"Skin" vs "texture"

[Macciata]

An apparently common type of skin-applier HUD for mesh bodies frequently mentions in its description, and instructions, that the user can add their own "skins".  The instructions are quite clear, but the process they describe only works with "texture" objects, not "skins" -- which appear to contain textures, but not in a way the texture editor can find.

What information am I missing?

[Fritigern Gothly]

A skin is actually a collection of textures, and a full-body skin consists of 3 textures: head, upper body and lower body. It is common to refer to the textures themselves as skins, as that it their intended purpose.
Now, it is important that we make the distinction between skin appliers and system skins. You may know the difference, but someone else that reads this may not.

A system skin is an item in your inventory, it's a single item that, when worn, will display the aforementioned collection of three textures on your system body.
A skin applier, however, will apply these textures on your mesh body and completely leave your system body alone.

Note that it has become not unusual to find that skin appliers contain only the upper and lower body textures, and that the head part is either unavailable for purchase, or available separately (quite disingenuous, IMO, but that's a different matter).

An important thing to note about system skins is that everyone wears one. Everyone NEEDs one, even if they hide it  with an alpha layer. System skins are one for the 4 required wearables. The other 3 are shape, system hair, and system eyes. Not wearing one of the 4 required items will cause your avatar to remain a poof cloud.

 

I hope I did not add to the confusion, I am writing this without coffee. LOL

[Orwar]

   A skin is the layer of your avatar where the textures depicting skin goes. As Fritigern said, this is generally speaking a collection of 3 skins - though for some mesh bodies there are more textures, depending on how the mesh has been UV-mapped. For some other avatars, made from mesh or prims, it may also be fewer textures.

[Janet Voxel]

You can use your own skins. What that means is you are in possession of full perm skin textures that you have access to the texture uuids.

[Macciata]

I think I may have fussed over and edited my first post so much that I whittled out the actual question.

Here is what I have:

• A mesh body and head (one of the free ones, "RuthToo").
• A skin, which I fully understand to be a set of three textures.  I can see those textures by wearing the skin and selecting edit on its inventory listing.
• An HUD from the makers of the body, which features illustrated buttons of several skins they have provided.  Each button shows either head, upper or lower body.  As per the instructions, this is the process for adding a SKIN*: "Right click on the HUD : Choose Edit : Click Edit Linked tab : Click on single button on HUD > Click Texture tab in Edit : Add Texture :" ... and that's where they stop.  At this point, I understand that what I need is a TEXTURE item; specifically, I want one of the three TEXTURES that are inside the SKIN.

However,  I cannot find any way to access those three images as texture objects.  As far as the knowledge I have goes (which is of course quite limited til yet), it doesn't seem likely that they even exist as textures -- that is, as a datatype called by colorful-checkerboard icons in viewer panels -- unless and until some kind of process is applied to the skin object.

What I really need to know, then, is whether having the skin means I also "have" the textures, and if so, how can I access them?  Or do I need to skip this and seek skin-patterned textures instead of shopping for skins?

* the instructions also say you can "drag and drop on button" to add skins, but that... that doesn't even... I mean, you can't drag skins "onto" an HUD button, right?

Edited July 22, 2019 by Macciata
Just thought of too many exceptions to my original phrasing

[Janet Voxel]

No having a skin does not mean you have the textures.

There are two ways you can go about getting a skin texture: 1) creating a skin and uploading it into Second Life yourself. 2) purchasing a full perm skin (usually a set) where you have full permissions to copy mod transfer the skin. You also have access to the skin uuids.

You most likely need the uuids the most for a mod body like Ruth 2.0. But with full perm skins you should have everything you need regardless.

[Macciata]

16 minutes ago, janetosilio said:

No having a skin does not mean you have the textures.

There are two ways you can go about getting a skin texture: 1) creating a skin and uploading it into Second Life yourself. 2) purchasing a full perm skin (usually a set) where you have full permissions to copy mod transfer the skin. You also have access to the skin uuids.

You most likely need the uuids the most for a mod body like Ruth 2.0. But with full perm skins you should have everything you need regardless.

Well, the skin is purchased, mod/copy/no transfer -- is the transfer permission critical to this?  I've tried to find out more about uuids but almost every result seems to imply that getting textures from skins is something only pirates want to do.  Are the texture uuids something I should be able to find, or would I have to ask the skin maker or something?  And if I had them, what would I do with them?  I don't see a way to give that information to the texture picker either.

[Janet Voxel]

23 minutes ago, Macciata said:

Well, the skin is purchased, mod/copy/no transfer -- is the transfer permission critical to this?  I've tried to find out more about uuids but almost every result seems to imply that getting textures from skins is something only pirates want to do.  Are the texture uuids something I should be able to find, or would I have to ask the skin maker or something?  And if I had them, what would I do with them?  I don't see a way to give that information to the texture picker either.

So what you want is a full perm skin kit that offers both the skin AND the textures. Or you can get a full perm kit that just sells the textures full perm and it lets you save them to your HD and open them in something like PS or Gimp. 

When you have the texture you can do this to get the UUID:

https://gyazo.com/2d9eb3334d4457e524617bffb4a1ebda

You want a full perm skin like this:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/FULL-PERM-SKIN-5/10592280

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

Has the Omega system been set up for Ruth 2? I think Ruth 2 uses the standard system UVs so it should be possible.

That would be the way to get a purchased skin onto Ruth 2, but only for Omega-compatible skins and only if the Omega system creator has set one up for Ruth 2.

[Macciata]

19 minutes ago, janetosilio said:

So what you want is a full perm skin kit that offers both the skin AND the textures. Or you can get a full perm kit that just sells the textures full perm and it lets you save them to your HD and open them in something like PS or Gimp. 

When you have the texture you can do this to get the UUID:

https://gyazo.com/2d9eb3334d4457e524617bffb4a1ebda

You want a full perm skin like this:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/FULL-PERM-SKIN-5/10592280

Cool, that answers my question then.  Looks like the quickest & easiest way to get what I want is to paint my own and scrape up 30L then.

11 minutes ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

Has the Omega system been set up for Ruth 2? I think Ruth 2 uses the standard system UVs so it should be possible.

That would be the way to get a purchased skin onto Ruth 2, but only for Omega-compatible skins and only if the Omega system creator has set one up for Ruth 2.

The skin came with an omega applier and I ran it, just in case the body might be compatible without it having been mentioned (didn't seem too likely).  Didn't work, so oh well.

[Janet Voxel]

Yeah, been a while since I played around with the Ruth, but when i did Omega didn't work. You're best bet is to use full perm textures.