how to make eyeballs

if one had to make make-up, would they paint onto the head template - and create an alpha channel around the make up for transparancy, and then wear that over their skin?

And what about eyeballs, the iris, on the head template the eyeball area is blank...

Thank you

Eyes have their own template. Just a simple square texture with the iris centered in it. One quirk - it's rotated 90 degrees. So a set of cat eyes with a vertical slit has a horizontal slit when you look at the texture. Unless you're doing lots of close-up photography, anything over 256 x 256 on eyes is a waste of bandwidth.

Makeup is usually built into a skin. You can make a makeup that is transparent behind it, using the head template, so the default slider-controlled skin shows below the makeup. But most people who want makeup also want a better skin than what the appearance sliders give you, and so the "tattoo layer" slots for the head, torso and legs will already be used for the skin that they bought. So a vendor like Celestial Studios might provide a skin with 4 head variations, each with different makeup, all of which blend seamlessly into the body skin.

Hi ceera, thanks for that, i found the eye template, but where do i preview my eye? The pop up window previewer in SL only has the head option - and doesnt show the eyes... Would i have to use another program such as poser for this?

There really isn't an "eye preview", per se. Go to the beta test grid, upload the texture there, and apply it to a new set of eyes in the Appearance controls, for an eye preview that costs nothing.

And no, Poser would be pretty useless for previewing eyes. I don't think the poser-compatable avatar can even display SL eyes.

To preview eyes inside SL without uploading:

1. Create a new eye body part and insert a 100% transparent texture into it's texture box. Wear the eyes.

2. Access your client side character folder and save your custom eye texture over the file named "eyewhite.tga". Make sure the size is 256x256 and that the TGA file is 24 bit.

3. Select Client/Rebake Textures in the SL client menu and watch your custom eye appear on your avatar for previewing.

NOTE: Save copies of the original files in your client character folder before changing them so you can revert back to the original settings.

thanks for this, i will try that sometime during the week,

much appreciated.
s

Where is it, Namssor?

It's been a while, and I'm not logged into Sl at the moment, but you need to first access the client menu. It used to be called "Debug" and was hidden by default. <Ctrl + ALt + D> needed to be pressed to show it. Once the "Client" menu is visible you navigate to Client/Character/Rebake Textures.

Someone please correct me if I have gottten any of this wrong. I do this so frequently that I no longer pay attention to the names in the menu and pretty much function on auto pilot when doing this. I can recheck once I have a chance to log in.

There is also another method:

Hit <Ctrl P> and toggle between enabling and disabling anisotropic filtering. This will force a rebake too.