Skins: Can They be Too Real?

Yeah, ditto. Those are spectacular, Namssor. You need to tell Zhan and Vince to take those rolled up socks out of their shorts though.

Lana, I'm having some serious network/ISP issues and can't do anything in SL right now. I hope to have it sorted later this week.

I made my own skin using photos of my real face. It turned out pretty well I think:


I mean, it isn't recognizable as my face, mostly because everything else about my av (hair, eye color, etc.) is nothing like me, but it turned out fairly well I think in a manner that reflects on this discussion. While I used photographs of myself as a base for the texture, I wasn't going for photorealism and I avoided it looking creepy because it was too real. I'm not sure how I would feel if my av totally looked like a photo.

I think the level of "eek factor" that some people get from super photo-realistic skins is related to how well it's implemented on the skin itself. High detail photo textures plastered on a color base with very little detail does indeed look eerie. Likewise, so does matched detail if the tone and/or shading is off. I've also seen some skin makers do great work, but forget the zoom factor. Skin grain and imperfections dark enough to be noticible at >5m look like blotchy omg wtf at 1m. When I was making my own skin (out of frustration at not finding just what I wanted inworld), I had a helluva time getting the photosourced skin grain toned down enough to pass the zoom factor test.

Soji.........you are not wrong.

In fact.......you are right.

So at the risk of spamming this thread........... to please Soji's sense of versimilitude,
here is a snap without funky hands.



For those that dont care for realistic skins......um........ fine.......thats ok , I get it.

For those that do, I have been banging the drum for Second Skin Labs for ages....... of course it wont be to everyone's tastes.......that is a given.
But the quality of Namssor's work is utterly magnificent.

Chip's Afro skins are also stupendous. I have a thespian alt who uses one.

True. But on a more simplistic note, one gets pretty significant 'eek' by having one or two facial features that are slightly exaggerated.

I love Nika's face, with its slightly anime eyes and wide mouth. She was designed to look welcoming, and it works for me, lol. However, she really cannot wear photoreal skins. I wonder if, as LL strives to drive the graphics more and more toward realism, all the painted skins will come to look cartoonish in time. And then human AV faces will all have to be realistically proportioned.

I hope that never happens. Not just for Nika's sake, but because I love the magical element to SL. I like being slightly unreal ... if humans in SL are forced to become completely realistic, well, that may be my cue to finally go completely abstract.

Not to say I don't love the realistic AVs ... I'm fascinated by them. I'll be going to SL Shakespeare productions from now on, if for no other reason than to see the AVs. (That's relevant because IC Skins, which made the Matt Damon AV Soji bought because of my whining [I still feel guilty about that, Soji!!], makes photoreal and painted skins for SL Shakespeare productions.)

Altho, again, I love the unreal factor to SL. If I were to write theatre scripts for SL (and it is tempting), SL would be the only place they could be performed, and the audience would have to know SL. SL enables such wonderful visual metaphors, as well as a level of genderplay, role inversion, and ephemeral dreaminess well beyond that which Shakespeare had available

Look at the shading on the neck, Ord.

Sssshh, the subliminal advertizing only works if you don't point at it.

You have green hair?

Umm. . .I kind of like me.

SO. . .something that seems unusual in SL. . .I've modeled myself as a slightly cooler, slightly taller version of myself. Sometimes I even wear glasses. In SL I'm taller than I am in RL, but I'm STILL short and stout by SL standards.

One of the most expensive things I bought when I first got here was a custom photorealistic face. I kind of like it. The designer made it sort of "in between" real and cartoony, and it works for me.

That being said--I don't like the way smiles and most emotion animations look on it. Those are VERY creepy.

Soon after I did that, a friend paid a lot of money, and uploaded a LOT pictures of her body, to have a full photorealistic body skin. You could even see beauty marks and veins in places if you cared to look. It was interesting in a technical way, but went a little too far.

I'd be more than willing to hire someone to do a custom avatar of me..but I guess i really don't like me in rl.

I'd be bothering the creator to change this or that.."Oh not the lines under my eyes..not the lines!!".."I dont want my nose that big in SL!!"

Those are great Male skins..I have a friend I'm taking shopping soon for a new male skin..perhaps i'll drop by that store. Oh and Chip..just a suggestion. I've taken several african american friends to your store and ultimately they tell me your skins are "too dark".

While the skins in and of themselves are spectacular..alot of Afro Americans are lighter in tone. (your'e prolly working on some)) Just a suggestion..I was forced to go to another less realistic skin vendor and buy something lighter. ((oh and your female afro american skins cover the gambit light to dark))

~Lana Tomba

...as L$1000 if Nambucks purchased this time last year will attest..

Strictly I'm waiting for an Evie in a skintone that suits me... the current pale is too dark and slightly too orange, but suits a good friend of mine to a tee. The GX1 was tintable, and the base I wear underneath is completely white; yet it's still the darkest skin I wear.

