Skins for specific mesh heads

[Angela Mikado]

When I started it was easy: Skin fits avatar, head, body and soul. Then came the mesh body and all the appliers. Glitches, and a lot of work. Here comes BOM and wow, lots of applier issues resolved. As I got a mesh head to replace the system head, I started seeing skins shown with (name a head brand) in the vendor photo. Since I knew that there were body "appliers" before BOM, am guessing skins for the body were rather generic. I always try demos and can't see a difference. Since lots of skin makers have only a couple main mesh head makers displayed in the photos, my questions are this:

1) excluding the newest HD type heads, do all BOM skins fit all heads and match up regardless of the vendor photo and those vendor photos used to attract "this is for my head" buyers

2) Which is better: the tat layer head skin and body skin or the complete skin.

thanks in advance

Angela

[Ceka Cianci]

I don't believe the complete system skin will work for the head..

I like using tats for both the head and the body because I can try on a skin demo for either  and just detach the tats if i don't like them.. it's great for when you are trying a bunch of skins at one time..

I don't ever really notice a difference from system skin or tats..

 

And no, not all head skins will match up for any heads.. They are still usually made for specific heads..

[Doc Carling]

I built hundreds of avatars with several mesh body brands,  heads and BoM. All with complete system skins and they look nicely. Not only one I built with  head/body tattoos. I don't say tattoos are bad.  I just don't see a need to use them.

It is not BOM that makes an avatar looking ugly. Main reason is a wrong shape. Mesh heads come usually with a shape that fits with skins of the same brand. You can still use other skins too, if you invest some time and work to edit the shape.  

As for vendor pictures. They are an help, when I look for a certain kind of avatars. But in general I use self-made shapes without exception.  So my avatars don't look like the ones on the pictures anyway. 

Edited April 4, 2021 by Doc Carling

[Lillith Hapmouche]

The magic word is "UV mapping". It can be blamed for minimal differences. That's the basic plan of how a texture is supposed to wrap around the underlaying head and body shape.

And if done right, you should not notice a difference between tattoo solutions and full body skins.

 

[Maitimo]

10 hours ago, Angela Mikado said:

1) excluding the newest HD type heads, do all BOM skins fit all heads and match up regardless of the vendor photo and those vendor photos used to attract "this is for my head" buyers

2) Which is better: the tat layer head skin and body skin or the complete skin.

1) they will all work but certain areas of the face, particularly lips, nostrils and eye corners, may not match up correctly if you use a skin made for the wrong head. On the other hand you may be able to "fix" these things with extra add-ons. For example, Genus lips are thicker than Lelutka's, so if you wear a Lelutka skin on a Genus head, the lips on the skin won't meet the edges of the actual lips on the head. But you could wear a Lelutka-specific lipgloss over the top to cover that part.  On a Catwa head, non-Catwa skins often show the inner eye corners "dragged" down the sides of the nose. Those can be covered with a tintable tattoo layer. You will always get best results if you get a BOM skin that's made for your particular brand of head.

2) Either way works just as well as the other, except with the tattoo layer it's easier to accidentally take off your face because you "wear" another tattoo instead of "add" it. Or, if you decide you want to change the face, you have to take off not only the face but also all the extras you're wearing over it (eyebrows, makeup etc), then change the face, then put all those extras back on. I use a lot of those extra layers (on head and body) so I much prefer a complete all-in-one skin. If you rarely change your look then either way is as good as the other but if, like me, you change a lot, then a complete all-in-one skin is easier to manage. On the other hand, if you wanted to buy two skins in the same tone from the same creator, it would normally be cheaper overall from a store that does them separately.

[Rowan Amore]

55 minutes ago, Maitimo said:

1) they will all work but certain areas of the face, particularly lips, nostrils and eye corners, may not match up correctly if you use a skin made for the wrong head. On the other hand you may be able to "fix" these things with extra add-ons. For example, Genus lips are thicker than Lelutka's, so if you wear a Lelutka skin on a Genus head, the lips on the skin won't meet the edges of the actual lips on the head. But you could wear a Lelutka-specific lipgloss over the top to cover that part.  On a Catwa head, non-Catwa skins often show the inner eye corners "dragged" down the sides of the nose. Those can be covered with a tintable tattoo layer. You will always get best results if you get a BOM skin that's made for your particular brand of head.

2) Either way works just as well as the other, except with the tattoo layer it's easier to accidentally take off your face because you "wear" another tattoo instead of "add" it. Or, if you decide you want to change the face, you have to take off not only the face but also all the extras you're wearing over it (eyebrows, makeup etc), then change the face, then put all those extras back on. I use a lot of those extra layers (on head and body) so I much prefer a complete all-in-one skin. If you rarely change your look then either way is as good as the other but if, like me, you change a lot, then a complete all-in-one skin is easier to manage. On the other hand, if you wanted to buy two skins in the same tone from the same creator, it would normally be cheaper overall from a store that does them separately.

Just wanted to mention that if you change your tattoo layer face, you can just reorder the makeup, brows, hairbase layers in the edit outfit window.  Hover over the tattoo face layer and use the arrow to move it 'under' the other layers.

[Doris Johnsky]

I know this:

The Slink BoM does not use appliers.  Skins have to be worn

I have a Slink mesh body and head, and I use a Danika skin and shape.  It works fine. 

I can't speak for Maitreya, but I KNOW Slink BoM does NOT take appliers. Not even Omega. 

[Nalates Urriah]

Most of the answers here are correct. Some are right but incomplete.

I will point out the nuance being missed is that what you mean by "work" may color the answer. In another thread people got into what makeup works with what head. I think that thread shows the problems. For instance all lipstick will appear on the lips of any brand and model of head. How WELL it fits on the lips is where some people had issues and problems with the mismatched brands.

Some of us go with the idea, "any make up MAY work with any head." Do a demo to know.

I have found Genus makeup generally works with my GE.AG Jennifer head. Took some experimenting to figure that out. In the process I decided the Catwa makeup doesn't fit the Jennifer lips, IMO.

The GE.AG make up is a perfect fit for my Jennifer head. I don't need to demo the makeup when buying a color I like. It is a brand match so it should. Other brands MAY work but it is a demo-before-buying-thing for me.

So any skin with a head texture is going to display on the head. How well you think that looks is going to be a question. If you match brands, it will generally look good and at least as the designer intended.

Skin versus tattoo... this is usually just putting the same texture on different layers. I see no different in the quality displayed. Depending on how you do your outfits one or the other may be easier to use.