How can I find out the color RGB of my avatar's skin?

[Evelyn Rieko]

How can I find out the color RGB of my avatar's skin?

[Innula Zenovka]

Several methods, none of which are, in my experience, wholly satisfactory.

You can bring up the Developer Menu (Control Q, I think)  (Control Alt D -- sorry, and thanks, Lindal) and choose "Color Under Cursor".    I find, though, that it's often better to use an external tool (Gimp and Photoshop both have colour-matching tools, and there are plenty of free tools you can download).    That's because the "Colour Under Cursor" only samples a very small area, so it's not much of a match.

When I've tried doing this, furthermore, I've found that the figures are more of a guide than anything else, since the same colour applied to a mesh or a sculpt looks rather different from what it looks like on your avatar's skin.

If you're trying to match mesh feet, it might be worth asking the creator of the foot/shoe.   I'm hopeless at colour matching, which is why I'm delighted to say I've found the creators of the three leading brands of mesh shoes/feet to be very helpful when I've asked for their assistance with this.

[Rolig Loon]

If you're using the Firestorm viewer, just open the Quick Preferences panel and click the Color Under Cursor button to activate or deactivate that feature.  As Innula suggests, it's best to take several measurements to get a feel for color variation over a large area.  Also -- I have never been quite sure about this -- it's best to make your measurements at mid day (SL day), since colors naturally vary as the sun angle and sky color change during the day cycle. 

[Lindal Kidd]

Eek, not CTRL+Q!  That'll log you off.  CTRL+ALT+D to show the Advanced menu, then Advanced/Show Develop, or CTRL+ALT+Q.

As Innula says, the "show color under cursor" tool is only a guide.  The color of your skin depends on the lighting.  You'll see a very different value if you check points that are well lit, and points that are in shadow.  Some creators have lists of good values to match many different popular brands of skins, and these can be a very helpful resource.

[Nalates Urriah]

There are some problems that hinder skin tone adjustment. Foremost is how the skin was made. Second is how the feet, hands, or whatever you are trying to match to the skin were made. So, the solution varies for the various brands of attachments. Plus some viewer brands work differently.

First take the skin and how it is made. With that consider how the color picker works. Some skins can be tinted. My Nomine skin is an early Windlight version that allows me to adjust the system skin (what you tweak in Appearance editing) to make it lighter or darker. This can through off the color picker (color under cursor or a GIMP/PS eyedropper). The SL color picker in the SL Viewer seems examine only the top layer/color of an avatar part. The GIMP/PS picker pulls the composite resulting color rendered to the screen.

Next is a problem with attachments. Very seldom are the feet and hands based on a gray-shades skin. The skin is already a color. To that color we are adding a tent, a second color. To get the color to add we need to know the base color of the attachment. Knowing that we could subtract it from the color picker’s value and have a pretty good idea which color to use for a tint. That is math PITA.

But that often fails to work as another factor kicks in. The avatar mesh and attached mesh reflect light differently. Actually there is no light to reflect in SL rendering, but it is a good concept for understanding what you will see.

Clothes makers know that if you make prim attachments, like the flap on skirts, they must be darker to match the skirt color on the avatar, because the avatar and prims reflect light differently. There are several clothes making tutorials on just that subject. So, when we use a color picker on the avatar skin we can’t just use that value to get a matching color on a prim or mesh attachment. We are going to have to tweak the values darker.

The result of all the technical problems I pointed out is that we just visually match the colors. We can get a good sense of the RGB proportions from the color picker. But, little more. If there is a lot more red in the skin color as revealed by the color picker then we need nearly the same percentage more red in our matching color. But we have to shift all 3 channels (RGB) to smaller values to get a match.

Next Windlight kicks in to cause us problems. If you have a red sunset going or a blue moonlit evening, it will through off your color matching. Imagine wearing colored glasses. So, when you leave your sunset (take of the red glasses) and arrive in a romantic moonlit location (put on your blue glasses) your matching will appear not to match.

So… what’s a girl to do?

First pick a neutral Windlight setting (take off the colored glasses). If you’re not into Windlight settings, use the Midday setting (Top menu: World-> Sun -> Midday). For a bit easier time of it use the 3PM setting for the default Windlight. To do that:

Top Menu: World->Environment Editor->Environment settings…

In the resulting dialog panel select:

• Customize my environment
• Fixed Sky
• A-3PM – and face into the sun.

If you have shadows on you may want to turn them off. But, keep Advanced Lighting Model enabled.

This will give you a match that works in most lighting situations. But, because the avatar skin and attachments have different ‘reflective’ properties you will never get a match that is perfect in all lighting conditions.

Obviously when buying things that need matching, check the color matching schema they use.