Skell Dagger

Thank you so much Today's look is... the same as yesterday's. This is one of those looks that I don't want to change out of. But I have a crapton of stuff to demo, so I'll have to at some point. Guess I'll enjoy it for a couple more days yet

Trying to 'get' Second Life can be like trying to force yourself to go to sleep on a night when insomnia has struck. The more you try, the more wide awake you are. Eventually, after five or six hours of tossing and turning, you get up at 5am and then you're finally falling asleep at your desk around midday. In short: from your post it seems that you're trying too hard to 'get' Second Life, and once that desperation begins to seep in that's when you feel like nothing is going to work. I think what is key here are the words I've highlighted below: I've been here for almost 12 years and I've not yet experienced all that SL has to offer. The woods as a whole are beautiful and overwhelmingly huge, but over the years I've examined different trees until I've found the ones that I love. Which 'trees' have you tried? Which 'trees' catch your interest in real life? What has hooked you so far? What piqued your interest a bit, but maybe didn't pan out when you approached it one way; could you approach it another way? Are you the kind of person who experiences things best when you're in a crowd of friends, or even just with one other person? What haven't you tried? Expand your boundaries and go for something completely out of your comfort zone. Maybe get a cheap vehicle and start travelling the roads of SL. Maybe set up a free blog and write about what you find on your journey. The thing that really hooked me (outside of my partner being here) was building. Sure, people want nice mesh stuff these days, and that requires a lot of study as well as outside programs, but people still buy my old prim creations, too. Then I found SL roleplay, which - admittedly - has changed over the years inworld, and I no longer partake in it. Then I found fashion, which I'm still heavily involved in. And now I've also found another niche in helping people to look good with mesh avatars, which led to my becoming a CSR for a major brand inworld, and I also help out here on the forums. You say that you've been a resident for a few years, but don't state how many years. I know that SL has changed immeasurably in recent years with the introduction of mesh. It's become more consumer-based, whereas before it was more creator-based. Sure, we could all pick up Blender now and spend hours going through tutorials on YouTube, but back then we could all point at the ground and raise a house with just a bit of trial and error. (Of course, we still can do that, but the market for buying it has decreased considerably. That's not to say you can't still enjoy building in prims, though, and the market is still there to a lesser extent.) However, I completely lost interest in building at that point, because I couldn't be bothered to invest a lot of time in learning a completely new program. So I moved my creative urges toward fashion in SL, and I now invest money instead Good roleplay is also getting harder to find, with many of the larger themed locations shutting down and roleplay moving more toward family-style living: Mom, Dad, kids, and people wanting 'sisters' to hang around with. I think a lot of it boils down to people wanting to be around and be sociable with other people (yes, even loners like me), be that here on the forum, chatting in inworld groups, roleplaying in a large urban region or with a small 'family' of friends, etc. The experience of SL is like the experience of RL. More often than not, for a lot of people, it's not great; it just is. Some people grab life by the horns and go balls-out to experience every single thing: off-road, off-piste, off the hook. But many of us let life wash over us and take us where it will. Oftentimes that can be more enjoyable, because it takes us places we never even dreamed of. As shown by my 'resumé' earlier in my post, my niche in SL has changed as I've moved through the years and let SL wash over me. As Ceka said: go where the wind takes you. Second Life - no matter how cool a 3D world - just isn't for some people, and that's absolutely fine, too. If you really can't 'get it' that doesn't mean there's something wrong with either you or it. It just means that particular relationship didn't work out

My suggestion for a classic, non-mesh avatar would be to wear clothing layer underwear first of all. Any mesh items on top of that should contain both the mesh item and the alpha layer in the same folder. As a basic example: a skirt and its alpha layer in a folder named 'skirt', and a blouse and its alpha layer in a folder named 'blouse'. That way you can simply right-click on each folder name and 'remove from outfit', which means both mesh clothing and alpha will come off at the same time. Finally, just remove the underwear layers.

So the world shrinks, drop by drop as the wine goes to your head. Swollen angels point and laugh: "This time your god is dead".

You can only change any brand of Bento mesh head (the 'Bento' bit is crucial) within certain limits, not just Catwa ones. Every mesh head starts out with a certain 'base shape' (as in the 3D mesh itself). That specific shape limits to a certain extent what you can do with the head. The example that I always give is in the jaw: if you want a pointed 'pixie' jaw then you won't be able to get that from a mesh head that starts out with a very square jaw. Always start out with a head that has a similar shape to the one you want to end up with. That's why Catwa's ads show not only examples of the heads with different skins on them, but also as a plain 'mannequin'-style untextured head, as do some other brands: so you can see the shape. There is always a caveat, however, and that is that some mesh heads are more flexible than others. Their starter shape is 'generic' enough that it can be moulded into a lot of different looks (again, within reason). For Catwa heads those would be the first Bento heads released: Catya for the women and Daniel for the men. With time and effort you can mould most Bento heads into something that looks nowhere near similar to their starting shapes, but those 3d mesh limits will always be there, and with certain heads that have very obvious characteristics you will not be able to erase those characteristics fully. In combination with shape edits, skins will also help, so demo demo demo! Back to that Bento thing. Be careful, especially with Catwa heads, when you use the words "basic mesh head". Catwa sells three types of mesh head: basic (cannot be animated, can only be edited by stretching in six directions; seven if you count 'all over resize') frames animated (can only be edited by stretching, as with the basic heads, but these ones come with animation add-ons that you can purchase) bento heads (these can be edited using the shape sliders, come with 16 motion capture facial AOs as well as 24 full face animated expressions as standard, with an additional HUD C and many add-on packs of animations to fill it with) So clearly you don't want to look at "basic mesh heads" at Catwa if you want to make shape adjustments to them.

