Tutorial on skins/ neck seams

[DelicatePrincess22]

Hi, new user here. My neck seam drives me crazy every time I log in. I tried using skins (and neck blenders, and a choker) to get it to go away, but nothing is working. I asked for help from other players online about using the skins but it still did not turn out well. I tried to find online tutorials about how to use skins but I couldn't find any. Can someone link a tutorial on skins and/or getting rid of neck seams? I have a legacy (perky) body and lelutka head. Thank you!

[Rowan Amore]

I never need a neck blender as I choose head and body skins designed to work together.  A lot of head skins now for Lelutka are created in tones to match the Velour body skins.  Some head skin creators still make body skins that match.

For example, Mila head skins match the body skins they make.  I wear a head shin from Amara Beauty in the Mali tone that matches the Mali body skin at Velour.

 

[AmeliaJ08]

You don't need neck blenders these days, get rid of it.

The critical things are: your face and body skin tone should match. The tone is usually in the name (ex: 'Porcelain' or whatever), your face and body skin don't need to be from the same maker if they're using the same tone name, they should match.

You also need your materials to match, if you've got any materials set on your body they need to be set the same on the head.

If you show us your 'Wearing' tab of inventory with all items expanded or your 'Outfits' window on the 'Clothing' tab we might be able to get to the bottom of what is going on.

 

Edited July 14 by AmeliaJ08

[Shiloh Lyric]

If you're wearing a body skin and head skin of the same tone, or even similar with a neck blender (if the head skin doesn't blend in already), then if you're seeing a 'seam', it's likely you have materials on in one (either the head or body hud) and not the other. Check things like 'environment', etc, in the head hud. Try setting everything (sliders or buttons in the material section of the huds) to nothing in both and see if that's the problem.

Edited July 14 by Shiloh Lyric

[Emma Krokus]

I found I need to add my skin blender / neck fix BOM layer LAST to make it work - this is on LARA X where the head and body skin I use are from different makers.

Edited July 14 by Emma Krokus

[EmmaAsht0n]

Your head skin must load AFTER your body skin as some head skins integrate some kind of neck blender. So when you "build" your avatar, first add the body skin and only after the head skin. Also the size of your neck can play a role. Look in your body and/or head hud to see if there's a neck size preset for a specific body or head brand.

Also some windlights/EEPS are more prone to show a neck line than others. CAWL is pretty neutral. Or Nam's optimal skin and prim. But PBR has made the latter a lot brighter than it used to be. So if you're using PBR, make sure to get a PBR-compatible EEP.
 

[Janet Voxel]

I play with a lot of skins. Those weekend sales are hard to resist! 
 

That being said you can occasionally have the same skin tone for the head and body and still have a seam. There’s a few things I do to mitigate this.
The first is to make sure the neck seam on the body has the correct setting selected on the body hud. Sometimes I switch between Lelutka and Genus and vice versa. If I forget to pick the right head setting it can create a seam. 
The next thing I like to do is order of operations: ie put the body skin on first, then the head skin. I’m not even sure why I started doing this, but I’ve been doing it for so long it’s become innate. I think it makes a small difference.

The last is actually use the neck fix! Most skin makers have a neck fix somewhere in their store. There are a couple makers that don’t include ears or a neck fix at all! Then you have to rely on the franchise skin makers ears and neck fix. Take Velour for example; it has three lines of skins: Ibiza, Venus and Picasso. If I’m wearing a sale skin that is from the Venus line brownie but I’m wearing the Picasso skin brownie, there may be a slight mismatch. The neck fix will clear it up 99% of the time.

There are rare instances where the skin included with the body just doesn’t match the head skin. In that case you just have to bite the bullet and get an updated skin.

[Ceka Cianci]

With the legacy body and lelutka head. I believe it is  either the 2 or the 3 dot that you want to set your neck at..

One of those looks very close to the fit, but the other is the fit..

I wanna say number 3 is the fit and number 2 is the almost fit, but it's been awhile..

 

If you are in the firestorm viewer and want to get to your wearing list  really quick to see the order that your layers are sitting. Press ctrl O. That will open the Appearance window. then you want to click the wearing tab..

To move the textures  in the order they are supposed to be.. in the upper right corner of that window is the wrench to edit the current things your avatar is wearing..

You want the body at the lowest point in the window, then the head above the body.. if you are wearing a neck blender, you want that above both the body and the head skins..

Also, check to make sure your head skin doesn't already have a built in neck blender once it is sitting above the body skin.. Many head skins come with those built in now..

The only reason I still use a neck blender now, is to edit the tone of my neck so I can blend into different tones than my body..

when finished with the wearing edits, don't forget to click save or save as at the bottom before exiting.

God knows how many times I've forgotten to do that.. lol

 

Anyways, if the texture layers are where they should be and you are still getting  a seam line, then it's more than likely a mesh seam line and you need to set your neck size to the 2 or 3 dot in your legacy body hud..

Also make sure you do not have a mesh neck fix on, which is just a mesh item that used to be used to cover neck seam line when bodies and heads were using appliers and skins were ending at the seam line..  a mesh neck fix is not a neck blender.. A neck blender is just a bom layer..

those used to be confused for one another  when both were still around  a lot.

Just my thoughts on what might be going on..

Edited July 14 by Ceka Cianci