Body and Head won't match no matter what.

[NunGrandma]

I'm a bit new to Second Life but i learn fast! yesterday i bought a mesh body (-Belleza- Mesh Body Jake) and a mesh head (LeLUTKA Connor Head 2.5).
from the start even before buying any skins the head would not match the body no matter what so i tried searching and made sure i hade the glow off or anything that might be causing the issue

but no matter how much i try it's not gonna match so i went and tried so many demos for the head and body while making sure it matches the label of each and matching the skin tone
but no matter what it always looks strange and you could see it across the room the only thing that helps just a little is when i put my graphics settings to ultra and turn the shadows on!

but it still looks off and the shadow shouldn't matter cause i tried the conor head with another body (Legacy body) and it looked perfect even though i had the demo on but i could tell it was matching

some people told me it's just the demo makes it looks off so i went and bought tow skins for the jake body which is these:
(Stray Dog - Jake Skin - TONE 04) and (Clef de Peau.Body Soft T3 [JAKE] Applier) and both of them don't work on the avatar i have even though the color match there is a neckline that is so obvious

and messy and i notice i met a lot of people who have the same body and they have the same issue no matter what and i met a guy who seems he knows his stuff and he told me it's an issue with

the jake body cause it's old and he recommended to me to get the Legacy body and he saw my avatar in his pc and on mine by sharing on discord and sending pics and he confirms that my neckline

isn't natural whatsoever and most people tell me my neck isn't matching on their screens too and now i'll show you what my avatar looks in some stages of me trying:

this is when i tried the skin for the body demo which i ended up buying with the demo head skin for lelutka head for Theo and matching the skins to 04 at the Not Found store
 

and this is what i look in my screen sometimes i could pass as matching perfectly if i turn the shadows on and put it to ultra and zoom a little back! which is not convenient.

keep in mind it looks this good when i have the ultra settings on and put the shadows on and the light is soft or not hitting on the neck area or else you could still see the neckline!
now i'll show you what it looks on my with ultra and shadows and with lower graphics settings and without shadow and keep in mind the legacy body on the head i own which is conor looked amazing which makes me think it's a jake body issue to be honest cause no matter what head oe skin i try on the legacy body demo it looks near perfect compare to the jake's body from belleza!

 

now i'll show you how it looks with the Legacy body with the same head with ultra setting and with lower setting and with shadows on and off

first with (Ultra graphics settings + shadows on) i used midday windlight only:

and this is with (Low graphics + no shadows) with midday windlight only

as you see with the Legacy body it doesn't matter what graphics settings or if i had shadows on or not it always looks near perfect and i wish i had this result on the jake body as well
can someone please help me is it possible to have such good result on the jake body too or is the body itself old and won't work good no matter what!?

my aim is to use the Belleza Jake body + Lelutka Conor head cause i already bought them and spent money on them and on skins for the jake body too so is there any way to fix this issue?

please help!

[Skell Dagger]

Catwa CSR here. While I'm not a CSR for Lelutka, I work with heads and bodies extensively and own most of the major ones available, so I'll help you out to the best of my ability.

You have several things going on here, which I'll go into more detail about shortly. But first, to fix that huge colour discrepancy between your head and body when you're wearing the same skintone from the same creator on both, you need to go into your viewer's Preferences > Graphics, and set Shadows to 'Sun/Moon', at the bare minimum. Having them set to 'None' is what's causing that issue. You don't need to be on Ultra if you don't want to; you can have shadows set to Sun/Moon even on Mid graphics.

Watch this video to see the difference that one setting makes.

Now to the other issue of the neck fit itself. With regard to this -

1 hour ago, NunGrandma said:

i met a guy who seems he knows his stuff and he told me it's an issue with the jake body cause it's old

- he is partly correct. The problem does lie with the Jake body, but not because it's old. The issue is because the creator of that body is very very very slow to update when new things come out on the SL grid. Case in point: BoM (Bakes on Mesh) has now been live for over a year (15 months or so) and Jake has still not been updated at all in that time to include BoM capability. Instead, you have to pick up a third party HUD to enable BoM on the body. And this lack of updates has caused your current issue, which is to do with the neck.

The Lelutka Evolution heads (of which Connor is one) feature a new neck fit that's been dubbed the 'Universal Neck'. Several major head and body creators agreed to move to a new standard neck fitting so that - going forward - neck seams like the one you're seeing with Connor/Jake would no longer happen. Legacy is one of the bodies that has the new neck, which is why the fit you're seeing with Connor/Legacy is seamless. Signature has also updated (their folders include two bodies with different neck options: one for the new Universal Neck, and one for the SL neck that fits older heads). But Belleza - being as slow to update as it is - is not a perfect fit for the Universal Neck. (In fact, it still has fitting issues with some other head brands, although it's a good fit with the older Lelutka Origins heads.) And in all honesty I wouldn't hold your breath for an update to Jake any time soon.

