Need help/advice with Tweenster

[MailieRP]

So... I joined back in 2017, ended up deciding I wanted a child Avi. Of course, I went through an extreme hassle of trying to make something that didn't look a weird mix between the green goblin, and a potato. The result wasn't perfect, but I was okay enough with it to ignore the obvious flaws. Then I left, came back, left... and now I'm back again. With a new perspective sort of, and deciding that my current Avi isn't the best in appearance.

 

Despite my best attempts at using the Tweenster hud to recolor the skin (which also won't effect the face for some reason...) I can't get rid of a rather blatant neck seam. Even when the tone matches the body.

 

 

So, I was hoping someone might know what I'm doing wrong, or might have suggestions or recommendations for alternative things to use... I'm still fairly puzzled by a lot of appearance stuff, like a lot. Maybe there's a different body mesh I should be using, or a specific head or something? I've tried just about everything I can think of only to get frustrated, doubly so when it seems a lot of others have amazing-looking Avi's.  Though even simply googling and looking for already-given fixes or advice... I'm left even more beffudled. Either mixed responses, or different meshes and such. Feels like there's just something I'm missing to make it click and magically work, which is probably silly... but still.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and even if you don't have any to give, thanks for reading to the end anyways! And sorry for the size of the images, didn't know how to make'em smaller.

Edited October 27, 2020 by MailieRP

[Laurel Aurelia]

Thank you for posting your wear folder that helps a lot when assisting with issues. I am assuming you don't currently have a mesh head on , most bodies that I am familiar with usually come with some sort of neck fix solution since the join between most mesh  and system avatars is especially egregious. In your tweenster hud is there something that controls neck size there?  And If not there, there might be an actual mesh piece you can wear on top that is included. If not,  Apricot Paws has a free neck fix  thing that while originally meant for furry avatars might help in this case as well. https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Apricot-Paws-SLUV-Neck-ExtenderFix-Freebie/14958878

[MailieRP]

1 hour ago, Laurel Aurelia said:

Thank you for posting your wear folder that helps a lot when assisting with issues. I am assuming you don't currently have a mesh head on , most bodies that I am familiar with usually come with some sort of neck fix solution since the join between most mesh  and system avatars is especially egregious. In your tweenster hud is there something that controls neck size there?  And If not there, there might be an actual mesh piece you can wear on top that is included. If not,  Apricot Paws has a free neck fix  thing that while originally meant for furry avatars might help in this case as well. https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Apricot-Paws-SLUV-Neck-ExtenderFix-Freebie/14958878

You're welcome, and thank you for responding! I wasn't sure if it was needed, but I figured with as much as I want to fix this whole thing... better to include it. As for the head, I don't think I do, no. The tweenster shapes all mention either default head, or Catwa. Pretty sure I don't have Catwa... but I'm not sure if default is correct either. Aside from that, there are tones, alphas,  a "omega skin hud", and the hud for tweenster. As far as I can see, there's nothing that controls neck size at all in the hud.  The only thing it lets me do regarding the neck is make it invisible with the alpha cuts, and there's also a color tint thing for "neck fader", but it doesn't help much at all as no matter what I change it to, the seam is still there.

I got that free fix, and tried it... but it didn't seem to do much of anything. Two of the three female ones just add a white line above the neck seam, and the third makes the head completely disappear. 

Edited October 27, 2020 by MailieRP

[Sassy Kenin]

Welcome to the Forums MailieRP🥰

[Maitimo]

I'm assuming that the body is NOT bakes on mesh because you are wearing the body alpha, and if it were set to bakes on mesh, your body would be bright red. You also do not have a mesh head (I can tell this because your head went invisible when you added the Apricot Paws neck fix). The Apricot Paws neck fix wont help here - that only works if there are gaps between mesh head and mesh body, and only works if both the body and head are Bakes on Mesh. But your problem isn't gaps, it's a mismatch of skin tone.

So this presumably means that you are applying the skin from the body hud, and the system skin that you are wearing is only seen on your head. Are you absolutely certain that the skin you are selecting from the body hud matches the tone number of the skin you're wearing (tone 3)?

I am also seeing a dark patch on your shoulder/side of neck which looks like it may be caused by lighting rather than the skin or body. Does this patch change if you switch to a different environmentsl setting? Does it move if you turn around? You're using Firestorm, so try Nam's Optimum Skin & Prim. Does that help?

If not - make sure Advanced Lighting is OFF - if this improves things, it means that there is a gloss/shine materials setting on the body that needs to be turned off (check the hud again for that).

