Whoa so much new things

I have not played since about 2007, so just wondering, wow whats with all the new "skins and shapes" back when i played all ihad were some neat clothes, but now people look really realistic and stuff!! can someone explain what really is a skin/shape? also what is the point of buying a shape? cause from what i understand, SKIN is what depends on how you look and shape is just the shape and you can just edit the shape of the generic character to look how you want it am i wrong?

thanks for the clarification

skin is just a layer that paints the shape is all..
the better the skin the better you hide the mesh..
not the most expensive but the better quality..

a good shape and good skin work well together..

You're right about the shapes. I don't understand why people pay for them. I just adjusted my shape and then made a tweak or two each day for about a week. I haven't done anything since then. I mean, why bother messing with perection.

In your case being a pefect ass is a good thing.

is it just me, or are the "white" skins ugly as sin? they are so PALE? is that why 90% of the people use a tan skin? even the skins that cost 1k+ linden that are white look kinda pale to me..

Thank Windlight for that.

They all pretty much look like corpses in the default settings tho......At least with windlight you CAN adjust the entire atmosphere so that the lighting is most agreeable.....and save your own day cycle so ya never have to see the crappy settings ever again.

But yeah....on topic.....shape is just the forming of the wire mesh.....skin is the painted layer that covers it.....and thus has the finer detailing that will complete the over-all appearance.

But, to say that shape making is basic and easy.....OMG.....I've been in SL for 3 years and I dug out some of my old shapes that I'd made back in the beginning.....pppppfffhhhh....whoa....scary!!

Seriously...it's one thing to KNOW what looks good.....quite another to actually make it happen. And most of the time when I do custom shapes for people......it's because they are so totally frustrated and lost with the shape sliders and they simply don't want to have work that hard to look good. Those who pop in just to explore and have fun......don't always want to 'deal' with the processes of perfecting the avatar. So.....folks who are good at making shapes will continue to have a market. Skins......way more complicated....and the good ones are well worth the L's for the effort and time put into em!! (having just started doing skins....OMG my eyes are gonna fall out of my head! It aint easy!)

I'm with Milla on the shapes. It *seems* easy, but my early shapes were awful. I have never bought a female shape, just worked and tweaked to get the shape I now love. But my alt is a dude, and I just didn't have the patience, at all, to make a handsome guy, so I forked over some Lindens.

On skins, not that I want a new one, but I looked for a slightly transparent one, mainly because on my actual avi, I tried to put my freckles and a few wrinkles on my brow and beside my mouth. The skins seem to erase any detail like that.

Ive never bought a shape..even considered making some to sell.

As far as skins.. I've paid over 1k for them, but keep coming back to Sin Skins at Pixeldolls now.

Same here. When I started I chose the 'girl next door' avatar and made her a bit more athletic looking and that's been my shape since Sept 2006, with one or two adjustments. I've had the same skin for 2 years, as well.

I do use an amended shape with system skirts and dresses to give an overall appearance consistent with my normal shape, but that's just a technicality that nobody sees!

The hard part about shapes for me is the face. It's hard to start off from scratch and make a shape that has a face that I like. I have much better luck buying a shape with a face I like and then modifying the body.

A good skin can still look less than its best on a badly done shape. A well-crafted skin and shape combination can enhance both, with the skin providing apparent details that the shape can't actually give you, and the shape matching the expected contours so the shading and highlights on the skin look right.

Simple example of that: Put the average photo-realistic female skin on a flat-chested female shape with no butt. The shading that should be under the breasts and buttocks looks all wrong. Put the same skin on a well-designed female shape, and it looks much better.

While in theory every shape that you might purchase is no different from something you could cook up yourself with enough slider fiddling, in practive, making a shape is a form of sculpture art. Hand 20 typical people a lump of clay. How many of them can make a superb-looking, anatomically reasonable human figure from that clay? How many are lucky if they can make it look like a mis-shapen rag doll?

Some people have no difficulty tweaking the sliders to get just the look they desire. Personally, I have a fun time adjusting my shapes to get just the look I desire. But for some things, like making an extremely tall or short shape, or making a shape designed to work with prim parts, like a Furry, I've learned a lot by starting with a shape someone else made.

But other people can't do much at all with the sliders without looking distorted and misshapen. Like the person who can do no better than sculpting a rough rag doll from clay.

We all have the same tools for making shapes. The same "clay" to work with. But not all of us are gifted sculptors. For those who can easily make their own shapes, they don't need to buy them. Those with no sculpting talent are grateful when the skilled ones sell shapes.