How can I narrow my seach for skins to use with BOM body and head?

[Jennifer Boyle]

I recently asked a similar question, but I think I worded it poorly, resulting in few responses.

I wear a Lelutka Simone head and a Maitreya Lara body. I recently changed to BOM for both. I am not completely satisfied with ther skin I'm currently wearing and want to replace it. I know that I can try demos, but

I want to avoid spending hours or days blindly trying demos that don't work well. Are there any characteristics that I can look at that indicate which skins are more or less likely to work well with my head and body, so as to narrow the search?

Thanks for any help.

[Orwar]

   If you're searching on the Marketplace, try including as many parameters as possible in your search. I.e. "Lelutka AND BOM AND Skin", alternatively just "Lelutka AND BOM" and navigating to the avatar components -> avatar skins -> female skins. 

   Other than that, you can check out the in-world stores of whatever brands you like the look of; most adverts will have a Lelutka icon on them if they're made for Lelutka, and many skin creators make skins for most of the big brand heads. The Skinnery for example has their store divided by which head you're using.

[Jennifer Boyle]

Thanks, Orwar.

What I'm unclear about is how necessary it is that a BOM skin be made for a specific head and a specific body, how likely a skin that isn't made for the specific head is to look good on it and if there is any other characteristic that would correlate with how well it would look. The skin that I'm currently wearing is one i happened to have that I though looked pretty good, just not good enough to wear forever.

[Marianne Little]

1 hour ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

Thanks, Orwar.

What I'm unclear about is how necessary it is that a BOM skin be made for a specific head and a specific body, how likely a skin that isn't made for the specific head is to look good on it and if there is any other characteristic that would correlate with how well it would look. The skin that I'm currently wearing is one i happened to have that I though looked pretty good, just not good enough to wear forever.

The head topography varies from brand to brand, and also in the new line (Lelutka). It is very obvious with the Lelutka Evolution heads, the mouth is very different from the previous heads. No Evolution skins look good on Simone. 

BoM skins will in most cases have flaws on other heads than they are made for. Difficult places to show up correct is around nostrils, eye corners and mouth corners.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/deetalez/48793553621/

 

 

[Maitimo]

3 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

Thanks, Orwar.

What I'm unclear about is how necessary it is that a BOM skin be made for a specific head and a specific body, how likely a skin that isn't made for the specific head is to look good on it and if there is any other characteristic that would correlate with how well it would look. The skin that I'm currently wearing is one i happened to have that I though looked pretty good, just not good enough to wear forever.

Bodies are all much of a muchness so for those it doesn't really matter. They all use the same UV map. But heads vary quite a lot; for example skins made for Catwa heads usually look terrible on Lelutka heads and vice-versa. So the best tactic would be to look for a skin that has a head skin made for Lelutka, and try that, with the corresponding body skin. However, you have an old Lelutka head, not one of the new Evo heads, so even a Lelutka skin may not look good if it's meant for one of the new ones. And you won't be able to tell, because the skin creator will say only "Lelutka", not  which specific head.

Really the only viable solution is just to try demos and maybe focus on older skins rather than the newer releases. 

The only absolute fact is that when you find a head skin you like, you'll need a body skin from the same creator, in the same tone. So find the head skin first, then buy the body skin to match it.

[Jennifer Boyle]

On 7/7/2020 at 11:01 AM, Marianne Little said:

The head topography varies from brand to brand, and also in the new line (Lelutka). It is very obvious with the Lelutka Evolution heads, the mouth is very different from the previous heads. No Evolution skins look good on Simone. 

BoM skins will in most cases have flaws on other heads than they are made for. Difficult places to show up correct is around nostrils, eye corners and mouth corners.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/deetalez/48793553621/

 

 

Thanks, Marianne.

[Jennifer Boyle]

On 7/7/2020 at 2:02 PM, Maitimo said:

Bodies are all much of a muchness so for those it doesn't really matter. They all use the same UV map. But heads vary quite a lot; for example skins made for Catwa heads usually look terrible on Lelutka heads and vice-versa. So the best tactic would be to look for a skin that has a head skin made for Lelutka, and try that, with the corresponding body skin. However, you have an old Lelutka head, not one of the new Evo heads, so even a Lelutka skin may not look good if it's meant for one of the new ones. And you won't be able to tell, because the skin creator will say only "Lelutka", not  which specific head.

Really the only viable solution is just to try demos and maybe focus on older skins rather than the newer releases. 

The only absolute fact is that when you find a head skin you like, you'll need a body skin from the same creator, in the same tone. So find the head skin first, then buy the body skin to match it.

