Newbie needs Help (of course, right?) RE: Avatar problems

[Sichelgaita]

I'm about a week old in SL.  When I first started SL I decided on the female Rocker Avatar simply because I liked the jacket.  So who knew the Rocker Avatar came with male looking undershirt and boxer briefs, not me.  Not only do I think the underwear is disgusting to look at, I found out after playing around with various clothes that the boxer briefs and undershirt don't come off  (They appear to be permanent parts of the Avatar) so that greatly limits what I can wear and it is driving me crazy.  

I (my avatar) can't wear bear plunging necklines, midriffs tops, low rise jeans, spaghetti strap tops strapless tops and worst of all, I want to get a breast augmentation but how am I supposed to do that if the underwear won't come off?  The breasts i want automatically match up with the skin color of the avatar and guess what, there is no skin, just a swath of white underwear.  I can't imagine having bone white breasts with an undershirt line through them switching abruptly to skin tone when my avatar is showing cleavage.  

I tried putting on the dancer's shape but  the underwear is still on the avatar. Did I do the wrong thing?  What's "skins" about, should I have changed that instead?  I don't want to do to much changing because when I started switching things around on the avatar I couldn't res until I deleted the (body) changes.  I still don't know which one(s) caused the problem or if I just went the wrong route in making the body changes but I was crashing a lot too.  Yeah, like every time I pivoted  too fast I would crash.

( I don't think my hardware is insufficient.  I have a brand new laptop with  the newest version of firestorm and Windows latest contribution to trashy operating systems, plenty enough memory, an almost scary fast processor,  so I figure it must have been the changes I made since I had no problems before making them.)   I thought it was best to get rid of all of them (except the dancer's body) and start over after becoming more knowledgeable. 

So here I am doing the "Newbie Needs Help" Thing. I am appealing to the better natures of the readers and hoping I don't get trolled too much because of my ignorance.  How can I remedy this situation with the white area from mid chest to mid knee? What are my options?  I'm still a newbie so I would appreciate any useful and positive alternatives/suggestions you can offer.  For those that offer help, thanks for pointing me in the right direction. ;)

 

 

[Randall Ahren]

Get a different skin. Other skins don't include built-in underwear and you'll be able to achieve the appearance you're seeking.

 

[Sasuiko]

Sichelgaita, don't worry, I had the same problem when I first started, I am pretty new to SL and it took me a while to get the hang of things with some help from really nice people I encountered. I realised that the weird underwear thing came with the newbie skin so the first thing I did was get a new skin. Have you heard of the marketplace? That was one really awesome tip I got, that you can pretty much search for whatever you want  - check this out: 

https://marketplace.secondlife.com

I think a lot of the high end stuff you have to pay for, which at the time I didn't have any SL money (Lindens) so I was advised to just do a quick search for free skins and shapes to start off with. Here's the one I used first, to try and customise my avatar. It's free so yay!

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Panda-Punx-Miranda-May-Shape-Skin-Gift/3468240

This one comes with shape and skin .

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/LBD-No-More-Noob-Freebie-Gift-Complete-Avatar/3039655

This one comes with clothing too.

That should help to get rid of the weird underwear thing. The shape is also modifiable so i spent a day or so just moving sliders up and down to get the shape I wanted with this skin. I realised later that with one shape, you can try on different skins for different looks so that was pretty fun. You can key search for free stuff on there and it gets delivered to your inventory (the briefcase looking icon in your viewer). I put in a bunch of key words like free+gift+female skins etc and just took my time going through the list of what I liked and didn't like. 

You just wear the shape and the skin and then take it from there, that's what I did I think I got a pretty good handle on how to tweak the details now and rezzing stuff on the ground to open up the packages etc, so if we're in-world at the same time, feel free to message me and I'll be glad to tag along for some shopping ^.^ I know it can be frustrating trying to figure it all out on your own. LOL

Hope that helps!

