avatar How do I make my avatar look like me?

[SandraFreed]

I want to make my avatar more like me, first thing I want to do is amputate the arm like in the picture.  Another thing I want is to model custom clothes.  I can probably make the clothes with tutorials but how do I do the arm?  I have some experience with Blender.

[angeoco]

A simple and probably crude way would be to get/make an alpha for the lower arm and a flesh-coloured sphere prim attached to the lower arm. Crude in that it might be hard to match the flesh colour and get a satisfactory shape.

[SandraFreed]

How do I do that?  I'm a total noob

[angeoco]

Hmm, it looks like I was mistaken about making the alpha, as it seems an alpha layer on a system-body arm applies to both arms at once. Maybe somebody else could clarify that.

However if you wear a mesh body, you can easily blank one lower arm using the body's HUD and un-wear the missing hand.

Assuming you have the lower arm blanked out, you then you need to make the prim. Go to somewhere that you have building rights, like your own property or a sandbox. Right-click the ground and select Create. An edit window opens with a set of shapes at the top; click the sphere, then the ground, and a big sphere will appear. In the same edit window click the General tab and rename it to something like "arm stump" then right-click the sphere and select Take, and it will be taken into your inventory, into the Objects folder.

Now you can go somewhere private if you like. Put yourself on a pose stand, to stop movement. Find the prim in your inventory, right-click it and Attach it to L or R Forearm. Now right-click it and click the Object tab and reduce it to a reasonable size, like 0.07 m all round. Then edit into position using the coloured arrows, and resize it and reposition it again and again until it looks right from all angles. Now click the texture tab in the edit window; click the Texture panel and set the texture to Blank, then click the Color panel and set the colour to match your body skin. It won't be easy to get a perfect match.

That's just a simple and crude solution, but it might be enough for you. I don't know of any alternative.

Edited December 17, 2017 by angeoco

[Klytyna]

2 hours ago, angeoco said:

That's just a simple and crude solution, but it might be enough for you. I don't know of any alternative.

If I remember correctly, there is/was a sim called "Adventures in Health II" that had a small museum type display of signboards about amputation/prosthetics, AND some FREE rigged mesh medical prosthetic limbs, complete with the needed alphas...

 

[SandraFreed]

3 hours ago, Klytyna said:

If I remember correctly, there is/was a sim called "Adventures in Health II" that had a small museum type display of signboards about amputation/prosthetics, AND some FREE rigged mesh medical prosthetic limbs, complete with the needed alphas...

 

I don't wear a prosthetic, but I will check that out.  Thanks

[angeoco]

I got an IM recently from somebody who saw this thread and asked for help with something similar, but unfortunately I lost it. If they get in touch with me again, I would be happy to help.

Edit: I found the message! Getting in touch with them now.

Edited March 23, 2018 by angeoco
found the message

[Maitimo]

I have done this with my avatar. It was only possible once Slink hands came out; because with the system body you can't put an alpha on just one arm, it applies to both. So you need to replace the other hand with a mesh hand.  With mesh bodies it's easier - some of them allow separate alphas on each arm, so you can "cut one off" at more or less any position you want, while leaving the other intact. Check body demos before purchase to make sure they work this way.

For the stump itself, well I have no skill in making mesh or sculpts so I used a simple sphere prim, chopped in half (using Dimple rather than Path Cut). And the texture has a fade on it, so the fade masks the join between the prim and the mesh arm. To make the texture I took a couple of snapshots of the arm, front and back, and stitched them together to get a good match.  Good texturing makes all the difference, it never looked half as good when I had a plain flat texture.

It will never pass with close-up inspection but from a distance it looks pretty good. You can still see the join though, the stump fits outside of the mesh arm so you can see the overlap here. It has to be slightly bigger because the arm itself isn't perfectly elliptical.

One thing to note; if the amputation is high, and you wear long-sleeved mesh clothes, the sleeve of the garment will be animated with your AO as though there's a whole arm inside it. Probably won't matter to the OP here as the position of the amputation looks similar to mine and I find that it works pretty well. But for an amputation above or close to the elbow you're going to be limited to short sleeved clothes only (except for applier clothes worn on the tattoo layer). 

 

Edited March 24, 2018 by Matty Luminos