Tutorial on Skin making?

I would like to take a stab at making a skin of my own. I was wondering if there were any simple getting started tutorials out there or an example psd? The one from the linden labs site has me confused. In the linden labs version of the head the alpha channel only reveals some of the face and does not cover the eyes, but does cover the teeth. I am not sure this is correct. Any help would be greatly appeciated and save me multiple test image uploads

The head texture includes the teeth and mouth interior but it doesn't include the eyes. That's correct. Eyes are textured seperately. The only part of the head texture that needs to be transparent is the upper right corner. That's where the eyelashes are. If you have the upper right corner opaque you'll end up coloring the eyelash polygons. For exact placement of the eyelashes refer to the head_alpha.tga file in the SL character folder (c:\program files\secondlife\character) or the alternate templates by myself or Robin Sojourner (you can find links to them in the sticky thread of links at the top of this forum). Hope that helps

Thanks Chip! I like your template better than the one on the second life site. One question: I assume you add these textures as tattoos. I did a face but it seems fuzzy and distorted. What are the steps after i upload my texture. The texture needs to be 512 as well right?

After you upload your head texture all you need to do is drop it into the correct tattoo slot on a skin. 512x512 is the recommended texture size. If it appears fuzzy or distorted you might not have the details in the right places on the template. It can take a bit of practice to figure out how best to create head textures so they look sharp on a skin.

thanks again I will keep playing with it. Is there a good tool to use to test textures out of game?

I gotta agree. Chip, your templates are amazing. Thank you.

I do have a q for ya, if y'wouldn't mind...

Any advice on nice smooth seams for skins? I've tried rubberstamping and copypasting and a bunch of stuff, I just can't seem to get it quite right. Maybe I'm being to critical of myself, but there always seams to be a seem... I mean seems to be a seam...

Thanks in advance

The best way to handle seams is to have the detail subtly fade out at either side of it so you're matching as much solid color as possible. That method works best for doing the hand painted more stylized look since you can get away with less detail. If you're doing high detail work across seams then it becomes a matter of using a 3d paint program so you can paint right on the model (and across seams) or just bouncing back and forth between photoshop and however you're previewing. Use the template grid to get your details in the ballpark, then preview, tweak, preview, tweak, until you've nudged one side into position (I like to use the liquify filter to nudge details around).

The two most popular methods for offline previewing are DAZ Studio or Tattoo (a shareware 3d paint app).

Hi, I have downloaded DAZ Studio but I cannot see how to:

a) import a targa texture map (eg head tattoo) onto the default Victoria model
b) export from the Victoria model to a SL head tattoo format

I am new to this so have I completely got the wrong end of the stick from reading the above posts?

I'm actually trying to put my own face onto my SL avatar, using Chris' very kindly created PSD templates, but its going horribly wrong so I was hoping that DAZ Studio would help me here but clearly you need some advanced training in order to operate it.

I was hoping there would be a tutorial somewhere available for using DAZ with particular reference to SL avatar texture maps.

Many thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

Milga