Old SL player needs help with new mesh avatars and clothes

[Hazy Frog]

I am a long time SL player, but been away for years.  Everything has changed. 

Can someone explain to me, very simply, how these mesh bodies and clothing works?  I have looked through the topics but I am confused. 

I have a Redgrave body and skin, but looking for clothes is a headache!  I dont under stand these terms like fryia or the others.  I dont mind getting a completely different avatar, just need a little direction. 

Also, if it matters, i prefer more cute or modest clothing. Not the sexy stuff.  Sundresses, boots, flirty tops, etc.

[Jemima28 Jonson]

This is totally me tooo...! lol

[Rudegerus Osterham]

This tutorial by @Nalates Urriah I think is a good overview,.

[Gregorian Chant]

When shopping for clothes, you'll see terms like Maitreya, Freya, Lara, Gianni, Legacy, and etc.  Like RL, you have to check the labels for sizes that will fit your chosen body.

Maitreya is the name of the store that sells the Lara body.

Belleza is a store that sells the Freya, Isis, Venus, and Jake bodies.

Slink is a store that sells the female Physique and Hourglass, and the male Physique bodies.

Signature is a store that sells the Gianni, Geralt, and Alice bodies.

The Shops (formerly TMP - The Mesh Project) is a store that sells the female and male Legacy and Classic bodies. They are sometimes called MeshBody.

Altamura is a store that sells numerous male and female bodies. I don't recall their names off the top of my head.

Niramyth is a store that sells the Aesthetic male human body, as well as non-human ones.

I'm sure there are many other body brands out there, but I can't recall their names at this moment.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Gregorian Chant

[Josephine Carissa]

Greetings Hazy,

Here are some places you can look for clothes:

COCO:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/32789  ( really great slacks ).

ISON:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/74396  (has a selection of items but several modest things too ).

S@BBIA:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/49599   ( longer skirts and sweaters ).

I'm sure you will get more idea's and suggestions too.

Best Regards,

Josephine

[Fritigern Gothly]

To be honest, I thought I had heard of most mesh bodies out there, but I had not heard of the Redgrave body, and that may also be the reason why it is so hard to find clothes for it. After all, unknown makes unloved and thus only few creators will make clothes for that body.

If availability for clothing, shoes, skins, etc., is a criterium for you, then I think it would be best to purchase a different. more popular body. More popular translated to a higher availability of clothing and accessories.
Off the top of my head, I would say that the most popular ones are:

• Maitreya Lara
• Belleza Freya
• SLink Hourglass
• Tonic Curvy

This list is in no particular order, other than the order in which I thought of them.
Make sure to pick up demos and play with the body, the HUD, adjust your shape to see if the body's changes feel right to you because especially minimum and maximum boob/butt/hip sizes differ between bodies, some bodies feel softer or "fleshier" than others, etc.
In other words, even though the shape sliders have the same range on all bodies, the effect can be greater or less between the bodies, hence why it is important to try demos and put them through their paces.

As for how the clothing works, most people seem to choose to buy mesh clothing, specifically created for the bodies they wear. This almost ensures that the clothing will fit. However, this is not a given, so for that too goes that you should always try a demo before buying, in case the mesh does not fit as nicely as expected.

Appliers are a different beast., They apply a texture to your mesh body. Nowadays this is usually a skin, makeup, or a tattoo. But to make things a bit more confusing, we now have Bakes on Mesh (BoM) and this lets you apply old system (style) clothing, tattoos, and even skins to your BoM enabled body. Note that these skins are best bought new and made sure they are BoM skins, although our old classic skins will work too, but especially fingers and toes will usually look wonky which is why people choose to buy them new.

Um... Dunno what other kind of info to chuck at you so if you have more questions, then please do not hesitate to ask more questions.

Good luck!

[Fritigern Gothly]

19 minutes ago, Josephine Carissa said:

Greetings Hazy,

Here are some places you can look for clothes:

Will they work with a Redgrave body? Because although I see Freya, Maitreya and Slink in the descriptions of hose products, but I see no Redgrave, which is what the original poster uses.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Fritigern Gothly

[Beth Macbain]

4 minutes ago, Fritigern Gothly said:

Will they work with a Redgrave body? Because although I see Freya, Maitreya and Slink in the descriptions of hose products, but I see no Redgrave, which is what the original poster uses.

I could be wrong, but I believe she means that she has a Redgrave skin, and a system body. Back in the day, Redgrave skins were THE skin to have. 

[Fritigern Gothly]

1 minute ago, Beth Macbain said:

I could be wrong, but I believe she means that she has a Redgrave skin, and a system body. Back in the day, Redgrave skins were THE skin to have. 

Hm, you could be right. But I guess only Hazy can tell us for sure 🙂
Though it is entirely possible that Redgrave, if it still exists, has ventured into the Mesh Body trade as well just like Belleza did. I bought my Belleza skin in... I think in 2009 though it could have been 2010. I wore it until after I bought a mesh body which also happened to be by Belleza but I still occasionally wear that skin after enabling BoM, although I do make it a point to wear gloves and socks when I do that  

[Hazy Frog]

yes! back when I played, Redgrave was a skin to have.  I am currently wearing a redgrave skin and body.

if i purchase say, the laura from mainreya, is that the only skin i can use? or can I apply any skin on top? 

