Trouble with Skin Tones

I think one of the biggest problems within Second Life is creating or purchasing a skin with a skin tone that looks half decent.
As a buyer I have purchased skins from reputable sellers that were far too yellow (making me look like a wooden puppet) , way too orange (so my avatar looks like it had a fight with a fake tan spray booth) , or just too white and freaky looking!
I find as I am creating my own skin , I have managed to nail the texture itself (skin grain..etc) after many sleepless nights of trying to fight what I like to call 'The Corned Beef Effect' (when your skin texture looks blotchy with a strange grain and the said avatar resembling corned beef) get the shadings and drawings the way I like , create great make-ups but the one thing I can not get right is the actual skin colour.
I have viewed pics of real life people to try to create realistic skin colouring , looked at pics of other peoples SL skins and even found swatches of skin tones on the internet and everytime I go to preview my new skin colouring , its always either too yellow , too orange , or too white!

Does anyone have any tips or stories of how they perfected or got to a stage that they were happy with the skin tones they created , i have spent at least a week on just the colouring itself trying to get them just right.
I appreciate any help that anyone has to offer!

When I first started making skins (back when there weren't any and everyone just used the system skin) what drove me to do it was that the tinting on the default skin is so oversaturated that it made everyone look like they'd been freshly dipped in wax. It seems a lot of skin makers make the same mistake - they make their skin colors way too saturated. That's what gives so many of them that "tan in a can" look. If it seems you can't get your skintones looking natural, try backing out some of the saturation.

Tried using personal lights? My skin looks wierd on my comp because im too lazy to activate that effect but look normal on my laptop with lights and effect enabled ;P

Also try twirking your graphic options

I've found that tweaking my graphic options (under Windlight) to eliminate 99% of shadow, color tinting (from the Sun and Moon), and washout from intense lighting/gamma settings helps bring the baked textures close to what my image editor (Photoshop) outputs. I see it as calibrating the SL client to match my software and monitor specs. It's not exact, but it really, really helps make sure I'm not off in left field some place with my skin tones.

It's inevitable that other people will run different clients, hardware, and settings from mine, but if they are relying on Windlight, face lights, or other settings to alter the color and contrast of the base texture, they should expect the skin to look different from what is shown in my advertising snapshot. That's what demos are for.

I'll also add that I have seen some skins that grossly or unevenly exaggerate the highlights and shadows of musculature and facial features, contributing to an over saturated transition between shadow and highlight. I can appreciate a stylized approach that evenly treats the avatar in a more painterly fashion, but that look can fall apart if the textures, for example, have fantastic rippling muscles down the front and inconsistent musculature on the back and sides (where the seams meet). The hue may be spot-on, but the treatment of the details can make or break the believability of the skin as a whole.

So far in the Windlight era I've kept my WL settings at the defaults figuring that's what the majority of people will be using. I'll likely switch to your approach of using modified settings once we get the ability to trade settings files. Then we can include them in the box with the skin.

We can already trade *.xml files inside SL. They translate into note card format just fine, but that definitely is not as convenient as instant functionality inside SL. Most people are not going to bother with the inconvenience of copying the text, drilling down to - C:\Program Files\SecondLife\app_settings\windlight\skies - to deposit the text file there, then rename the extension to .xml instead of .txt.

That gives me an idea! If anyone wants to post or send me their favorite Windlight settings (in *.xml format) for skins, or other things (like prims), I will write up a simple installer that installs all of them at once. No need to remember directory locations or change file extensions. Authorship can be recognized if the file names are unique to the author's name (i.e. Chips_perfect_skin1.xml). If it seems like a good idea, I'll start another thread with a link to the ones I already use, and periodically update the installer with new stuff from other people.

That would be very cool if you feel like tackling it. Who knows how long we'll have to wait for LL to provide that functionality. I think people would be thrilled to be able to trade settings even if not specifically for skins.

Done.

/109/ee/273733/1.html

Oh god thanks, I was start to think that was the only one that thought that WL sucks, and i mean the light that casts on the skins.

I was fighting this issue with LL, but I gave up since they seem more focused in landscapes..

Btw I will share my preset Namsor in ur post.