[Amethyst Jetaime]

In addition to the Marketplace you can also pick up a lot of things in world by going to stores.  A lot of merchants give away gifts of high quality items. Some are for avatars less than 30 days old, some are gifts you can get by joining their group, and some are just free for everyone.

This blog, FabFree, gives you information about a lot of the things being offered and where you can go to find these.  They also have a lot of good information for new residents.

[Sasuiko]

Oooh! that I didn't know, thanks for the tip Amethyst!

[Tex Monday]

Welcome to SL...

The problem,as stated before, is the skin that you're using. It's been discussed in another post that the default skins given by LL contain undergarments. The way to get rid of them is to change the skin that you're using. So you know, the AV contains two items (mainly) skin and shape. The shape is obviously the shape of your AV..how tall, how skinny etc. By the way, if the shape is modifyable, it can be changed through the Appearance (but that's a topic for another day). The skin is what you look like...what race you are, if you wear any makeup, freckles etc. You can mix and match just about any shape with just about any skin. You need to figure out what looks good on you and put it together.

As discussed earlier, you need to get rid of the LL default skin and find something else. My suggestion is to go into search and look for skins that you like. Stay away from things that say "DEMO" on them, as they will have tattoos on that you can't get rid of. it's just a way for designers to show off their stuff.

Also, you can look for freebie shops to find skins or join groups that have free items. Fab Free is a great group. They also have a website you can use to find things. http://fabfree.wordpress.com/

Good luck.

EDITED: And that's what I get for writing a huge novel..everyone else said it first....:matte-motes-sunglasses-3:

 

[Keith Artful]

In SL its all about the shape and skin when it comes to avatars, the rest is just well Icing on the cake .. make sure you always change you skin as soon as you Join Second life .. I think they do that for newbies because it keep the wolves off the doorstep 

[Keriwena]

Right now, these last few days, SL has been going been going through some growing pains as they update the servers and sims. Crashes, inventory problems and the like are widespread so don't despair if you have trouble with things that "should" work. Once things are settled, everything should be much better, and you won't have to deal with problems some of us have suffered with for years.

 

While I think you'll find the best stuff by shopping inworld for group gifts and other store generosities, and second would be similar things in the Marketplace, you can use your client's Search for "Freebie Galaxy" and traipse though 15 levels of mostly free stuff. (I recommend the "Perfect" skins... around level 6, IIRC)

[Sichelgaita]

Done! Thanks!

[Sichelgaita]

Hi Amethyst !  Thanks for that info, I'm sure it will be productive.  I recently did a search and ended up joining a (what, group? not even sure) called Newbie Heaven.  I can't find it's location now.  How can I find the coordinates for this place, it sounds great.  Your help is appreciated!

[Sichelgaita]

Thanks for this information.  Right now I can't even res.  Bake failure. I've tried removing every thing from my avatar and I haven't made any changes that have not worked well before this so I don't know if this is part of the "growing pains" or if there is something else wrong.  I have tried the control/alt/R thing several times and it might as well be bubble gum as well as it has worked.   (i had major inventory problems last night and bought some new things when if I had known about the changes, I would have waited)  I did get a message that my inventory was loading the first time I couldn't res but after leaving and returning, I am no longer getting that message but still can't res.  I would pick a place to begin that is different than the shelter I am using (which is having wall res problems of it's own right now) but I already took all my cloths off, lol. I don't want to res somewhere new bald and naked.    lol, I might want to return to that place one day.

[Madeline Blackbart]

You could try a Test female You'll need to go into your prefrences and enable the developer menu. Then under developr menu go Avatar>character test> test female (or test male) This will set you back to the defualt ruth character then you can change to what you like fromt here. If that doesn't work you may have corrupt data in your cache. Try clearing your chache manually this video can show you how to do so http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsK9EEihwEA . Hopefully one of these thigns help. And welcome to sl it can be like that sometimes.