Skell Dagger

I should have my own bat-signal Elixdude, it would depend on whether you want your face to be smooth as well. I'm absolutely loving Insol's new male skins that have just been released. 'Tyson' has a beautifully-smooth and ageless face, whereas 'Leo' has just a few small hints at age (but not so much that I would regard it as a mature skin). Matching body appliers for Insol are at Bold & Beauty (you'll find the male body appliers in a small store at the opposite end of the region than the bigger store where the female body appliers are). Alternatively, Avi-Glam have different body options, from soft (no abs) to light abs. I'm not sure if Clef de Peau still offer options for abs/no-abs; they used to on their Gen 1 and Gen 2 skins, so it's fairly safe to assume they will have the same options on their new Gen 3 skins, too.

A (very rare, I promise!) triple-image post from me, since I just can't make up my mind which ones of these to put here. Damn it, I have always wanted cheekbones like this Credits Lamb for FaMESHed, plus ARTE and Nanika for Vanity event. Hair: Lamb - Halo (balayage) Necklace: Nanika - Arrow Necklace (black) Eye appliers: ARTE - Galaxy Eyes (Catwa, Lelutka) Outfit: Gild - Disturbed Collar Shirt with Pants Set (Slink, Gianni, TMP) Skin applier: L'Etre - Toni (Catwa: buttermilk) Brow applier: Identity Body Shop - Thick Eyebrows (Catwa, Omega) Eyeshadow applier: Zibska - Noir Pack 10 (Catwa, Lelutka, Omega) Piercings: Catwa - Bento Face Piercings* (rigged for all Catwa Bento heads) Ears: L'Etre - Olympe Mesh Ears Rings & straps: RealEvil - Nemesis Rings (Slink, Gianni) Head: Catwa - Skell* (Bento) Body: Slink - Physique Male *review copy

If only those who view our finalised Flickr and blog images could see the behind the scenes stuff that goes on to get them. I've been suspended in mid-air before now (raised up on an invisible prim, so I can catch that Windlight shine just perfectly on my background and highlight my hairstyle shape), on a pose that gives me a great head/shoulders shot (but looks ridiculous from the chest-down), with pants that don't match and no shoes; just to get a good close-up of a skin or eyes or hair (And no, no pics, but it did happen. On numerous occasions!)

It's perfectly possible to come close to 30k with a more mainstream body than Kemono or Kuroo. 30k itself is pretty low, but I have a lot of outfits that are around 35k, and most of the ones that I wear on a day-to-day basis are around 50k at most. I wear mesh bodies and mesh heads all the time, and I don't skimp on accessorising. Granted, you may have different avatar customisation requirements than I do, especially if you wear animated tails, ears, wings, etc, but - by 'mainstream body' I've taken your meaning as 'a mainstream human male avatar look', and have written the below post accordingly. Three outfits below. (Apologies for the low quality, since I was just doing print screens in order to capture the name tag info, rather than my usual 5000px high-res snapshots.) From left to right: 1. Signature Gianni (male bodies don't come more mainstream than that) and Catwa Skell. Mesh pierced ears, Bento face piercing (with most of the piercings hidden), long and detailed necklace, mesh sunglasses, mesh shoes with lettering detail, mesh hair, plus a full and detailed suit = 38,241 2. Slink Physique and Catwa Skell. Mesh pierced ears, Bento face piercing (again, with most of the piercings hidden), mesh hair, and an outfit that's a lot simpler and less-accessorised, but it still looks good = 29,998. (So I'm just under that 30k mark for this one.) 3. Slink Physique (which, yes I know, I didn't even need to be wearing for this one!) and Catwa Daniel. Detailed mesh suit and shoes, plus long hair and some old sculpted glasses that still look good. (Well, they look good when I'm not taking distant low-res print screens so I can show the text above my head, at any rate!) = 45,834. This one edges under 50k, but it's those old sculped glasses taking it higher. If I remove those the complexity drops to 40,910. If I take off the body, it drops to 38,256. And these are 'onion-skin' heads and bodies, each with multiple layers. While it could be argued that male avatars are less likely to have a higher complexity because they don't accessorise as much as female avatars do, I can just mention one thing that happened yesterday: while helping a male avi sort out a neck-matching issue that he had between his mesh head and body, I teleported to him at the Catwa store. Since I normally have my jellydoll limit set reasonably low (around 120,000) he was just a pixellated blue blob to me. I maxed out my settings so that he'd rez and I could see the problem he was having, and I realised he was only wearing a Slink body, a Catwa head, a simple pair of jeans... and a short-ish flexi hair that was rocketing his complexity up past 250,000.

