How often do you change your head skin?

[Kylie Jaxxon]

12 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

Maybe 10 years ago or so.

Lol, hey...why change what's not broke

[Spiffy Voxel]

I last changed my skin at the end of last year, when I updated the custom textures I created for my alien avatar. 👽

My next upgrade won't be for a while, as I first need to learn how to make normal and specular maps... 🤔

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

11 hours ago, Mr Amore said:

Because avatar makeovers are a traumatizing experience, I haven't done it often.

lol what?

[Shiloh Lyric]

I change all of the time. I have a few favorite skin-makers, but even that changes from time to time. I'm so fickle when it comes to face skins.

I don't change bodies, and I don't change heads, but head skins and tones get changed whenever I see a new one I like and buy it or just because. The underlying shape is always close, just tweaked to fit a particular skin a bit better (maybe a slightly less wide mouth or something). My favorites right now are DeeTaleZ, Amara Beauty and Mila. In the past I've favored The Skinnery, Not Found and Glam Affair. I still mainly stick with those 6.

Edited August 25 by Shiloh Lyric
typo

[Nuuna Nitely]

Often. I don't change my shape and have layers (wrinkles, skin imperfections, contouring) that I always wear and make different skins still look like "me".

[graceblakeley]

Since BoM came along and with all the weekend sales we have now make it so very easy and painless to create a completely new underlying look. I have favourites but do change often.

With the ease of completely changing face and body skins for so many different looks beyond just clothing screams for the ability to be able to create folders within Outfits. Why this does not exist already baffles me, especially when considering the amount of effort put into other useless features within viewers.

The naming convention within my Outfits is becoming so bad around half of the available characters are spent describing which face and body skin and height is being used as I like to switch looks readily depending upon mood, target venue etc.. 

[MissSweetViolet]

36 minutes ago, graceblakeley said:

Since BoM came along and with all the weekend sales we have now make it so very easy and painless to create a completely new underlying look. I have favourites but do change often.

With the ease of completely changing face and body skins for so many different looks beyond just clothing screams for the ability to be able to create folders within Outfits. Why this does not exist already baffles me, especially when considering the amount of effort put into other useless features within viewers.

The naming convention within my Outfits is becoming so bad around half of the available characters are spent describing which face and body skin and height is being used as I like to switch looks readily depending upon mood, target venue etc.. 

That feature use to exist, I have no clue why it stopped, I still have 5 of the original folders I'd made that I've been using to help sort, but am no longer able to make any more.

What I do with sorting my own looks is give each look a name, for instance my brunette is Gabbi in my outfits, so I just have to go the appearance tab and type in Gabbi to see all those outfits instantly. That's worked pretty well for me so far.

Edited August 25 by MissSweetViolet
Spelling corrections.

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

On 8/23/2024 at 8:29 PM, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

I guess like a lot of you, I've had the same avatar for a long time. Same head, same body. Just curious how often you change your head skin? Sometimes I'm shocked at how different it can make your avi look even if you haven't messed with the sliders at all, especially if the head skin has "personality". 

I revisit often. I dabble in skin making so when I make a new one I change.  The whole body skin, face skin ears skin is frustrating. I just do not understand the whole point of having separate skins for face and body. I get on board with makeup tattoos of course.. Maybe I am just set in my ways to much. But I tend to change my skin with each outfit  lol

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

3 hours ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

lol what?

They can be very traumatizing. For men particularly who do not have that knack for it, same is true for women. Not everyone just knows how to do things. Ive been on SL 17 years and I still don't get some things.....

[Gabriele Graves]

I have a handful of favourite skins I change between reasonably often depending on what look I want.  Last couple I picked up were a couple of older SLUV skins from Sessions a few months ago.  I only buy SLUV skins and so expect that I've got most of the ones I'm ever going to be interested in.

[MillyWH]

20 hours ago, Mr Amore said:

Around 2-4 years, depending how long it takes to find an 'upgrade', and not just a 'sidegrade'.

 

Because avatar makeovers are a traumatizing experience, I haven't done it often.

I'm sorry it's traumatizing. If you ever need help message me in world. I've helped a lot of people with updates and changes and I enjoy it.

