How do I create a face texture?

*Edit* Well ive been playing with this. What I did was take my face and cut it in half, copy that half and flip it horizontally. Copy and paste facial pieces so it fit where the template instructed and painted over my skin color with the color I used for the rest of the skin. So basically the face involves a lot of use with the dodge and burn tools just like the rest of the body? Unfortunately I don`t think my template is lining up with my avatar.



*Original Post*
Hi, ive searched the forums over and over for help with making a skin, I could not find any so I was on my own. It came out well. However now I would like to put my face onto the avatar, what program do I need to use to create a face texture for this? Can it be done in photoshop? (I checked google as well but kept coming up with articles on RL skin care). Also, is there an easy way of getting the face to be the same color as the rest of my skin or do I need to recreate the body/legs?



Help appreciated, thanks.

Well you might be almost there.

You speak about "the template", if you have built your image against an "upper body" template - all of it, not just a face - then I think that you are ready.

No extra software needed - the upper body template stored as a 512*512 TGA file (is that what you have?) needs to be uploaded, as an image, to SL using the file menu option when you are connected in-world.

Using the "change appearance" Avatar options, you should find that you can select your freshly uploaded "upper body" image as a skin - now you will find that unless you also have a matching lower body image you will have some sort of mismatch - thats why most skins are a "set" of all the body parts.

Putting that minor complication aside, because its good to see "something" working, once you select your "upper" image as a skin texture you should see it "map" onto the avatar - if you like it you can "save" it, still in appearance change mode, saving it as a new skin, which you can name as you wish.

If you are doing this for sale, decide if you want your potential purchaser to be able to "modify" the skin (using their set of appearance sliders), and set the file rights to your new skin accordingly.

If you are happy with all this you might want to look at creating a matching lower skin as well.

I have recently started working with Avpainter (you can buy it on SLExchange I think) which is an offline 3D mannequin, male and female, used for clothes design - but it works perfectly well for "skin" design as well - and this lets you try everything out on your Windows PC (I hope you have one!) before uploading anything to SL - it also lets you modify the skin, or clothes or whatever - in place on the model without needing to go back into Photoshop - in fact I don't normally use Photoshop at all.

Hope this helps - I am sure you well get lots of other more experienced advice as well - Good Luck

Thanks so much for the reply.

Unfortunately I must not of explained well, sorry!

When I refer to "face textures" I meant like this:

http://www.3d.sk/img/tn/Head_textures_0025/bg_Head_textures_0002.JPG

I guess I meant to say, "How do I create a head texture?"

Basically I have created a very nice skin (minus the head). I now would like to use my RL face on the skin head template and needed to be able to create a head texture. But what I ended up doing was cutting my photo in half, copying that half, and flipping it horizontal to create something similar to what is pictured in the link.

I had to delete all of my RL skin and now I am tryign to draw it back up to match the rest of the SL skin I created color. I dont know if there is an easier way for this or what.

I do plan on marketing the skin if the face comes out well. My only concern is that in RL I have a "beauty mark" over the left side of my lip, and as you probably know a very well known skin for males in SL also has a beauty mark on it, on the right side. If I were to market this skin and leave my "beauty mark" in it would that be stepping on toes?

I understand he did not invent the beauty mark but ya know, I don`t want to be deemed a copy cat o0. But the main reason I bought his skin was because of the beauty mark (Was trying to get it as close to the RL me as I could)

i got the same problem and was wondering if there were any standard face textures available with the different body parts already available

If you go to the link I posted there is some there. Or try searching "head textures" in google and see if there are any royalty free ones for purchase.






Personally, I dont think its that easy. Ive been busy shading and such this avatar face. I took a photo of myself and used my nose, lips, and am using the dodge and burn tools to get some depth and tone on the face.



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My current question now is, my nipples keep stretching out at different places, is there something I need to know concerning nipple placement?