Maintaining appearance with mesh heads

[LATR0DECTUS]

Mesh heads (catwa, bento, etc.) are undoubtedly getting very popular. I am very interested in getting one, but the biggest issue I have with them is possibly changing my current face. I really, REALLY love my avatar's face, and it's the face that everyone I know recognizes me as. I do think that the animation aspects of the mesh heads are very appealing to me, but I am simply reluctant to change my appearance. Has anyone who is using a mesh head experienced this dilemma regarding changing your face/shape? Do you try to recreate your old look with a mesh head and how difficult is it to do so? 

I am primarily concerned with animations where i can close my eyes, part my lips, and stick out tongue. Anyone know of any huds that can accomplish these actions? If so, I may find my need for a mesh head to decrease.

Thanks in advance.

[Fionalein]

59 minutes ago, LATR0DECTUS said:

Has anyone who is using a mesh head experienced this dilemma regarding changing your face/shape? Do you try to recreate your old look with a mesh head and how difficult is it to do so?

I think a lot tried. Difficulty depends a lot on brand, the two most popular ones seem to allow less freedom in sliders than lesser known brands...so DEMO a lot

 

[Puretone]

The best you can do is find a bento/mesh shape (and all that really matters is the face) that is similar to your current look. Make sure it's a mod shape. use your old shapes body sliders with the new 'face', then tweak the face until you get an approximation of your old system face. Bento rigging will distort system faces something fierce.

But, it's that same rigging that allows for the expressions you want to have.

It seems daunting, but I've had good results using a bought shape, a provided shape and a free shape with 3 different heads while keeping my original body shape.

[Claireschen Hesten]

If you are going to demo mesh heads make a note of all the slider numbers for your head in appearance mode you can then apply these numbers to editing the shape that comes with the mesh head. If you are lucky you can get away with using your own base shape with a head. I'm planning on buying a head as soon as funds allow I've been very fortunate with my chosen head it looks more or less exactly like me using my base shape and zero mods not everyone is so lucky 

[Marianne Little]

First of all, does your current skin have an applier?

If the answer is no, then you're out of luck. For now. To try and find both a head and a skin that's just like your current look, is almost impossible. A skin is so important for the look.

Linden Lab has promised us Bakes on Mesh, where you can wear your classic skin with mesh bodies and heads. I am sorry that I don't have time to write about it now, but it is a whole subforum if you scroll down.

[BelindaN]

Keeping your look is a huge concern. Look at my mesh heads thread and you'll see that I had this same issue. But by demo-ing loads of heads I found the one. But then along came Genus and a bad influence by the name of Ceka and I found my golden ticket........

[Talligurl]

6 hours ago, LATR0DECTUS said:

Has anyone who is using a mesh head experienced this dilemma 

This is the primary reason I put off switching to a mesh head. Eventually I made the switch and accepted the change in look, and before very long I was wondering what took me so long.

[Blush Bravin]

3 hours ago, Claireschen Hesten said:

If you are going to demo mesh heads make a note of all the slider numbers for your head in appearance mode you can then apply these numbers to editing the shape that comes with the mesh head. If you are lucky you can get away with using your own base shape with a head. I'm planning on buying a head as soon as funds allow I've been very fortunate with my chosen head it looks more or less exactly like me using my base shape and zero mods not everyone is so lucky 

Using the shape slider numbers from your system head with a mesh will NOT get you the results you want. Mesh heads do NOT respond to sliders the same way a system head does. So the outcomes are very different.

@LATRODECTUS when making the switch to mesh head keep these things in mind:

1. Does my current skin have a head applier available? Or can I find one similar that does offer head appliers?

2. Can I find a mesh head that has the same basic shape as my current system face?

Bento mesh heads respond to many sliders and you can change them a lot but you can't change the underlying look of the head so much that it doesn't look like that head anymore. So finding the basic bone structure and overall face shape is important. 

There are a lot of brands out there. Do your research and take your time. Don't buy anything without having demo'd a lot of brands first. Also, demo skins with the different heads if changing skin is something you're up to. I will tell you that different skins will make the same exact head with the same exact shape look totally different. So keep that in mind.

It IS totally possible to get a mesh head and keep the same look of your system head. It just takes time, patience, and a little bit (or maybe a lot) of money.

