What’s changed in a nutshell

[Eleora Lowey]

Hi there, I’m an old newbie. I signed up more than 10 years ago, only played for a couple of years, and haven’t been logging in till now. 

I realised that the shoes I got no longer fit as there seems to be a part of the foot sticking out. Upon digging, it seems like the old tech used (is it invisiprim or something?) doesn’t work as well in the new viewer or I may be wrong. it’s  overwhelming for me and I don’t even know where to begin learning what’s changed with avatars (something about system vs mesh?).My look is kinda outdated  if you get what I mean? Do I need to use the avatars provided? 

can someone please explain to me what’s changed? Do I need to shop for an entirely new inventory ? 
 

thanks! 
 

[Rowan Amore]

https://strawberrysingh.com

She has excellent tutorials about everything.  Very concise and easy to understand.  And....welcome back!

[Fritigern Gothly]

I would indeed think that after all these years, your look may be outdated. However you do not HAVE to change unless you want to. I want to make this clear from the very get-go.

However, if you wish to get up-to-date with mesh, BoM and all the other new technologies, then a good start would indeed be to use one of the default avatars. It would get you a mesh body and fitting clothes, although you won't find much that will fit those avatars. Hold on, because there will be a lot to take in.

I will assume that you don't have many L$ to spend, so for starters I would like to direct you to the Free Dove. It's possible that you have been there in the past because they have been around for a long time. The reason why I point you in that direction is because it's a near one-stop-shop. You can get a free mesh version of the Abar eBody and a variety of clothes which will fit, also free. The eBody is fairly popular, and although there are creators that make clothing for that, it may still be difficult to find nice stuff for that. Stil, not bad for starters.

There are a few free and cheap mesh heads around although the ones that I would usually recommend are currently not available. Maybe someone else could help with this.

So, that's the basics taken care of, a body and (hopefully) a head. Now we get to some of the new technologies. Namely "Bakes on Mesh", also known as BoM.
Mesh attachments that are BoM compatible or BoM enabled have some cool properties when this feature is enabled.
- They will automatically hide your system body, you won't have to do a thing to hide it. (system is the body that we have always had, until mesh bodies came to the scene).
- BoM bodies and heads will also show the system layers that you are wearing (skin, eyes, clothes, tattoos, etc.) but with some caveats.
- In addition to the traditional skins and clothing, BoM bodies will also allow you to wear clothing which is designed for use with that specific body (very important!) 
Note that if your body or head does not support BoM, you can still do a lot with it, but you won't be able to use your old skin or old clothes.

Another thing that has changed is something called Bento. Before Project Bento, fingers would not move, facial expressions were limited to the handful that LL had provided. Bento added more "bones" to the avatar's skeleton, these bones can be animated by animators and allow custom facial expressions, finger movements, but also attachments like tails, intimate body parts, or wings and/or an extra pair of legs (useful for centaurs, for example). Overly simplified; Bento allows human avatars to be animated in a more natural looking way and adds the ability to non-human avatars to have natural movements on their wings, tails, ears, etc.

 

BTW, If you do have the money to spend on the newer tech, then my recommendations changes a little of course. There are lots of different bodies, but the most popular brands for female avatars are Maitreya, Belleza, SLink, Tonic and the misleadingly named Legacy body. These bodies vary in price, but on average would be about 2,500 L$.
Popular head brands are Catwa, Genus (temporarily closed!), Akeruka, Lelutka, LAQ and I think I forgot at least one more big one. Most heads would sell for around 5,000 L$. There is a creator which sells heads for about 1,500 or so, but then sells the HUD separately for 3,000L$ so make sure to pay close attention!
When it comes to making a choice, let nobody tell you want is "best" because that is always a subjective thing. What is best for me may not be best for you.
Your old skins will still work (remember BoM) but some of the problems with the old system skins are that the nails on fingers and toes will not fit properly on the mesh fingers and toes. The nose is sometimes a problem too as the nostrils sometimes don't align well. To avoid these issues it would be advisable to buy a skin designed for BoM. This is another place where to beware of what you'd buy because many skin creators sell a separate head skin and body skin. The head skin is often tailored to a specific head (there are differences in layout) and the body skin is typically just a basic skin.
RULE OF THUMB: Always get demos! Get demos for all the bodies and heads that you seem to like so you can try them out at your home and see if they really are as nice as they seem. The same goes for clothing, skins, and so forth. (unless the stuff is free ;-)) and if there is no demo, skip them. 

