Turn photo into avatar

Hello and thanks again for all the advice you give a newbie like me.

A couple of related questions........

Is there a way of turning a photo of myself into an avatar ?

Can I get my photo to display in my profile ?

Thanks as always

FH

I can't remember the name of it, but I know that in the sLiterary sim there was a place that did this. It's not cheap, though, from what I recall.

ETA: I'm going inworld shortly, so I'll head there and send you an LM to it if it's still there.

Yes.

http://www.secondskinlabs.com/Portraits/portraits.html

There is a sim Called "Avatar Island" that will do it for you.. More than likely a fee involved

If I'm understanding this question, that part is easy. If the photo is on your hard drive, just go to File>Upload Image, or hit Cntrl-U. It costs L$10 to upload. The image should be roughly the same ratio as the profile rectangle. The image uploads to your Textures folder and may look all distorted at first. You can drag it from Textures into your profile picture where it should no longer look distorted.

Sorry if you already know all that and I'm taking the question too literally.

You must be one of those people who don't mind mixing real life with SL. I've toyed with doing this a little more myself.

Yes, Avatar island does offer that service but I doubt it's cheap.

Essentially what they do is use your photo to create a skin texture that your avatar wears. They also would have to make a shape that works with the texture.

There's other ways to do it.....without spending so much to have a photo altered (it's a tedius process in photoshop to do that)

IM me in world if you're interested and I can probably help you create an avatar that looks look you, without having to morph a photo into a skin. And without it costing you a fortune just to have a mini-me running around in cyber space.

Avatar Island and Cyber Extruder (the avatar creation process that uses facial photos) is fairly cheap because it is automated by software. Last I checked, it was not much over a thousand lindens (a few US dollars) to get facial photos auto-translated onto the avatar mesh. Cyber Extruder does not pretend to compete with the higher end, more hands on, and artistic processes (multi-photo translation, shape matching, full body skin blends, high rez references, custom alterations).

Avatar Island= You get what you get, and you don't get upset (because it's only a couple of bucks and there are no hands on alterations unless you pay other humans to do more work).

Custom shape and skin= You get what you want because everything can be custom tailored (within reason for SL avatars). If the customer expects a Poser quality likeness (millions of polygons and 4096x4096 textures), forget it.

Custom shape (no skin)= You get a plastic looking rough approximation based on limited morph targets.

Custom shape and generic skin= Yet another rough approximation. If the skin isn't just right this avatar can end up looking even less like the RL person it's intended to look like than with just the custom shape.

Good points Nammssor.

I guess it's really about what you want to get out of it. I do custom shapes/looks for people and what I do is find a skin that is the closest match to the 'look' the customer is aiming for (be it celebrity or photo of customer) and then I make the shape while wearing the skin to perfect the look as much as possible with-in the boundaries of those elements. I look for the right hair....and I make the eyes myself.

Over all I've had great results. No....not a photo likeness....and from what I've seen of photo-skins being wrapped over an avatar shape.....they look kinda weird..... I'm not sure about the process you're describing, as the last time I looked into it for myself...it was a matter of a skin being made using a photo. But, regardless....1000L is a lot especially for someone new in world.

Anywho....again.....it really boils down to just how exacting you want to be. A photo is indeed exact....but in a cyber world where the characters are all more like cartoon (granted very real looking) likenesses of humans, most people seem pretty content with a 'likeness' of themselves.

But yes, one can get an avatar made from a photo.

Oh goodie, another "realistic avatar" thread!

Slight derailment here...

I met Soji the other night, and he was wearing the most marvelous av...an older gentleman who looked rather like a skinny version of Mark Twain.

In a world of twenty-something surfer hunks and rock stars and hulking shoulders, it's amazing how appealing and sexy he looked. I wanted to crawl right into his lap.

We ladies get variety from hairstyles and clothes. Men are more limited. There really should be someone out there making a wider variety of male skins and shapes.

My advice to the OP: Forget looking like your RL self. It's expensive, and the results (even if you go to a skilled artist like Namssor) may not satisfy you. But DO try for a unique look.

I just think it would be creepy to see.

What, Soji as Mark Twain? No, he was great. Or a RL photo on an av? We proved in a previous thread that that WAS eerie.

Very true. That type of service is not for everybody. Most of my client's want their avatar to represent them as they appear to business colleagues in RL. Their avatar is a business asset in the sense that they are instantly recognizable within SL.

As far as shape goes, I try not to make distinctions between shape and skin when doing custom avatars. They should function as a single unit. It is the limits within Second Life that cause us to make that distinction in the first place with avatars. We don't do that when we look at somebody in real life.