 

[Janet Voxel]

About every three to six months for me. I play around with different skins, shapes, bodies and heads all the time though. 
 

For me it’s a lot of fun!

[Mr Amore]

For some the appeal of SL is customizing their avatars, for others it's everything but.

 

Traumatizing is a strong word, so I'll detail the process of updating an avatar from my perspective:

- Shop around dozens of stores for demos; Bodies, heads, skins, hair, appliers, appliers and more appliers.

- Stand on a sandbox and unpack hundreds of boxes.

- Try on every head skin and filter out the weeds. Then compare every skin on every mesh head and filter those down too.

- It takes hours to reach a point where you've settled on a body, head, skin and tone. A skin tone must be compatible with the male attachment.

- Now the fun begins of finding an acceptable hair base, which aligns with facial hair and vice versa. These are often mismatched in tone or width.

- BoM eyebrows work best when layering with scars, but are a pain to find.

- Repeat the demo filtering process for body hair, scars, bruises, tattoos and so forth.

- Finding socially acceptable poses is a whole other quest. Most AO's tend towards the dorky, since no one in their right mind behaves that way.

- Once every component has passed the vetting process, you buy everything and come to terms with dumping $80 on a virtual doll.

- When you finally build the avatar, every component must be attached in the correct order. A naked avatar for me is around 50 elements.

 

The sequel to this drama is wearing clothes. I won't start on how something so simple as changing a shirt necessitates in creating a new outfit.

 

Everything could be so much simpler if LL took inspiration from other games. In 2024, any self respecting virtual world should have a visual wardrobe.

[Katherine Heartsong]

I don't think I've even touched my adjustment sliders in two years or more. Once I got the shape right, I am perfectly happy.

And my male alt doesn't get out enough to bother. Got a nice look, done.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

37 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

I don't think I've even touched my adjustment sliders in two years or more. Once I got the shape right, I am perfectly happy.

Aside from making changes to height and face on occasion, I find I'm always tinkering with my body sliders. Some pants/shorts/skirts really blow out the hips for some reason.

 

39 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

And my male alt doesn't get out enough to bother. Got a nice look, done.

I find male shopping to be so much more fun. I think it's because I don't have to navigate the obnoxious "lemme just pull up half of my shirt/skirt" trends everywhere I go. Their mesh items also play a bit nicer together it seems. Pairing a top and pants from different stores isn't as rage-inducing as doing it for my female avatars. Pairing shoes with long pants is a whole PAIN, though, but I'll just toss them into womens shoes/boots if I have to to work around that.

[PJBear Bitey]

I change my head skin as often as I change my body skin.  

I recently changed head to Genus Morph. Only lasted a couple of days because the skin I was wearing didn't work on the Morph, and every skin I found seemed to only work with Velour.  Then saw 50L AK Vivian head at FLF Bash, randomly grabbed because 50L, actually really liked, so now I'm back to my original head/body skin. Which isn't Velour.

(on a side note: why the heck do they, Velour, seem to have something like a monopoly with some heads? I couldn't find a single head skin that worked with any other body than Velour that also worked with the Genus Morph system, (the 'other' Genus Morph option is 'original BOM', which means non-X; which meant I could have gone backwards, but I didn't have any non-X BOM skins any longer).

[MillyWH]

4 hours ago, Mr Amore said:

For some the appeal of SL is customizing their avatars, for others it's everything but.

 

Traumatizing is a strong word, so I'll detail the process of updating an avatar from my perspective:-

I've been thinking about what advice I'd give to people upgrading and I think I've changed how I would approach upgrades. 

I wouldn't try to do everything at once but do an upgrade in stages. 

First would be if you have a strong idea of what style you like and don't like check out stores first to find ones that match that style and figure out what bodies they make clothes for.  There is no point investing in a body and then finding out the stores you like don't make anything for the body. 

 

If you aren't going to change your look very often it might work to have a body that doesn't have a lot of stores supporting it but if you want to have more options then a more popular body is going to be a better choice 

 

Then demo them and play with the HUDs and see how you feel.  And kind of go from there.

 

I would also stick with BOM and avoid appliers as much as possible. Appliers are a pain and BOM is easy just right click add .  It also makes saving outfits easier.