This discussion has largely focused on avatar rendering, but can we also please talk about all the frills and folderols, knick-knacks and whatnots that store and event owners rez around their locations for decorative purposes? (Images behind the spoiler tag.)

I'm staking out some group-only lucky boards, and the only other person here is another guy whose name also begins with S. He's a newb: system body, no AO, and wearing just a pair of flipflops and system underpants. He slumped over into Away pose seconds before one of the boards ticked over onto S. I felt sorry for him standing there with no nice mesh clothes on, so I figured I'd let him have the shirt that was in the board when he came back. They're on a very short timer, so I waited almost the entire duration... but he never came out of Away. So I thought "hell with it" and clicked. One free shirt. About five seconds later he came back, clearly read chat, and out shot his hand. "Sorry, your name doesn't start with X." I STOLE THE SHIRT OFF A POOR NEWB'S BACK AND NOW I FEEL BAD.

Ready for the club: Credits David Heather and Sorgo for The Men's Dept. Shirt & jacket: David Heather - Havana Blazer (Gianni, Geralt, Jake) Pants: David Heather - Havana Trousers (Gianni, Geralt, Jake) Eyewear: Sorgo - BLNR 2.0 V1 (Noir SG) Hair: Volthair - Thomas (B&W) Hairbase, Beard, Brows: Volkstone - Dom Fatpack (Catwa, Omega) Necklace: RealEvil - Savage Necklace Ears: L'Etre - Olympe Mesh Ears Piercings: Catwa - Bento Face Piercings Male* (rigged for all Catwa Bento male heads) Head applier: Insol - Leo (ST1) (Catwa) Body applier: Bold & Beauty - Homme (Omega, Signature, Slink, TMP) Head: Catwa - Skell* (Bento) Body: Signature - Gianni *review copy

Listening to this absolute banger of a track on repeat, and loving the hell out of the dances in the new Vista male Bento AO. The face animations are so good. Skell's really feelin' that groove (Video won't embed, alas.) https://i.gyazo.com/902f1aca5271321fbb6a76b51e8b8ef9.mp4

Some other premium membership benefits that don't get mentioned as frequently include an increased number of missed IMs before they cap, 60 group slots (which, for the shoppers among us, still isn't enough! ) instead of the 42 that basic accounts have, plus access to live support chat.

@Marianne Little & @Callum Meriman @Eccose Now that I'm inworld I can find the ad images for those amazing Identity Body Shop brows. I own all three of these sets, and I practically live in the ones on the right; they're that good:

Dancefloor banger that I've had on repeat a lot today, even through headphones while at work. Talk about focused

If by 'weird' and 'funny' you mean that your eye area turns white, check that you have Hardware Skinning enabled in your viewer's graphics preferences (under the advanced tab).

No need for a female skin to get your real life look, Eccose. If I were you I would demo Catwa's 'Victor' and 'Skell' Bento heads, as those have starting shapes that you'll be able to tweak using the face sliders to get very close to your real life look. If you don't want to spend L$5000 on a Bento head, then the Catwa basic 'Justin' head is fairly close as well, and only L$900, but it can only be stretched in four directions; there's no slider customisation. For skins I would look at Insol, who have brought out a couple of beautiful smooth and pale skins recently. Matching body appliers can be found at Bold & Beauty (if you opt for a mesh body; you appear quite slim, so I'd suggest either Slink Physique or Signature Geralt for a body). Another possibility is Avi-Glam, so have a look at both of those places and pick up some demos. This is Insol's 'Tyson' skin in Tone 01 on the Catwa 'Skell' head: As for those fierce brows, check out Identity Body Shop. They had almost-identical ones out at Hipster Men's Event a few months back, which should be in their mainstore by now. (I don't think they have their brows in their Marketplace store, so you'll need to look at their inworld store.) For the light facial hair, try CDC Creations. Their beards are tintable, and their '46' one (pic here) might work well for you. Alternatively, Mister Razzor's 'Jordan' beard (also tintable - pic here) is similarly light, but has a more defined and thinner 'tache. (Note that, because Skell's hair is dark in those images, I've tinted his facial hair dark. You can just as easily get a much lighter colour. A tintable beard will apply completely white, so you just need to find the RGB colours you want, and input them to tint it.) For the hair, try Stealthic. One of their styles (I think it's called something like 'Obscura') is similar to how yours is in your first picture. Hope that helps get you started.

