Do I need to start all over with a new avatar before getting a new skin?

[Marianne Little]

8 hours ago, kurt28 said:

I appreciate you all taking the time to help me understand this stuff.  But, I still feel confused as hell.  I don't understand why they've made the process so complicated.  They should have kept things simple.  It took me forever to find a skin that I actually liked.  And even after reading all of this I'm still not sure how to get the whole body.  I read all of the comments and I still can't grasp this stuff.  I don't even know how to demo the thing.  Or how to tell what clothes work with it.  I might as well quite asking questions because this is all lost on me.  

Can I ask you if you read any other links that's provided for you?

What do you do when you go shopping? Don't you use links, to a store? Do you know how to buy a product demo, or do you never demo things and hope for the best? For Belleza body:

1: Teleport to a store. Like this: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Belleza/103/77/26

Locate this large sign. Buy the demo in the bag under.

2: Find an adult sandbox, unless you have a home to try a naked body in privacy. I suggest: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Coral Gardens/135/69/23

3: ADD the demo box. It is attached to your screen and unpack for you. ACCEPT the "Mesh body Jake demo". DETACH the demo box from your screen.

4: The content of the folder is shown to the left. I have opened the notecard -Belleza- Information & Policies *PLEASE READ* and it is on the right side of the screen.

 

5: Time to try on your body. If you have any clothes on, take them off. I say this so you are not confused with what's different types of clothing.

6; WEAR the -Belleza- Mesh Body Alpha. Your body turn invisible from the neck and down.

 

... To be continued...

 

Edited July 29, 2017 by Marianne Little

[Marianne Little]

7. Now you can WEAR the -Belleza- Jake Mesh Body DEMO *Beta* V1.0 and ADD -Belleza- Jake Body HUD *Beta* V 1.0.

You should see this:

The rings around is to show it's a demo. You do not have to worry about the shapes for now. Use your own shape. You can edit the shape anytime, just as you edited your old shape under "edit appearance"

8: The most important thing is the HUD worn in the upper left corner of the screen. Click on it and it opens:

The first tab contains the included skins. Click on them and watch the body change.

The second, the Alpha section, is very important. You can either click on large body parts like upper arms, or individual spall pieces, like I have done. See how the green parts on the body symbol and the invisible parts of the avatar match.

There are more tabs, but I really think this is enough for now.

... to be continued....

 

Edited July 29, 2017 by Marianne Little

[Marianne Little]

9: Get some demo clothes. OR, you can try on some of your old ones. Unless the clothes have BOX symbols, they will not show up. All parts with clothes symbols, like jackets, pants, underwear, can not be used. You can wear them but they will not show. Maybe you are disappointed, even your nice, new clothes has a bad fit and the mesh body is visible.

10: This is where you use the alpha section of the HUD!

Click on the sections that correspond with your clothes. I used chest, back, upper arms, pelvis, upper legs.

11: Now, the fine details. Look at the body where the clothes stop. There may be some adjustment needed.

The shirt has a few open buttons, I had to make a triangle cut down, or else there is a invisible part under the neck. Look how I have finished the left leg. I will now click on small parts of the alpha HUD on the right side, so both legs look natural.

12: Now, if you think this was worth the work, buy the body and the clothes. Take off all demos and repeat the steps with the new body and clothes.

13: Admire yourself!

EDITED TO ADD: The Belleza body comes with a shirt, shorts and sneakers. So you have something to wear while shopping.

And please, please, try demos! Of all your new clothes. Try on demos and see if you can use the Alpha in the HUD and make them fit. You can even save your alpha settings in the numbers "Alpha Saves". So if you save this alpha layout, you may use it for all short sleeved shirts and shorts. The next can be only the pelvis alphaed out for swimming trunks, just as an example. The third for jeans and naked upper body, and so on.

 

 

Edited July 29, 2017 by Marianne Little

[Lillith Hapmouche]

2 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

13: Admire Marianne!

'k. 

[Marianne Little]

4 hours ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

'k. 

TY

There is one more important thing, you can turn the alpha HUD view by clicking on the arrows. Maybe you can see that instead of showing the alpha selection front, it now shows sideways back.

And here is a problem, not uncommon with jeans and shorts when there is no shirt or jacket over. If I select one more alpha, it is visible over the belt. There is not standard for clothes. What to do? Will not have a gap over the belt. Will not have skin poking through the shorts.

