MESH MESS!!!!

[mintyspice]

omg! look I am back in the game and that's great, but damn!! this MESH! so i have a GA.GE head love it! now i don't like the body it came with so i was looking at this great legacy body expensive but i am willing to part with the lindens for an awesome avi, my question is does my head work with this body, when i tried the demo of legacy my head was smooched and funky HELP!!  I AM SURPRISED that the stores that sell the bodies don't direct you to heads that are compatible be it in a sign or some in the shop to get you going

[Lewis Luminos]

Pretty much all human heads are compatible with all human bodies of the same gender (so such a list is not necessary), but you should also wear the shape that comes with your head (or the shape you've already made for your head) - NOT the shape that comes with the body. Shapes are head-specific, not body-specific, and it is MUCH easier to adapt your shape to fit a new body than it is to try adopting another shape to fit your head.

 

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by Lewis Luminos

[Gabriele Graves]

Welcome back to SL minty The reason your mesh head looks strange is that mesh heads require you to change your head shape to make them work with that specific head.  You can't simply use a shape made for the system head or any other mesh head.  It is likely the shape that came with the Legacy demo is not meant for the GA:EG head.

One thing to consider about Legacy bodies is that they are much more laggy than most other bodies so while they may look great to you, that comes at a cost of performance.  They will lag you and others around you.  This will affect you and others most noticeably at busy places.

These days, it's often the other way around in SL, head vendors often have adverts directing you to bodies.

[Nalates Urriah]

It isn't the body that is the problem. The shape is the problem. While there are ways to sell shapes that ONLY affect the head or body, no one does that. So, when you use the body's shape you screw the head. And of course the head shape will screw the body.

Most head makers provide a shape to show what they designed thee way THEY want it to look. I suspect most designers think of that shape as a starter shape. Many of us tweak the head to get a look we want. My GE.AG Jennifer head doesn't look like the model in the store because I changed it. No body maker is ever going to use my revised head-settings. Sucks. But there is a work-around.

I export my shape (only full perm shapes can be exported). The result is an XML file that can be edited. I split the file into two files. One with all the head settings and another with all the body settings.

If I get a new body with a different shape than the one I normally use and it messes up my head, I can import the head only settings as a new shape. That effectively blends the two shapes together and restores the head settings. Or I could go the other way and import the body only shape to restore the body settings.

Firestorm has a shape import feature on the New Shape panel. Not all viewers support shape import.

Or you could skip all that and just manually tweak the new shape. Provided it is mod-OK. I generally find the body easier and quicker to modify than the head. So, I suggest starting with a shape that has the head the way you want it. Then fix the body.

[mintyspice]

Ok so I’m staying with the body my head came with lol! Kylie So I got some skin amplifier how does that work? I did what it said it was omega regular skin that said goes with GA.GE  head but I did put it on but it didn’t do anything.. do I need a omega kit or something??

[Nalates Urriah]

16 hours ago, mintyspice said:

Ok so I’m staying with the body my head came with lol! Kylie So I got some skin amplifier how does that work? I did what it said it was omega regular skin that said goes with GA.GE  head but I did put it on but it didn’t do anything.. do I need a omega kit or something??

This can get so confusing... To reduce confusion we need to know which 'skin amplifier'.

Omega is for use with appliers. BOM generally negates using Omega.

With my GE.AG head I set its HUD to use BOM skin. But, I use appliers (makeup in the head's HUD) for make up. The head uses the onion skin layers idea. So there are multiple copies of the head, or at least parts of it, stacked on top of each other like Russian dolls. I can set the head, via its HUD, to use BOM skin. Think of skin on the Classic or Mesh avatars as the base layer. For a mesh head that is the inner onion skin of the head. System layers can be stacked on that single Classic base layer. The BOM skin is the System Layer Skin that the system applies to the Classic avatar. Enabling BOM on the head tells it to use BOM and grab the texture used on the Classic avatar (which is hidden) and apply it to the head's skin layer.

I can also use system layers for tats and makeup which will appear on the head. But, I seldom do.

The head's HUD makeup is on layers above... outside... the base inner layer of the head. So they will overlay the system layers. I think this is awesome. But it makes for a complex and more costly render.

With the body we have the same possibilities, but it - like the head - depends on how it was made. I haven't played with Legacy so I don't know how those bodies work. My Slink Redux is BOM only. So, Omega and Appliers only work for the finger nails. Slink also provides a Classic body that can use Appliers, but the ACI is way high and it is script heavy... the point of BOM was to reduce those numbers and improve SL performance.

Hopefully a Legacy user will add in what you can do with that body.