 

I have omitted some details here and there because you already have a lot to take in. If I wanted to be complete in my descriptions of the tech and what to look out for and all the caveats and whatnot, this post would have been much longer and even more overwhelming than it already is.

Do feel free to ask questions, questions are good. We will try our best to help you as well as we can.

[Nalates Urriah]

You are coming back in the middle of a transition. Your old Classic avatar is very viable and the way we work with tattoos, skin, system clothes, makeup, and all the things you are used to are now the 'new' way. Sort of having come full circle.

While you were gone mesh was introduced from that came standard size mesh clothes, Liquid Mesh clothes, and now Fitted Mesh clothes. Since we weren't getting an Avatar 2.0 designers came up with Fitted Mesh Bodies (FMB). But FMB did not use the system layers you are familiar with. Stacking skin, tats, underwear, and clothes as we do with the Classic avatar was not possible with FMB. So, onion skin FMBs were developed and appliers became a thing to put a tat on a tattoo layer, skin on a skin layer, etc. 

Now we have BOM that allows a FMB to have a single layer, no onion skinning, and use system layers to stack things just as the Classic avatar does. So... we no longer have to use appliers.

During this transition there are lots of old FMB onion-skin style stuff still around. Onion skinning is still common with heads. One has to pay attention to which method the designer is using with there products.

So it is going to be confusing. But, what you knew is now back in fashion.

I made a post to help another returning person understand the new SL jargon in older SL terms. 

 

[Marianne Little]

I am linking direct to a blog, and do not worry because it is directed to "blokes". It tells you all about the new jargon. http://www.virtualbloke.com/archives/3711

Since you mention shoes... the best selling point for investing in a mesh body, is that literally nothing new is made for the system avatar anymore. You can still use your old shoes, it is ways to replace the invisiprims with "alpha layers" that does the invisiprim job. Think of them as socks that makes the feet disappear. In all sizes from low-cut liners to overknee. Alpha layers can be made to hide all other parts of the body as well, I compare with socks since you mention shoes.

So with a free set of alpha layers, you can experiment (they are free in the store but 1 L on the Marketplace). https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/LBD-BOMSystem-Alpha-Layers-Full-Perm/18683103

In addition to the ALWAYS DEMO, there is also use ADD, not WEAR. Before, you had one shirt layer, one jacket, one pants... etc. If you use Add. you can wear up to 62 layers. I have never used that many, but 8-10 often.

You are used to objects like sculpted shoes, sculpted pant cuffs attached to the logical place. Shoes, one to left foot, one to right foot. Pant cuffs the same, one to left lower leg, one to the right.

Rigged mesh uses the right hand as the default attachment point, and many creators does not change it, even if it goes on another part of the body than the hand. You can wear a mesh top, and then wear a pair of jeans because it is a different part of the body, right? No, what happens often, is that the jeans replace the top because both use the same attachment point. Oops.

Add, on the other side, add multiple things attached to the same place. So no involuntary striptease.

Many will say: Oh, get a free mesh avatar, it is so many good ones. Yes and no... it depends on how much work you will put into it. The full priced mesh heads/bodies are easy to use because it is a lot of tutorials. With the free ones, you already need to know something about HUDs and Alphas, to understand how it works. For the popular bodies, it is lots of tutorials just a search away. Note that there are updates to these all the time, so a tutorial from, let us say 2015, will give you wrong information, at least show you things you do not recognize from your 2020 body...

So you can read about free or inexpensive mesh here: https://ryanschultz.com/category/second-life-steals-deals-and-freebies/

If you invest money in SL, I would say start with the body. It is easier than a head. You can always buy a head later. But always demo. A survey of the most popular bodies also indicated how much content that is made for them. https://www.seraphimsl.com/2020/06/13/mesh-body-survey-female-body-results/

The longer you go down on the list, the more you have to search for things made for those bodies.

