Really in need of some help

Hey all. I have read my little heart out on these forums. Contacted skin makers inworld to get advice and I keep getting myself misunderstood.... so here it goes:

I am a designer in SL (pretty good I think) I make clothing, jewelry, thrones, hair, eyes.. shoes.. everything but a skin. I understand a skin is just clothing. I understand that it takes practice. I understand most of the steps of making a skin. My problem is this:

I have a problem thinking in 3D (my weakness). I can take existing makeup (the head skin) and recreate it so I'm thinking... if it was possible to get a skin unflattened (unfolded) in it's raw (3 piece form), maybe I could achieve it better. In other words....

Is there someone out there with an unflattened, 3 piece skin... that I could buy? I'm willing to pay good. I don't care how good it is it's for reference only really. I would never use anyone's work to make linden. I pride myself on the reputation I have built for myself here as a designer, business woman and island owner. Pleasssseee with sugar on top can I buy a lousy unflattened skin from someone that really only shows the highlights and shadows, so I can practice making skins?

Dezire Moonlight

problem is that an image is a 2d thing, its either a texture in paint, or a texture wrapped around a 3d model, but the image itself is still just 2d

if you want to get a better idea how a image wraps around a model you might want to try a 3d paint program, those allow you to paint directly on the generic SL model

you get the generic AV models from the downloads section of this website



these things range from free/basicly useless ececpt for visulation, to quite pricey and powerfull

here is one thats quarky to use (ie oddball camera controls, and you have to put a copy of the textures you want inside the same folder as the program) Its abit more powerfull than MS paint, so using it for serious painting would be a task, but its great for making pinpoints, viewing in 3d,correcting seams, and its free ...
http://www.terabit.nildram.co.uk/tattoo

all the way upto Deep Paint, which is basicly photoshop with a 3d model, think the average retail price is 750$ altho i saw a on sale copy for 159 on the net

A similar (in end effect, anyway) approach would be to get a program that's able to read 3d file format generic SL models come in, and use it as a viewer. The format is Wavefront .obj files iirc, which is very popular because its' easy to read... so there's quite a plenty 3d object viewers able to load it, from free ones like Milkshape all way to commercial programs.

With help of such viewer, you can paint on the 2d templates in your 2d program of choice, then watch how these drawings appear (and change as you make changes to textures) on the 3d model loaded in the viewer. It's way faster (and cheaper) than uploading textures into SL after each change just to see what it looks like. ^^;

edit: as far as getting a pre-made skin goes, would probably try to check the slExchange for the cheapest skins featured there --the non-demo ones going for L$ 1, there's quite a few-- ... and then speak with their makers. Since these are provided pretty much out of goodwill and not to earn someone money, it's likely they'd be more willing to provide 2d version as learning material ^^;;

Ok so what you are looking for really is a set hopfully of jpg or tga or even psd files that you could use simply as a guide or referance for the tonal and highlights etc... Ya I wpould also love to have something so I could make myself my own skin for SL so I can actually be me

Have a look in the "character" subfolder of your SL installation. You'll find a bunch of TGA files in there you might find very useful.

Oh, now that's USEFUL! Thanks for the pointer, had no idea those were there!

I would however advise against opening freckles_alpha.tga - that thing makes you feel like your soul is being slowly eaten.

I will not sleep well tonight.

Thank you for all the comments. I asked Wiccan the same question (designer and owner of bewitched) and she said to check out renderosity.com... Just thought I'd let everyone that is searching for this same problem know.. there is much there we can use in SL. I bought some of their beginner kits (waiting patiently for receipt lol) which are reference photos and meshes and such. Like I said a lot there we can use. If anyone is interested go there it's free to join and search for "beginner compleat reference kit" that's just the start of what is there. Again thank you for all that responded
Dezire