Eyelashes hell

Hi!

I want to ask for help with eyelashes on face part of skin template.

Seems whatever i do i receive the same result - i change alpha channel without top right corner, i add to alpha channel lashes from top right corner, i remove half of them, i draw with different color ..... and eyelashes are the SAME all time.

What i do wrong?

The only effective way to limit the coverage of default eyelashes is to use the sliders for eyelash length in the client viewer. This will shorten, but not completely get rid of the eyelash polygons.

Read further if you want to get into more complex ways to minimize default eyelashes.

There are four things being processed here:

1. The eyelash information that you add to a texture you upload as part of a skin can only add texture information to your avatar. If you leave that area completely transparent you will still end up with eyelash color that is linked to your default head_color.tga file in the SL client.

2. The head_color.tga file (if this is a file you are altering) defines certain areas with special color (eyes, mouth, and black eyelashes). This can be made transparent in the upper right, leaving only the default skin color to define the eyelashes.

3. The head_alpha.tga file defines the transparent area within the region of the avatar mesh mapped to the eyelash polygons. It can not change the geometry of the avatar, which has polygons reserved for eyelash information. You will get a full eyelash or a big fat "monolash" depending on how this file is altered.

This file also requires a special kind of LZW compression for grayscale images that many image editing applications do not support (i.e. Photoshop, ACDsee). If you alter this file and overwrite it with the wrong compression, the SL client viewer will not execute.

4. Default skin tone, which can not be removed under any circumstance, is also the default eyelash color if no additional texture information is present to override this color. This can be adjusted to hide the eyelash color by adjusting skin tone while wearing an opaque skin with a texture that has a transparent upper right corner on the head texture in the skin and in the head_color.tga file in the client.

Thank you vm for your answer, Namssor!

May i ask about the results? This means we can't make good looking eyelashes using skins only?

There is also the alternative of painting the eyelash texture directly around the eyes.

The avatar eyes are in what can be described as a semi-open state. There is a narrow slit that defines the openings for each eye in the polymesh on the avatar head template (whichever one you are working with). Some of that surrounding texture maps to the inner eyelid (a few pixels) and the rest describes the area surrounding the eyes. This is where eyelash information can be painted directly on the skin. This result can look quite good with minimized eyelash polygons if not overdone. A front view can be very convincing. A side view looks less convincing, but not terribly strange.

The final alternative is to buy or make a set of prim lashes. The drawback with this method is that fitting and placement needs to be extremely precise in order for them to work well. They also don't follow the blinking of the eyes.

In all honesty I think that matching the resolution of the surrounding facial textures can look more convincing than maxing out eye and eyelash textures on prims or template textures. I prefer to paint on eyelashes and use a 256x256 texture for the eye template. We are dealing with poorly constructed low-poly models for the avatars, and they can only be pushed so far.

Hi Elena- I 'feel your pain'! The eyelashes can be hell but prim lashes do solve it- contact me inworld I will hook you up - ask around, my lashes are widely known for their ease of fitting- look for me, happy to help you out.