 

 

[Rabid Cheetah]

I just had my 14 year rez day, and spent a lot of it revisiting very old avis from my first few months in SL.  Such a delight to see them in richer detail merely from the vast difference between the computer, graphics card, and monitor I was using back then, versus now.  Plus there's a way to use your old clothes with the new bodies, BOM or something like that.  Ask the others.  So don't dismiss your old stuff.  Like someone above said, there's no requirement to update.  That said, though, you will notice a cultural shift:  The Pixel Snobs succeeded in driving SL culture into being vastly more visually based and picky about appearance than things were a decade ago.  I've even seen parcel descriptions that bar entry to anyone wearing Classic avis.  Welcome back!  I hope you enjoy the new SL.

[Eleora Lowey]

17 hours ago, RowanMinx said:

https://strawberrysingh.com

She has excellent tutorials about everything.  Very concise and easy to understand.  And....welcome back!

Thank you! I'd check it out later. 

[Eleora Lowey]

16 hours ago, Fritigern Gothly said:

I would indeed think that after all these years, your look may be outdated. However you do not HAVE to change unless you want to. I want to make this clear from the very get-go.

However, if you wish to get up-to-date with mesh, BoM and all the other new technologies, then a good start would indeed be to use one of the default avatars. It would get you a mesh body and fitting clothes, although you won't find much that will fit those avatars. Hold on, because there will be a lot to take in.

I will assume that you don't have many L$ to spend, so for starters I would like to direct you to the Free Dove. It's possible that you have been there in the past because they have been around for a long time. The reason why I point you in that direction is because it's a near one-stop-shop. You can get a free mesh version of the Abar eBody and a variety of clothes which will fit, also free. The eBody is fairly popular, and although there are creators that make clothing for that, it may still be difficult to find nice stuff for that. Stil, not bad for starters.

There are a few free and cheap mesh heads around although the ones that I would usually recommend are currently not available. Maybe someone else could help with this.

So, that's the basics taken care of, a body and (hopefully) a head. Now we get to some of the new technologies. Namely "Bakes on Mesh", also known as BoM.
Mesh attachments that are BoM compatible or BoM enabled have some cool properties when this feature is enabled.
- They will automatically hide your system body, you won't have to do a thing to hide it. (system is the body that we have always had, until mesh bodies came to the scene).
- BoM bodies and heads will also show the system layers that you are wearing (skin, eyes, clothes, tattoos, etc.) but with some caveats.
- In addition to the traditional skins and clothing, BoM bodies will also allow you to wear clothing which is designed for use with that specific body (very important!) 
Note that if your body or head does not support BoM, you can still do a lot with it, but you won't be able to use your old skin or old clothes.

Another thing that has changed is something called Bento. Before Project Bento, fingers would not move, facial expressions were limited to the handful that LL had provided. Bento added more "bones" to the avatar's skeleton, these bones can be animated by animators and allow custom facial expressions, finger movements, but also attachments like tails, intimate body parts, or wings and/or an extra pair of legs (useful for centaurs, for example). Overly simplified; Bento allows human avatars to be animated in a more natural looking way and adds the ability to non-human avatars to have natural movements on their wings, tails, ears, etc.

 

BTW, If you do have the money to spend on the newer tech, then my recommendations changes a little of course. There are lots of different bodies, but the most popular brands for female avatars are Maitreya, Belleza, SLink, Tonic and the misleadingly named Legacy body. These bodies vary in price, but on average would be about 2,500 L$.
Popular head brands are Catwa, Genus (temporarily closed!), Akeruka, Lelutka, LAQ and I think I forgot at least one more big one. Most heads would sell for around 5,000 L$. There is a creator which sells heads for about 1,500 or so, but then sells the HUD separately for 3,000L$ so make sure to pay close attention!
When it comes to making a choice, let nobody tell you want is "best" because that is always a subjective thing. What is best for me may not be best for you.
Your old skins will still work (remember BoM) but some of the problems with the old system skins are that the nails on fingers and toes will not fit properly on the mesh fingers and toes. The nose is sometimes a problem too as the nostrils sometimes don't align well. To avoid these issues it would be advisable to buy a skin designed for BoM. This is another place where to beware of what you'd buy because many skin creators sell a separate head skin and body skin. The head skin is often tailored to a specific head (there are differences in layout) and the body skin is typically just a basic skin.
RULE OF THUMB: Always get demos! Get demos for all the bodies and heads that you seem to like so you can try them out at your home and see if they really are as nice as they seem. The same goes for clothing, skins, and so forth. (unless the stuff is free ;-)) and if there is no demo, skip them. 

