Need help understanding Avatars

[Bench1290]

Hi, i've asked countless times for help from friends but they dont explain or really answer. Google doesnt help at all either, maybe I am just really stupid and cannot get my head round it.

 

Can someone PLEASE explain:

 

1- What are skins and shapes? Do I need them? What do they do? I dont understand, I will buy the signature gianni body, what then would a skin or shape do?
2- What on earth are omegas?
3- What on earth are appliers?
 

Thank you

[Rolig Loon]

1. Skins and shapes are exactly what they sound like, and the same as they are in RL. Your shape is the geometric form of your body (fat, skinny, tall, short, wide-shouldered, short-waisted, pug-nosed .... ) and your skin is the covering on the outside, a digital painting ("texture") with all the details of color, shading, birthmarks, pimples, wrinkles, freckles,  ....  You must always have both a shape and a skin, just as in RL. Your classic avatar (the body that you always have) can adjust its shape with any combination of 72 parameters, controlled by sliders in your Appearance panel, and you can buy thousands of commercially available skins to replace whatever is already on your classic body.  If you are wearing a mesh body as a shell over your classic avatar, it will have its own shape and skin. In that case, you would be wearing a full-body alpha mask to hide your classic avatar, and the world would only see the mesh body.

2. Omega is the brand of a particular applier, and ....

3. An applier is a scripted tool that you use to "paint" or "apply" a skin to your mesh body. If you were applying a skin to your classic avatar, you would do it quite simply by dragging the skin from your inventory onto your body, the same way that you would drag a texture onto any other object in SL.  Mesh bodies are a little harder to texture because each brand has its own unique UV map ( roughly, a template that defines where the texture will appear on any object), so an applier is designed to adjust a skin to your particular brand of mesh body. Without an applier, you would find that the skin's texture could appear in unexpected places on your body (your navel appearing on your hip or wrinkles appearing across your fingernails, ... ).

Edited October 29, 2017 by Rolig Loon

[Cindy Evanier]

38 minutes ago, Bench1290 said:

Hi, i've asked countless times for help from friends but they dont explain or really answer. Google doesnt help at all either, maybe I am just really stupid and cannot get my head round it.

 

Can someone PLEASE explain:

 

1- What are skins and shapes? Do I need them? What do they do? I dont understand, I will buy the signature gianni body, what then would a skin or shape do?
2- What on earth are omegas?
3- What on earth are appliers?
 

Thank you

Have a look at the tutorials and FAQ  here.  Ignore that they are mostly talking about female avatars,  the same principle applies when it comes to mesh bodies.

http://meshbodyaddicts.com   Its a lot to digest but this is a good reference point to start

[Lindal Kidd]

Hi Bench, and welcome to Second Life.  Rolig and Cindy have given you a couple of great answers.  I'll add a little, and hope it does not confuse you further.

Second Life has many functions to allow you to customize your avatar.  We now distinguish between "classic" avatars, the bodies that can be controlled in this fashion, and "mesh" avatars or mesh body parts, since the latter are a fairly recently added feature of SL.

Your classic avatar requires a minimum of four items in order to exist at all.  These "essential four" are skin, shape, eyes, and system hair.  You can reduce your avatar to these four by doing the following:  Go into your inventory, look in the Library folder.  Find Library\Clothing\Initial Outfits\Older Outfits\Ruth.  Drag and drop this folder onto yourself.  You will find that you now appear as a rather homely young woman in a pink dress with white polka dots.  Right click your avatar, select Take Off/Clothing/All.  Then right click your avatar again, select Detach All.  You are now as basic as you can possibly get.  

You can adjust your gender, shape, and facial features by right clicking yourself and choosing Appearance/Edit Shape.  You can save these changes as a new shape, which will appear in the Body Parts folder of your inventory.  You cannot take off your skin, eyes, or system hair, but you CAN replace any of them with another item of the same type, by right clicking the new item in your inventory and choosing Wear.

