Help with Customized Avatar Skins

I am a researcher and would like several customized skins. They are very simple needs, but I am not sure how to do the things I need. I am considering doing the work myself, but if it isnot terribly expensive I perhaps I should find someone to create them for me? Any suggestions would be wonderful.

If you are considering creating the skins yourself, this is the right place to pick up information, tips, and tricks. Most of the information can be gotten from the stickies at the top of this forum, but there are a few gems to be found amongst the other posts, like this one:

/109/e1/246059/1.html

Depending upon your knowledge of graphics software, this can seem enlightening, or nightmarishly difficult. All in all, the work involved in creating custom skins is NOT EASY for anyone. That is why they sell for a premium in world.

If you're looking to hire someone to do the work for you the "Products Wanted" forum is where you need to post requests. Just so you are not surprised by sticker shock, any kind of custom one-off texture work is going to COST. You're talking about paying a graphics professional US$30-40/hr for 10-100 hours of work for a complete skin.

There are alternatives. Avatar Island has some less costly, less complete alternatives, but you will still need to do a lot of tweaking of the textures yourself.

I am afriad it may be simpliar to have someone else do it.

I only need some scars on specific body parts (arms, legs and wrists) and some weight specific features.

Can you buy a skin that is for only an arm or a leg?

Do you need to buy a whole avatar skin?

How hard would it be to take a general avatar and add some scars to lets say the writst or make the avatar very over weight or very thin?

Scars are simpler to do. They still need to have a specific pigmentation range, though.

99% of the time, no you won't find partial skins for sale unless they are for somthing very specific. There is only one arm texture applied to the avatar too. Any texture you apply to the right arm will show up on the left. That makes some things difficult. Legs have independent symmetries above the ankles, but the feet suffer the same problem as the arms.

Drawing scars on the avatar is much easier than a whole skin (likely no seam spanning). Weight details would probably be as hard as building an entire skin. That gets into global shading and skin folds. Most skins are designed around specific slider shape settings in mind, and a very skinny or obese avatar would definately need to be designed with a specific skin/shape combination in mind.

It boils down to how much realism you are looking for. The default avatar skin looks a lot like Fimo clay. A photo sourced avatar skin and shape combination will look much more life like.

Wow, it does sound complicated. Maybe I should look for someone.

I am quite good with PS, but time is not on my side right now.

You certainly don't want to be learing something new on a deadline! General PS graphics skills don't usually cover the same skills you need for skinning and shape design unless you come from an illustration/life drawing background.

I would head on over to the "Products Wanted" forum and be very specific in desribing what you want to do.