Catwa Male Head (Dino) on Maitreya Lara?

[CosmicArchangel]

Okay! So I'm extremely new to SL and have been playing around with what I want my avatar to look like.... (have been literally working on this for weeks, ugh, it never ends)

I finally came to a combo of body & head that I really like and may work - thanks to omega appliers skin may be a great fit - HOWEVER, the one thing that isn't working is the neck....

I'm trying to combine the new Catwa Dino male head and plop it onto the Maitreya Lara body. My reasoning for this odd combo is while I'd like to have a very"femboy" type body, I still want a fairly masculine looking head. I was wondering if there is any way to fix the neck?

Or is my perfect combo not so perfect in the fact that it's quite literally impossible?

Any feedback and advice would help! If this combo won't work is there any place I can buy clothing for the Belleza Jake body that look a bit more feminine or maybe have an oversized look? A lot of what I'm finding is very tight shirts and most things have more of a "jock" appeal. Not exactly what I'm looking for. I like a lot of the clothing that "krankhaus" is doing for their kuroo and the kemono bodies, but I don't believe that any of that will fit the Belleza Jake.

[Iki Kimono]

This is a combination I sometimes use, as I switch between the Jake body and Lara with the V-tech mod. The bad news is that there's no way to fix the neck that I know of. The best I've managed to do is whack up the neck size on the Lara using the HUD, and then use some kind of choker/wide necklace to mask the join. 

However, Catwa did just release her first unisex head and while I'm unsure if she'd ever go back and add the option to older heads, it probably wouldn't hurt to ask.

Of course, I'm reasonably new to using the Lara/V-tech combo so it could be that I've just missed an obvious trick. If anyone knows better, I'd also be really glad to hear about it

[CosmicArchangel]

7 minutes ago, Iki Kimono said:

This is a combination I sometimes use, as I switch between the Jake body and Lara with the V-tech mod. The bad news is that there's no way to fix the neck that I know of. The best I've managed to do is whack up the neck size on the Lara using the HUD, and then use some kind of choker/wide necklace to mask the join. 

However, Catwa did just release her first unisex head and while I'm unsure if she'd ever go back and add the option to older heads, it probably wouldn't hurt to ask.

Of course, I'm reasonably new to using the Lara/V-tech combo so it could be that I've just missed an obvious trick. If anyone knows better, I'd also be really glad to hear about it

Oh! I will go and mess with the neck size on the Lara and see what that looks like!
Aha I did see that Catwa did that! Just after I bought the Dino head too! I'm half tempted to just purchase the Magy head too, but ugh. Such a waste considering I like the Dino head. ; u;
Maybe I'll muster up some courage to ask about the adding the option to the older heads, it's worth a try!
Aha I'm new to it all, so any tricks and tips would help! ^ ^;;

[Alwin Alcott]

48 minutes ago, CosmicArchangel said:

, the one thing that isn't working is the neck....

don't know if it will work with this combination but changing your windlight settings to a shadowless preset can improve the edges on the neckseam in some cases.

[Callum Meriman]

5 hours ago, Iki Kimono said:

However, Catwa did just release her first unisex head and while I'm unsure if she'd ever go back and add the option to older heads, it probably wouldn't hurt to ask.

Took a while to find that one, and sadly it still has the darned duck lips, although a far more masculine chin is possible over the Catya for example. One day I can dream there will be a female head, suitable for male use, and without those ducklips.

Female Catwa Head

Male Catwa Head

And yes, there is no real way, the male and female shapes have some pretty big rigging differences. I always make a female head look masculine, skin and chin mostly. Bento does allow it on a few of the female Catwa heads.

Edited October 12, 2017 by Callum Meriman

[FaintOutline]

This is an old thread but for anyone still interested there is a much better solution, which Callum Meriman is on to.   

Use a female head with a male omega skin.   It will then apply to the head, vtech, and Maitreya body.  I personally use Lelutka head and a Seven Deadly Skins omega skin.  

The Catwa works, but the neck is very oddly shaped in my opinion, but it is a pretty head.

[Maitimo]

On 7/3/2019 at 3:49 PM, FaintOutline said:

This is an old thread but for anyone still interested there is a much better solution, which Callum Meriman is on to.   

Use a female head with a male omega skin.   It will then apply to the head, vtech, and Maitreya body.  I personally use Lelutka head and a Seven Deadly Skins omega skin.  

The Catwa works, but the neck is very oddly shaped in my opinion, but it is a pretty head.

Funnily enough, I have just done this (sorta, without the V-Tech). I tried the unisex Magy head but it wasn't a match for my current look, which I wanted to maintain; the features on Magy are quite rounded and it seems more suited to someone wanting a feminine face on a male body, rather than the other way round.

I've bought the new Margeaux head from Catwa, because it's the one that was the closest match to Justin, in particular with the very angular chin and high cheekbones.  And the Lara body. The underlying system shape is female (this was the only way to get control of breast size).  The following pics show these with the same skin (Egozy Zladim) that I was previously using.  Overall, it works much better than I anticipated. The body skin doesn't have much muscle definition so it maps pretty well to the female shape. The two main areas of distortion are the upper eyelids, which are somewhat stretched, and the nipples, which are not quite placed right for male nipples (but not placed right for female ones either, because there's a bump in the mesh above them where the female nipples would be). Note that breast size is set to 20: I found that any less than that makes the chest look actually concave rather than flat. 

A bit of eye makeup solves the eyelid problem and a cute shirt hides the weird nipples. It doesn't even seem like I need to stick to specifically "flat-chest" clothes either, as long as I use Maitreya ones and not standard sizes, though I guess its worth checking for excessive under-boob shading, which I will need to avoid.

