I want to create custom personal face skins for my avatar, any advice please?

[angeleyes32 Sparta]

Hi, so I’d really love to learn how to make skins for second life for personal use as the ones on marketplace aren’t really what I’m looking for , I make skins for the sims 4 but second life seems a little more complicated. I’m aware I’ll need photoshop, the psd templates, etc but I’m confused as if I need the actual mesh dev kit or not? I’m wanting to make personal face skins for my lelukta head (I use a separate body skin) I tried just uploading the texture but the lips didn’t look right. Any tips please? 
Do I need the actual 3D mesh head of lelukta or is the PSD 2D files enough? (They are provided on their website)
Thank you. I’ve tried watching videos online but they aren’t much help. I want to create a face skin or “tattoo BOM” overlay I think it’s called.

Ps. Obviously I’m not able to obtain a 3d dev kit as I don’t meet the requirements so would I be able to use a different mesh head for making skins?

[Wulfie Reanimator]

You don't need a mesh dev kit to create skins.

All you need is the correct template (doesn't need to be a PSD, or use Photoshop), so you know where to put the details. LeLutka heads have two different templates if I recall correctly, one for classic skins (Linden Lab system avatar template), or EvoX (their own proprietary template).

You can use the mesh head you already have to test what your skin will look like.

[Maitimo]

You don't need the dev kit, just the template files from the website.

 Load the UV file into your praphics program.

Start with a base flat layer in whatever skin tone you want, and basically its a case of starting to paint in, on different layers, the various features, highlights and shading etc. Use a different layer for each feature so you can adjust them separately without essing up whats underneath..

When I made my skin, I used photos of real eyes and lips and noses, and copied them into my template, and use the warp tool (liquify in Photoshop) to shift it round until it fit the UV map, then adjusted the colour and blended them into the base skin layer. 

Matching at the neck is the hardest part, but if you use Firestorm, here's a trick. - Make a new tatt layer, wear it and add your face skin texture to it as a LOCAL texture (don't actually upload it), but leave the edit window open.  Now, any changes you make and save in your graphics program will update on your avatar, so you can make subtle changes to even out any seams around the neck. It's much easier if your body skin includes a face as well; then you needn't worry about the neck at all; just blend your own face into transparency under the chin and all round the neck, and wear it over the top of your existing face skin. 

I'd advise not bothering with eyebrows at all; they're very hard to draw and there are so many nice ones on the market anyway. 

A word of caution - it took me a whole year to make my first skin and another year before I was fully happy with it (and even then, it isn't fit for sale because it still has seams that I can't be bothered to repair).

Edited February 1, 2023 by Maitimo

[Stephanie Misfit]

On 1/22/2023 at 5:10 AM, angeleyes32 Sparta said:

Ps. Obviously I’m not able to obtain a 3d dev kit as I don’t meet the requirements so would I be able to use a different mesh head for making skins?

If you would like to use a 3d dev kit for making skins in Photoshop (and there are some advantages to doing this), the Akeruka dev kit is Evo X compatible and freely available on their marketplace store. You can make skins that you can use on your Lelutka head using this dev kit, and of course they will work on AK as well.

[sodolly]

On 2/1/2023 at 5:55 PM, Stephanie Misfit said:

If you would like to use a 3d dev kit for making skins in Photoshop (and there are some advantages to doing this), the Akeruka dev kit is Evo X compatible and freely available on their marketplace store. You can make skins that you can use on your Lelutka head using this dev kit, and of course they will work on AK as well.

hi im using this kit right now and i was wondering how to get the 2d version to transfer to the 3d version?