A note about "system hair".  When avatars were initially designed, they included built-in hair that could be edited, like the shape, with the Appearance sliders.  This hair was pretty ugly.  If you set all the hair sliders to zero, you appear bald.  When you buy prim or mesh hair, you're buying an attachment...think of it as a wig.  It also comes with a system hair item, often called a "baldy", a "bald cap", or an "eyebrow shaper".  This is simply a system hair object with the sliders set to zero, so that you don't wind up with ugly system hair poking through your hair attachment.

You should practice with the Appearance sliders a bit.  Most of us create our own unique shapes.  Think of this as an evolutionary process.  Edit yourself until you like the result, and save it.  Over the next few weeks or months, you'll do this several times, "tweaking" your shape until you look like...well, yourself.  Yourself in SL, that is.

The classic avatar can wear many more texture layers in addition to the skin.  These layers cover specific parts of your body, and each has its own special inventory symbol.  They are the tattoo, underpants, undershirt, shirt, pants, socks, gloves, skirt, and jacket layers.  They can look quite nice, but are all skintight layers.  They do not have wrinkles and volume, the way real life clothing does (with certain limited exceptions like the skirt layer and long pants).  There are two other very specialized "clothing layers":  Alpha masks, which make a part or all of your body invisible, and the "physics layer" which contains adjustment sliders to govern how much your breasts, belly, and butt jiggle in response to your movements.

That is the "classic avatar".  But over the years, SL has added new capabilities.  One of the biggest additions was mesh objects.  Really, everything in SL is a mesh...a set of points in 3D space that defines a surface.  However, the original creation tools dealt in geometric primitives, or "prims"...basic shapes like a sphere or a cube that can be defined by a simple mathematical formula.  Mesh, on the other hand, is a more complex 3D model, created in an external program like Maya or Blender.  This allows the creation of objects of very complex design.  Second Life creators (us, I mean, not Linden Lab!) grabbed this new capability and ran with it.  Mesh clothing items now are much more common than the older "clothing layer" type of garments.  And mesh body parts were also created.  If you wear a mesh body, or other mesh body parts like a head, hands, or feet, part or all of your classic avatar are hidden by wearing an "alpha mask", a special sort of clothing layer that has the property of making part or all of your classic body invisible.  The mesh body is then worn as an attachment.

Being an object, not a classic avatar, mesh is not affected by clothing layer textures.  Instead, you use an "applier" to control their texture.  An applier is a small, one button HUD sold by the makers of skin or clothing.  You wear it, click the button, and your mesh body takes on the texture of your skin, or the clothing.

[LittleMe Jewell]

I'd also recommend you read this blog post - @Skell Dagger does a great job of guiding guys through this stuff.

http://www.virtualbloke.com/archives/category/noob-dude-a-style-101-for-the-male-avatar

 

[Nalates Urriah]

You’ve gotten some good explanations. They are accurate. I’ll try to give you a simple explanation that I hope helps you.

What are skins and shapes?  - When you look at an avatar (Second Life person) you see the skin and its shape. The skin is texture… image… that is wrapped on the avatar surface… skin.

The shape of an avatar is controlled by ‘shapes’, which are a collection of settings; height, how muscled, how much body fat, and more. Right click your avatar and select Edit Shape. You’ll see the settings. You can play with these (depending on the shape you are wearing) and then click the UNDO button to return to the starting shape.

Whether one uses the Classic avatar or buys mesh body, hands, feet, and/or head a skin is needed. Both classic and mesh can only be seen if there is a skin. Otherwise, think invisible man. Classic avatars and mesh bodies have a default skin. They can be replaced. They CANNOT be removed, only replaced.

Shapes are similar, replaced not removed. Shapes affect both classic and mesh bodies. They can make you fat, skinny, or cute.

