, if that sort of photorealism is important to you.

Myself, I don't want my avatar to look like me. I already look like me in RL. I don't need SL for that. Also, I don't even think of my avatar as "me". It's just a tool. Since it's the only thing that is always on-screen at all times, I want it to look like something I enjoy looking at. I'm nowhere near vain enough to enjoy looking at myself that much. To each his own, though. I do understand the appeal.

I did the cheapo amateur version of this, and it was pretty hideous, good only for a laugh, which it got lots of.

If you look at the template for skin, you will see a sort of stretched out face with eyeholes, mouth hole, etc. You have to take the photo and stretch it out in more or less the same way and line up all the holes.

Upload, make new skin, and drag and drop the stretched out face photo.

Or, and Chosen says, you could do it right.

Step one. Be artisitic.
Step II, have several years worth of experience with the relevant tools and computer graphics in general.
Step C. Create something amazing.

2700L - right, that's just north of $10 USD. If if could be done in about 20 minutes, sure. But it'll look like crap and you get what you pay for.

Same here. Ish. About two years ago. People around me recoiled in horror. It was kind of funny. I did it with Poser though. It has some tools that help you apply your face to a head mesh. The UV map isn't the same as LL's templates, but it requires minor stretching to make it fit.

As you indicate though, Chosen's approach is best. Just slapping a photographic face onto a template and uploading will always have horrifying results... even if it's lined up with the template well.

Lots of graphics work is required to make it look good in SL.