Bite the bullet and edit your shape. Set the butt down to zero or close to zero, and the shorts look perfect. Click on "save as" and use some name that you will remember. Like "slim jeans shape" or "small butt shape". You can put a copy of this shape in the folder with the clothing that you wear. This shape will also work on other pants if you run into problems with the size.

Do the opposite if the pants are too wide. Increase the butt until it is no open gap between the jeans and the back. For sides, it is often the saddle bags or love handles that need a slight edit. For the chest, take down the pectorals. You can get a very good fit if you are willing to modify your shape slightly.

All this takes time and effort. It depends on how picky you are.

[Marianne Little]

We have talked about layers and appliers. This is the third important thing you need to know. If you see the first image I posted, the Omega installer is sold to the left (arrow pointing at it). This is 99L, but you need only pay for it once. You don't NEED it. It is already 96 tattoos on the Marketplace made for Belleza Jake.

Let us say the tattoo you want, don't come with Belleza applier. It only says "Omega"in the advertisement.  THEN you have to go back and buy the Omega activator.

When you have bought it, you unpack it same way as other things. You can wear it, and you get an invitation to the Omega group. Join or decline, does not matter. You must click on the orb once more. New group invitation. It is just annoying spam.

But then, you have the Omega installer in your inventory. Wear it, and it attach to your screen. Click it. You get a message in local chat, Omega System Installer  - Belleza: Attempting to Activate Belleza
[11:08] body10: Thank you for Activating the Omega System!

Then you are done with it. Detach it and you don't have to wear it more. You must do this again when you get an update or unpack a new body. Not before.

Now you can add the Omega appliers to the screen and click them. Some keep the text "bra" on the underwear layer. Some make their own pretty appliers with original design. Does not matter. Just look for a place to click.

Normally, use tattoo layers for tattoos. In the top picture, you will see that the shirt symbol for torso tattoo has changed color to blue. The tattoo is applied to the body. It can take a few seconds.

In the second image, I did the same for an undershirt. Notice that this comes in two parts, it is just how the SL templates it. Don't think about it, just click both on the undershirt and the underpants.

The layers is good to use for tattoos, body hair, scars and other marks, and tight fitting clothes.

 

 

Edited July 29, 2017 by Marianne Little

[Lillith Hapmouche]

1 hour ago, Marianne Little said:

Bite the bullet and edit your shape. Set the butt down to zero or close to zero, and the shorts look perfect. 

Oh... lesson learnt: my female main may not need good ole system skirt shapes anymore, but the m-alts might immensely profit from "pants shapes" for certain garnments. 

On second thought, I probably trashed a rather high number of pants demos, because I didn't think of that kind of connection.

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, Marianne Little said:

 If you see the first image I posted, the Omega installer is sold to the left (arrow pointing at it). This is 99L, but you need only pay for it once.

Or go to the Omega inworld store: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Glamour Isle/130/211/23, join the Omega group for free, TP to the Guys section and buy the Omega Installer for 50L - then leave the group if you want.

/me is always scouting out the bargain way of buying anything

[kurt28]

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Who are those "they"s you mention?

The people that are designing these new avatar skins and stuff.  I've bought a skin a few years ago and the process was much simpler.  And I got the whole body and head/face together.

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And what's so difficult about picking up a demo and playing with it to get some practical experience?

I have demoed things before but the process seems a bit harder now with this particular skin .  If you go to the store it's in, it looks like you're looking at a dashboard with tons of buttons.  It was all very overwhelming.  Not to mention, how do i demo a skin if I don't have the head and body i need to go with it.  You have to buy things separately. 

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Can I ask you if you read any other links that's provided for you?

Yes i did.  I tried to read the tutorials that someone linked to, but I found them confusing too.  I just can't seem to wrap my mind around this stuff. 

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What do you do when you go shopping? Don't you use links, to a store?

I do a search for something like "skins", and then go start teleporting to different stores that have skins.  And I like that Jake skin you have in the picture btw, but I'm disappointed that you don't get the head with it.  I've never seen that one anywhere I went to and I went to a lot of stores.  Most of the stores have the same skins.   

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Do you know how to buy a product demo

Yes I know how to do that, but the process looked a lot more complicated with the skin I was interested in than this Jake one. 

