Facial Hair/Stubble

Hi, i'm trying to design a head tattoo that overlays on the default SL skin to create facial hair and stubbled/shaved head look.

So far, the technique i've tried is filling the RGB channel with a pure color, then using the alpha to paint the stubble with a noise filter and/or a hair brush. Is this the right technique, or is there an easier way to do this? It looks okay, just wondering if I'm doing it in a "normal" way, as I realize using a brush in the alpha channel creates a variance of grey levels, which leads to random transparency. Is this what I want to achieve the stubble?

Keep in mind I just want to paint over the SL skin with certain things, not a complete skin redo.

I've been playing with this and with a bit of messing around with alphas and pure colors in the RGB channels, it seems to be working out well

Hi Trendan. The way you're going about it can certainly work well, but you might also want to look into getting David Nagel's brushes (or making your own brushes). Nagel's got several brush series specifically for hair and skin. You can get about 30 of his collections here.

Yep, been using those.. I believe it was one of your previous posts I saw them in. Basically i've been using them in the alpha channel to paint the pattern. I can't see any other way of doing it, unless I had access to the default skin tone textures that SL uses. Are they about anywhere?

Check your SecondLife/character directory. All *.TGA files there are related to the default skin, makeup, or clothing.

Oh, so it's just transparent according to head_color.tga

I think I should mention that I'm trying overlay the facial hair/stubble as a tattoo. So is painting the alpha channel with the brushes the best attack? Like i've been doing? I.e. going into the alpha and using my hair brushes to paint it.. then i've basically been coloring solid colors over the main RGB channels to get the desired facial hair color.

Just wondering if there is an easier method, though there is nothing difficult about this one.

The "head_skingrain.tga" file also plays a significant role in the texture of the defaut skin.

What you might find interesting is a Photoshop file I put togther that has all the default files on separate adjustable layers. You can plug your own alpha channel textures into this file and tweak them with some of the adjustment layers and layering effects. Here's the link below from my web site (Links/Downloads).

Slider_Conversions.zip (3.7Mb download)