Next, I want to address this:

1 hour ago, NunGrandma said:

yesterday i bought a mesh body (-Belleza- Mesh Body Jake) and a mesh head (LeLUTKA Connor Head 2.5).
from the start even before buying any skins the head would not match the body no matter what

1 hour ago, NunGrandma said:

some people told me it's just the demo makes it looks off so i went and bought tow skins for the jake body

STOP THAT!

Heh, sorry for the all caps. Please don't just buy full priced items to try and fix things. ALWAYS try demos - of heads, bodies, skins, everything. You're getting there with skins, but did you demo the head and body together before buying them? If so, you would have seen the mismatch before you even spent a single L$, and you might have queried it in advance and saved yourself some money. Also, please don't listen to people who tell you something like "it's just the demo that makes it look bad, so buy the full priced version and it'll look fine". The demo should be indicative of the finished product. If the demo looks bad, the finished product will look bad. Yes, in the case of skins you may see some fine white 'contour lines' defacing a demo, but they are not so severe that they detract from a bad mismatch (as you can see from the 'Ultra' screenshots you took, where it's obvious that the skins match perfectly).

And that bad mismatch could be because of this:

1 hour ago, NunGrandma said:

i tried the skin for the body demo which i ended up buying with the demo head skin for lelutka head for Theo and matching the skins to 04 at the Not Found store

Theo is a head skin by Stray Dog (I can also see that you're at the Stray Dog store in your screenshot). Stray Dog has his own body skins - just inside the door and to the right when you walk in. Body skins by Not Found do not match to Stray Dog skins. Not Found body skins match to their own head skins (and their older head skins match to body skins by Clef de Peau, just to make things doubly confusing!) The general rule of thumb is as follows:

• always demo
• when demoing a skin, check the store to see if it sells both head and body skins; if they do then buy both head and body skins from that store
• if the skin store only sells head skins, look for a notecard in the demo folder which should tell you at which store you can get the matching body skins (and demo both together first!)

The long and the short of it is: you will struggle to get a perfect neck fit with Connor/Jake. Enabling that 'Sun/Moon' shadow setting in your viewer's graphics prefs will eliminate the worst of the tone discrepancy between head and body, and making sure that you have a head skin and body skin in the same tone from the same creator will get you to as close a match as possible. After that, there isn't much else you can do, because of the speed (or lack thereof) of the Belleza updates.

Edited December 15, 2020 by Skell Dagger

[NunGrandma]

Thank you so much for clearing the issue for me and i appreciate it you just saved me a lot of trouble i have been trying for almost two days and it got tiring.
You did a great job explaining everything i wanna know and now i get why i have the issue and i have some points maybe not important anymore but i'll put it in here for people who reads
and may have the same issue as me:

- The avatar isn't even mine i'm logged in to a friends account who got into the game yesterday and decided to buy a mesh body and skin and we all went and picked it fast
i didn't have time to research or even think about the demo it was a rushed decision and cause i bought a lara skin from the Belleza store and worked like magic with my Lelutka head
i thought the body being Belleza same as my Lara and a Lelutka head gonna work like magic and that's why i feel responsible to fix this issue for my friend considering i pointed him into
that direction and he was willing to buy the Legacy body from start but i told him he could get a cheaper from the same source i got mine which is Belleza so that explains why people
need to research and try the demos before spending any money i agree.

- I miss-named the place i got my skins from it wasn't Not Found it was as you said the stray dog place i just got them confused and they worked great on Legacy but as you explained
they don't work as well on Jake's and i knew it's an issue when almost everyone i saw with the same Jake's body was having the same issues as me that was a huge dead giveaway.

- So the best choice for me is to buy the Legacy body and you have every right to type in caps because i was in a hopeless tired place and i thought i could fix it and i bought the people's
words even if it didn't sound realistic just in hope it magicly solves my issues and now i regret it kinda cause the body and the tow skins pretty much useless!

 In the end i wonder do you think a tattoo layer could hide all this mess or it will still be visible as i said i'm kinda new and don't understand if the tattoo layers go over the body thus hiding
any issues or it just simply draw itself over the body which won't solve any issue whatsoever? and if i bought the Jake's body yesterday is there any chance we can refund the body or not?

Finally, Thank you so much you were helpful and went over every issue you just gave me the peace of mind i needed grateful for your help and Merry Christmas  

[Skell Dagger]

52 minutes ago, NunGrandma said:

The avatar isn't even mine i'm logged in to a friends account who got into the game yesterday

Well, the name did make me wonder, but I'm not one to judge based on that I will, however, caution against logging into someone else's account, even though they've given you permission to. It's not strictly against the ToS, but it's strongly warned against. And I do understand that your friend may feel overwhelmed and confused at all the options and wants someone who knows their way around even just a little bit more than he does to try and fix him up. But, as a CSR for a major mesh brand in SL, I've had to help far too many people who have been set up entirely by someone else, and who have subsequently messed something up, and the friend has left SL etc, and they have no clue how to fix things on their own.  It's always preferable to learn how to work with your own mesh head and body wherever possible. Suggest that he regards it the same as he would do his car. It helps to know how to change the oil, check the tyre pressure, and change a tyre himself rather than taking it to a garage to get it done!