The tutorials you just shared were easy to follow.  Thank you.  I don't think that was the hard part though.  Everything we talked about on page one of this post is what is the most confusing. 

What about this: 

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/GAEG-Full-Skins-Hugo-ST5-Chestnut-Standard-Avatar/9781738

Isn't this one what I need to get the body and the head along with the skin for my classic standard avatar?  The last one I shared said omega applier and it would only work with a mesh head and body.  This one doesn't say anything about having to have a mesh head and body. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, kurt28 said:

What about this: 

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/GAEG-Full-Skins-Hugo-ST5-Chestnut-Standard-Avatar/9781738

This will be a 'normal standard classic' avatar skin -- the kind that you use one a standard non-mesh avatar - which is probably what you want.  I recommend you stay away from mesh bodies and heads for a while - avoid anything that says mesh / applier / omega.  Only gets skins that say 'standard', or 'classic' or 'system'.  As long as you only get skins with those words, you can buy whatever ones you like -- though I'd still recommend a demo.

[Skell Dagger]

Kurt, mate, buy that standard skin (demo it first, though!) that you most recently linked-to, and stick with it.

You are, as Marianne first suggested, simply not ready for mesh bodies and heads. You're still referring to mesh bodies as 'skins', viz. -

6 hours ago, kurt28 said:

And I like that Jake skin you have in the picture btw, but I'm disappointed that you don't get the head with it.  I've never seen that one anywhere I went to and I went to a lot of stores.  Most of the stores have the same skins. 

Jake is a mesh body, not a skin. I mentioned it here in my list of the main mesh bodies:

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The main male mesh bodies right now are:

• Signature 'Gianni'
• Slink 'Physique'
• Absolut Creations 'Adam'
• Belleza 'Jake'
• Niramyth 'Aesthetic'
• NX-Nardcotix 'David'

And in Marianne's image you can clearly see on the ad itself that it states "Jake Mesh Body".

I'm trying to say this kindly, but if you can't even get the terminology right for two completely different things then you would be in for a world of even greater confusion if you were to buy a mesh body and/or head and needed help with setting it up (or fixing any of the occasional little glitches that they can experience). The only way anyone would be able to help you with setting up a mesh head and/or body would be to use something like TeamViewer to set it all up for you, and tell you to leave it exactly as it is, which would mean one set of clothes for life and no touching the HUDs!

That last skin you linked to (the one listed as 'for standard avatar') is the one you should buy. (Even then, I'm pretty annoyed at the designer for their copy/paste line at the top which states "This Full Skins Applier is made for the STANDARD AVATAR ONLY". Here we are, trying to help people by letting them know that - if you see the word "applier" it means "this will only work with a mesh avatar" - and they're using that word on a non-applier skin for standard avatars.)

In short: buy that last skin you linked to, and forget about mesh bodies and heads. They look fantastic but they are a lot more work, and they're not a requirement for having fun in SL.

Edited July 30, 2017 by Skell Dagger

[Marianne Little]

23 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Or go to the Omega inworld store: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Glamour Isle/130/211/23, join the Omega group for free, TP to the Guys section and buy the Omega Installer for 50L - then leave the group if you want.

/me is always scouting out the bargain way of buying anything

Trying to KeepItSimple. After all, it is a serious risk of him buying the wrong Omega pack. That Omega store is huge.

[Marianne Little]

17 hours ago, kurt28 said:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/GAEG-Full-Skins-Hugo-ST5-Chestnut-Standard-Avatar/9781738

Isn't this one what I need to get the body and the head along with the skin for my classic standard avatar?  The last one I shared said omega applier and it would only work with a mesh head and body.  This one doesn't say anything about having to have a mesh head and body. 

 

The skin has a demo. Do you want me to buy it, unpack it, wear the demo on one of the starter male avatars, take a picture and upload it here?

(No, seriously. That was a joke)

Buy the demo. It is free. Unpack it and wear it on your own shape. Look at it and judge how you like it. Even if it is only appliers, then you can trash the demo, and you risk nothing, pay nothing. You only do an active thing for yourself.

Sigh, I feel vexed and that is a sign that I should close the thread and say it is over for my part. Maybe Skell has the energy to continue.

Edited July 30, 2017 by Marianne Little