Looking for 'Base Highlight/Musculature/Shading Skins' to start from, not seam guides

As it is, I've the urge to jump in on the skinning bandwagon, as it twer. And like many, I rather lack in talent in a lot of places. ^_^

What I find myself needing is a way to get ahold of a simple skin with proper highlights and musculature, that I can move on from there with. I've a friend that wants me to work on making tattoes for them, and I myself have the urge to use the musculature and highlights/shading in addition to my own feeble texturing skills to produce some Furry skins that, in short, don't look like a nice plasticy crayon.

Now, likely, I'm going to get shot down with the whole thought of, 'Oh, you want to rip off all our hard work if we give you skins'. That's a fair arguement. Except I'm not hunting photorealistic skins, I don't need the thing to have a real skin texture to it itself. I just need the highlights, shading, an' musculature, to apply over a skin as a template.
I'm sure someone will want to point out Chip's mindbogglingly wonderful texture templates and seam guides and such. Thanks Chip, they're great. They are however, not what I'm in need of here. (Those will be what I initially 'paint' on, before I try an' overlay the highlights an' such. If I can get them.)

Now.. I've fiddled around in the SL \ Character's directory (And that's <your install dir of SL>\Character, for those that are wondering), I've found the various templates SL uses on the default character skins. Unfortunately, since _as far as I know_, you can only really work with one layer, they're not exactly the most useful to me. The shading layer is almost unnoticable if I were to apply it to my texturing work as is, and the bump map layer is too.. how to put it.. 'heavy' on it's details, they become obscuring and unnatural. Not being a graphical guru or genius, I'm at a loss on what to do at this point, and thus I turn to the forums, with all expectations that I'll be told to 'Figure it out myself'.

Anyways, here's to all the novices who are still trying to find their rear with both hands and a roadmap, for skinning work. My hats off to those that are managing to find their way, heh. With luck, someone can help me out too.

- Saranae Kanahoe

Saranae,

When making my skin (which is very basic), I simply looked at all the promos for skins in the classifieds forums and on SLB/SLX to see what other skin makers did for shading and painted in what I thought looked good. Study the skins that are out there and try to add what you like to your skin.

However, that's not easy. Getting the highlights and shading right takes some time and trial and error. And, yes, i know, that's what you want!!!

Someone may come out with a shading guide, but you're likely to want to alter stuff anyway.

Good luck to you on getting these.

I have asked very politely many times (and on the forum as well), but no one has ever offered. On the mac, one does not even have access to the bump maps and files that you describe, so it's worse.

The only person I think that has done this (sortof) is Jinny ____ (forgot last name) who posted some templates, one of which has the shading for the lower body female. Kudos to her, but its' not much use without the rest of them.

You'll find that using the shading maps, highlight maps, and bump maps as light maps in Photoshop is a great way to get started. I don't have time to write a step by step right at the moment, so I'll just paste from the Photoshop help:

Using a Lighting Effects texture



To use the Texture Channel in the Lighting Effects dialog box:



I'll try to remember later to come back and post a step-by-step that is specific to this subject, but in the mean time, if you need additional help with lighting in Photoshop, look up "Lighting Effects Filter" in help.

Could someone either post those files for mac users or explain what part of the library they are in? I have never found them.

Getting all the anatomy in the right place is the hardest part of making skins, so it's the part people are least likely to share. I tried to do it subtly with the shading guide layers in my templates but I made them a little too subtle to be very useful (seemed like a good idea at the time). I may release something more helpful the next time I update my templates, but no idea when that will be or if I'll change my mind

yeah, I realise why it isnt done, I just wish I had the crapy Linden ones to work from.

I once spent a couple of hours trying to extract the shading from your templates without getting the UV grid. I eventualy decided it was possible, but not worth my time in that I would have to clean up with the clone tool for several days even after I eliminated the grid. At that rate its easier to draw your own.

I hope to get a tablet for Christmas, then I can draw my own easily enough, that kind of shading with the mouse is frustrating at best. I am beginning to think that one *needs* a tablet to do anything good in the clothing/skin category.

