Newbie skin and account question.

I have made my avatar and have twiddled my look. As I do so I see that you can always bring up the alterations. My question is can we change our avatar look at will even gender?. Just curious. I see there is a save as button but can you load a pre-saved look? I don't see a load function.

I have a premium account. I note that you can only have one avatar per account but many per email. So if I wanted to make avatars to fit activities would they get the benefits of my premium? If not what is the difference between a free av and a premium. I like being premium but don't want several premium avatars.

and a bonus question to ask. Is there a good site that lists all the emoticons and gestures? I would like to use a few.

Thanks for the help and fast responses.

Doc, yes you can change everything about your avatar, when you "Save" a change you are overwriting the current file you are wearing though.. Best bet is to do a SAVE AS... that will give you the option to rename it.. the new shape/skin/hair/clothing will save in the same folder as the one you are currently wearing.

You can find things you are wearing by typing "WORN" in the search bar of your inventory, so you can tell what folder things are going to save in.

To load something, just go into the folder it is in, right click on the item and pick "WEAR" from the popup menu.

Any new accounts you create will be basic and will not get the benefits of your current premium account. You have to pay for each premium account.

Premium accounts can own mainland, get a L$300/wk stipend and can file a wider varierty of support tickets for LL to ignore.

You *can* change your avatar's gender. Just click the male or female button in Appearance and click Save.

You probably won't look good when you do that, though. You need to get gender-appropriate skin, shape, and hair.

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You store your basic body in inventory in 4 parts: skin, shape, eyes, and hair. You can have multiple sets of these, each of them different


Make folders in your inventory with parts you want use together, and check out the user's manual for more info (appearance, and inventory)

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User%27s_Manual
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User%27s_Manual

Thanks for the good info and special thanks to Daniel to give me more tutorial online.

There are some excellent video tutorials out there too. Here is a link.
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Video_Tutorials

You can find different avatars in the Library folder of your inventory, I might suggest you use these to practice changing/putting on/taking off different clothes, skins, shapes and so on. The Library even has a few avatars that are not human, so you can see how easy it is to change your whole avatar.

Note: The one thing you can't change without getting more accounts is your name.

Make folders in your inventory for each "Look". I have 80+ different looks for Ceera, from a simple Human female in blue-jeans and t-shirt, to a huge red dragon.

But though you can change your appearance and gender at will within one account, they will all have the same name over their head. Which may look sort of odd if your name is Cindy Sweetlips, and your current look is a burly Hispanic truck driver. Or if you are Marcus Strongbear, and your current avatar is a demure and half-naked slave girl...

Alts, or additional accounts, are a good way to get additional name more suitable to different genders or forms. But an alt will not share your Premium Status, even if it has the same e-mail address and payment info and real-world info. That may not matter to you, since you can still "adult verify" them either by putting payment info on file, or by using the Aristotle "Age Verification" process. One advantage to having alts also be Premium is that each one of them does get the 512 M2 free land tier benefit, so if you had a main account and three alts, all Premium, between them they can hold 2048 M2 of land tier-free (by donating tier to a group that you set up for all of them). Of course, you still end up having to pay the Premium dues for each of them in that case, but for some people, if you want Mainland, that may be worthwhile.

I have several alts, and have found it best for each one to have a separate e-mail account. I also put no more than 5 accounts on a single payment method. LL is erratic about how well they allow the same e-mail address to be used for multiple accounts, or how well they allow the same payment method to be re-used.

You can easily transfer L$ from one account to another, so really only one even needs payment info, since that account can buy L$ and distribute them to your alts. You can also transfer any transferrable items from one account to another. But no-transfer items would have to be purchased by each account that you want to use them with.

For credit cards, it appears to be a limit of 5 accounts per card at any given time. But you can take one account off and add another if you wish.

With PayPal, it seems LL limits you to the first 5 accounts per lifetime that you try to place on one PayPal account. After that, they refuse to allow that PayPal to EVER be used for any new accounts, even if it is one you used to have on PayPal, took off, and are trying to put back on PayPal. But the ones that were on t before that lock is set can still happily use that PayPal account. Go figure...

Doc, this is very good advice. I have about 40 different looks for myself as well as some other non human forms. In each folder, I keep skin, hair, body shape, eyes and clothing but you can also add anything else including Jewelery and AO's. Any time I want to change I just right click on the folder and click 'Replace outfit' - Makes me feel like a shape shifter in SL!

However, I do try and avoid busy or crowded areas when changing due to lag and other reasons