Understanding Avatar basics

[PhilippeAndre]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to SL and I'm wondering if there might be a breakdown/explanation of avatar basics somewhere online.  I don't mean a tutorial because those usually explain changing clothes, changing overall appearance (head, chin, ears, etc).  What I mean is has anyone seen a basic explanation of what an avatar consists of in its most basic state? I've looked around and haven't found anything.  When I mean basic state I mean detaching everything from the avatar, including skull, leaving you with a buck naked avatar with nothing attached...all ready to be worked on.

I think most of us who are struggling with adjusting the looks of our new avatar don't fully understand how skins, shapes, eyebrowshaper, hair, etc actually all work together.  Or maybe it's just me.

It'd be great to see an explanation along the lines that an avatar consists a shape to which you add a skin, to which you add ...etc etc. It'd be nice to see/read how each basic avatar component interacts with other components, and read about the common problems (and fixes) new SL people see when trying to put together a good look with a new avatar.

Just a good overview of the above information would give newcomers/noobs a better grasp of avatar appearance.

Any comments/input would be greatly appreciated.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Well if you remove it all, you just get a horridly deformed figure - assuming dials at 50, no AO, no texture to the skin, and so on.

Those tutorials all kind of exist for a reason - there's nothing really there beforehand.

You need to make some kind of shape for yourself or you're going to be pretty rough looking. The default setting of the base SL mesh is horridly distorted.

You'll need some kind of texture based skin because otherwise you're just a thing with an RGB color value.

You could "grow" the system hair - but honestly you don't want to... so you're going to need to go get some hair.

- and it just goes on like that.

 

At its basic, its a low polygon poorly made mesh that had innadequete morhing dials, sprouts hair that is just a clump of solid color - but cannot be colored using a normal RGB color value/picker, and is animated in a jerky fashion.

 

[Anaiya Arnold]

Going from memory, your basic avatar components (the minimum you can reduce to) are shape, skin, hair/eyebrow base, and eyes.

The hair/eyebrow base is usually set up so that the base is "bald" as the system hair is astoundingly ugly.

 

I might check later to make sure I did not leave anything out.  Anyway, it is impossible to "remove" these elements.  You can swap them for other elements of the same kind, but your avatar cannot have no skin, or have no eyes on (for instance).

 

[squashy Beeswing]

Yes, I remember my own newb days and it was all very confusing. 

For some reason, the idea of changing avatar shape / skin confounded me.  I'd no idea what a skin even did, and shapes were a mystery.   And then there was the whole issue of clothing layers! 

I know the information's out there and that's great, but, AFAIK, you have to search the forums or read various blogs in order to find it.  It should be more readily available. 

ETA:  Or else there's the video tuturials which i forgot to mention (overlooked them as a newb as well) which are really good and helpful.  I guess, really, they should be your first port of call. 

[Jane0018]

I also a new here..thank you for you share..

[Melita Magic]

You tube has a lot of good videos about Second Life. 

Torley's videos there are very educational.

[JoJo Moeleneaux]

Welcome Philippe,

I had a quick look and it's not so easy finding anything on the basics but I did find this. 

http://avatartoolbox.info/AvatarToolbox.html and a link from this page which has some more basic info:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Appearance scroll down a little and you'll see basic info on an avatars body, skin, eyes and hair.

I'm not sure if it's exactly what you're after but there is some basic information here about avatars and I hope there's something here that helps 

Hopefully someone else comes along that has better info than this, there's a lot of really knowledgable and helpful people on this forum.

[Melita Magic]

Also, Pussycat has  a website about Second Life basics I think. Maybe she will post her URL here for you.

[squashy Beeswing]

@ Melita and the OP

There are links to Pussycat's blog at the bottom of her forum posts.  :matte-motes-wink:

[MariahWhispers]

I am new and found this.  I hope it is o.k. to place this here because it is a world of information.  http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/getting-started-in-second-life/