Creating custom skins

Hi I'm looking for some advice and tutorials about making skins. I have found lots of info on prims and making hair and shoes and t shirts but so far no solid advice about where to start with making custom skins. Can anyone point me a a corner of this massive site where I can get some advice or even to an external website.

Please forgive me if this question has been posted in the recent past .

Thanks in advance

^L^

This was pointed out to me after I had just well pretty much done it by trial and error.

/109/ce/78104/1.html

I haven't looked at it though

Also get all the templates here the ones for skins there are some templates that show that mapping here

I started just by putting in a solid skin tone colour just cause i was totally unsure of where to start

I then went and fished out the greyscale files in the character folder (I think it was called that) in the actual secondlife program. there is a default set. I put those under the skin tone and saw what it did

Then it all kind of fell into place


I found a few tutorials on the net on how to shade and make various "marks" on skin and I just went from there


I hope that helps a bit basicaly its a lot of shadding and stuff. I also broke a mouse trying to make the beard and body hair so that will give you an idea of how much drawing I did for detail in it.

I now have after wearing out a mouse making a skin have decided its time to go buy a tablet. ^^

Is that grey scale available online anywhere?

I'm at5 work and dont have SL installed...

if you use photoshop look for free brushes that are created for making hair and beards and such

will save you a ton of time

here is what i have learned.

get the templates from the sl website's downloads sections.

you need to know how to use photoshop/gimp/paintshop pro, whichever software you are comfortable with. you need to understand, among the basics, layers and, to be a good skin creator, you need to understand colors and all that goes with that. i suck at that.

as this is the only way i know how to do it, you need to get daz3d (www.daz3d.com). it's in mac or windows. u need to learn how to work that program.

then you will create your skin in your graphics program, try it on over and over on an avatar in daz3d to adjust it to make sure the eyes are in the right place, etc., etc., then when u finally have it all perfect, u will upload it as a regular texture.

then you go to Create/Body Part/New Skin. you will choose he texture you created as well as some other options (like you get when uploading animations). it will cost you L$10.

if all goes well, u have a skin.

it took me over a year to figure all this out and i am not sure it's totally accurate. however, i believe in sharing! if you make a million lindens, remember me!

Just want to point out, a simpler option is a sticky at the top of this forum, the SL Clothes Previewer. The name refers to clothes, but the point is you can apply textures onto an avatar to test while working.

alas, i believe the software listed before this is only for windoze. mac & linux people are out. daz3d is free and works on all platforms. maybe not linux . . .

also i don't know if the clothing painter can move the character around in real time and/or a bvh file to see how it works while moving!

anyhoo! whatever works!

"Just want to point out, a simpler option is a sticky at the top of this forum, the SL Clothes Previewer. The name refers to clothes, but the point is you can apply textures onto an avatar to test while working"

yeah the free 3d viewer is something I use for everything. YOu can spin the model and zoom him in and out etc. Its just the SL 3D character rendered and very easy to use not to mention price is right

The only issue I had with it with skins was the lighting that you see ingame was not available this is the only situation where I had to upload to Second Life to see how the light fell on it. When I do clothing I dont seem to have this problem I can do huge chunks of work and upload maybe 3 or 4 times max with the skin I was uploading more often because of the effects the sun has on the skin. I had taken photos of the skin UV plates posted on the forum but I found it still left me wondering how it all looked so I uploaded a lot. It was also my first skin so this likely had an influence on the number of uploads.

Most of the stuff in second life has me worrying about the mechanics behind it like lighting and all the little secrets but the actualy drawing part is never the problem once I get over that hurdle I no longer feel like I am using Pandora's box

thank everyone for some fabulous tips I've spent a lot of time getting to grips with what's involved creating all sorts of things here in SL and skins seems to be the biggest mystery of all. So it comes as absolutely no surprise that some have taken as long as year to figure it out. I'm very conversant with photoshop so no problem there but I stuggle with terminology and jargon and find screen shots showing step by steps very useful, that way I know what I should be aiming for at each stage...if anyone knows where I can see a screen shot of a rendered skin applied to a template just before it about to be uploaded please let me know where I'll be eternally grateful, . That way I can look study and work it out from there.

The one key thing I have learnt here in SL that is an essential tool is 'patience'

hehe just have to dig around in this forum but this was posted awhile back

/109/fa/176595/1.html

its german but a couple of us went and registered and its safe. I dont speak german but it was easy enough to guess as its using a standard phpBB script just the german version.

Someone made 3 templates there so its good ifyour trying to understand (again this came after I had figured it out hehe)

Basically its just what is on the UV skin templates pinned up at the top of the forum only in skin tone and such ^^

good luck

If people are looking for skin examples, I have this to contribute (just the head). No one seemed interested in having any fun with it as a metaskinning project in the gallery section, so maybe people can make use of it here as an example to study technique. It's not a typical skin - more like HR Giger meets the Tin Man - but is still a good example of the distortion and seem blending techniques I use on all my other skins.

Lighting inside SL is something to pay close attention to. It is much harsher than Johan's SLCP. I use SLCP to work out most of the seam issues, then switch to SL to do final testing (there are several ways to test skins inside SL without dropping L$10, beta grid, for one) I tend to flip between "Force Sunset" and "Force Sunrise" quite a bit to obtain the full gamut of how the skin reacts to most lighting conditions. "Force Noon" makes everything look like crap, so if your skin looks good under that light, you're golden.

lasher, sure, i can do screenshots for you! today (monday) i am a bit busy until this evening but i will make u some. either IM me in world or send me an email via the forum and we can arrange a time to do it live (i have a little software app that u can look at my screen in real time) or i will send u the pics.

".if anyone knows where I can see a screen shot of a rendered skin applied to a template just before it about to be uploaded please let me know where I'll be eternally grateful, . That way I can look study and work it out from there".