 

I have omitted some details here and there because you already have a lot to take in. If I wanted to be complete in my descriptions of the tech and what to look out for and all the caveats and whatnot, this post would have been much longer and even more overwhelming than it already is.

Do feel free to ask questions, questions are good. We will try our best to help you as well as we can.

Wow! Thanks for the detailed reply. 
I’m indeed oVerwhelmed by all this as I’m not familiar with SL jargon- sorry. I’d definitely take a look at Free Dove (that rings a bell) - thanks. 
 

but wait...what?! We can buy a new head?! I’m so confused. Are there online tutorials to explain the differences between my old avatar and the new ones? Thanks! 

[Eleora Lowey]

14 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

You are coming back in the middle of a transition. Your old Classic avatar is very viable and the way we work with tattoos, skin, system clothes, makeup, and all the things you are used to are now the 'new' way. Sort of having come full circle.

While you were gone mesh was introduced from that came standard size mesh clothes, Liquid Mesh clothes, and now Fitted Mesh clothes. Since we weren't getting an Avatar 2.0 designers came up with Fitted Mesh Bodies (FMB). But FMB did not use the system layers you are familiar with. Stacking skin, tats, underwear, and clothes as we do with the Classic avatar was not possible with FMB. So, onion skin FMBs were developed and appliers became a thing to put a tat on a tattoo layer, skin on a skin layer, etc. 

Now we have BOM that allows a FMB to have a single layer, no onion skinning, and use system layers to stack things just as the Classic avatar does. So... we no longer have to use appliers.

During this transition there are lots of old FMB onion-skin style stuff still around. Onion skinning is still common with heads. One has to pay attention to which method the designer is using with there products.

So it is going to be confusing. But, what you knew is now back in fashion.

I made a post to help another returning person understand the new SL jargon in older SL terms. 

 

Oh so my classic avatar is making a comeback now? If I understood correctly, the new avatars in SL are all FMB but you can layer clothes on like 10 years ago? If so can we still edit the clothing like we used to? And what’s onion skinning please? Thank you so much. 

[Eleora Lowey]

7 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

I am linking direct to a blog, and do not worry because it is directed to "blokes". It tells you all about the new jargon. http://www.virtualbloke.com/archives/3711

Since you mention shoes... the best selling point for investing in a mesh body, is that literally nothing new is made for the system avatar anymore. You can still use your old shoes, it is ways to replace the invisiprims with "alpha layers" that does the invisiprim job. Think of them as socks that makes the feet disappear. In all sizes from low-cut liners to overknee. Alpha layers can be made to hide all other parts of the body as well, I compare with socks since you mention shoes.

So with a free set of alpha layers, you can experiment (they are free in the store but 1 L on the Marketplace). https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/LBD-BOMSystem-Alpha-Layers-Full-Perm/18683103

In addition to the ALWAYS DEMO, there is also use ADD, not WEAR. Before, you had one shirt layer, one jacket, one pants... etc. If you use Add. you can wear up to 62 layers. I have never used that many, but 8-10 often.

You are used to objects like sculpted shoes, sculpted pant cuffs attached to the logical place. Shoes, one to left foot, one to right foot. Pant cuffs the same, one to left lower leg, one to the right.

Rigged mesh uses the right hand as the default attachment point, and many creators does not change it, even if it goes on another part of the body than the hand. You can wear a mesh top, and then wear a pair of jeans because it is a different part of the body, right? No, what happens often, is that the jeans replace the top because both use the same attachment point. Oops.