Right-click on the Second Life application and choose "Show Contents". This will open the application contents in a new window. I don't know exactly where, but you should be able to find the images you seek there. Many files that it seems Windows stores separately (e.g. the keyboard keys definition file) from the client are stored in the application package on MacOS.

Wow.

What a mixture of emotions. I am elated to finally find all this stuff but appalled and deeply dissapointed in LL for NEVER POINTING THIS OUT.

Thank you so much for this one simple hint.

LL should be ashamed of themselves for not making this fact apparent to new users or any users for that matter.

Not only are the character files in there, but megabytes of HELP FILES, the same help files that are missing from the web and not even available in game. This information could have changed the game for me if I knew it earlier. If there is a pointer to it or any indication it was there anywhere else, I have not seen it, and I am *not* a dummy and I *have* been loooking.

I have always been shocked at the lack of help files or any kind of written clues as to the features the game offers, but to find out now that all these files were available and someone at LL was just too stupid to think to tell anyone who uses a mac that they were there is just beyond belief. It just shows yet again that no-one at LL even *thinks* of mac users.

Afer playing the game for close to a year, and having to learn every single thing by asking people or by figuring it out myself, I am appalled at the missed opportunities and the things that I *could* have done if I had access to this information when I started.

SHAME Linden Labs SHAME!



I now officialy give up on defending these idiots at all and join the ranks of the seriously disillusioned in SL.

Kris Ritter was right after all.

I'm curious. Are the help files different on the Mac? The ones included with the PC version are the same as what's accessable from the help menu inworld. For example chat.html is the same as Help -> Basic Help -> Basic Second Life Skills -> Chat, and Advanced_Second_Life_Skills.html is the same as Help -> Basic Help -> Advanced Second Life Skills, etc. Does the help folder included with the Mac version include something more? If so, I'd love to see it. Can someone post a page or two?

hehe, yeah. Sorry about that. I did the shaded grid layer mostly for the toes, nails, and nipples. Next time I'll do it without the grid and include some body definition.

Currently the best way to work out muscle definition lines is to wear the templates as a skin and take screenshots. Then look at the grid and plot points along where the muscle lines should be.

Well.. This is -actually- better response than I expected. Honestly, I'm used to dealing with forums of folk who react very.. hostile, to asking for any sort of help.


Anyhow. I'd actually say that with Chip's templates, it's easier to get an idea where some of the shading would be, in all honesty, as certain division lines follow the edges where _I_ would think it should be. I think I'm going to have to give in, an' draft my artistically talented friends with pizza, movies, an' a wee amount of begging, to see if they can take a stab at helping with this part. As I said.. It's simply beyond my talents, vastly beyond.

Another thought crossing my mind though. If you're dealing with the semi-transperant skin idea, or the linden starter skins, those work off from the shading file in \characters, correct? So if you wanted to use the standard starter skin shadings, you could try to make yours a semi-transperant, perhaps.. or perhaps you'd take the one's from \characters, use them as a layer somehow in your image editing software, and merge it together later? o.o Not exactly sure how I'd do that, more used to alpha masks and seperate files holding glowmaps an' reflec maps (My limited experiances come from doing personal skinwork for Freedom Force models. ^_^), but I'd wager adding the shading as a layer in Photoshop wouldn't be insanely difficult. Hrmm..

Once again though, it's a matter of definition. The shading map doesn't seem to show enough, and the bump-map shows too much, to be used 'raw', as they are, or so I think. Not very sure anymore. o.O

Ah well, I'll kick it around for a bit an' see what I can get together. Thanks for the positive input. ^_^

As a thought, for the mac folk that can't seem to get at the files, perhaps some of the more noteworthy ones would be worth uploading as full permission textures, and tucked away in one of the freebie spots, like Yadni's Junkyard?

- Saranae Kanahoe

Actually, a thought just meandered through my head.

Can you..
1. Use seperate textures on one's skin and add..
1a. Alpha masks
1b. Glow maps
1c. Reflection maps?
2. Can you add any or all of those to prim'd objects?

