Yet another skin "help" question. :P

I don't expect a miracle answer to this *giggles*, I know its all time and patience, trial and error, but the question still remains: how does one make skin that looks like skin?

My time spent so far on skins has been about 6 weeks, 6+hours a day, I've taken a few days off here and there to get perspective (and read forums- hehe), to find out how else I can improve.

The Top Questions:

Has anyone else ecountered a colour change between what you've worked on out of SL to when its worn as skin?
I see the colour flatten when worn, and all the subtle shadows and highlights disappear. I've had to intensify all of my shadows and hightlights to even notice them on my avatar.

Is it ok to shift the nipple placement closer to the centre? Any attempt to keep them within the template guide makes them blur out towards the underarm. Would people notice if the nipple point on the mesh, didn't line up with the texture?

EYESHADOW HELP!!! OMG! This is my biggest nightmare to date theres not much room to move here. Eeep! I've been trying to apply real life makeup tips to the template, things like inner and outer shadow placement. Results: flat colours and baby powder again. Hehehe!
I've also noticed a "cat eye" effect on the shape of the outer corner of the eyes, not the texture applied. Is there a way to work around it? Or do most people just work with it?
Eyeliner: Fine
Eyebrows: Good enough (still tweaking colour)
Eyeshadow: seriously stuck!

I've also been through all the funny stuff. I started out looking like a flat cartoon, then overdid what I thought were hightlights that ended up looking like baby powder. The I found the Nagel skin brushes and went way over board with them (LOL).
I've used AvPainter for clothing, and must say its been a godsend for seams (crotch is still out tho *sigh*).

I am *wasting* lindens uploading to the live grid, but for now I like seeing how it moves, I like seeing it in different light, and I am bugging all my friends for their criticism.

I've been playing this game for 20+ months, and started making clothes in week two. Yes, *those* clothes are hidden away from public now, but from day one my reason for being in SL was because I could *create*, and feel proud over what I could do. I can do clothing with my eyes shut now- yay!

Skins however have their own set of issues!

I come from a traditional RL arts background, and over the last two years have taught myself how to use GIMP (and i just bought PS but am not game to touch it just yet- hehe).
My skills have improved a lot, especially over the last six months or so, thanks to you guys who post such helpful hints, tip and tricks on the forum. Chip, Chosen Few, and Robin are GODS in my eyes. A big thankyou to artists patient enough to share their time and advice on texture creation.

I know this is a common question and request, and ANY advice will be appreciated. Even if your not a texture creator, I'm open to everyones suggestions and requests at this stage. And after reading the forums over and over, NO MAKEUP options will solve my eyeshadow nightmare (giggles) but I'd still like to know how to do it!

Yes, color changes are unfortunately caused by any combination of SL's gamma settings, SL's sun/local lighting, plus whatever monitor/color calibrations/corrections your graphics application (e.g. Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, Gimp, etc...) may have. I don't really think there's an easy solution for getting your textures to match up between in-world and out-of-world. It's frustrating at first, but you sorta get used to it after a while--like you might figure out a specific range of hues, saturations, and brightnesses that works best for you.




In theory, you could put nipples where-ever you'd like--it's your skin, after all; plus it's always fun to experiment with things for your skin. A possible problem is that certain clothing may result in "wardrobe malfunctions" with a skin that has nipples in a slightly "off-center" location.




Eyeshadow's pretty tough to get right. I've attached some images (one with Chip Midnight's face texture grid) that shows an eyeshadow pattern/location that works pretty well for me. As for the flatness problem--I think sometimes throwing in a highlight/shine on top of the eyeshadow base color helps--it can make it look sorta glossy. Likewise, shadows going from the eyelid crease and fading outwards may also help prevent eyeshadow from looking flat.


Overall, I guess it's just about trial and error with skins... not much else really.

P.S. Uploading and testing your skins on the beta grid helps if you find yourself short of L$ for upload fees on the main grid.

Doesn't the SLCP (Second Life Clothes Previewer) also allow for skins? Like, it's just a texture, right? At any rate you can download that (see the sticky above) and use it for previewing. It will save you OODLES of cash.

Thankyou so much for your reply to my post Eloh, I understand skinning is one of the more difficult things to tackle, so all of your advice has been greatly welcomed.

In regards to colours, right now, I've just accepted my "pale" will now be my "goth", and I need to work on making a much darker tan. That had been my biggest WTF, so I am glad I am not the only one to notice. I'll take ur advice and accept it, not much lost in the long run.

The nipples I have shrunk, allowing them to fit within the grid, where they should be but NOW i have deformed nipples *ROFLMAO*... they are now diagonally skewed *sigh*. They are perfectly symetrical on the template!!!! GRRRR!!! Back to the drawing board as to what I did to make that happen- hehehehehe!

The eyeshadow pics have helped HEAPS, especially with the crease placement, lol- two days worth of moving mine up down up down up down out left right *giggles*.

I've been working on some pretty scaled up PSD's... 2048 was what i started painting with, at around 80mb for the head- oooops . But it occurred to me last night that was probably my issue... That I was hoping to retain all of my eyeshadow detail i had at 2048, on a 512. Thats NOT smart *lol*.
So late last night, I started my eyeshadow attempts again, on a scaled down 512 head... and i *think* i am getting it now. There really isn't many pixels to work with in such a small space, but at least if I work the same size, *hopefully* whatever I do to it, will be rendered the same in game. (please note the *hopefully*- cuz I am waiting to see what the colour issue does to my eyeshadow colour choices!).

As stated above: sleepless night number 52 *giggles* (its now 9am... i get an hour to nap!)
I tread a fine line between sanity and creativity, thank God its the weekend!

Eloh,

Would you mind telling us how to get on the beta grid?

I found some instructions somewhere on how to make SL show a menu on its start screen with the names of all available grids. I've lost the link to the instructions since then and I don't remember if the beta grid has a particular name listed on that list and what it is. I've been looking all over for this info and can't find it yet.

Thank you.

I've never heard of such a thing, and I'd probably be weary of it if I did - using the Beta grid requires downloading the Beta client, which automatically connects to the beta grid. It's in the Downloads section of the SL website.

Ah, I see.

The setting I'm talking about is a setting in the Client menu, in the Debug settings which I have forgotten which one it is. I set it some time ago and it works because it's showing a pull down menu list of all available grids - see the attached image.

The instructions I once saw somewhere to get on the beta grid were a specific program switch to use with the SL executable but it was probably a very old post and it's not effective any more.

I'll check out the beta client. Thank you very much for the help.