Add, on the other side, add multiple things attached to the same place. So no involuntary striptease.

Many will say: Oh, get a free mesh avatar, it is so many good ones. Yes and no... it depends on how much work you will put into it. The full priced mesh heads/bodies are easy to use because it is a lot of tutorials. With the free ones, you already need to know something about HUDs and Alphas, to understand how it works. For the popular bodies, it is lots of tutorials just a search away. Note that there are updates to these all the time, so a tutorial from, let us say 2015, will give you wrong information, at least show you things you do not recognize from your 2020 body...

So you can read about free or inexpensive mesh here: https://ryanschultz.com/category/second-life-steals-deals-and-freebies/

If you invest money in SL, I would say start with the body. It is easier than a head. You can always buy a head later. But always demo. A survey of the most popular bodies also indicated how much content that is made for them. https://www.seraphimsl.com/2020/06/13/mesh-body-survey-female-body-results/

The longer you go down on the list, the more you have to search for things made for those bodies.

 

 

Thanks for your explanation. So is rigged mesh new or old tech? By add, did you mean to say I can for instance, wear two jumpers at once attached to the same point? 

[Marianne Little]

34 minutes ago, Eleora Lowey said:

Wow! Thanks for the detailed reply. 
I’m indeed oVerwhelmed by all this as I’m not familiar with SL jargon- sorry. I’d definitely take a look at Free Dove (that rings a bell) - thanks. 
 

but wait...what?! We can buy a new head?! I’m so confused. Are there online tutorials to explain the differences between my old avatar and the new ones? Thanks! 

I think you are asking about things that you got links for, but I can try to reply as short as I can.

Linden Lab never updated the avatar, no matter how much people complained about flipper feet, no toes, cankles, wrists, no nails, ugly shaped  and blocky bodies.

Mesh creators then started making new body parts in mesh. I think the first was feet with real toes and toenails. This was a success. The mesh feet creator sold creator packs to shoe designers, so they could make shoes that fit perfect.

Then came hands that had static poses first. and breasts that looked more real. Then butts... and so one designer throw all together in a new body from the neck down. Others followed with their body. It is a large market now.

The better we look, the more demand for realism it is, and heads is also made for us. Under all this new mesh is the default avatar. This is 2 of my my other avatars heads (to the right) and show the transformation.

 

Edited August 13, 2020 by Marianne Little
added a few words to clarify + typo

[Marianne Little]

26 minutes ago, Eleora Lowey said:

Oh so my classic avatar is making a comeback now? If I understood correctly, the new avatars in SL are all FMB but you can layer clothes on like 10 years ago? If so can we still edit the clothing like we used to? And what’s onion skinning please? Thank you so much. 

Onion skinning: When we started to hide our avatars with a mesh body, how should we customize it with tattoos and other things we used system layers for? The onion skinning is like the Russian dolls. It is added 3 layers over the body, tattoo layer closest to the skin, underwear layer over, and clothes layer on top. It is 3 copies of the body. They are so close that you can't really see them.

The mesh body and its onion layers are scripted and react to appliers. Appliers send the texture to the body. If the applier script match the script in the body, the mesh body accept the texture and it is wrapped over the body - we have put on a skin. We use another applier, a tattoo, and do the same. The tattoo is applied on the tattoo layer. Same for underwear layer, clothing layer.

If you use the wrong applier, nothing happens. You can not use a Belleza applier on a Maitreya body and vice versa. It is a universal system called Omega, that use a script that can be used on every body that is ready for Omega.

Edited August 13, 2020 by Marianne Little
typo

[Marianne Little]

21 minutes ago, Eleora Lowey said:

Thanks for your explanation. So is rigged mesh new or old tech? By add, did you mean to say I can for instance, wear two jumpers at once attached to the same point? 

Yes, you can wear many objects that is attached to the same point. You can wear all sort of things on the same point.

Rigged mesh is new. It follow your body. Instead of skirts with prims that sink down into the chair when you sit, the mesh skirt follow the butt, legs and bend at the knees.

