Orwar

Rent? Prim allowance? Pictures? Might help raise some interest.

If I made a new avatar today, knowing what I know about the available mesh bodies, I'd go with Maitreya as my first pick - you can always get another body down the line if you want to use it for those outfits it works with (or if you just prefer it without clothes), but since the vast majority of creators rig for Maitreya, you'll just about never have to feel like you made the wrong choice. It's also inexpensive enough that most people can get it when they start out (unless they absolutely want to go the freebie route). Unlike certain other bodies.

New hair. Feels weird. We'll see whether I get used to it . . .

I made two variants, one for my male avi and one for my alt. Ladies first: And for myself: Also let me slip in 2 Home & Garden options!

There is also the alternative spelling of tw@.

I heard 'woah, okay guys', and promptly lost interest.

Pet peeve: when the original pet peeve thread gets locked for going off-topic, and people then immediately set off with personal drama in the new one, that's likely to get this locked as well.

Gone fishin'.

You know the rules, we can't have anything fun around here. (IBTL!) The reason I wrote what I did was mostly to mock the concept of 'feminists' being a singular entity; the original bare face challenge was meant to make the point that no one should tell women how they should look (I'm still wondering who does that, honestly). But when people then, just like in this thread, begin whinging about piercings or eyelashes, the whole thing just feels like one big contradiction; "Don't look like they want you to, you should look the way I want you to!". Many women use make-up not for others (i.e. 'men'), but because they themselves want to; it's just one of those things our species have been doing since prehistoric times. Whilst I personally don't use make-up in RL (except the occasional black nailpolish), my avis do, both the male and the female one - that's not to attract others, it's because I like that aesthetic. Most of my friends are genuine goths though, and they get furious when people try to tell them they wear too much make-up or too many piercings; it's just none of their darned business, it's their choice, and the whole idea with the punk movement (which the goth subculture sprung out of) was to give the middle finger to mainstream fashion, to allow the individual to be and express themselves in whichever way they want. So yes, I get a little bit mad when what was intended to be a 'fun challenge', which I have no issue participating in, turns into a judge-fest of whether people can or can't have eyelashes, brows or piercings.

"Huh, what-- Oi, get out!"

Totally not a good way to phrase it in a thread with this title, for those of us who just woke up. Pouts.

When you try to find an MP link through going to a creator's profile in the edit menu, get there - but it's in Portuguese. By now I know where the button is to change the language, but when it happened the first few times I didn't even know what words I was looking for to change it back.

Honestly, that argument just .. No, come on. What you're referring to is of course something extremely important, but to not only have the whole world stop any other communication than that, but to go back and say 'this I said back then wasn't as important as the things I try to say now, so I don't want anyone to know I said it' - it's just plain silly. That said. Still no. If you want to post your nipples on the Internets, there are plenty of places where you're free to do so - just like if anyone wants to view nipples, they too can go to those sites.

Neph wouldn't take her piercings out, because she frankly doesn't care about any 'rules' and isn't a fan of anyone trying to tell her what she should or shouldn't look like, whether it's feminists or the zhe phantom of zhe patriarchy. Just like Orwar, who couldn't care less about whether his appearance appeals to others or not - besides, they're both equally likely of knocking anyone, who believes themselves entitled to remark on their appearance, into the nearest body of water.

The expedience of the process depends on how used you are to working with it. I do it the same way as Wulfie suggested, just the same as I do when I want to demo my poses before upload and adjust them before paying for them. As for how useful it is, well that depends on the variety of your apparels' needs. Back before we had mesh bodies, mesh clothing used to come with ready-made alphas; this is starting to come back it appears, now that BOM enables us to use custom alphas instead. One thing that I've noticed with Maitreya for example is that bathing suits and underwear often clips at the crotch, and the alpha pie slices for the body often were unusable for such things.

Oh, it's Firestorm. If you open your wardrobe, you get to 'Edit Outfit' through the button with the spanner in the top right corner:

It depends entirely on what you're layering, the only times it matters is when two textures intersect each other. If for example you have a tattoo on your chest, and chest hair, then the chest hair tattoo should be on top. If you're using a system layer for lipstick and eyeshadow, their order in regards to one another doesn't matter.

If you're using BOM, you could make your own alphas for it, but if it's a minimalistic bikini it may be difficult . . . But then I think it's one of the things that I think would benefit the most from custom alpha layers, as there tends to be clipping at the crotch that you can't do much about.

You can also change the order of layers after adding them. Click your Appearance (wardrobe) button, go to Edit Outfit, and use the up/down arrows to restructure the order of the layers.

I mean, I've heard people say that they do that, but in the context they've said it I've just rolled my eyes and thought they were being immature jesters. Guess I'm never letting Neph leave home without using alphas again.

Wait, is this actually a thing? I never tried it because I figured you'd just end up derendering the avatar completely.

This has to do with the clothing's mesh LOD. If you zoom out far enough, the mesh will be displayed in a lower polygon version, to save rendering weight. This happens to some, but not all apparel, depending on what settings were used when the creator uploaded the mesh. It can also be affected by your settings, specifically the LOD factor you use; whilst some creators say that you should raise it to accommodate their design choices, I'm of the mind that you should never have to go above 2, and that it should generally be kept somewhere between 1 and 2, to avoid unnecessary lag. To avoid appearing naked at a distance though, it may be worthwhile using your body's alphas or, if using BOM, clothing specific alphas, to ensure no private bits end up accidentally on display.

Making a Facebook account for a fictional character/your gaming persona is against their rules. Most people don't care or aren't aware, and plenty of people do it anyways. Facebook's moderators remove such accounts when notified about it, or occasionally through different methods of 'purging' the userbase (a bit like they just purged 'skinheads' off the site, rather hilariously swiping out a whole lot of SHARPs and stuff when trying to target 'Nazis'). If they've caught you and deleted you, it's up to them to decide whether to make an exception or not - but they're infamous for being rather stringent on their rules regarding this. Facebook really isn't meant for Second Life avatars, and I've made no account for my SL avi - in the few instances I want to check up on a creator who communicates through it, I'll just look through my regular account. Personally I don't see the point of 'keeping SL and RL separate'; if I make friends in SL that I want to have FB contact with, I have no problems exchanging my personal details with them, just as through any other online games/communities - but then I'm also of the generation who looks at FB as something used by your mum to share cat pictures and where your aunt checks in to yoga class five times a week. Shrugs. TL:DR: Facebook and Second Life avatars don't play nice together. Find another platform if you don't want to expose your RL profile.

Local uploads are temporary and only last until you log out; their purpose is to test whether a texture looks right in-world before you upload it. You'll have to upload the profile picture (Ctrl+U), and then go into your profile, and either click your profile picture and find the uploaded texture in the texture picker, or drag-and-drop the texture from your inventory to your profile picture slot. Make sure that when you are done, you close your profile by pressing 'OK' rather than 'Cancel'. As for size, I personally tend to go with 512 x 384 (SL will stretch this to 512 x 256 or 512 x 512 - not sure why it goes with one sometimes and the other other times). This is larger than needed for the profile window itself, which is more resource intensive than necessary - but it also allows people to click on your profile picture to enlarge it and see it in a larger version. If you want it just to be as near its original resolution as possible in the profile itself, the window is about 200 x 150 pixels (closest possible size is 256 x 192, which will be resized to 256 x 256 or 256 x 128). Some people whack up 1024 x 1024 textures for their profiles, but that only makes them take longer to load and make them have to compress much more.