Questions about mesh bodies and when to use alphas.

[Chris Cash]

Going mesh is giving me a headache.  The clothing I get. But it's putting together the body/skin/head that grinds my gears. 

 

For instance. I have the Jake Mesh Body and a Free EvoX head I got from the Xmas event. I think it's the Logan head. I'm not on to check.  Anyways, the HUD for the Jake Body has skins in there and when I click them they work. Great.  But the Jake Body folder also has other skins that came with it that are like tatoos I guess?  And for some reason I have to remove my alphas to get those to work. That's what is confusing me.

 

I can't figure out when to use alphas for my naked self to appear and when not to.  Obviously I know when to use them when it comes to clothing.. just use the HUD and hide the parts you don't want to see that glitch through the material. That's easy.    But it's confusing when just putting together the head and body.  I can never figure out when to use the alphas and not.

 

And also what are those tattoo skins even called? Bake on Mesh I'm assuming?  If so then what are the skins that are on the HUD itself?    When using the HUD I have to use alphas. When I don't use the HUD I don't need alphas.  Ughhh see I'm already getting a headache just thinking about it lol.

 

Any help would be much appreciated 

[Lindal Kidd]

Hi Chris! Yeah, it's a confusion all right. It may help to review a little history.

Back in the days before mesh, all we had were the "classic" avatars. You applied skins, tattoos, and even many types of clothing as layers that were painted directly on the avatar body. You did this by using the Wear and Add commands, there were no applier HUDs.

So, along came mesh, and pretty soon there were lots of people using it to create substitute bodies, heads, hands, and feet that looked way better than the classic avatars. Only one problem: these replacements were 3D objects, worn as attachments. Skins and other avatar layers didn't work with objects, only with avatars. So, the mesh body creators made applier HUDs to, um, apply textures like skin to these mesh body parts. In fact, the body parts actually had several invisible layers, spaced very close together, to which different textures were applied. Oh, and the original avatar body? That was hidden with a full body alpha mask.

Then came Bakes on Mesh (BoM). What this did was allow the old avatar texture layers to be applied to the new 3D mesh body parts, just like in the old days. If you're wearing a BoM body or head, you don't need to wear the full body alpha mask to hide your classic avatar, the system will do it for you. (And if you forget and wear it, you turn red all over.) No applier HUDs are needed, you just Wear or Add a skin or tattoo or other BoM texture. You also don't need all the layers that previously were used with applier HUDs, which greatly simplifies your mesh avatar.

The body creators also came up with a way to hide just the parts of the mesh body under clothing, a system of "alpha cuts" in the main body HUD. This let you decide which bits to make invisible. The only problem was, it didn't always match up perfectly with clothes. It did, however, mean that clothing makers could stop including alpha masks with their clothing, and leave that to the wearer. With BoM you can use both methods...an alpha mask designed for a specific outfit, or the alpha cut controls of the HUD.

The big problem is that you can't mix and match between BoM and appliers. You can go the applier route, or the Bakes on Mesh route, but not both. With the Lelutka EvoX heads, you can't use older skin and makeup textures, because they changed the texture mapping for the new line of products...you have to wear skins and makeup designed for EvoX. If you don't, your textures look wildly misplaced.

I haven't sussed out yet why some creators make skins as tattoos, instead of skins...on that one, I'm as puzzled as you! Maybe it's a holdover from when some people started making makeup as tattoos, rather than options painted directly on a full skin texture.

Edited April 10, 2022 by Lindal Kidd

[Persephone Emerald]

There are basically 2 ways you can wear a skin on a mesh body - either with a HUD that applies a texture to your body - or set your body to Bakes on Mesh and just wear skins, tattoo layers, alpha layers and clothing layers. If you like the skins that come with your body well enough, pick one you like from the HUD, then set your Body to BOM and wear the same skin tone from the pack of skins you got with your body. This way, whether your body is set to BOM or not, it will show the same skin tone. Unfortunately this doesn't solve the problem of what skin to wear for your head - unless you also wear a full body or head skin from Belleza that matches your body skin.

I think because there are now so many different kinds of mesh bodies and heads, most skin creators have resorted to selling their body and head skins separately. Since you can only wear one skin layer at a time, this means that usually the body part of the skin will be on the skin layer, but the head part will be on a tattoo layer. (Some skin makers might have both as tattoo layers or in appliers. I'm not sure. The Lelutka EvoX heads don't have applier layers for their skin, so they need to use either skin layers or tattoo layers.)

When you find skins you like, be sure to demo them first. Then keep both the head and body parts of that skin in the same folder, with the name and maybe tone(s) or hair detail versions of the skin in the title of this folder. Keep all of these as subfolders in your Body folder, preferably within another subfolder labeled "Skin". This way you can find all the parts you need easily.  Keep the appliers and the original packages inside these folders too. You can delete versions you don't need from your folders, while still keeping them inside the original package.  You're wearing Jake now, so you can delete other body skins from the folder, but if for instance you decide to wear Gianni later, those skins will still be inside the packages to pull out and use.

You can either use your body HUD or the alpha layers that come with some mesh clothing to hide parts of your body. Both ways work. Sometimes one way hides the body better than the other way. You could use both ways at the same time if you want. 

Multiple tattoo and clothing layers can be worn at the same time. Tattoos go on the lowest level, then Underwear, then Shirt and Pants, then Jacket. You can wear multiples of the same layer, but then whichever one you put on last goes on top - unless you change their priority in Appearance. 

If you want to be really brave, you can strip off the applier layers from the modifiable Jake body to lower your avatar complexity. This would mean not being able to use any appliers for either your head or your body skin, though you can still use applier HUDs for makeup and mesh clothing. There is a free script on MP that can modify the modifiable version of your body here, but it does not affect the regular, non-modifiable version.