Some of the realism is missing because we have not got flexi mesh yet. So it is no moving skirts and hair.

The good thing is that clothes that is rigged to fit a mesh body is put on without editing. It fits out of the pack. But you must buy clothes made for that body, because a body is not a body, it is lots of bodies, and they are all a bit different. So if you try to use "wrong" clothes, they cut in the body or hoover over the body.

If you ever used a belly piercing, think about how we spent so much time editing it to sit right when we were standing on a posestand. Then we walked off the posestand, and the belly piercing did not move correct with the body, it was sometimes in the belly, sometimes outside. Use a rigged piercing now, and it follow your body as you move around, dance, bend and stretch.

Rigged mesh also mean that you can not move it up and down and stretch it, because it is rigged and bound to the avatar bones. But when you edit your body, rigged mesh follow the editing and fit your new shape. Unrigged mesh act as sculpts and prims when you wear it. It is static, and it can be moved and stretched (unless it is no modify).

[Laurel Aurelia]

Welcome back Eleora! I will try to explain the difference. So the Second Life body you were born with all those years ago is commonly referred to as our system body, and if you use that you will be considered a Classic avatar.  Some traits of a classic avatar are: Weird mushed feet,  hot dog fingers, and generally just a rougher looking shape of a human in general. Back in the day we were all fine with this because everyone looked like this. So you remember how there are/were some avatars that chose to not use their system human form? They would use prims and an alpha to block out that system body to become cool creatures like a dragon or in my case, I had a pretty cool sloth avatar from Grendels back in the day.  Essentially  this is the same spirit of what a mesh body and head is today except instead of being made out of regular prims,  mesh is made in 3d programs which allows for a much higher level of details and realism. No more mushed feet! Since it is rigged to the system body underneath, the shape of the mesh body can be changed by using the sliders in the system shape just like you changed your shape before.

As you know people have always loved customizing their avatars and with the advent of mesh avatars that did not change. People wanted ways to wear body details such as tattoos,  freckles, or  some tight-fitting clothing. The designers did this by making applier layers which would take textures and apply them to certain ONION layers on the body. You would have have a tattoo layer, a couple of different clothing layers, and by layers I mean it was copies of the body that were/are stacked on top of each other and rigged together which made the avatars needlessly complex because people were not always utilizing these extra layers.

Enter Bom. Bom or Bakes on Mesh is the ability to use system layers on mesh bodies. Where as you were more than likely limited to maybe 3 or 4 layers on a non bom body due to how many onion layers comprised the body. You can wear 50+ plus with BOM  which has basically blown the doors off on how detailed your look can be. All those textures are baked on to a single layer.  Most of the big named bodies and heads have been updated to use BOM, and  some have even remade their products so that there are much fewer onion layers. Someone posted Skell's Bom tutorial which is a must read imo! He goes into great detail explaining  bakes on mesh, and if I were you, I would try to learn how to use mesh bodies and heads this way instead of appliers as it is a technology that is slowly fading in its traditional use, though it still currently has a place with high definition make up.

I know this is a lot of info to take in, just take your time! Your system avatar will still serve you well until you discover a look that makes you happy.

[Nalates Urriah]

1 hour ago, Eleora Lowey said:

Oh so my classic avatar is making a comeback now? If I understood correctly, the new avatars in SL are all FMB but you can layer clothes on like 10 years ago? If so can we still edit the clothing like we used to? And what’s onion skinning please? Thank you so much. 

Well sort of a comeback... The BOM change allows FMBs to work more like the Classic body. You can layer clothes on a BOM-FMB just as you did the Classic body you are used to. 

Since it is system clothes being layered, you can make them just like you remember. However, I think system clothes are now used mostly for skin, tats, underwear, and shirts that need to fit under mesh clothes. It is the mesh bodies, heads, and clothes that are popular. The Classic body is not all that popular nor making a comeback. But...

Onions have many layers. The FMB pre-BOM was made like a set of Russian Dolls. One inside another. The inner most copy of the body was for skin. Since prims can only have one texture/diffuse image and cannot be composited with other images the tats layer was a copy of the body just a tiny bit larger than the skin layer. The same with the underwear and clothing layers. Pre-BOM bodies had four times as many polygons and textures as needed by a Post-BOM body. BOM is a Linden effort to reduce the render and data load on the system and it reverts us back to how Classic bodies were dressed. So, I would say it is System Layers that have made a comeback.