[Orion Pastorelli]

@LATR0DECTUS

8 hours ago, LATR0DECTUS said:

I do think that the animation aspects of the mesh heads are very appealing to me, but I am simply reluctant to change my appearance. Has anyone who is using a mesh head experienced this dilemma regarding changing your face/shape? Do you try to recreate your old look with a mesh head and how difficult is it to do so?

OK here's my two cents - you're going to look different.  There is no way around that.  However, you're going to look BETTER. 

The high-polygon count of a bento mesh head will give you rounder, smoother, more realistic features than the system head ever could.  It's no contest.  In addition, light and shadows will render more smoothly and in a more flattering way.

That said, I am convinced that anyone, with enough time and effort, can capture the spirit or "look" of an original system head.

As has been mentioned before, there are 3 factors the will affect the appearance of a bento mesh head:
1.  The base mesh model of the head
2.  The avatar's Shape
3.  The Skin applied to the mesh head

Experiment with combinations of all three factors and DEMOs, not just one time, but over the course of several sessions.

Lastly, even if you are not going to be able to perfectly re-create your old look. You will be able to create something new and better. With enough time, you will get as used to it as you were to your old head.

Edited September 5, 2018 by Orion Pastorelli
grammar & tagging!

[Lindal Kidd]

Everyone here is spot on.  But one thing you asked hasn't yet been answered.  You asked, " I am primarily concerned with animations where i can close my eyes, part my lips, and stick out tongue. Anyone know of any huds that can accomplish these actions? If so, I may find my need for a mesh head to decrease."

Yes, there is such a HUD, and for many years it has been one of the things I ALWAYS wear.  It's called "Auto Emote" by Outy Banjo.  It uses the standard SL facial morphs...which, as you know, can look pretty bizarre, and that might be undesirable for you.  The thing that it does that I love (and that no mesh head does, as far as I know) is that it automatically links your facial expressions to key words in chat.  So, for example, if I type any of the words "smile", "grin", "beams", or some others, my avatar smiles.  If I type "LOL", "ROFL", "laughs", etc., my mouth opens wider in a laugh.  Plus, you can modify how long the facial expressions play, and you can control them manually too.

There is no "parted lips" facial morph, so it doesn't have that.  But I like the slightly parted lip look too, and I wear a "parted lips" makeup tattoo to achieve that.

[Alyona Su]

1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Everyone here is spot on.  But one thing you asked hasn't yet been answered.  You asked, " I am primarily concerned with animations where i can close my eyes, part my lips, and stick out tongue. Anyone know of any huds that can accomplish these actions? If so, I may find my need for a mesh head to decrease."

Yes, there is such a HUD, and for many years it has been one of the things I ALWAYS wear.  It's called "Auto Emote" by Outy Banjo.  It uses the standard SL facial morphs...which, as you know, can look pretty bizarre, and that might be undesirable for you.  The thing that it does that I love (and that no mesh head does, as far as I know) is that it automatically links your facial expressions to key words in chat.  So, for example, if I type any of the words "smile", "grin", "beams", or some others, my avatar smiles.  If I type "LOL", "ROFL", "laughs", etc., my mouth opens wider in a laugh.  Plus, you can modify how long the facial expressions play, and you can control them manually too.

There is no "parted lips" facial morph, so it doesn't have that.  But I like the slightly parted lip look too, and I wear a "parted lips" makeup tattoo to achieve that.

Chrysanthemum Facial AOs and gestures do all of this: there are themed AOs (The one called "Sweet" describes what @LATR0DECTUS is describing) They also can react to active gestures for facial or full body animations. I think Catwa facial animations in the add-on animations HUD (not the one that comes with the head) can also be triggered by chat and I know the old static LOGO heads had chat triggers as a feature, I imagine their Bento heads also do.

Edited September 5, 2018 by Alyona Su

[Ceka Cianci]

Any mesh heads that come with expressions, you can link  those to chat triggers, like any expressions..which most do and most have them where you can control them in their huds to play or be static as well.

Some you can intermingle with other heads, where some mesh head brands expressions won't work with another mesh head..

I don't know if all the expressions from mesh heads will work with system avatars or not..that I never tried..They might since i would think they are moving the avatar bones..They might look really good or a little freaky..I just never tried them though to find out..