Appliers… Omega is a brand of applier. An applier is a HUD, device that usually shows up on your screen as a type of control panel. It is programmed to apply an image (texture) to the mesh body. The texture could be makeup, nail polish, skin or clothes. The applier is also a way to complicate the theft of skins and clothes. It hides the texture name and UUID (a number) the SL system uses to find the skin, clothes, whatever. And it saves you having to deal with the tedious details of getting it on correctly.

[Bench1290]

On 10/29/2017 at 2:05 PM, Rolig Loon said:

1. Skins and shapes are exactly what they sound like, and the same as they are in RL. Your shape is the geometric form of your body (fat, skinny, tall, short, wide-shouldered, short-waisted, pug-nosed .... ) and your skin is the covering on the outside, a digital painting ("texture") with all the details of color, shading, birthmarks, pimples, wrinkles, freckles,  ....  You must always have both a shape and a skin, just as in RL. Your classic avatar (the body that you always have) can adjust its shape with any combination of 72 parameters, controlled by sliders in your Appearance panel, and you can buy thousands of commercially available skins to replace whatever is already on your classic body.  If you are wearing a mesh body as a shell over your classic avatar, it will have its own shape and skin. In that case, you would be wearing a full-body alpha mask to hide your classic avatar, and the world would only see the mesh body.

2. Omega is the brand of a particular applier, and ....

3. An applier is a scripted tool that you use to "paint" or "apply" a skin to your mesh body. If you were applying a skin to your classic avatar, you would do it quite simply by dragging the skin from your inventory onto your body, the same way that you would drag a texture onto any other object in SL.  Mesh bodies are a little harder to texture because each brand has its own unique UV map ( roughly, a template that defines where the texture will appear on any object), so an applier is designed to adjust a skin to your particular brand of mesh body. Without an applier, you would find that the skin's texture could appear in unexpected places on your body (your navel appearing on your hip or wrinkles appearing across your fingernails, ... ).

 

On 10/29/2017 at 1:47 PM, Cindy Evanier said:

Have a look at the tutorials and FAQ  here.  Ignore that they are mostly talking about female avatars,  the same principle applies when it comes to mesh bodies.

http://meshbodyaddicts.com   Its a lot to digest but this is a good reference point to start

 

On 10/29/2017 at 3:59 PM, Lindal Kidd said:

Hi Bench, and welcome to Second Life.  Rolig and Cindy have given you a couple of great answers.  I'll add a little, and hope it does not confuse you further.

Second Life has many functions to allow you to customize your avatar.  We now distinguish between "classic" avatars, the bodies that can be controlled in this fashion, and "mesh" avatars or mesh body parts, since the latter are a fairly recently added feature of SL.

Your classic avatar requires a minimum of four items in order to exist at all.  These "essential four" are skin, shape, eyes, and system hair.  You can reduce your avatar to these four by doing the following:  Go into your inventory, look in the Library folder.  Find Library\Clothing\Initial Outfits\Older Outfits\Ruth.  Drag and drop this folder onto yourself.  You will find that you now appear as a rather homely young woman in a pink dress with white polka dots.  Right click your avatar, select Take Off/Clothing/All.  Then right click your avatar again, select Detach All.  You are now as basic as you can possibly get.  

You can adjust your gender, shape, and facial features by right clicking yourself and choosing Appearance/Edit Shape.  You can save these changes as a new shape, which will appear in the Body Parts folder of your inventory.  You cannot take off your skin, eyes, or system hair, but you CAN replace any of them with another item of the same type, by right clicking the new item in your inventory and choosing Wear.

A note about "system hair".  When avatars were initially designed, they included built-in hair that could be edited, like the shape, with the Appearance sliders.  This hair was pretty ugly.  If you set all the hair sliders to zero, you appear bald.  When you buy prim or mesh hair, you're buying an attachment...think of it as a wig.  It also comes with a system hair item, often called a "baldy", a "bald cap", or an "eyebrow shaper".  This is simply a system hair object with the sliders set to zero, so that you don't wind up with ugly system hair poking through your hair attachment.