If none of these help, then it seems that what you have is a badly-made skin. If this is the case, then you may need to do one of the following:

- Find out if the body can be changed to Bakes on Mesh, and do that. Then use a different BOM or system layer skin. (Pink Fuel has some inexpensive ones with flat chest options)

- If the body cannot be changed to Bakes on Mesh, then look for skin appliers made by someone else. Try demos.

- If demos and new skins still don't work, then go back and try playing around with environment settings again. Otherwise, the problem may not be fixable at all with this particular body.

 

As an alternative, you may want to consider upgrading to Maitreya with the flat chest or petite add-on.  If those are too expensive, there is a flat-chest body (Natasha) and a Petite-chest body (Vania) at Lucybody which fit Maitreya clothing. These two bodies are about half the cost of Maitreya. Any of these bodies can be reduced in size using sliders.

Edited October 27, 2020 by Maitimo

[MailieRP]

1 hour ago, Maitimo said:

So this presumably means that you are applying the skin from the body hud, and the system skin that you are wearing is only seen on your head. Are you absolutely certain that the skin you are selecting from the body hud matches the tone number of the skin you're wearing (tone 3)?

That seems to have made it a bit better... sort of. Three seems to have some issue with the tones matching, at least from my eyes. So I switched it to two and I think it looks a lot more 'even'. So, thank you for that!!

 

1 hour ago, Maitimo said:

I am also seeing a dark patch on your shoulder/side of neck which looks like it may be caused by lighting rather than the skin or body. Does this patch change if you switch to a different environmentsl setting? Does it move if you turn around? You're using Firestorm, so try Nam's Optimum Skin & Prim. Does that help?

If not - make sure Advanced Lighting is OFF - if this improves things, it means that there is a gloss/shine materials setting on the body that needs to be turned off (check the hud again for that).

I think it is from me having my settings all the way low. I get a lot of lag sometimes, even though I think my pc should be find... Anyway, onto the topic at hand. So, I bumped the graphic preset from lowest, to low-medium.  Mind, these are in different places, but I think the "hardware skinning" makes a ton of difference.    TO    

While there is still a barely obvious tone issue near the neck seam, I think it's a lot better! The blatancy of the seam, too, seems to be a lot better with hardware skinning on. 

 

As for upgrading, I don't have a whole lot of L$ to spend, but I'll definitely check out those suggestions! I've been searching forever for something that more readily befitting of a child avi. Been hard-pressed on that front, especially as I don't/didn't know what to look for. So thank you so much for both the help and the recommendations. This has mostly settled a vastly over-welcome headache.

 

2 hours ago, Sassy Kenin said:

Welcome to the Forums MailieRP🥰

Thank ya!! ^^

Edited October 27, 2020 by MailieRP

[Maitimo]

16 minutes ago, MailieRP said:

That seems to have made it a bit better... sort of. Three seems to have some issue with the tones matching, at least from my eyes. So I switched it to two and I think it looks a lot more 'even'. So, thank you for that!!

I think it is from me having my settings all the way low. I get a lot of lag sometimes, even though I think my pc should be find... Anyway, onto the topic at hand. So, I bumped the graphic preset from lowest, to low-medium.  Mind, these are in different places, but I think the "hardware skinning" makes a ton of difference.    TO    

While there is still a barely obvious tone issue near the neck seam, I think it's a lot better! The blatancy of the seam, too, seems to be a lot better with hardware skinning on. 

 

That does look much better - and you may find you get better frame rates on low-medium settings than on the lowest. I have no idea why.

That "less obvious" seam in your second pic is about as good as it ever gets in SL, particularly without a mesh head. It is literally and physically impossible to get an invisible and perfect seam between mesh body and system head. Pretty much everyone gets a seam to some degree, unless you have high-end body AND head. And Tweenster is definitely not "high end". 

Lighting makes a big difference, but you need Atmospheric Shaders turned on to make use of it. With more ambient light, and less sun/moon light, the appearance of seams is much reduced.

[Eddy Vortex]

I'm a bit late to the thread, but I wanted to show how I minimized the neck seam on my Tweenster body.

I turned off the fader in the HUD.  This is how my neck looks with the Catwa head:

 

This is how it looks when I took off the mesh head. so it's basically what you'd see with a system head:

 

I used the [NB] Alpine-skinlight RGB windlight on low to mid graphic setting in both images.  I've also had the body enabled to BoM.  Tweenster already has Omega pre-installed so you just need to get the free BoM relay to get your system to appear on your mesh body.  You can get it here: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Bake-on-Mesh-Appliers-for-Omega/18239191.  Use the relay labeled, Omega BoM Skin - Body.