On to your closing questions first:

52 minutes ago, NunGrandma said:

i bought the Jake's body yesterday is there any chance we can refund the body or not?

No, that won't be possible. A copiable item will not be refunded. The vast majority of large purchases like that will only be refunded in the case of an accidental double purchase.

52 minutes ago, NunGrandma said:

do you think a tattoo layer could hide all this mess or it will still be visible

A tattoo layer won't fix a difference in the mesh shaping. Something like that would be able to blend the difference between two skins, but a mismatch in the 3D shape of the mesh itself can't be fixed by a tattoo layer. Neck fixes/neck sheaths (such as the one you enabled on Jake) are more of a jury-rig fix, as you'll have noticed when you looked more closely at it.

Going back a little way in your post, I can see there's a bit of confusion here between skins and mesh bodies:

52 minutes ago, NunGrandma said:

i bought a lara skin from the Belleza store and worked like magic with my Lelutka head
i thought the body being Belleza same as my Lara and a Lelutka head gonna work like magic and that's why i feel responsible to fix this issue for my friend considering i pointed him into
that direction and he was willing to buy the Legacy body from start but i told him he could get a cheaper from the same source i got mine which is Belleza

I've colour-coded certain words in that, to help me explain the confusion. RED is for mesh bodies, and BLUE is for skins.

Lara is a mesh body created by Maitreya, not by Belleza. You didn't get your mesh body from the same source as his Jake mesh body. What you purchased for yourself from Belleza was a skin that goes on another brand's (Maitreya's) mesh body.

The reason why your Maitreya Lara body works perfectly with your Lelutka head - regardless of whether your head is from the Evolution range or the Origins range - is because Maitreya have included the Universal Neck fit as part of the HUD for Lara, as well as another neck fit option that works with the older head (Origins). That the 'Lara skin' from Belleza also works well is simply down to the fact that you must have purchased both head and body skins from Belleza, in the same tones.

I hope that explains it a bit better. It's absolutely not your fault if you got confused; customising an avatar in SL is a bit of a minefield these days with so many brands and options. That's why everyone will always bash you (metaphorically!) over the head with that "demo! demo! demo!" mantra.

(Incidentally, Belleza's three female bodies [Freya, Isis, and Venus] have suffered from the same lack of updates as Jake has.)

52 minutes ago, NunGrandma said:

you have every right to type in caps because i was in a hopeless tired place and i thought i could fix it

The all caps was mainly me begging rather than yelling I do understand that hopeless tired place. I deal with it day in and day out with others, and it's a horrible and frustrating place to be. If you find yourself there again, please step back and take a breather. Then look up in Search the inworld support groups (assuming there is one; sadly for Belleza there isn't) for the items you're struggling with, join them, and ask in there. Or post here and get some help from us veterans who have been futzing with all this stuff for years. We can usually get you sorted out fairly quickly, and you'll always find someone who can help you here.

Addendum:

One thing I've just done is gone to the Lelutka website and checked their FAQ for any known issues. The suggestion to mitigate any issues at the neck with Belleza bodies is to set the neck size to 0 on the Belleza HUD. Whether that's for the female Belleza bodies or the male one (or both) I'm not sure. I've never had to adjust the neck on my Jake body (mainly because I never wear it!) but it's worth checking before you consider purchasing the Legacy body. Give it a try and see if it helps at all. As mentioned earlier, I'm a CSR for a completely different brand and I almost never wear my Jake body, so I'm not as thoroughly familiar with its HUD as I am with those of Signature and Legacy, but hopefully that 'neck size 0' might do the trick. 

I also suggest joining the Lelutka inworld support group, since they know far more about their brand than I do and will be able to give you more accurate and pertinent advice.

Edited December 15, 2020 by Skell Dagger

[Wulfie Reanimator]

1 hour ago, Skell Dagger said:

Well, the name did make me wonder, but I'm not one to judge based on that I will, however, caution against logging into someone else's account, even though they've given you permission to. It's not strictly against the ToS, but it's strongly warned against.

I'm aware this is off-topic, but, the only "risk" in account sharing is to the original owner of the account. If I let someone else log into my account and that other person violates the TOS, my account is still fully responsible. That's why it's warned against.

The only thing LL doesn't allow is trying to change ownership of the account, such as giving it away completely or selling it for money.

I hope the neck issue gets solved though! Though this seems like the common problem with separate head & body (namely vertex normals and shading), it's basically unfixable (besides fudging with the scene lighting) without the creators collaborating together for a better product.

Edited December 15, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator