New ears or head? Please help me.

[Benson Gravois]

Hey folks,

I am currently in the process of improving my avatar and I want to know who sells the best ears. However, the mesh head am using is the Catwa Justin, I bought it several years ago when the mesh heads were still relatively new. So I am instead wondering if there a better head I could be using now before trying to put new ears on the Justin. I am notice a lot of other avatars have way better looking heads now, with better expressions and animations and everything. Please help me I need some direction!

[Nalates Urriah]

I'm not into Catwa. So, I don't know if your Justin-head is bento or not. If it is not bento, I would suggest upgrading the head as bento is needed for most of the new facial expressions.

Check the ears on the demo of the head you think you may upgrade to. See if those ears work.

There are the fae and eleven ears... you weren't clear on what type of ears you want.

[FairreLilette]

Swallow has some amazing ears, most are unisex.  Swallow is both on MP and inworld though I could not find any demos even when I looked inworld.  Swallow's Noldor Ears are amazing and five stars all around.  Super, super easy hud.  

As far as a head, you can use the ears on your existing head or a new, I'd presume. 

Mandala has nice looking ears too though I don't know much about them. 

p.s.  Sorry had to make a correction.  I bought something that was only piercings and not ears and piercings.  Hadn't spent time on them as they were a new purchase.  

But, I'd recommend looking at Swallow and Mandala for the "look".

 

Edited August 17, 2019 by FairreLilette

[FairreLilette]

After thinking about this, remember with ADD ON EARS you have to TINT THE SKIN to MATCH YOUR SKIN.

With add on earrings, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TINT THE SKIN to match your skin.  All you do is add the earrings and it changes your look in amazing ways, imo.  I think the ears add an amazing new touch, as do the add on earrings which are much easier. 

If you just want to try earrings, then Artificial Hallucination is a good one to try.  

I'd go with ears or add on earrings first and see how you like it.

If you still aren't satisfied, then it may be time to look at new heads for a new look.

Best of luck.  I'm going through a make-over too.  Best thing I ever did for myself in Second Life.  It has really been worthwhile for me to have a make-over.

Edited August 17, 2019 by FairreLilette

[Orwar]

   Beware standalone ears.

   I get it, the ears on certain heads aren't particularly high detail and may come off as a bit blocky - but many of the high-poly ears out there on the market will have a significant impact on your complexity. 20-30K per ear isn't uncommon. Besides, getting the skin colour to match from your head to ears can be a PITA; get it right in one WL and in the next it'll look like you dipped your hearing apparatus in bleach. For photography it's fine to use a different ear than those that come with the head, as long as you can tint them to match your skin for your lighting setup, but when you're out and about I reckon more people would notice a gross mismatch of colour than your ears not being smooth as baby's bottoms.

[Maitimo]

On 8/17/2019 at 4:19 PM, Nalates Urriah said:

I'm not into Catwa. So, I don't know if your Justin-head is bento or not. If it is not bento, I would suggest upgrading the head as bento is needed for most of the new facial expressions.

Check the ears on the demo of the head you think you may upgrade to. See if those ears work.

There are the fae and eleven ears... you weren't clear on what type of ears you want.

I have the Justin head, and no, it's not bento, it's one of their very early ones. Still a nice head though, and there is an animation set (available separately). It just doesn't respond to the shape sliders like bento heads do. It also has only one tattoo/makeup layer instead of two.

@Benson Gravois, if it's human ears that you want, and if you have the budget for it, I would suggest getting a whole new head, rather than trying to match add-on ears to your skin. As Orwar says, it's hard to get a good match and what looks perfect under one set of lighting conditions will look wrong in another. If you're planning on sticking with Catwa, I suggest trying the Victor head; when I was testing demos, that was the one I was able to get the closest match to Justin's shape. The Skell head got pretty close too, it has the same pronounced cheekbones, but I really did not like the mouth on Skell at all. 

If you're after elf/pixie/Vulcan/Romulan ears or something else of the pointed variety, you'll be better off with add-on ears. While you can make the built-in ears pointy on a bento head, using the shape sliders, they generally don't look much better than system ears when you do that. My ears of choice are Mandala; you can't use appliers on them but they do have about thirty built-in skin tones, and they're tintable so it's not excessively difficult to get a decent match. They are not as heavy on the avatar complexity as the ones Orwar was referring to, about 6k per ear. And the set does include a human version as well as elf and pixie.

Here's an untouched snapshot using the Optimal Skin & Prim windlight;

Not quite a perfect match, but you'd have to get pretty close to see the difference.