Why do I look bad?

I just plunked down what to me is some serious lindens to get a set of skins. I tried on the demos, several in fact, and kept coming back to this one. Now, in appearance editing mode I can get it looking pretty good except the chin seems impossible (we're really talking face/head here) but when I exit that I look like I'm coming off a four-day bender! My eyes have shadows, I look angular and frankly dirty. What's going on? Is the lighting in the editing mode different? Would it be worth it to contact the seller and asking what the slider settings were used to create it? I'm polishing the first of several avatars I'd like to have and I'm a little concerned.

I think the lighting while in edit mode is a little different, yes. However, you still should be able to get the look you want. Make sure to move the camera around constantly while adjusting the sliders. What looks seemingly good from one angle can look terrible from another.

Rendering 3D geometry on a 2D screen is inherently flawed that way. The only way to make up for it is perpetual repositioning of the camera. Otherwise, all you're really seeing is a 2D image, which can be hiding a lot.

It helps, by the way, to have automatic camera movement turned off in your SL preferences. Also, don't be afraid to adjust the lighting while working, to see how your av looks under different conditions. You can move the sun via the World menu.

When you get out of editing appearance, try forcing sun to sunrise or sunset. Avatars look their worst under noon sun.

I had the same as the ts. Faces do look different in appearance and in real sl. When I trimmed down (in appearance) all the features that make faces interesting such as aging bags under the eyes, then I looked better. Not much better, but better. You'd better not be old in SL or you're screwed.

Does the position of the sun, nearby lights, etc., affect the baked texture the appearance editor produces?

When you go into appearance mode your avatar is lighted differently. Try going into appearance mode when the region is dark and you'll notice it. I don't think the time of day affects the baking process. Sylvia is right when she says that avatars don't look good right at noon with the sun directly above. The sun is always moving around so that unfortunate time of day doesn't last very long.

The short answer to your thread question is, "Because you're ugly".

Hmm, maybe try using a posing stand? Posing stands make ur avatar stand perfectly still so you can edit the avatar and the things it is wearing easily. If you need one I will send you one.

Thanks for all the info! I'll give myself some more tweaking and try different light.

Paulo: That's so true. Part of what I was doing was trying to keep from looking so young but maybe I'll just give in. I'm clearly an adult at least. My other av will hopefully look more experienced.

What is baking, anyway?

Daisy: =:0 You didn't say that! My momma says I'm handsome!

Gaybot: Thanks for the offer, but I have a posing stand I picked up during orientation. (Where I learned everything I thought I could except that there's sooooo much to learn!)

You'll find you'll have much better luck putting the aged look you're going for into skin textures than into the avatar geometry itself (the slider settings). The avatar model is extremely low-poly, which is 3D speak for "not detailed". The reason for that depends on who you ask. The cynical explanation is that the person who built the thing in the first place did a half assed job on it. The forced positive answer is that if it had more polygons in it, it would be much harder for lower end computers to use it, so it's a good thing that it looks so bad.

To compensate for the lack of geometric detail in the avatar 3D mesh, skin makers in SL have gotten quite adept at faking detail with clever texturing. By computer standards, it's an ancient technique, dating back to the days when all models in games and other real time applications were low poly. It works quite well with a good texture artist at the helm.


Baking is the process by which lighting, shadows, and other elements are combined into one texture or set of textures. In the context that Suzanne mentioned it, she was referrig to how SL combines all your various clothing and skin layers into one set of three textures on the avatar.

Were you actually to be carrying around all those layers as individual textures, your avatar would be consuming enormous quantities of texture memory (jacket, shirt, & pants, plus socks, underwear, gloves & shoes, plus skin, times 512x512 for each equals one hell of a lot of pixels). So, every time you exit appearance mode, your SL client takes all those layers and flattens them into just three textures (head, upper body, and lower body), so the amount of pixels involved, and subsequently the amount of texture memory required to keep track of them, is minimal.


Uh, isn't that exactly what Cher told her son in Mask?

Thanks for the baking explanation. It makes a lot of sense. I'll stop waiting for a cookie to pop out of the CD drive. Under what conditions does one need to rebake? I was trying it after running across a mention of it while looking for insight into my dilemma before I came to the forums.

Momma doesn't look like Cher, either. And she'd know I was fibbing if I told her so.

Rebake whenever the following happens:
1. You or someone else says, "you're wearing that white sweater/pants with the 'TEXTURE MISSING' words all over it." After a minute, that should go away. If it doesn't a rebake is in order.
2. You notice that things you wear are in the wrong place. Recently, I had multiple nipples all over my legs. And another time, the ruby red color of a ring I was wearing showed up all over my body...looked like the SL world's worst sun burn!
A friend of mine had BLACK appear on his body. Pitch black, smears of black all over...they moved up his legs and slowly engulfed him--just like in that horror movie that I'll never watch alone.

So there's two or three ways to 'rebake'.
1. Easiest to explain is "Go into Appearance Edit, change your shirt (or make any simple, visible change) and SAVE and Exit'. This will cause the multiple texture layers to be flattened into a 3 part texture (head, upper and lower body).
2. There's a MENU item in CLIENT menu Called 'Rebake Textures'. (to get the CLIENT menu, you activate Debug mode with CTRL+ALT+D or CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+D, I forget which)
3. There's a Prim object I've seen that will cause a Rebake if you Sit on it in world. I carry one in my inventory...Drop it and Sit as Needed.