system skins, BOM & mesh bodies & heads: realistic expectations?

[Nika Talaj]

So according to the stickied thread, we may see an announcement of BOM release next month (6/2019)!!  I have a few questions.

I have a large number of old system skins, and was hoping to make use of them.  I have textures for a few, and for a lark made appliers for my Maitreya body and Logo head. (Yes, yes, I could just use the BOM viewer, but given that I haven't used an LL viewer in years, I just couldn't face the learning curve).

First question: While system skins applied successfully to both, they didn't look great.  The hands and feet look really odd, because the system skin has shading for knuckles/metatarsals/fingernails that doesn't match the mesh.  Maitreya's creator's kit tells you how to modify old skin textures so they look right on a Maitreya body, but of course I don't have textures for the system skins in my inventory, so doubt they'll be usable.  My question: I know that Maitreya handles feet & hands differently from some other body makers.  Are there mesh bodies that are so close to the SL maps that fingers and toes on old system skins would look good?  And still work fine with the body's HUD for nails?

Another issue is that a BOM skin will not be materials-compatible.  Generally, that's not an issue, but occasionally it is.

2nd question:  Old system head textures applied surprisingly well to the LOGO head.  However, eye shadows were kind of an issue.  The system skin textures looked like they warped near the outer edge of the head, causing the skin's eyeshadow to curve upward oddly.  Another head texture resulted, not surprisingly, in a mismatch with the mesh lips.  The LOGO makeup hud worked fine in general, tho hairbases worked a little oddly with the applied skin underneath.  Question: old system skins evidently have built-in distortions to fit the system mesh, which seem particularly visible on the face.  Is it realistic to expect any of them to really work well?  That may not be crippling; some of the warping could simply be covered up by using an eyeshadow from the hud.  What's realistic to expect?

 

Edited May 25, 2019 by Nika Talaj

[Theresa Tennyson]

14 hours ago, Nika Talaj said:

So according to the stickied thread, we may see an announcement of BOM release next month (6/2019)!!  I have a few questions.

I have a large number of old system skins, and was hoping to make use of them.  I have textures for a few, and for a lark made appliers for my Maitreya body and Logo head. (Yes, yes, I could just use the BOM viewer, but given that I haven't used an LL viewer in years, I just couldn't face the learning curve).

First question: While system skins applied successfully to both, they didn't look great.  The hands and feet look really odd, because the system skin has shading for knuckles/metatarsals/fingernails that doesn't match the mesh.  Maitreya's creator's kit tells you how to modify old skin textures so they look right on a Maitreya body, but of course I don't have textures for the system skins in my inventory, so doubt they'll be usable.  My question: I know that Maitreya handles feet & hands differently from some other body makers.  Are there mesh bodies that are so close to the SL maps that fingers and toes on old system skins would look good?  And still work fine with the body's HUD for nails?

Another issue is that a BOM skin will not be materials-compatible.  Generally, that's not an issue, but occasionally it is.

2nd question:  Old system head textures applied surprisingly well to the LOGO head.  However, eye shadows were kind of an issue.  The system skin textures looked like they warped near the outer edge of the head, causing the skin's eyeshadow to curve upward oddly.  Another head texture resulted, not surprisingly, in a mismatch with the mesh lips.  The LOGO makeup hud worked fine in general, tho hairbases worked a little oddly with the applied skin underneath.  Question: old system skins evidently have built-in distortions to fit the system mesh, which seem particularly visible on the face.  Is it realistic to expect any of them to really work well?  That may not be crippling; some of the warping could simply be covered up by using an eyeshadow from the hud.  What's realistic to expect?

 

First question: Fingers and toes will never look good using an old skin: however, the fix isn't as difficult as it might seem. You, or someone, can make a tattoo that only covers the toes. You don't need the actual skin texture - a flat texture close to the texture of the skin near the toes that's combined with the toe shading from the body maker will have a look almost identical to an applier; just the flat texture without the shading will look very similar to an Omega applier (Omega appliers have no shading around the toes because they'll be used on so many different feet.) The lack of shading isn't that noticeable on something as highly modeled as toes. With hands you can do similar things just for the fingertips or you can get the "gloves"  that used to be used for separate fingernails with system hands - it's basically doing the same job.

Second question: System skins have a lot of variation in the eyelid area - try various options. Another thing you may not be taking into account is many mesh heads are set up to respond to the sliders of the eyebrow shaper in addition to the sliders of the shape, and I believe some of them even use sliders like "eyebrow thickness" that aren't normally used with system heads. Try adjusting some of those sliders and see if they help.

A big factor in general is how old the skins are. Many skins made or updated after appliers started becoming popular have textures that are very similar to those skin makers' mesh body appliers so the newer it is the fewer problems you'll see.

Edited May 26, 2019 by Theresa Tennyson

[Ramses Meredith]

If you want to try how come system skins on bakes on mesh you can play with my avatar i have keep it  system uvmap compatible so, a part hands fingers and toes (which can be "fixed") you will have all compatible hehe

[animats]

I'm trying to do something similar, but for animesh. See this topic. I bought a low poly animesh model from uno.blokke which is compatible with the UV maps for system skins and clothing. I've been putting system skins and clothing on that to make animesh NPCs. It's working pretty well.

 

30 LI animesh NPC.

Animesh only have a skin layer - no clothing layers. So everything has to either be baked on, in Photoshop, or rigged mesh clothing can be linked. T-shirts and jeans bake on, hair, jackets, and dresses need their own mesh. Finding low-poly mesh items for animesh is a problem - most SL clothing tends to be far too dense a mesh. If you know of any good low-poly casual wear mesh items, let me know. "Low-poly" here means about 1000 triangles.

I'd like to get one good jacket, one good skirt, and one good pair of boots or shoes with triangle counts under 666 (for animesh, 666 tris = 1 LI) or maybe twice that, to demonstrate that it's possible. Anything out there? Thanks.

[Cesartje]

On 5/26/2019 at 8:41 AM, Theresa Tennyson said:

So according to the stickied thread, we may see an announcement of BOM release next month (6/2019)!!

I am so anxious about that!

[Nika Talaj]

Thanks, Theresa, very helpful.  I didn't realize newer skins would be more mesh-friendly, but that makes sense.

We tried an old male skin as well.  In all 3 skins we tried, the body seemed to look fine (except for fingers and toes).  But on the male skin, the face was distorted even more than the female skins had done, tho as stated above the female skins had problems matching the head mesh also.  I always wondered why skin makers didn't simply re-release their old skins as appliers, face and all, and now I see why.

There are a lot of faces released nowadays.  For me, probably it would be a better use of time to just find a head+skin+shape combo that I see a nice vendor pic for, rather than attempting to rescue old skins.  Time marches on.

[Cesartje]

I tested and I liked  - I guess the results will depend on the head you use - if the head is very close to SL UV map, the results will be better with old skins.