 

I've been putting a hud together myself with different animations that I'm finding for facial expressions for mesh heads,because the mesh head I'm using is in beta testing right now..So our animation hud hasn't been released yet..So I'm just scrounging aroudn for different ones and putting them in my own hud

 

I'll be adding some static ones also..I'm trying to figure out how I can put them on auto..I'm kind of new to making huds,so I'm not sure if I'll even be able to make them auto or not..

But I can switch them on from my menu when I want..

I made a video of  some of the ones I've tried out so far and they seem to work good on my genus head..

Maybe I'll make one and see how they look on the system avatar as well..

 

These are with some of the Mayreal mesh head animations on my Genus Project beta mesh head.. I'll try to make s video with the system avatar and see how big the difference is or if they will even work at all with it..

EAT: Don't mind the Zombies..It's the first youtube video I ever made and kind of wandered for a couple of seconds  hehehe..

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by Ceka Cianci

[Fionalein]

1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Yes, there is such a HUD, and for many years it has been one of the things I ALWAYS wear.  It's called "Auto Emote" by Outy Banjo.  It uses the standard SL facial morphs...which, as you know, can look pretty bizarre, and that might be undesirable for you.  The thing that it does that I love (and that no mesh head does, as far as I know) is that it automatically links your facial expressions to key words in chat.  So, for example, if I type any of the words "smile", "grin", "beams", or some others, my avatar smiles.  If I type "LOL", "ROFL", "laughs", etc., my mouth opens wider in a laugh.  Plus, you can modify how long the facial expressions play, and you can control them manually too.

The bento face expression HUDs by Happy Dispatch and by Sweet Animations react to facial morphs and translate them to bento face animations, I was told the LAQ heads also have this ability buildt in... so if you want you can continue wearing your old autoemote with those... and yes, they make your old adult furniture's face morphs work again with bento heads (which seems to be the point my friends are interested in the most whenever I tell them about that stuff)

[Clover Jinx]

Catwa and LeLutka bento head default huds trigger animations from chat.

[Ceka Cianci]

24 minutes ago, Clover Jinx said:

Catwa and LeLutka bento head default huds trigger animations from chat.

I kept calling them expressions when I should have been saying gestures..hehehe

A lot of Catwa and Lelutka use gestures,as well as LAQ and the few that come with Genus plus some others.. What's nice about that is,if we wanted,We could pick the ones we like from them all that work well for us, and not even have to use a hud if we don't want to and link them to chat triggers..

Which i didn't even think of until just now..hehehehe

 

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by Ceka Cianci

[Raindrop Drinkwater]

34 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

(...)@LATR0DECTUS and I know the old static LOGO heads had chat triggers as a feature, I imagine their Bento heads also do.

Yes, their Bento heads do that as well. The animations (eyes and lips) can be combined to create your own chat triggers.

[Blush Bravin]

1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

The thing that it does that I love (and that no mesh head does, as far as I know) is that it automatically links your facial expressions to key words in chat.  So, for example, if I type any of the words "smile", "grin", "beams", or some others, my avatar smiles.  If I type "LOL", "ROFL", "laughs", etc., my mouth opens wider in a laugh.  Plus, you can modify how long the facial expressions play, and you can control them manually too.

Even the pre-bento mesh heads had chat activated animations. For the bento heads, you just have to activate the gestures that come with the head. I know this is the case for Catwa heads, but I'm not sure about any other brands. Also, mesh heads look oh so much better doing those animations, but that's my opinion of course. I always made sure my system face was as still as possible only using the occasional smile as the face distorted so easily.

[Lindal Kidd]

1 hour ago, Clover Jinx said:

Catwa and LeLutka bento head default huds trigger animations from chat.

Clover, and the others who responded similarly...do these triggers work automatically?  By that, I mean I would not have to specifically type "/smile", a gesture trigger.  My Auto-Emote picks up these trigger words from ordinary chat, plus there is a configuration card you can edit and add or delete trigger words.  The "smile" action, for example, could have a long list of triggers that activate it, not just one specific word.  If the Bento heads do this too, that would be terrific, and a strong selling point for me, because I sure agree that the Bento facial animations are a lot better than the old facial morphs.

