Skinning myself alive

[Ulfilas Graves]

Hello! I'm an old skool player, of almost 13 years, but I've had a break and have come back this last week to discover mesh is all the rage and bento is a thing and my avatar now looks, well. Old skool. 

He probably renders quicker tbh? Maybe not with all non mesh sculpty addons... anyways. 

I've decided it's time to recreate my avatar and weirdly (or not) I'd like to create one that looks more like my RL self (see my profile pic - yes I do have an actual rainbow mohawk in RL)
- SO.. I need to find a body that's not ultra ripped (or can be customised - Bento and a less defined skin?) Having said that I'm unlikely to be naked, or topless tbh... maybe. And I also want to at least put my own real face as a skin onto a head - probably Bento, because of getting the shape right. 
 

I'm no stranger to photoshop et al, (I'm an artist and designer) so skinning should be straight forward (ish?), and I'm wondering whether doing a Blender projection painting on a head would be best, then editing the texture some more in photoshop. Although that's going to mean I have to do a little bit of Blender learning tbh.

Is it worth getting a Head like erm Catwa Daniel - and using a dev kit for the skin? I'm 46 so I'm not looking for a teenage or 20 something looking avatar either. 

Am I asking too much?

[Kweopi]

if you are not stranger to photoshop you should get the textures of a skin, from UV map to eloh skins ( get them on ruth/roth files github, ) i also advice you to start your journey with roth mesh body files, they are free , inworld and blender files too. At least you can do various tests until you got the things right .Al meshes are BoM now ( old sistem skin work ) so what you made for the free roth, you can apply to others.If you are really an old skool player, i know you will like "do it your self way" than to pay someone to do it. At least, is the way i will do it if i was not so lazy. GL

[Ulfilas Graves]

Thanks for that @Kweopi  I'll take a look and see if I can find the files, but might need some assistance. I'm happy to do some experimenting. I don't really want to pay someone, where's the fun in that!?  See you in world at some point. 

[Ulfilas Graves]

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Mesh-Roth-2G-Bento-Hands-Head-Body-Alpha-HUD/16280056
Is this the one you suggest?

[Ulfilas Graves]

I found a whole load of links on that marketplace listing that should keep me busy for a few hours/days/weeks! 

[Kweopi]

https://github.com/RuthAndRoth/Roth2

[Nalates Urriah]

To get your face and skin looking right is a bit of a trick. With Photoshop (PS) you can tint things so the body and head skin will match on the neck. It will likely be hard to find a retail body skin that matches your imported face. But, you can pretty easily match your head skin to the body with some PS effort.

As you work with your face remember to use Ctrl-8, 9, and 0 to adjust the camera. If you have a good RL portrait, import it to SL, put it on a cube, attach it to the your head, move it to the side and scale it to the right size. At this point use Ctrl-0 to get the 3D head to look more like the picture. The default camera angle will make the face warp when you zoom in, sort of a fish-eye lens effect. That makes it really hard to get the right look.

Then start trying demos to find a head that is close enough to can adjust it to what you want. This can be a challenge. Not all head designers weight the face to the same bones, all or some of them, and the NEVER weight the heads the same way. There are some looks you just can't make with certain heads. I love my Jennifer hear (GA.EG - they have guy heads) but I can't get the eyes the way I want them. Close but not perfect.

PS: Some head and body designers supply a UV map in their developer kits.

Edited April 12, 2020 by Nalates Urriah
PS

[Ulfilas Graves]

I don't use photoshop. I use Affinity Photo. I could no longer justify the extra expense for Adobe products. So I'm looking around to find 3D paint programs and I found an open source one called Armor Paint https://armorpaint.org/ 
I'll have to investigate and see if it's feasible to use for skinning

[Nalates Urriah]

11 hours ago, Ulfilas Graves said:

I don't use photoshop. I use Affinity Photo. I could no longer justify the extra expense for Adobe products. So I'm looking around to find 3D paint programs and I found an open source one called Armor Paint https://armorpaint.org/ 
I'll have to investigate and see if it's feasible to use for skinning

Looks interesting. They want US$17.50 for it... let me know if you get it.

PS's 3D painting is a pain to learn. I am taking a Udemy class on Blender 2.8. I hope to understand Blender's 3D paint.