While they're not as close together as the ones in your example, the below mesh horns are editable, so you can resize and shift them closer with a bit of work. They're all from Souzou Eien on Marketplace. Mephistopheles Horns Oriax Horns Celestial Horns

It sounds like the mesh socks that you're using have an auto-hide option that is automatically hiding the Slink feet. The full Slink body has an auto-hide option in the HUD that you can toggle off and on, so I'm guessing the feet also have the same thing. I haven't used the feet as a standalone for a long time, but it would be worth looking in the HUD to see if there is a toggle on/off option for auto-hide there, but be aware that it might mean parts of your feet poke through the mesh socks. Failing that, what you need to find are applier socks that are compatible with Slink (or you can use Omega applier socks together with the Omega installer for Slink; just wear that and click it to install Omega compatibility into the feet). That's where the 'socks' option in the HUD comes in: you'll need to set that to 'on' in order for the appliers to show.

As Annie mentioned, never use 'wear' from your inventory; always choose 'add' to wear multiples of anything. Using 'wear' will replace a thing of one type (in this case an alpha layer) with another thing of the same type, rather than adding the second thing. To add something, simply right-click it in your inventory and select 'add'. However, you don't need to wear two separate alpha layers if you have a mesh body and head. Simply wear the full avatar alpha layer that came with your Catya head. This will make your entire underlying system body disappear (that's what you're seeing poke through and make your skin go 'splotchy'). Yes, this means that your eyes will also disappear, but your Catya head folder contains rigged mesh eyes that you can add (remember: add, don't wear!) If you don't like the colour of those eyes (by default they are blue) then your Catya folder also includes an eye applier HUD. Add it and you'll see it appear on your screen. Click the eye colour that you like best and your eye colour will change to that one. (Many stores sell other different eye appliers, too, but we're aiming to just get you sorted quickly here. You can go shopping later!) I've also noticed that you're wearing a 'Hitomi Shape'. Make sure that this is a shape created for use with a Catwa Bento head, otherwise it may make your face look a bit strange.

Tales of the Future [x]

I can't speak for other head brands, but as a CSR for Catwa I can tell you that she doesn't make changes within her range of heads that mean a skin will work on (for example) Catya and not on Margeaux. I'm not sure why some skin creators name specific heads, but my guess would be that they own the head in question and have only tested the skin on that head, so they name the head 'just in case'. The only other reason I can think of is if the creator also included a shape, which would have been made for that specific head. (And even then you can get interesting effects trying shapes made for one head within a specific brand on another head within that same brand.) In short: any Catwa-compatible skin should work on any Catwa head, but - as always - check with a demo. Omega skins, however, are a different beast altogether. They are created to work across as wide a range of heads as possible, and different heads use different UV maps. So Omega skins tend to feature words such as "based on LAQ" or "based on Catwa", which means they have been tested on those brands and are guaranteed to work well on them, but you take a (very small) risk with using them on other brands. As with any purchase in SL: if a demo is available, ALWAYS try the demo.

The twilight gleam is in his eye, The night is on his hair.

I'll feel free to edit my body and head in the way that I want to, not in the way that someone else tells me to. In addition, your advice sure as hell doesn't work for male avatars. Since I don't want my Signature Gianni body to have massive gym-shoulders and 'bracketed' upper arms I've had to reduce my shoulder width to 50, but to remain proportionate my head size is 82. If my head was also 50 I would look bloody ridiculous.

If the glitching tops are applier ones (and the alphas aren't something like delicate lace) then try setting the applier layer to 'mask' instead of 'blend'. However, if it's transparent mesh clothing causing the issue then try editing your hair (if it can be edited) and changing the alpha masking on the offending sections, as per this video. (As with the appliers, though, this only works well on 'sleek' textures; any hair sections that are feathered or curly won't look good when masked). Your final option is to try the materials version of your hair, if it comes with that as an option. What you're encountering is the OpenGL alpha glitch, which is an annoyance we can only (currently) mitigate with judicious use of masking and blending on mesh body parts.

Judging by this and the OP's other post here, they have perhaps been upset by someone who is incredibly tall and with a tiny head, or incredibly short and with a huge head...

Today Skell is diving down the back of the couch in search of extra pennies, because dear god Cyberpunk Fair is going to bankrupt him. I have thirty-four items that I want to buy...