No, I'm not a goth... I just don do tan.. *shrugs*

No offense, but I don't think that pic does Starley's skins justice. One of mine:

I'll definitely expand the selection at some point. Winter is usually when I have time to work on SL stuff but RL work just hasn't let up this year. I figure by about the year 3087 I'll have something to suit everyone's individual tastes.

Didn't mean to offend ..sorry. Of your afro american male skin choices you have black black and blacker . Good luck.
~Lana Tomba

Trying my first Flikr to show my skin -- Sun Kissed-Mod Lips I-Shale by Gala Phoenix



I think that's cartoonish but in a pleasant way.
It's as realistic as I need to be.

Edit: But not inline like my test in another thread..

Edit.2: Duh! How did I manage to leave in that "?v-0 at the end??. Try without:-

Chip has gone through most of the good licensed reference material for black males and females. They are very dark because the model reference materials are just as dark. This is one reason the selection of photo referenced black skins in SL is what it is. Some of the lighter skins can be made darker to a lesser degree, but the color gamut gets clipped on anything that is high contrast, and that destroys the look of realism. Thus, it is extremely difficult to modify mid range skin tones to look realisticly black, and likewise, hard to push detail out of very dark skins without compromising other areas of the skin that have destinctive highlights. It's much easier to start from scratch on a well lit skin reference and keep the original skin color than it is to push the color gamut through hand edting (especially over seams) up to the point of crossing the line between a realistic looking skin tone and a wrong looking skin tone.

Evie was referenced from a Latino model, so my next paler female skin will come from a much lighter skinned photo reference. Over all, Evie had a very forgiving color gamut, unlike some of my male skins. I was quite surprised I was able to get the number of skin color variations out of her that I did.

Thankyou for explaining that to me..While not a novice when it comes to making textures and tweaking them to suit my needs..I figured that the highlights and dark reference material and lack of more midranged tones had something to with it. I'm really quite surprised that there isn't more licensed reference material out there.

Has anyone considered buying licensed reference material from..say Poser? I'm not quite for sure what the copyright is on skin packs they sell..but i know i've seen many mid ranged tones on various Poser sites.((maybe thats a no no?...maybe you guys are painting from scratch?)) ..I really don't know but really do appreciate the thoughtful and educational response.

~Lana Tomba

Her shape is different, Ann, and so is the tone of her skin. Yours is very fair and may well be said to not do Starley's skin any justice either. Just saying.

I'm aware of that. It was just another example.

As I said, *I* don't think the pic does it justice...my opinion.

No, you're right, Ann, that pic wasn't a flattering representation of the Vogue skin - especially underneath the dinosaur hair. I was just comparing it to the demo I was trying on - god, you know how awful skin shopping is.

This one is better of my Vogue self.

and an attempt to compare to my new Sunkissed skin by Chip Midnight. Your results may vary!

lol no I said I DON'T have green hair. What I was getting at was that, while my skin was created using photos of myself, my av isn't realistic.

I think you mean "sites that sell textures for use with Poser" (like DAZ and Rederosity), not "from Poser" (which is not a vendor, but an application). Poser skins are the wrong kind of reference material to be using for skin design in SL. Besides it being illegal to use the raw textures for resale, they are already tweaked for different UVW's, lighting, and rendering engines, making them a very poor choice of skin reference for SL. Also, just about every single one of those Poser skin textures were created from the same licensed high rez LIVE MODEL photo references that Chip, myself, and most other skin artists pull from. We all use the same or very similar techniques and resources when designing skins from photo reference. There are literally just a handfull of places supplying the 3D graphics industry with good quality licensed 3D modeling reference at reasonable prices. It's been this way for far longer than SL has been around, so it will probably not change any time soon.

The cyborg IS the cg artist.

Realism of CG--the uncanny valley--SL avatars.

No matter how 'photo real' a skin is doesn't mean you're achieving true 'realism'--What matters is the way it receives light and color, reflects light and color, casts and receives soft-shadows and self-shadowing, and has sub surface scattering...those are the things that make something look truly real.

Second Life can't do most of those necessary things...SL relies mainly on the diffuse texture map...and that's it. In CGI, the creation of a realistic human implements all the things I listed above...and those things can only be done in unison when it's pre-rendered.

Just using a photo real diffuse texture doesn't create realism...

My point being--skins in SL can't be too real (ie. uncanny valley danger zone)--SL's graphical engine can't do near enough of the CG elements needed to produce something truly 'realistic.'


ps. The Soreal shop by creator Kwamey Pinion, has some fantastic realistic skins--especially black males and females. Similar to Chips.

Also, Very Important Pixels by cartboy Kitchensink has some excellent realistic sculptie faces that talk when you type or voice--however, they are only masks at the moment...

Ya, Chip and Namssor, you guys have some great work.