What's going on?

[Jennifer Boyle]

Some time ago, when SL introduced the alpha channel, with the advent of v. 2, I think, I made a skin of transparent textures. When I wore it, I was invisible except for my name and any worn prim attachments.  Yesterday, I donned it for the first time in a long time.  Instead of being invisible, I looked like I was wearing a very low-quality skin.  It wasn't a default skin because it did not have underwear on it.

Can anyone tell me what is going on?

[Cerise Sorbet]

A totally transparent skin will simply show the old fashioned system skin that's always lurking underneath on every avatar. This is by design. The original concept was that people would use that layer to put things like tattoos on top of the system skin. Then it sort of exploded, and people started painting entire new skins on there.

If a skin like that ever made your avatar invisible, that was a bug.

 

To get what you really want, you will instead want to use an alpha wearable. It's a "new" (well a couple years old now) clothing part you can create from the inventory menu. There is already one pre-made in the inventory library that hides the whole body, you'll find it under Library>Body Parts>Alpha Masks

[Jennifer Boyle]

Thanks, Cerise.

I know how to make alpha masks.  I was just curious about why the behavior changed.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Jennifer Boyle wrote:

Thanks, Cerise.

I know how to make alpha masks.  I was just curious about why the behavior changed.

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As far as I know it has always behaved like that. If it has been different at some point, that must have been a bug. Alpha on the skin making you invisible would ruin a lot of content. All cleavage, tatoos, make up, hairbases, nail polish etc worn as a skin layer would turn you partially invisible.

[Nalates Urriah]

This is a more technical explanation: Possible Alpha Layer Problems.

You may see another change in how transparency works when Avatar Baking goes server side in late February.

There is also additional information in the Wiki about invisa-prims and why they were replaced when Deferred Rendering was added. See:  SL Wiki on Alpha Masks.