Skin Tutorial.

I don't want to do a whole skin, but just the make up on my face I have seen it done once before. The only thing the example came with lipstick and eye shadow . I want just to make smokey eye effect and and have natural lips. I know I am going to need to make it a texture to add as a tatoo. I already have used alpha channels many times before with my job. But I never worked with textures for 3D applications, so what size do I set up my image area (pixels please) and what is the best format from Photoshop (before CS) to save the texture as to bring it into SL?

Yeah I a noobie and proud of it.
If you can help me just let me know. Feel free to IM me on SL with the Specs.

PS. Is there a template on where the eyes, nose, cheeks, and lips are located in the image area so that when it set it up its not too way off from the features of the face?

Thanks.

Hi Nyx. All the available templates (LL's, mine, and Robin's) show the lips and eyebrow locations (and the rest of the anatomical features). You should also dig through the files in the Character folder in your SL install. There's a lot of useful stuff in there including the masks used by the default skin for makeup, eyebrows, and the like. Skin textures should be 512x512. Namssor also has a downloadable kit for doing makeup easily in PS. You can find a link to it in the sticky thread at the top of this forum.

Just thought I'd mention that my makeup kit now has an official download home at secondskinlabs.com under "Links/Downloads" on the main menu there.

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I'm a bit confused by the alphas in the character folder when it comes to skins.. How are the THREE alphas for each texture to be used? I mean, there are a shading_alpha, highlights_alpha and head_alpha. How does those apply to making a skin texture?

Think of those textures simply as very rough guides for placing the anatomical details of the human form onto the templates. You're much better off using real human models as reference for translating the highlight and shadow details onto a skin.

Ok.. So I can just skip them and make a skin texture without taking any notice of them..

Yep, they're there if you want to refer to them, but you don't really need them.