Struggling with mesh heads

[Mar Scarmon]

I am an old-school second lifer.   I have tried several mesh head demos and they look awful.  They all seem to make me look like a pouting teenager or I have hideously distorted facial features.  Can I change my facial features with a mesh head like I could with my classic avatar, things like lip shape, eye spacing?  What else to I need to buy? Do I need to buy makeup?  Do I need to buy new skin?  I have my old skin that works with my Maitreya Lara body.  Do I need appliers (not clear what these are sorry).  Is there a brand of head that is easier to use and set up?  Should I get a non Bento head or a bento one?  Sorry I am so hopeless but thanks for your help.

Edited July 11, 2022 by Mar Scarmon

[colleen Criss]

You can adjust the head using it's HUD and your SL sliders. The HUDs should offer some basics like brows, lashes, etc. Bento is the way to go and almost all of the head creators use BOM . 7DS has full body skins , not all do these days. If you go with Lulutka or Akeruka  they use x. evoX and AK ADVX . Most any head will work with Maitreya body. 

Good luck ! Be sure to demo everything before investing.

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

24 minutes ago, Mar Scarmon said:

I am an old-school second lifer.   I have tried several mesh head demos and they look awful.  They all seem to make me look like a pouting teenager or I have hideously distorted facial features.  Can I change my facial features with a mesh head like I could with my classic avatar, things like lip shape, eye spacing?  What else to I need to buy? Do I need to buy makeup?  Do I need to buy new skin?  I have my old skin that works with my Maitreya Lara body.  Do I need appliers (not clear what these are sorry).  Is there a brand of head that is easier to use and set up?  Should I get a non Bento head or a bento one?  Sorry I am so hopeless but thanks for your help.

You can adjust by the SL sliders, but you will not get a big difference in some of those sliders.  You do not need to buy makeup or anything else if you buy Lelutka heads, they are the most complete selection of tattoos (makeup and hair bases etc) that far surpasses any one else.

 You could buy shapes online but ick... either the body is fubar or the head is and then they state specifically for so and so head... so, best bet and I have faith you can do it, use the SL sliders.... 

No appliers needed as BOM is a standard now (it should be if not) and you should be fine with any skin, Lelutka has 2 versions however and this is a bit tricky but easy managed.. But that head can accommodate old system skin.. (providing the nail beds were fixed) 

DEF get bento

[Eddy Vortex]

You don't need to rush for a mesh head. Just pick all the demos you can get your hands on and play with the shape sliders until you can get as close to your system head as possible. Take all the time you need. Walk around in demos for a while so you can figure out your likes and dislikes.

New heads are Bakes on Mesh (BoM) so no HUD-based appliers are needed.  You can continue to use your old skin and makeup with them.

For your purposes, get a bento head as it responds to shape sliders more than the non-bento variety. Any brand of head should work with your skin, such as Catwa, Genus, Slink, GA.EG, Logo, Akeruka, Lelutka (Evo classic). Keep in mind the newer Akeruka and Lelutka heads use EvoX which uses a different face map and look mighty funky with old-school skins. (Actually, you can use Lelutka EvoX heads; they have an option in the HUD to toggle between classic (Evo) and EvoX mode.)

Edited July 11, 2022 by Eddy Vortex

[Nalates Urriah]

Your problem is in the shape files not the head. This image shows what happens when you wear a mesh head with an old 'classic head shape'. Skip the text in the image. That is for the Lindens regarding a feature request I made. I explain more below.

'A" shows my classic head with a classic shape. In 'B" I added my GA.EG mesh head, no other change, still my classic shape. In 'C" I kept the mesh head and added the shape that came with the mesh head. In 'D' I took off the mesh head and kept the mesh head shape. You can see how the shapes deform the head both classic and mesh.

Obviously I am changing shape to make the mesh head look similar to my classic look. Not only will the shape sliders change the mesh head, Bento adds more bones to the head that can be animated to change the appearance of the face. My head is animated and there is a 'Bewitched' nose wiggle that is adorable. That is something that cannot be done with a classic head.

Your existing skin will work with some mesh heads. In general, heads use UVMaps similar to the classic UVMaps, so old skins do tend to work with mesh heads. BUT... skins made for specific brand-model head can, and usually do, look better. An exception is in the EVO head which uses a different UVMap and requires a special made for it skin.Try the demos.