[Clover Jinx]

3 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Clover, and the others who responded similarly...do these triggers work automatically?  By that, I mean I would not have to specifically type "/smile", a gesture trigger.  My Auto-Emote picks up these trigger words from ordinary chat, plus there is a configuration card you can edit and add or delete trigger words.  The "smile" action, for example, could have a long list of triggers that activate it, not just one specific word.  If the Bento heads do this too, that would be terrific, and a strong selling point for me, because I sure agree that the Bento facial animations are a lot better than the old facial morphs.

It's ordinary chat. I haven't tested it in depth but I know whenever Rhonda types "lol" her head does the laugh animation. It has a tendency to get stuck, but there's pros and cons to everything. May have to see if there is a way to add trigger words or not. Maybe with Ceka's gesture idea which was the only way to use the Catwa animations when sold individually. 

[Blush Bravin]

19 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Clover, and the others who responded similarly...do these triggers work automatically?  By that, I mean I would not have to specifically type "/smile", a gesture trigger.  My Auto-Emote picks up these trigger words from ordinary chat, plus there is a configuration card you can edit and add or delete trigger words.  The "smile" action, for example, could have a long list of triggers that activate it, not just one specific word.  If the Bento heads do this too, that would be terrific, and a strong selling point for me, because I sure agree that the Bento facial animations are a lot better than the old facial morphs.

They are so automatic that I finally realized I needed to stop using this ":p" when typing cause I stick my tongue out every time. You don't have to use the "/" to activate them unless you have set it that way when you activated the gesture. You can go in and change the triggers on the gestures to suit how you want to use them.

Edited September 5, 2018 by Blush Bravin

[Ceka Cianci]

26 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Clover, and the others who responded similarly...do these triggers work automatically?  By that, I mean I would not have to specifically type "/smile", a gesture trigger.  My Auto-Emote picks up these trigger words from ordinary chat, plus there is a configuration card you can edit and add or delete trigger words.  The "smile" action, for example, could have a long list of triggers that activate it, not just one specific word.  If the Bento heads do this too, that would be terrific, and a strong selling point for me, because I sure agree that the Bento facial animations are a lot better than the old facial morphs.

If the auto emote uses gestures and you can load a note card to set  a series of gestures into motion ,then it should work the same for any gestures..So you could more than likely use the mesh head gestures..As long as you had gestures that worked with the mesh head..

I'm going to have to get this auto emoter and try it out..

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by Ceka Cianci

[Blush Bravin]

1 minute ago, Ceka Cianci said:

If the auto emote uses gestures and you can load a note card to set  a series of gestures into motion ,then it should work the same for any gestures..So you could more than likely use the mesh head gestures..As long as you had gestures that worked with the mesh head..

I'm going to have to get this auto emoter and try it out..

 

One thing to remember is that you can use bento animations across brands of mesh heads, but you can't use them with system heads.  System heads won't react to the bento bones that are used for animating bento heads.

[Ceka Cianci]

16 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

One thing to remember is that you can use bento animations across brands of mesh heads, but you can't use them with system heads.  System heads won't react to the bento bones that are used for animating bento heads.

I was talking more about the gestures being able to work with the auto emoter..Since a gesture for mesh is just a gesture..I should be able to load up the card with my gestures and use the auto emoter..

Unless it's just allowing system expressions in a script and not any gestures..I think the system expressions are not gestures but expressions that can be triggered without a gesture..

where if the auto emoter is using gestures,then it should be possible to use any gestures and trigger them from chat..

ok I'm dizzy now

 

I just have to see this auto emoter now hehehe

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by Ceka Cianci

[Blush Bravin]

2 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I was talking more about the gestures being able to work with the auto emoter..Since a gesture for mesh is just a gesture..I should be able to load up the card with my gestures and use the auto emoter..

Unless it's just allowing system expressions in a script and not any gestures..I think the system expressions are not gestures but expressions that can be triggered without a gesture..

where if the auto emoter is using gestures,then it should be possible to use any gestures and trigger them from chat..

ok I'm dizzy now

 

I'm not techie this way. So what I have come to understand could be totally off base. But from what I understand gestures are being used to trigger bento animations. I'm not sure how that even relates to what you said because you kinda lost me. But I'm sure I'm lost due to my own deficit.

[Lindal Kidd]

I don't think that will work, Ceka.  The Auto-Emote HUD was designed WAY before Bento.  It does not use Gestures, either.  It responds to key words in local chat or IM and triggers one of the classic avatar facial morphs.