[Fritigern Gothly]

Just now, Hazy Frog said:

yes! back when I played, Redgrave was a skin to have.  I am currently wearing a redgrave skin and body.

if i purchase say, the laura from mainreya, is that the only skin i can use? or can I apply any skin on top? 

You are not sentenced to using only skins by Maitreya. As long as the skin is made for the body, you can use it no matter who created the skin.
Also, there is a thing called Omega and this comes as a HUD for Maitreya, it allows you to wear skins that are made for use with the Omega system.
Maitreya is also BoM ready, so you can use your old skin (fingers and toes will look weird though, so wear sock and gloves :-)) or buy a new, BoM specific one.

With the exception of the BoM variant, skins for mesh bodies come as appliers. You wear the applier (it's usually a HUD item), touch it, and it puts the skin on your mesh body. You can then take off the applier and you'd be done.
BoM skins are worn just like the classic skins that we know and love and they "magically" appear on your mesh body.

P.S. Note that nowadays, skins are often sold in two parts. The head (which is for specific mesh heads) and the body (which usually is more generic). I still have a hard time adjusting to that...

[Parhelion Palou]

Redgrave has stayed mostly in the past. They have some skins with appliers for the Maitreya Lara but that's about it. I don't know if they have anything at all for mesh heads. Their skins might work for BOM.

[Jennifer Boyle]

IMHO, you'd do well to look around for clothes you like before selecting a mesh body. Identify several stores that sell clothing that you like for prices you are willing to pay that is of the quality that you find acceptable. Note which bodies they sell clothing for. Then, select one of those. You can right click on mesh clothing and mesh bodies and click on "Object Profile" to find out the name of the article and who made it; I often do that when I see someone wearing something I think I'd like to have. Another thing to pay attention to is how well a brand of clothing fits. Some of my favorite brands consistently fit so well that I don't bother trying demos of their clothing. I don't think that there's much correlation between clothing price and quality.

I wear Maitreya Lara exclusively. I chose it because it seemed to be the most popular and the one that the most clothing was available for. That still seems so.  Most of the clothing in my favorite store is for Maitreya only.

If it's important to you to duplicate the look of your system avatar, you might consider wearing the demo, making an identical twin alt, and standing on posing stands beside each other or even in exactly the same place, and adjust shape sliders to see how closely you can match the shape. This is tedious and time consuming. If you succeed, be sure to save the shape to use with the "real" body.

Good luck, and WB!

Edited May 7, 2020 by Jennifer Boyle
Addition

[Marianne Little]

I did not see that you posted in another thread before making your own. So I link to my reply instead of writing all over again. You also got another reply in that thread that I recommend. https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/454060-female-mesh-body/?do=findComment&comment=2111111

If you want to keep your skin and your face but still use all the new, modern clothes, get a meshbody that can use Bakes on Mesh. Now you probably get more confused, what is this BoM?

 

As I wrote in my first reply, mesh bodies are attachments worn over the hidden default second life body - the one you have now. This also made all layers on the default body invisible, so skin creators sold appliers, that applied the skin on the mesh body. You could have whatever skin under the mesh body, it was not visible. The same had to be done with tattoos and clothing layers.

LL made a change called Bakes on Mesh, BoM for short. This suddenly makes the things like skin, tattoos and clothes layers visible again, and show up on the mesh body. Now you can use your Redgrave skin, and it will be baked on any mesh body IF it is BoM or can be used with a BoM relay.

I don't know if you were in SL after we got tattoo layers and alpha layers, so I try to explain what they are. Forgive me if you already know this.

When we started SL, we had to buy all the makeups we wanted as skins. Our tattoos came on clothing layers, most common were underwear layers. We used invisiprims to hide the ugly misshaped feet, so we could wear prettier shoes.

Tattoo layers changed how skins were sold. A tattoo layer cover the whole body. Head, hands and feet included. A new brand of creators used this to sell makeup only. It became oldfashioned to sell full makeup skins. Creators sold bare skins and makeup packs. It was a revolution in avatar appearance, since LL also let us use more than one layer. We could use a skin and layer as much makeup as we want, from different creators. Tattoo layers are very versatile and are used for everything, makeup, tattoos, hairbases, scars, freckles and also as clothing layers. To wear a full body suit, you had to wear several clothing parts before. Now, the whole suit goes on a tattoo layer, click and add it as one.

This also meant that "add" replaced "wear" if you will use more than 1 layer. Wear replaces it, add adds a new layer.

Alpha layers replaced the old invisiprims - that it totally removed from SL. You can wear them but they are not doing anything. Here you can also add invisiprims, to hide your feet in boots, your shirt, your jacket and so on.

Meshbodies gave us beautiful bodies, but they represented a step back since all these layers became hidden under the new body. Creators adapted and started to sell appliers. Same for mesh heads, there had to be new appliers for them as well.

Now we are in the position that we can choose to wear appliers on mesh bodies or let the layers show up instead. We can even do both, wear a skin as the base, and wear both layers and appliers over. All this has made avatar customization more complicated, but if you choose to use BoM, you do not have to think about appliers. You add and take off your layers from the inventory, as you are used to. You can wear your old tattoos like Garden of Ku, or buy new ones. Just make sure new ones are marked "BoM" or "Bakes on Mesh". Under is an example. My oldest parts is the tattoos worn on underwear layers, then new and old tattoo layers.

 

Edited May 8, 2020 by Marianne Little
spelling errors