Makeup... your classic makeup, the stuff that uses system layers will work with mesh heads that have BOM (Bakes on Mesh) skin. That make up is classic system layer makeup. The stuff you used with your classic avatar. Mesh head makeup can get tricky because you can use both Applier and BOM/System Layer makeup on the mesh head at the same time. I typically use BOM for skin and occasional facial tats. Then use the mesh-head's applier make up for blush, eye shadow, lipstick, etc.

I think you definitely should get a Bento enabled head. It gives you the best of both worlds.

The short story on Appliers... If you have ever put a texture on a prim then you know what an Applier does. Mesh bodies and heads are prims... the Applier just take that process of putting a texture on a prim into a HUD to make it easier.

Ease of setup... Setting up a mesh head is a matter of wearing it and wearing the included shape. There is way more you CAN do. But that is the basic setup.

Ease of USE.... is another story. Mesh heads come with HUDs (notice the 's'). Check the demo of the HUD. With mesh heads there are WAY more possibilities than with the classic head because yuo can use SL Materials with a mesh head. You can have very realistic 3D water drops on a mesh head with a wet skin look that reacts to the light around you. Have someone help you in-world when you start trying to figure out the HUD. And experiements with the demos to learn what is what. If yo mess it up, get another demo. 😃

 

[Lindal Kidd]

Votes for Nalates's response as "Explanation of the Week"!

[skepwith]

As Nalates points out very well, a Bento head (which most on the market are these days) will bend to your shape but each one will do so very differently. Most if not all creators include at least one reference shape with their demos and I recommend starting with this shape and working back toward your old self instead of starting with a copy of your original shape and trying to fix the crazy stuff that it does to the head.

Different heads respond very differently to the shape sliders, sometimes in very non-intuitive ways, and I had a few that I never would have guessed how to fix until I popped in the included demo shape. The demo shape is also probably closest to the creator's "ideal" shape for the head, so you can tell right away that if it's wildly different from what you want for yourself, it will probably be more of a struggle to get the head to go that way.

There are a number of free Bento & BoM heads available in this list to try playing with just to see how this works without having a big DEMO sign in your way. The one from Genus is very popular and I see it everywhere, and I think the ones from Rebirth and Kalhene are decent enough and different enough to give a whirl.

I feel you on the whole pouting teenager thing. The popularity of the frown clown face is very strange to me but in fairness the lips on the system avatar and many heads start to do super weird things if you do anything other than turn the corners down.

Edited July 12, 2022 by skepwith
"bend" not "conform"

[Cali Souther]

I have tried to use my old shapes/skins with my new heads - and end up with some of those really bizarre / pinched looks.   

[MoiraKathleen]

With mesh heads, I've found that it's easier to start with the sample shape that usually come with a mesh head.

I first make note of all the body, torso and leg slider values for my regular shape.  Then I put on the sample shape for that mesh head (after making a copy of it) and work with the head (and related sliders) to get everything adjusted as I like.  Then if I can get the head part satisfactory, I will update the body, torso and leg sliders to the values I had noted from my original shape. 

 

[Nalates Urriah]

19 hours ago, Cali Souther said:

I have tried to use my old shapes/skins with my new heads - and end up with some of those really bizarre / pinched looks.   

This happens when you use a classic shape (older shapes) on a new style mesh head. You have to use a shape made for the mesh head you are wearing. You can make your own shape. I do. As Moira wrote, it is easier to start with the shape supplied with the head. But you can start with any shape.

In most cases skin will work reasonably well, if not very well, on any head. The Evo X is an exception.

Moira does the number copy thing to combine shapes. I started using the idea of exporting my shapes to XML files. Early on in the mesh clothes era I used shapes tweaked for specific brands of clothes. So I had dozens of shapes. When I added a new head... that head shape needed to be added to dozens of specific brand-style bodies. It made for lots of tedious work.

Then I found out I could export a shape to XML and remove all the body settings keeping only the head settings, wear the clothes-brand-shape, and import the head only shape to combine the two. Much quicker and easier. But one does have to know how to edit XML files, which is not that hard.