[FairreLilette]

21 hours ago, Eleora Lowey said:

Hi there, I’m an old newbie. I signed up more than 10 years ago, only played for a couple of years, and haven’t been logging in till now. 

I realised that the shoes I got no longer fit as there seems to be a part of the foot sticking out. Upon digging, it seems like the old tech used (is it invisiprim or something?) doesn’t work as well in the new viewer or I may be wrong. it’s  overwhelming for me and I don’t even know where to begin learning what’s changed with avatars (something about system vs mesh?).My look is kinda outdated  if you get what I mean? Do I need to use the avatars provided? 

can someone please explain to me what’s changed? Do I need to shop for an entirely new inventory ? 
 

thanks! 
 

Wow, you've got a lot of read here.  

While it seems like there is a lot of information here, it gets very easy once you start.  

You can pick out a mesh body and a mesh head or stay a Classic which is the default (old) system avatars.  

Do one step at a time, as once you start doing it, it will seem like a nutshell.

In a nutshell, basically you wear an alpha which alphas out the Classic (old) avatar and makes it invisible and wear a mesh body and head over that head and body alpha and then shape your mesh head and body like you used to with the shaper.  Best to start with the shape the head comes with, as it's the head you really need to shape first.

And, then buy a skin for your "head" style.  Sometimes the body skins are separate.  

Best of luck!  

[Marianne Little]

It sure is a lot to read. I got my first meshbody in 2014 and before that, I had first sculpted feet, then feet and hands in mesh, breasts, Phatazz, you name it. We got tattoo layers and then we could use 5 of each layer and way before,

invisiprims got gutted and we used alpha layers and we got fitmesh and rigged mesh., we had appliers and Omega, now also Bakes on Mesh...

And explaining all that in as few words as possible? I think you got closest, @FairreLilette

The OP had left SL when invisiprims was working, and they stopped working in 2011. It must be like frozen in the tundra and thawed up, in a different world than the one you know.

[Eleora Lowey]

Wow! Thank you everyone for your time in crafting the replies. You are all very helpful indeed. I do have a lot to read and am time poor in RL, but I'd try my best to catch up. Like what @Marianne Little said, I just "rose from the dead" and lo and behold, it's a whole new world! Once I'm caught up with my reading, can I ask questions here again pls?  Thanks very much. 

[Marianne Little]

58 minutes ago, Eleora Lowey said:

Wow! Thank you everyone for your time in crafting the replies. You are all very helpful indeed. I do have a lot to read and am time poor in RL, but I'd try my best to catch up. Like what @Marianne Little said, I just "rose from the dead" and lo and behold, it's a whole new world! Once I'm caught up with my reading, can I ask questions here again pls?  Thanks very much. 

We like people who come here and ask. 👍

It is so many people who shop first and ask later. They come here and say: I just bought xxx and why is it no clothes to buy for it? Why can I not use another skin? I bought this and it does not work? Most of this is misunderstandings, they think they bought something else. Plus that many sell "mesh avatars" that can not be customized.

Research before shopping is smart!

 

[Fritigern Gothly]

On 8/13/2020 at 11:50 PM, Eleora Lowey said:

 Once I'm caught up with my reading, can I ask questions here again pls?  Thanks very much. 

I would be quite miffed if you wouldn;t ask follow-up question!

Well, not miffed, but disappointed.

[Zeotetra]

System avatar still have a place using mine with mesh particularly the mask & Roleplay props.

As for shoes made a shoe shape and went with a tattoo layer now does look like i have shoes on in my opinion not as stylish as mesh.. its stylish in its own way just like Stompers 🤓

There are some who mix and match to get a balance between looks and performance.
E.g. friend of mine uses a mesh body, kept the system avatar head and since the mesh is bom (Baked on mesh)
can add layers just like system avatars can adding clothing layers, tattoos and skins.