As others have said, 'realistic' is as subjective as 'best' when it comes down to it. It's just personal opinion, and 'realistic' can be equally defined or changed by the choice of skin worn on that mesh body. The ladies of the thread have told you what bodies they like to wear on their male alts, but as someone who has lived in a male body for 11 years in SL I will always ask any guy who wants advice regarding mesh bodies this one question: "What build do you want your body to have?" Because that's pretty important to us guys Personally I'm not a fan of the 'spends a lot of time working his delts and biceps' look, so I favour slimmer bodies with a longer torso and broad "swimmer's shoulders". However, for someone who does want the worked delts and biceps look, an entirely different body than my usual one would be recommended. While I do own those very popular 'gym bunny' bodies, I've spent a lot of time working with their shapes to bring down the musculature as much as I can, because a lot of clothing these days is only fitted to those bodies, so the more bodies I have to choose from, the better my clothing choices. As a CSR for one of the big mesh head brands in SL I see this a lot in our support group chat: a guy comes in and asks which mesh body is the best. Almost immediately about half a dozen women chime in to recommend one particular body (yes, the worked delts and biceps one that's so popular!) but - once I ask him what kind of build he wants - more than half the time he wants a slimmer body that would require a completely different recommendation altogether. (That hasn't happened here, thankfully. You've been given a fairly wide range of suggestions. But it happens elsewhere with depressing regularity.) In short: let us know what build you want and we can help you further.

A shape is just a set of numbers that dictate the dimensions of your body. These numbers are accessible by right-clicking on your avatar, selecting Appearance > Edit Shape, and moving the sliders around until you have a set of numbers that you like. You can edit everything from the length of your nose to the wideness of your eyes, how tall you are, how big your butt is, how fat/thin/muscular you are, etc. Think of a shape as like your skeleton that sits underneath everything else. A system avatar (sometimes called a classic avatar - what you have right now) is a combination of a shape, with a painted-on system skin covering it, just like your real skin covers your skeleton. It also needs - at its bare minimum - a system hairbase (now most commonly used as an eyebrow-shaper) and system eyes. As Rhonda mentioned, those are the four items you must always be wearing (even if they're completely hidden by a mesh body and head) because without them your avatar simply won't rez properly. A mesh body is an object (or set of objects) that you wear over the top of your system avatar. To do this you need to wear an alpha mask, which renders parts of your system avatar invisible so they don't poke through the mesh body. A mesh body is rigged to various points of your avatar's skeleton, so that it moves realistically when you move. (Think of rigging as like it being 'pinned' to you in those places.) A mesh head is exactly the same: an object worn over your system avatar's head, for which you will need an alpha layer to hide the system head so that it doesn't poke through. There are several types of mesh heads, but the two main ones are static heads that you can only change by stretching them in each direction, and Bento heads. Bento heads are rigged to lots of points on your face (the same way that a mesh body is rigged - or 'pinned' to parts of your underlying avatar skeleton). This means that - with a Bento head - you can use the face sliders to customise the shape of that head, within the limits of what its starting shape looks like. For example: if you want a very pointy jaw you won't be able to do that with a mesh head that starts out with a very square jaw, so pick a Bento head that has a starting shape close to the one you want to end up with. When you see shapes that are "made for XYX head" those shapes are designed to ONLY be worn with specific Bento mesh heads. For example: a shape created to be worn with the Catwa 'Catya' head will look really odd worn under a system avatar, or even under a Bento mesh head from another brand, such as Lelutka. You would probably be able to wear that shape with another female Catwa brand head, but you might need to tweak it a bit. Shapes that are made ONLY for specific bodies are less common. Usually you'll find them made for a specific mesh head AND mesh body combination. For example: a male shape might be for Lelutka's 'Andrea' head and Signature's 'Gianni' body. If in doubt, always look for any mesh head brand names. You can always tweak the body sliders of a shape to work with any mesh body, but shapes designed for specific mesh heads would need a hell of a lot more work to tweak to another brand of mesh head.

Exactly. I don't mind exercising my Cam-Fu and using tricks like Wireframe Mode while actually hunting for the object. That's what hunts are for, after all; they're not supposed to be easy. I just prefer to be given the chance to do that without being summarily booted home before anything even rezzes!

A word to store owners who are participating in the Men Only Hunt: switch off your goddamn 'teleport home and ban all new avatars' limits for the duration of the hunt. I've been taking a new alt account around that hunt to see what I can use for a Noob Dude blog post. I'm only six stores down the list and I've already been teleported home and banned by name from the region for three hours. (And, of course, if I try to go back after those three hours, I'll be sent home and banned again.) Many newb guys are going to want to do that hunt, to get their avatar kitted out free of charge, and that creator has just given me a pretty bad impression of their store being an unwelcoming place. I won't forget that. I might have publicised their store, but now? Not a chance. Not every newbie is a bloody griefer. Ditch the paranoia for the two measly weeks that the hunt is on for, and help the new guys to look good, damn it.