Most of the freedom force stuff the roommate had me doing, was adding glowing body art to various models, adding reflectiveness to the new team logo he drew up for the skins, as well as some other tweaks. I've learned to adore glowmaps.

Right now there are three main ways to create skins in SL. Most people make opaque textures to go in the tattoo slots. They completely cover up the underlying default skin. The biggest benefit of that method is that you can put in as much detail as you want. The downside is you lose ability to use the appearance sliders to change skin characteristics. The second way is to replace the files in your character folder with custom versions. The benefit to that is that depending on how you do them you can still use the appearance sliders to change color, makeup, and so on. The downsides are that it's more complex to do it that way and it's harder to get a lot of detail. The third way is to use tattoos but make them semi transparent so that the default skin shows through underneath. The biggest downside there is that tattoo textures shade differently than the default av skin and getting a good blend will likely cost you much of your hair (from pulling it out).

Your second way would only been seen by you on your client though correct? Those files wouldn't be transmitted to anyone else would they? Everyone else would see you using their original default files.

I used the jenny skin template to start out with, and went from there on my own.

I also agree the best way to visualize is to make a mesh skin from Chip's templates showing the mesh on your body, wear it and take screenshots from all angles for reference while you work, it's pretty invaluable. It saves a lot of time being able to see what parts of the template get stretched, which direction and how far when wrapped onto a body mesh.

Nope, everyone else sees them too. Whenever you change skins, clothing layers, makeup sliders or whatever else, those images are used by the client to bake together the single texture that goes to everyone else's viewer. If you change the images in the character folder you insert different ingredients into the recipe, altering the baked texture.

Ohh ok, I assumed everyone else recieved your skin textures that are stored server side like all other textures and then their client baked them using their clients own default files.

So what your saying is that my client downloads the skin textures, bakes them onto me using the default files, and sends them back up to the server for everyone else to see?

That would sure explain some slow res times for skins.

Yep, exactly Otherwise you wouldn't be able to change makeup and other skin parameters in appearance and have other people see them. It also has to do it because it changes whenever you change clothes. Everyone who you come in viewer range of receives three textures instead of one for each piece of clothing, tattoo, custom skin, and whatever else you have on at the time.

Dianne, if you haven't found them yet, on the Mac you need to control click on your Second Life application in the Applications folder, and choose "Open Package Contents" from the contextual menu. Then go to Contents > Resources > Character. The files you are looking for are a bunch of .tga files stored in there.

They aren't as helpful as you might wish, but that's where they are.

Chosen, I'm sorry I don't have time to answer your question right now. I have a very bad cold, and I'm going back to bed.

Oh! And we can't put anything on the Avatars (or anything else) except Texture (color) and Transparency. The Bump we are allowed is all built-in, and works per prim face; we can't make custom bump maps, although there is limited ability to use image luminosity on Prims. There isn't any kind of glow, or specularity, or any of that stuff, though, except for the "full bright" and "shiny" textures, which are, once again, per prim face and not availaible for Avatars.

Holy cow. I wish i had seen this weeks ago. Thanks!

Having had to resort to cover an arm in prims before for a different-colored sleeve on a comissioned project (the templates only have one arm used for both the left and right sides), I *really* don't recomend it unless you have no other workable alternitive like I did. It's *extremely* finiky, especialy around joints, and what looks good to you might look like crap to someone else because they're looking at it at a different angle or a lower level of detail (either from their distance, or their graphics settings, both of which change things like how the client renders curved surfaces).

You can work around the single arm limitation by using two clothing layers. Have one sleave on the undershirt or jacket layer. Depending on how generalized texture layers gets implemented, we may be able to use two textures for a single garment. I have no clue if that'll actually be possible but it would sure solve the single arm problem.

I thought about that but I couldn't think of a way it would actualy work. Care to elucidate?

Yes, Chip, how? It would work easily if we could make one arm transparent, but since we can't, I don't understand.

Please explain.

Logically, I don't think there is a way to make right and left arms different without prims. A one armed man standing next to a mirror is still a one armed man.