Skins Vs. Outfits

maybe I am not as clever as I think, but I have been searching for a good resource describing the difference between Skins and outfits and have come up dry. Could someone point to places where this is described or perhaps describe it here? How are skins prepared, who makes them? what are the advantages of knowing how to use them vs. just making outfit folders? I have found so little, I don't even know what the right questions are?

A skin is exactly that. A skin. As in birthday suit. An outfit would be the clothes (and optionally other accessories) that you wear over the skin, in fact the skin could absolutley be a part of the outfit. As far as how are skins "prepared", well they are made in the skin creators graphics program of choice (the method differs by creator, some use photosourcing, some hand painted and some use their own mixture of both.. none are trivial processes) then uploaded. I'm really not sure what you mean by "what are the advantages of knowing how to use them vs. just making outfit folders?" since skins are not a substitution for outfits (well, maybe on nudist beaches they are), though people do usually have skins *in* their outfit folders. You can find most skin creators by doing a search in world for skins.

I think perhaps you are confusing a common term from half-life/quake etc for textures...they use the term "skins" I have no idea why, but the proper term is just texture. Skins in Second Life, as mentioned, refer to something quite literal.

Thanks for the starting point - I had seen several references to skins, but no real ground point to begin looking. I will search it out inworld. Am I right in assuming that is it similar to clothing with templates and such, but is actually the skin of the Avatar that is being created? I ran into the question while doing some research on flexi-prims for clothing and in one of the threads there were several references to skins, including a step in the process where one makes saves a new "skin" folder.

Anyway thanks for the start. I am sure I can take it from here. Only other thought is if there may be forum or wiki stuff outworld that is available for reading.

Technically there's not much difference between skins and clothing. Some clothing has the option of bulking out (or further deforming the avatar mesh) like baggy shirts and pants. Both skins and clothing use the different texture areas of the same avatar mesh. Skins use all 3 (placed on the tattoo layers) and clothing uses one, both, or a fraction of the upper and lower body with the exception of the skirt which has its own mesh. Both skins and clothing embed their textures in "outfits". An outfit is a loose term to describe the type of inventory item they are. I guess the official terms are now body part for skin and clothing for all other texture layers above the skin. Shapes, hair and eyes are also considered body parts according to the current SL interface.

I guess the only reason to use a skin texture on the clothing layer would be to make a "Fat Suit" with bulky distorted flesh undulating in the wind

Skins are just the same as clothing in SL. They're just packaged differently. The same upper and lower body templates used to make clothes are used to make skins, with the addition of the head template.

The avatar has several layers of texture that get combined and baked into three final textures that get sent to everyone who can see you.

The very bottom layer is the default Linden skin that's controlled by the appearance sliders for pigment, makeups, freckles, and so on. The sliders control how the images in the "character" folder of the SL install are combined to produce the bottom layer. Some skins sold in SL replace those files so that you can still use the appearance sliders.

Above that is the tattoo layer. These are three texture slots in the skin tab in appearance where things like body tattoos and makeup tattoos can be overlayed on a default skin. Most skins that are sold in SL are actually three fully opaque textures that sit in those three tattoo texture slots and cover up the underlying default skin.

The upper and lower body have additional texture layers, for underclothes, pants and tops, socks and gloves, jackets, etc. They all use the same templates since they're all textures being applied to the avatar using the same UVW mapping.

When you exit appearance mode or change an article of clothing, the SL clients composites all those layers together to create the three textures that get sent to everyone around you (so they don't have to be sent all the individual textures).

The only real difference is how they packaged as objects in SL. By creating a shirt, or pants, or dropping textures in the tattoo slots, you're basically just assigning them to a specific layer.

Hope that helps

Chip, this is a great help, and I have created several articles of clothing, but I am having a devil of a time trying to access these "layers" to create a new skin. I am trying to create a skin with just your template overlaid on my avatar so I can see where all the UV bricks actually end up.

I have imported them as textures, but How do I create the new skin and put them on it?

I have searched a lot for this and am desparate - a step by step on creating a new skin, saving it, putting the skin textures on it would be immense. also switching from skin to skin is a little vague - if there is already a place where this is described a simple pointer would be fine

thanks.

Create a new skin:

right click the body parts folder in your inventory. Choose new body parts>new skin

Wear the new skin.

You'll see there are three sections for tattoos or similar... head, upper body, lower body. Apply your textures there.

Switching from one skin to another -

Find the skin you want to wear in your inventory, and double click on it.

It will replace whatever skin you are wearing.

You can't remove a skin, because you have to be wearing one. All you can do is replace it with another.

You can also replace a skin (or anything else you are wearing) by having the new one in an "outfit" folder (which is nothing more than an inventory folder with all the parts of an outfit in it.) Drag the folder onto your avatar, and the whole outfit (including the skin) will replace whatever you have on.

Hope this helps!

I am just starting to do skins and I find everything u post here is very help full. I am also checking out the textures you lets folks download I will keep looking for your post and answers ty for the help you give.

Thanks, Shemaplay

You must be talking about RL...

I am not sure if I want to be "undulating" in SL also, when I do it in RL so well

Not in RL for me (whew!), but I have tested some custom distorted skins out in SL. It is possible to control the amount of distortion through alpha channels since the clothing sliders respond accordingly to varying degrees of transparency. You put a skin on the usual tattoo layer and map another version of the skin (with transparent portions) over that on a shirt or pants layer and voila, you get a custom distortion that would otherwise be impossible to achieve using just the SL sliders. Of course, now you're naked with very few options for clothing yourself except for a jacket and skirt. You could make a nice trench coat and become a SL flasher.

If I understand what Valradika wants to know (and if not then it's going to become my own question ), it's how to create a skin that has your own texture mapped on it, but directly on the skin layer, not on the tattoo one. Chip's explanation clarified the different layers, but although I guess everyone could live with a skin on the tattoo layer, it seems more appealing (for modifications and adding tattoos for instance), to have it on the skin layer.

Are those files stored on your hard drive locally, and sent over the network for others to see on your avatar by any chance?

If so, would it be revealing a big secret to tell us where those files lay ?

Thanks anyway for the explanations. As of today I know that I'm not dumber than most to try and map skins on the tattoo layer - the only way I could find. Thanks Chris for the comfort .

Yes.

Chip already pointed you in the right direction. A typical SL install points to this folder - C:\Program Files\SecondLife\character. Mac installs are a little different (stored in packets). There you will find all the TGA files shared by the client and servers to build (bake) avatar textures for SL.

Oh right, my bad - and thanks for pointing that out.