Ah, if only Photoshop could help with that (outside of image editing itself). Overindulged at Christmas? Clone out that post-prandial pudge! Getting older? Blur away those wrinkles! (Mind you, might want to practice first, otherwise you might end up looking like this ) Curves is a way of fine-tuning certain levels of RGB - their depth and strength - in an image. I tend to use it either to discover interesting tint effects, or for lightening or darkening images since it gives me more control over that than the simple contrast etc tools do. Couple of quick example videos (I'm just using the existing points on the curve, but you can click to add more): darkening an image using overall RGB tinting an image by changing just the red value Before and after of that second image: I'm monopolising the thread with image-editing stuff again, aren't I? /me slinks off and lets the pretty people keep being pretty.

Welcome! The clone and blur tools are my most-used ones. I rarely use anything else, to be honest, except perhaps the curves adjustment.

Forgot to mention one other edit that I sometimes have to do, and that's the hairline. A lot of male hairs show rather visible joins - especially on the forehead - so I grab a 'splatter' brush and use quick, short strokes from the head into the hair and then out of the hair onto the head: Most of my editing is done using an old version of Photoshop (PS6) because it loads quickly and has pretty much everything I need. I keep Photoshop CS5 for when I need the heavy guns Before and after images (just a quick touchup done in about a minute) are behind the spoiler tag:

I always plug a mouse into my laptop whenever I use it. While I can easily do anything else with just the trackpad, for image editing a mouse is crucial. The best thing I've found for editing seams actually is the clone tool. I set it to grab as wide a sample as I can from the neck either above or below the seam (depending on whether that area is lighter or darker, and sometimes I mix the sampling up from both light and dark). Use a feathered circular brush, and pull the opacity down to between 20-30% (experiment to see what works best for you - mine was at 27% in the video I'm about to link). Short rapid clicks are key; don't sample and drag. Vary your sampling points frequently as you work. The larger, the more feathered, and the more random your sample points, the better your end result. And, once you're done cloning, set the blur tool to an equally low opacity (I rarely go above 35%) feathered circle and fine-tune any small, obvious lines. (If you're going close to a sharp edge, such as where your neck stops and a shirt collar begins, then change your brush to a solid circle, make it a lot smaller, and zoom in much closer.) Here's a quick video showing how - once you're used to doing it this way - you can clear up a neck seam in less than a minute. Note how I used a larger brush on the right side of the image (sampling from below the join), but as I got closer to the darker shading of the Adam's apple I reduced the sample size. Then, as I got closer to the underside of the chin on the left of the image I reduced the size again, finishing up with a gentle blur tool at 30%. Images behind the spoiler tag.

Finally got around to changing my Flickr banner and icon. The old ones were pre-mesh head!

Jacket: Ascend - Striker Biker Leather Jacket (Jake, Gianni, Slink) Pants: Sn@tch - Bomber Latex Pants (Omega, Slink) Necklace 1: Nanika - Arrow Necklace (black) Necklace 2: Gild - Cross Charm Necklace Eyewear: Diram - Ziva Unisex Glasses (black) Hair: VoltHair - Nils (black) Facial hair: Volkstone - Dom Facial Hair (black - Catwa, Omega) Skin: Vendetta - Yvan* (T4 - Catwa, Omega) Ears: L'Etre - Olympe Mesh Ears Head: Catwa - Skell* (Bento) Piercings: Catwa - Bento Face Piercing* (Skell) Body: Signature - Gianni *review copy

Do you know what you got into?

First, I have a folder for each month, which is sub-foldered by event (and, if not from an event, by week). Inside each of those folders is a folder for demos (any actual purchases without demoing from said event go in the top-level event folder). Then, once I've demo'd, it's simple: Because some things deserve a 'hell yes'

It's a reasonably good list, yes, but it's really only good for learning how to work with mesh bodies and heads, as the listings of mesh heads and bodies on the site are very old and outdated (it hasn't been updated since August 2018). Case in point: only five Catwa female Bento heads are listed (there are currently 25 of them in the store) and only one Catwa male Bento head (there are currently eight in the store). None of them mention or show the 16 full-face AO motion-capture animations that the heads were updated to back in September 2017, so even though the site continued being updated for another 11 months, those listings weren't updated. Likewise the bodies. Since I'm mainly familiar with male bodies I can see that the listing for Slink Physique Male shows the very first HUD that it came with, and is horribly out-of-date). The listing for Signature only includes Gianni and omits Geralt (and shows the old HUD). The listing for Belleza Jake shows the old version, and so on. There are some good tutorials on the site that can still be learned from, but I wouldn't recommend it for any complete or up-to-date listing of mesh body parts, for any brand. For that I'd recommend Strawberry Singh's blog, since she at least (until her recent hiring by Linden Lab) posted up-to-date video reviews.

Welcome, and no problem. I'll be available to help in some way or another (either here on the forum or inworld). If inworld, check my profile. I don't hide my online status, so if I'm showing as offline then I'm offline If I'm online then you'll get my autoresponse initially, but hang on for a few minutes and I should get back to you.