I saw in a group notice a few weeks back that Violetility were going to return to - and expand - their Genderpunk! line. Great to see that they're following up on that promise. It's also great to see that they're not going down the same road as most other makers of male kinkwear and alternative-/avant garde- wear, of only rigging for Gianni and Jake. Many of us still wear Slink, and I'm glad that Geralt is also expanding its userbase, because not everyone wants to be a muscleboy (or can be arsed to spend hours fiddling with a muscled body, tweaking sliders left and right just to reduce those muscles so they can look how they want but still wear the same clothing as everyone else who gets The Good Stuff). However.... even though I love a good corset and I'm thrilled to see us freaky boys getting some new stuff to wear, I won't be getting this one. I prefer corsets to end below the pecs. Having them cover the pecs is just a little bit too femme for me, even on the hard boys in the ad. Not judging; just my personal taste; I am ridiculously picky about that kind of thing I'm still very happy to see this.

A redelivery won't help. There haven't been any updates to Jake since it was released. The body is still in beta and does not have hand poses yet.

The store in question sent out a notice to their group yesterday with regard to another vendor scripting issue, and it's very likely that the reason given was also behind the OP's problem with the hunt gift:

"A little ranty." Uh, that's putting it kindly Thanks for linking! Definitely look forward to seeing what you make, Raindrop. I prefer Slink, too, but while female Slink body support still seems pretty strong, male body support is getting more and more rare, with many, many designers dropping support for every other body except Gianni and Jake. Jake is still in beta, for God's sake! It still has some considerable flaws (including lack of any hand AO - which causes splayed-out fingers on a frequent basis if you don't use one of the "I've got balls the size of melons so I walk with my knees 24 inches apart" Bento AOs on the market - as well as some pretty bad neck fitting issues with the 1mm gap all around, against many mesh heads). Doesn't matter how slowly you get there; that you're aiming for it at all is a good thing

Usually that message pops up up if you click the Copy to Inventory (or Copy and Wear) button too quickly after opening/unpacking the box. You need to wait for the window to populate with the list of items in the box, and then you click whichever of those buttons you want. (Copy to Inventory is always the best option.) The error can also depend on how the item is being unpacked, as follows: If it's something you wear to unpack (as in: it puts a HUD image on your screen that has a texture on it saying something like 'click to unpack', or it makes you carry a bag or box that you either click to unpack or that is scripted to automatically unpack) then any items inside it that have the 'no copy' permission will not unpack into your inventory. There is also a situation that - in the case of a scripted unpacker - if you're in a sandbox that doesn't allow scripts, the script doesn't run and the items won't unpack. If it's something you rez onto the ground and right-click > unpack/open then - as mentioned in my first paragraph - just wait until you see the list of items in the small window that pops up. Once you see those you can then click the Copy to Inventory button. If No1 is your issue try rezzing the HUD/bag/box inworld and opening it via the right-click menu, rather than wearing and clicking the HUD.

Today I'm grimacing at the new Men's Dept collection. five lots of sweatpants two lots of sweatshirts two lots of sneakers three lots of sportswear (basketball tops & shorts) oh, and 10 lots of decor Really? ETA: I got so narked about this, I blogged about it. Eight swear words in a fairly short post. Yep, not happy.

The entirety of Daft Punk's Random Access Memories, but this track specifically right now, which someone has discovered fits perfectly over the ending of 2001: A Space Oddysey -

I do know that some of the Midnight Madness and lucky letter boards in that store also require the store's group tag to be worn, so if the group tag is behind it then that would account for those not working. Candice, were you clicking from more than 10 metres away? Most group-scripted items will only whisper within a 10m radius that you're not wearing the correct tag, so maybe try getting closer to see if you get that kind of error after you click? However, if the hunt requires a group tag that worked everywhere else except at that one store then the only thing - other than scripting issues - that might account for the no-click problem would be some kind of bounding box covering the hunt object. I recall two items during last year's Men Only Hunt that had a similar issue. One hunt object was inside a mesh display shoe, and the only way to click the hunt object was to derender the shoe. The other was buried halfway into a mesh wall. It looked clickable, but the wall had what I assumed was a bounding box around it that meant you simply couldn't click the object at all. After a lot of frustrated camming inside the wall I was finally able to click the damn thing. (I could have derendered the wall, I know, but the whole store would have vanished if I'd done that, and I have a habit of derender-and-blacklist instead of derender-temporarily, so I was wary of doing that )