Olila’s Second Life - Tutorials & Diary Diary & Tutorials

Weather you are buying skin or clothes, working on your shape or CREATING clothes, primhair or skins in Second Life - it can be really useful to have a clue about some issues regarding how things around the naked avatar works.

NOTE! The appearance of your avatar can be changed in “Appearance mode”. Rightclick on your avatar and choose ‘Appearance’.

For this tutorial I’m going to use Ruth as an example - thats what the default SL-avatar is called. Actually this isn’t Ruth… Her looks were too bad, for my taste! Think this is the default ‘Female Shape’ look or something - but lets call her Ruth, ok!

 To the left: Naked Ruth!

NOO! It’s not naked me! It’s naked RUTH!!

1. SKIN (Appearance mode/Body Parts/Skin)

Here you can adjust how your avatars skin look -if you are wearing a default SL-skin. (you can find one in your ‘Library-folder’ at: ’Clothes/More outfits/Ruth/Lightly tanned skin’). 

When you are wearing a default SL-skin you can change the skincolour, add some freckles, makeup and so on. This default look have nails and a belly button but as you can see on Ruth here - thats about it. The shading is created almost only by the SL light and: The nipples!? Shall we call her Barbie from now on?

This look is why you really soon in SL are going to want a ‘texture-skin’ (some of the default avatar-looks now comes with this kind of skins, too).

A texture-skin is a “body-costume” that uses the 3 textures for tattoos to create a more human-like look. Really good designer-skins could be expensive but you can also find nice ones for free. But once you can afford it - the skin you choose is what REALLY makes your avatars own style and make you look different from the rest of us .

Let’s start by getting rid of Ruths default makeup shall we? You’ll do that under Skin/Makeup, setting all these sliders to minimum.

Ruth without makeup:

I categorise the skins in SL into 4 categories. I call them:

Makeupskins
Full body Makeupskins
Transparent Skins
Opaque Skins

NOTE! That’s only what I call them and then there are mixes and matches of all these techniques, of course!

Makeupskins

The makeupskin is a skin that uses a transparent texture with painted makeup. The makeup itself is made semi-transparent so that you still may adjust the skintone underneath in the appearance menu. Only the Face-tatoo texture is used.

For this type of skin you shouldn’t pay any money!

Full body Makeupskins

This type of skin uses the same technique as the makeupskin but also uses the upper and lower body tatoo-textures to add some “bodyparts” like nipples and bodyhair. To make this work so that the skintone could still be adjusted underneath - the “bodyparts” must be semi-transparent. Otherwise the parts only look good within a very small range of skintones.

Transparent Skins

These skins have an overall skintone on all three tatoo-textures but the whole skin is semi-transparent. Here you might find body-shading (highlights and shades) to accentuate the bones and muscles in the human body as well as makeup, bodyparts, bodyhair and bits.

NOTE! Many really good skin-designers uses this technique - so that you will be able to change the skintone to your liking. But not too much - because the transparent skintone will prevent that.

Opaque Skins

YEESS! This is what you want to pay good money for when you find one you really like. Skintone, makeup, shades, and everything is painted on the skin. And most important: The skin can be made to look very much like real skin, not only a body with paint. With this type of skin a skin-designer can really create their own style. As you can imagine a good designer-skin takes a very long time to make - and thats why they are expensive.

Some designers make parts of the skin semi-transparent so you can change the colour of for example the eyebrows to your liking - read the instructions that comes with the skin!

A single designer-skin may cost: 500-1200 L$.
Unfortunately many designers sell skins only in packs. Like: “The same skintone with four different makeups” or “four different skintones with one makeup” for like: 4000 L$.

In my humble opinion thats stupid. Most people can afford just one skin. And if they CAN afford a four-pack - one of the makeups or skintones included might be one they wouldn’t want to be caught dead in (read: Never would use). So thats like throwing away 1000L$… I’ve been in that situation many times. I really, REALLY liked a skin - but finally went with a designer where I could buy the skins one by one.

But you can find real skins for free or really cheap, too! But then your choice of skincolour and makeup often is much more limited.

Here is Ruth in one of my own early (07) skins from Olila’s called “Anne“:

Doesn’t a skin make a big difference?
You can buy my skins at my shop: SLUrl: Olila’s West Sunset/32/36/22

2. SHAPE (Appearance mode/Body Parts/Shape)

As you might already know ‘Shape’ in ‘Appearance mode’ is where you adjust everything about how your avatars body look. I’m not going to get into that now - other than making you aware of the settings of the eyelashes. You will find that under: Shape/Eyes/Eyelashes - almost at the bottom.

Unless you bought a shape thats not modifyable the setting of the eyelashes length is ALWAIS up to you! If you try on a great expensive skin and it doesn’t look at all as in the picture this might be one of the reasons. A skin-maker can decide the colour of the eyelashes or make them transparent - but they will always show in one way or the other - no way around that because thats how the naked avatar works.

Many skins have “painted” eyelashes (on the skin itself) and looks best if you set the “real” eyelashes to: 0 (they will still show a little..). But its up to you! I just wanted to make you aware of that the settings of the eyelashes can make a big difference when it comes to how your avatar looks in different skins - and that those settings are not a part of the skin itself.

Here is Ruth in default “skin” with minimum & maximum eyelashes:

3. HAIR (Appearance mode/Body Parts/Hair)

Even before you want a “real” skin the appearance of your hair might be a big issue (at least for the ladys). Thats when you get a primhair that works like a wig on the naked avatars head. I’m not going to dig deeper into primhairs here other than some “good to know stuff” about the “bald head hairbase” you always wear with primhair.

Most of the time when you buy a primhair it comes along with a “hair” that has no hair… It makes you bald so that you can wear your primhair-wig without the SL hair showing.

BUT! The hair-settings in appearance mode is also where you adjust the settings of your eyebrows. I don’t mean the colour - but where the eyebrows appear, so to speak. And this works even if you are wearing a ’real skin’. The eyebrows might be painted on the skin but YOU adjust WHERE they “appear on the face” in your hair-settings.

Before I knew about this I could dislike a hair demo I tried on because it made me look “angry” or “sad” or just strange - not like myself at all. The reason? I tried out the hair with the INCLUDED ‘bald hairbase’ that came with the hair - and the eyebrows-settings didn’t match my skin and overall look.

Conclusion: Independent of your skin and shape you should create and wear your own ‘bald hairbase’ with all your primhair and skins! Adjust the settings of the eyebrows to your liking (Appearance mode/Body Parts/Hair) wearing a ‘bald hairbase’ (you can use a free one) and save it. Also wear your favorite skin when doing this - because the eyebrow-settings may also affect the makeup.

Here is Ruth in the ’Anne-Skin’ fom ‘Olila’s’ with a ‘bald hairbase’ and two different settings of eyebrows:

See what I mean? I only changed the eyebrows!

4. EYES (Appearance mode/Body Parts/Eyes)

If you use the default Linden Lab eyes you can adjust the colour in Appearance mode/Body Parts/Eyes.

If you BUY your eyes the designers often add some “glitter & sparkle” and the colours could be anything you desire and actually much more realistic. Or: Not realistic at all… If you are looking for a more non-human look the eyes might make all the difference!

THE FINAL BALD, NAKED AVATAR

• Your personal SHAPE - where you adjust your eyelashes independent of your skin.
• Your SKIN
• Your personal ‘bald hairbase’ - where you adjust the settings of your eyebrows independent of your skin, shape and prim-hair.
• Your EYES

Hope this was helpful!

Tutorials by Subject

Updated: December 2008