Linden Body Freckles through your SL Skin + Another mod - here is how

This may be a temporary hack or bug by LL i am not sure. I do know from playing around that it does not work with the face. If someone else can figure that out, please post it.


You will be modifying these files:

located here: C:\Program Files (x86)\GreenLife Emerald Viewer\character
** The name of your SL viewer will be in place of "GreenLife Emerald Viewer"

- bodyfreckles_alpha.tga
- upperbodyfreckles_alpha.tga

*** Make a back up of these files before modifying them!

All i did was:

1. Open the 'freckle' files using Photoshop or Gimp ( i used Gimp)

2. Increase Brightness by however you see fit after testing - I used max because i was using an African ethnic skin so the freckles were only showing through sufficiently with brightness set to max on all the files.

3. Save as a TGA, single 8-bit sorted grayscale channel, and its size will be roughly 150K (uncompressed will be around 256) [Thanks to Viktoria D.]

This modification will allow you to turn on your Linden freckles in the appearance menu and have them show in SL through an SL based skin (the kind you buy and wear in world). The only problem is this mod does not affect the face, only the upper and lower body.

Also - You may notice inside that 'character' folder 3 files: head_color, upperbody_color, lowerbody_color. Those are the default "Linden skin" files. If you own a Eloh or Sezmra or the textures for your skin, you can actually save your textured skin into the character folder and replace the 3 files i just mentioned. SL will display your skin to everyone around you - and an added bonus is that you will be able to use the Linden freckles over your entire body/face. You can also update your skin client side whenever you choose and free up the appearance window skin slots allowing you to upload alpha'd makups for quick changes (like i do). Just a tip for the intrepid modder/skin fanatic.


** Again, all of the above modifications will be displayed to everyone around you in SL as any regular skin. These are not mods that only you can see.


Any questions or problems, just ask.

I am using GreenLife Emerald viewer and have tried this with: Rainbow/Cool viewer, Snowglobe, Second Life standard, and Meerkat (Meerkat did something weird).

There was a short discussion on the freckle files here: /109/84/333031/1.html

Hmm. Maybe it would be easier (in the long run) to pull those masks right into PS and apply them directly to the skin? It would not be adjustable on the fly, but it might be a little more future proof.

Oh, you must thing i know Photoshop-Gimp-Fu.

I went tinkering with that stuff because i am a skin fanatic that had a weird hunch that i could make my freckles darker but only after i had seen those files when i accidentally selected an opened them. Turns out i was right.

Will you ever see a Brian Dawson mod again for SL? LOL ~never~

<- 1 trick horse - remember (and most of us are lucky to even get that!)