The shirt is by Blueberry, the jeans are by Jellyroll and the mod for my right arm is a specific Maitreya mod by DK Scripts. (Never mind the millions of extra clothes and shoes; switching to Maitreya is worth it to me, for this mod alone).

So then I thought, how will it look with a female skin on the face? So I shaved bought a female skin, also from Egozy to ensure a skin tone match with my body. And a friend bought me a flamboyant drag-queen gown, and suggested that I'd look good as a blonde...

The match at the neck between the male body and female head isn't perfect here; there's a distinct seam but it's not glaringly obvious and you'd really have to cam in to see it. Solution for future use; Photoshop. The face skin is Celine by Egozy and I love how the blush (built in) exaggerates those cheekbones. Plus the freckles, which saves me wasting a makeup layer on them.

Overall, I'd call this a success. I was surprised how well the male skin worked, even without the V-Tech, and I was also surprised at how I still look like "me", with both the male and the female skins. Though to be fair, I was a pretty boy to begin with. I don't think this solution would work so well for a man with more masculine features.

I'm not convinced about the blonde, but I need a drag-queen name now. How about Matilda Von Stump?

Edited July 7, 2019 by Matty Luminos

[Skell Dagger]

Great work, Matty! I always enjoy seeing people pushing gender expectations toward the androgyne boundary.

Margeaux is the Catwa head that I eventually decided on for Skell's Syd persona, after working with Catya for a while. At some point I'd like to also try working with both Lee and Eva, which are Catwa's two other very 'strong' angular female heads, but Margeaux gave Syd the look that he needed.

Couple of suggestions - if I may - with regard to making the Lara shape a little more masculine:

• Make the hands larger. By default, Lara's hands are absolutely tiny. While it may just be a trick of perspective and angle, in the images with the blue shirt your left hand looks very small compared to the rest of you.
• To reduce the feminine curve at the waist and hips, play around with increasing the saddlebags love handles slider in conjunction with the reductions to the hip width slider. Also, I'd suggest reducing the butt size a little, as Lara has a very pronounced curve at the base of the spine which makes the butt stick out a little incongruously for a male avatar using a femme shape, and it also has a small effect on the hips.

Enjoy the heels and amazing pants you can now wear. No longer will you roll your eyes at the umpteenth pair of sweatpants, low-riding saggy ripped jeans, and sneakers that are the majority offering at menswear events.

Edited July 7, 2019 by Skell Dagger
Wrong slider! I mean 'love handles' not 'saddlebags'

[Maitimo]

9 minutes ago, Skell Dagger said:

Great work, Matty! I always enjoy seeing people pushing gender expectations toward the androgyne boundary.

Margeaux is the Catwa head that I eventually decided on for Skell's Syd persona, after working with Catya for a while. At some point I'd like to also try working with both Lee and Eva, which are Catwa's two other very 'strong' angular female heads, but Margeaux gave Syd the look that he needed.

Couple of suggestions - if I may - with regard to making the Lara shape a little more masculine:

• Make the hands larger. By default, Lara's hands are absolutely tiny. While it may just be a trick of perspective and angle, in the images with the blue shirt your left hand looks very small compared to the rest of you.
• To reduce the feminine curve at the waist and hips, play around with increasing the saddlebags slider in conjunction with the reductions to the hip width slider. Also, I'd suggest reducing the butt size a little, as Lara has a very pronounced curve at the base of the spine which makes the butt stick out a little incongruously for a male avatar using a femme shape, and it also has a small effect on the hips.

Enjoy the heels and amazing pants you can now wear. No longer will you roll your eyes at the umpteenth pair of sweatpants, low-riding saggy ripped jeans, and sneakers that are the majority offering at menswear events.

Coincidentally, I tried the demos for Lee and Eva too (as well as Magy) but as soon as I saw how Margeaux looked, I knew that was the one.

And ouch, you were right about the hand size - sliders at zero (I whacked that up to 60 - which, now that I look at this photo, might be a bit too high). Its a pity the foot size doesn't respond to the sliders in the same way, that is a bit of a disappointment as the feet are so tiny too.

I played around with the hips and butt; now have butt size at zero, hip width 30, hip length 48, saddlebags 20 (any higher made me look too "hippy") and I raised love handles from 60 to 83 to eliminate the narrower waist. Here's the revised shape, wearing only applier clothing so you can see the actual shape of the body, not just the clothes:

Much better, thank you!

While you're here, @Skell Dagger, I have a question about the Maitreya body that you might be able to help me with. On my Signature body HUD, the tattoo, underwear and clothing layers are separately tintable, but I can't find a way to do this on Maitreya, where I can tint only the skin layer. Is that feature not available at all or am I just missing it somewhere?

 

[Skell Dagger]

36 minutes ago, Matty Luminos said:

While you're here, @Skell Dagger, I have a question about the Maitreya body that you might be able to help me with. On my Signature body HUD, the tattoo, underwear and clothing layers are separately tintable, but I can't find a way to do this on Maitreya, where I can tint only the skin layer. Is that feature not available at all or am I just missing it somewhere?

It's not available on the Maitreya body. You're now bumping into one of several reasons why I'm still surprised that Maitreya outstripped the likes of the far more customisable Slink Physique female body (which has similar options to the Slink male body) when it comes to popularity. (I know that Slink Hourglass is very popular, but not every woman wants that curvier shape.) Maitreya has far fewer features than the ones that I took for granted on my Slink body, such as tinting specific layers, being able to switch off appliers for arms and hands (Maitreya only has 'entire upper body'), resizing feet etc.

And yes, the hands need to come down just a tad, but they're much better than the tiny Maitreya defaults.

ETA: Also, good catch on the love handles slider. I gave entirely the wrong one when I mentioned saddlebags (although those are important, too). I've amended my previous post.

Edited July 7, 2019 by Skell Dagger