Thanks, Maltimo. I'm using BOM for both head and body, and I'm looking for one skin. This is the only way I've found to completely get rid of the neck seam.

[Laurel Aurelia]

Hey Jennifer, the only store I can think of off the top of my head that has bom skins for Lelutka that are all in one is Amara Beauty. I am not sure how big of collection it is, but I do remember seeing a few the last time I was there. As for having an issue with the neck seams, many of the brands that have the face layer on tattoo, often have another tattoo layer to wear on top of head tattoo that will cover that neck seam. If it is not working, there are few things that could be going on.  Bodies and heads will have a seam that cannot be fixed if one of the body parts has had the materials turned up too much. Even just a hair over can make it look weird. The next thing that could be an issue is that the head and neck are set at different sizes thus creating a line. I wear one of the newer Lelutka heads, in one of the more recent updates, they added a second head  size  with  (SL) as an affix at the end. That head was to only be used  with Legacy bodies and I think the Ruth one too. The head without "SL" at the end was for Maitreya and other bodies that it had previously worked with.  I hope this was helpful. Good luck!

[Maitimo]

33 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

Thanks, Maltimo. I'm using BOM for both head and body, and I'm looking for one skin. This is the only way I've found to completely get rid of the neck seam.

You'll find that most skin creators these days do not release their skins in one piece. They have a skin which is for the body only, and a blank face. Then you buy the face separately and this is supplied as a BOM tattoo layer that you wear on top.  You won't notice any seam though; skins made this way or the old way is exactly the same as far as the texture is concerned. So if it would have matched as a whole one-piece skin, it will still match as a two-part skin.

If you are using a body skin and a face skin from the same skin-maker, and in the same tone, and you are still seeing a join, it most likely means that your head or your body have materials (shine/glossiness/environment) set at different levels.  You can check this by the following method:

• Change your windlight/sky settings to CaWL or Nam's Optimum Skin
• Turn off advanced lighting

You'll see that the skin now matches; if it still doesn't, check the following:

• Either your head or your body have a tint added to them on your hud
• You bought the wrong head or body skin (note that some skin sellers have revised their tones so if you try to match an old body skin with a new head skin from the same seller, it may not work).
• You are wearing a "neck fix" either as a tattoo layer or part of your head or body. You don't need this with a mesh head so turn it off.

It could also be that you have bought a skin from a creator who isn't competent enough to make their skins match under any circumstances, though this isn't likely if you bought it from a well-known creator.

 

 

[Jennifer Boyle]

On 7/9/2020 at 11:18 AM, Maitimo said:

You'll find that most skin creators these days do not release their skins in one piece. They have a skin which is for the body only, and a blank face. Then you buy the face separately and this is supplied as a BOM tattoo layer that you wear on top.  You won't notice any seam though; skins made this way or the old way is exactly the same as far as the texture is concerned. So if it would have matched as a whole one-piece skin, it will still match as a two-part skin.

If you are using a body skin and a face skin from the same skin-maker, and in the same tone, and you are still seeing a join, it most likely means that your head or your body have materials (shine/glossiness/environment) set at different levels.  You can check this by the following method:

• Change your windlight/sky settings to CaWL or Nam's Optimum Skin
• Turn off advanced lighting

You'll see that the skin now matches; if it still doesn't, check the following:

• Either your head or your body have a tint added to them on your hud
• You bought the wrong head or body skin (note that some skin sellers have revised their tones so if you try to match an old body skin with a new head skin from the same seller, it may not work).
• You are wearing a "neck fix" either as a tattoo layer or part of your head or body. You don't need this with a mesh head so turn it off.

It could also be that you have bought a skin from a creator who isn't competent enough to make their skins match under any circumstances, though this isn't likely if you bought it from a well-known creator.

 

 

Thanks.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

On 7/7/2020 at 10:02 PM, Maitimo said:

Bodies are all much of a muchness so for those it doesn't really matter. They all use the same UV map.*

* For the most part. Maitreya especially will usually grow seams along the inner thigh if the skin isn't made for it, and the classic toe-issue. So if a texture is made for Maitreya, it'll only have a chance of being seamless on Maitreya, and vice versa.

But in general, the texture mapping errors seem much more lenient on bodies vs faces. So you should probably focus on matching the head first. It really needs to be checked on a case-by-case basis anyway.

But also, if you want to make things complicated, you can get neck-blender tattoo layers to make the tone transition smoother. (Not a neck-fix, those are mesh replacements for the neck to make it align with a specific body.)