 

 

[MillyWH]

It's really interesting to see how people handle their looks and changing  . I've gotten to the point where I'm not attached to a certain face or look. Although I do always make my body shape roughly similar (I don't bother coping exactly). So that is usually the only constant. 

Although my first years on SL I was very rigid about how I looked and didn't deviate from that much at all. Now I just kind of go with whatever. 

[missyrideout]

Not very often once I'm locked in. Right now I'm waiting for updates before I shop for a new skin. With the possibility of an update to the bake service and PBR related updates, it seems a new generation of high detail skins could be right around the corner.

I keep trying skins at events because my current Glam Affair is over a year old and I do see some higher detailed skins out there already but I haven't found anything that fits. Literally. Half the skins I try right now have an upper lip that extends beyond the coverage area of the EvoX HD lip area. It's odd and I don't get it. And it doesnt seem to be a mistake as I see it in their advertisements. Looks great when perfectly blended by AI enhancement I guess but in world it looks awful to me.

[MillyWH]

42 minutes ago, missyrideout said:

Not very often once I'm locked in. Right now I'm waiting for updates before I shop for a new skin. With the possibility of an update to the bake service and PBR related updates, it seems a new generation of high detail skins could be right around the corner.

I keep trying skins at events because my current Glam Affair is over a year old and I do see some higher detailed skins out there already but I haven't found anything that fits. Literally. Half the skins I try right now have an upper lip that extends beyond the coverage area of the EvoX HD lip area. It's odd and I don't get it. And it doesnt seem to be a mistake as I see it in their advertisements. Looks great when perfectly blended by AI enhancement I guess but in world it looks awful to me.

 Sometimes that has to do with the shape you are using. I know skin ads will usually list the head worn with the skin but not the shape.  And then of course there is AI and Photoshop.

 

I thought about picking up the new Glam Affair skins at FLF bash but the shading is a lot darker than I like (and the previous skins have had) and it doesn't work with the head and shape I have.

 

Izzie's has fixes for those types of issues if you wanted to look into going that route.

[AmeliaJ08]

6 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

I don't think I've even touched my adjustment sliders in two years or more. Once I got the shape right, I am perfectly happy.

And my male alt doesn't get out enough to bother. Got a nice look, done.

Oh I'm constantly messing with shape and making small tweaks. I made all my own body deformers too so I'm always messing with those, tweaking each bone by just a little.

LL probably make a lot of money out of me with my constant $11 uploads since I'm too lazy to log into the beta grid.

 

Edited August 26 by AmeliaJ08

[AmeliaJ08]

1 hour ago, missyrideout said:

I keep trying skins at events because my current Glam Affair is over a year old and I do see some higher detailed skins out there already but I haven't found anything that fits

I always think that something much better must be available but whenever I try the latest and greatest it's really no greater than the last. I always find skins all require a whole lot of extra BOM layering on top, that's the stuff I find takes the most time as well - getting it all just right is a time consuming process even if you do already have everything you need.

I think the next big thing will undoubtedly be 2K skins though, looking forward to that. You do become pretty keenly aware of the lack of resolution available if you really get into skin detailing, it will be nice to have more.

[Anna Nova]

My facial look is predominantly the layers of BoM that add veins and stuff.  I use mainly Izzie's for that.  The underlying skin needs to match the body skin.  I changed to Velour Modalesque body skin last year, because I like the skinny athletic look, so I have tried quite a lot of Velour compatible face skins.  Honestly I find it hard to tell them apart because of the add-ons, so I ended up with Saturday-sale one from Velour.

Previously I had a similar set-up with Amari Beauty mainly because their body skin set was free, and I still like it.  It's not that out of date.

[Conifer Dada]

I made my own skin and I made a very small modification to it yesterday, involving skin tone below my eyes. So technically I changed my head skin yesterday! But It's been basically the same since I first made the skin, about 6 years ago. I have made many small modifications since then, but it hasn't changed much.

Prior to making my own skin, I used a bought one that was quite similar but  it had too much painted-on contrast.

Edited August 27 by Conifer Dada

[PermaRuthed]

Hardly ever.