You should practice with the Appearance sliders a bit.  Most of us create our own unique shapes.  Think of this as an evolutionary process.  Edit yourself until you like the result, and save it.  Over the next few weeks or months, you'll do this several times, "tweaking" your shape until you look like...well, yourself.  Yourself in SL, that is.

The classic avatar can wear many more texture layers in addition to the skin.  These layers cover specific parts of your body, and each has its own special inventory symbol.  They are the tattoo, underpants, undershirt, shirt, pants, socks, gloves, skirt, and jacket layers.  They can look quite nice, but are all skintight layers.  They do not have wrinkles and volume, the way real life clothing does (with certain limited exceptions like the skirt layer and long pants).  There are two other very specialized "clothing layers":  Alpha masks, which make a part or all of your body invisible, and the "physics layer" which contains adjustment sliders to govern how much your breasts, belly, and butt jiggle in response to your movements.

That is the "classic avatar".  But over the years, SL has added new capabilities.  One of the biggest additions was mesh objects.  Really, everything in SL is a mesh...a set of points in 3D space that defines a surface.  However, the original creation tools dealt in geometric primitives, or "prims"...basic shapes like a sphere or a cube that can be defined by a simple mathematical formula.  Mesh, on the other hand, is a more complex 3D model, created in an external program like Maya or Blender.  This allows the creation of objects of very complex design.  Second Life creators (us, I mean, not Linden Lab!) grabbed this new capability and ran with it.  Mesh clothing items now are much more common than the older "clothing layer" type of garments.  And mesh body parts were also created.  If you wear a mesh body, or other mesh body parts like a head, hands, or feet, part or all of your classic avatar are hidden by wearing an "alpha mask", a special sort of clothing layer that has the property of making part or all of your classic body invisible.  The mesh body is then worn as an attachment.

Being an object, not a classic avatar, mesh is not affected by clothing layer textures.  Instead, you use an "applier" to control their texture.  An applier is a small, one button HUD sold by the makers of skin or clothing.  You wear it, click the button, and your mesh body takes on the texture of your skin, or the clothing.

 

On 10/29/2017 at 4:33 PM, LittleMe Jewell said:

I'd also recommend you read this blog post - @Skell Dagger does a great job of guiding guys through this stuff.

http://www.virtualbloke.com/archives/category/noob-dude-a-style-101-for-the-male-avatar

 

 

On 10/30/2017 at 11:37 PM, Nalates Urriah said:

You’ve gotten some good explanations. They are accurate. I’ll try to give you a simple explanation that I hope helps you.

What are skins and shapes?  - When you look at an avatar (Second Life person) you see the skin and its shape. The skin is texture… image… that is wrapped on the avatar surface… skin.

The shape of an avatar is controlled by ‘shapes’, which are a collection of settings; height, how muscled, how much body fat, and more. Right click your avatar and select Edit Shape. You’ll see the settings. You can play with these (depending on the shape you are wearing) and then click the UNDO button to return to the starting shape.

Whether one uses the Classic avatar or buys mesh body, hands, feet, and/or head a skin is needed. Both classic and mesh can only be seen if there is a skin. Otherwise, think invisible man. Classic avatars and mesh bodies have a default skin. They can be replaced. They CANNOT be removed, only replaced.

Shapes are similar, replaced not removed. Shapes affect both classic and mesh bodies. They can make you fat, skinny, or cute.

Appliers… Omega is a brand of applier. An applier is a HUD, device that usually shows up on your screen as a type of control panel. It is programmed to apply an image (texture) to the mesh body. The texture could be makeup, nail polish, skin or clothes. The applier is also a way to complicate the theft of skins and clothes. It hides the texture name and UUID (a number) the SL system uses to find the skin, clothes, whatever. And it saves you having to deal with the tedious details of getting it on correctly.

 

Wow, I've never seen a forum before where a few people really really put effort into helping someone out. I totally understand and i've gone and got a great avatar now. Thank you all SO much, super appreciated.