Orwar

Nah - open your body HUD, and on the second page of it you'll find the tinting menus. Select nails, pick a colour from the colour picker, and pull the brightness slider to the floor.

I went the lazy route and just went with tinting the nails black in the body HUD. It doesn't look perfect but, well, I wasn't looking to look manicured.

𝔏𝔦𝔢𝔰 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔰𝔩𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔢𝔯!

Will there be cake?

Snorts. I reluctantly tolerate mankind - I don't discriminate; I despise everyone equally!

I got tired of my workflow being a few squiggly lines on a piece of scrap paper in my desk drawer, and as the subject of 'Gimp vs. Photoshop' came up (yet again) in a Discord chat, I figured that I should re-format it, and that I might as well share it here. Before I dive into the Gimp part (because obviously I use Gimp, which is superior and also free!), there are a few principles that starts in SL itself, and different workflows depending on what I'm doing. The rule of thumb is always to do as much work as possible in SL, and as little editing as required to reach the desired effect; this means that the pose, the backdrop, the lighting, the framing, and (almost always) the DOF should all be spot on before I open Gimp - and there's no crime in taking a shot to look at it, decide to adjust something and then move back to re-take it until it's where you want it, whether it's changing the camera position or the lighting intensity or the DOF sliders. On a good day, the only editing required is: Blend neck seams. Add signature. But sometimes you'll want to do something more 'artsy' in the editing process, and occasionally you've got a shot which requires more fixing (a shot not taken in a studio, or in a shoot you wrapped before realizing there was an error). If any of this is required, then you'll want to complete this before you start adding filters and effects - and it's also the point at which you do the layering, if you're doing a layered shot. Did an animation wherein your shoulder popped backwards? Someone got a leg going through a skirt, or an arm going through their hip or gut? I don't know what the 'proper' term is, if there is one aside from 'correcting' it; I like to call it 'reconstructive photo-surgery', because I'm a weirdo. This assumes that there's only one layer of the shot, or that even with multiple layers, there's an issue that needs correcting (if you're doing image layering, that may come first though). At this stage you'll primarily be using the paint brush, smudge tool and heal tool, to rebuild the missing or broken things. So what do I mean when I talk about 'image layering'? It's when you want to wear a hair and a hat, but can't get the two to work together in-world without extensive clipping or having to deform the hat until it's more of a tent than a bonnet. In a studio setup, you can solve this by taking two shots - one with the hair, and one with the hat, then lay the hat layer on top of the other one and use alpha masks to just put the hat on. Or a coat over a shirt, or a necklace that clips with your shirt collar, or anything else really that collides with something else. Once you've got the shot fixed up so that there are no seams or clipping, you're ready to begin adding any effects or filters that you may want to do. Personally I've found myself using and making filters less and less, not only because of the 'raw shot puritans' raging on the forums, but because I've learned to set up my lighting and stuff in the viewer - looking back at photos I did even just one year back, yikes, the excessive use of Softglow (why did I ever--) and other filters making the contrasts much too hard and the colours appear posturized, ugh. But there still are some features that I use to some extent on occasion. Sharpening (unsharpen mask) can be a great way to pick out some detail, especially on portraits, to make eyelashes and pores pop, layering a desaturated copy of the image (or just playing with the slider, because Gimp now has a slider - yay!) to make the shot appear, well, less saturated (gloomier!), and of course film grain (i.e. HSV noise - 'cause the cool kids do it!). I've also done a few shots where I've tested out the whole anaglyph thing (again 'cause of the cool kids) and found that .. Nope, just no. I'll leave those shenanigans to the pop star wannabe bloggers - after all, how dark do you appear when it looks like you're at a disco doing LSD? And finally there's the signature - easily done, just make a signature that you copy-paste into your pic. Well, I used to do that at least, but I've gone from an underlined, two-line black letter logo with wavy effects to just a single line, all minuscule fraktur, which I just quickly type in by hand, align to the corner I want it in, and then drag it out a few pixels from the edges and set to a high transparency to make it more discrete. But that's just me. Glances up at the text wall to figure out whether I actually made any point. . . . So, I hope you found that, uh. Educational? Inspirational? Entertaining?

Except if the 'demo' is the mesh without any textures. Goes to write it down on my long, long list of pet peeves.

Good quality and/or creativity - preferably both. Then again, to be fair, some of the biggest brands in SL have neither. Marketing can be extremely time consuming. Having a handful of bloggers and being at a couple of events would be a good place to start, as well as having your own Flickr and in-world group, and/or Discord group, to advertise new releases. Avoid the pitfall of too many events though, start off with one or two to see what pace you can comfortable create at, with the quality standards you set for yourself - also, not all releases need to be at events. You could, but it's probably not going to help much. When people look for places to advertise, they tend to look at traffic - clubs and infohubs are generally better places for it. Also, competitors advertising at your store doesn't sound too appealing, in my opinion. Some (quite a few) stores do this already, and I think it's a good thing. You may also want to consider group/free gifts to boost region traffic - it doesn't need to be anything super fancy, but a single colour of an older release or something simple. Speaking of groups, don't put a join fee on it; it doesn't 'stop spammers/scammers' and, the group is there for you to advertise in and occasionally offer support through; customers shouldn't have to pay for that - unless you've got a VIP group with more discounts and/or free periodical releases.

Daz3d, usually, from what I've heard, plus photo-editing like crazy. Adverts like that should be banned as false marketing - but meh, as long as they provide demos so that you can see what it actually looks like in-world for yourself.

Demos can be a fairly decent indicator of the items' complexities .. But it can also be grossly misleading, depending on how it being a demo is shown - adding a meshed demo sign floating over your head adds to the complexity of the item. That said, avatar complexity is said (by people who grasp it better than I), to be a very poor indicator of the actual performance impact of an avatar, but it's the tool we've got for now so we'll just have to make the best use of it that we can. Here are some of LL's own info on complexity: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Avatar_Rendering_Complexity And a quick video with Torley.

This outfit has my alt's complexity at 47K. It's not difficult scaling it down further by finding less complex alternatives and pulling accessories. Edit: Tried on another pair of eyes and it went down to 34K. Her usual shopping/exploration outfit has something like 26K complexity. Complexity alone is a bad measure though, and there are several factors that may be causing lag. Excessive scripts, HUDs with a lot of texture memory (and scripts), other people around you, your environment, particles, physics, a too high LOD and/or drawing distance, etc.

Well, he's found ContraptioN, better Victorian-Edwardian Steampunk-Dieselpunk (and a touch of Horror & SciFi) apparel does not exist on the grid.

It depends on several things, but yes, genitalia HUDs specifically do tend to have a lot of scripts in them, depending on how functional your bits are. AO HUDs, especially the ones that contain not only an AO but also dances, gestures, and all sorts of whatnots, can contain high amounts of scripts. Body and head HUDs are meant to be worn when you set your avatar up, i.e. when you're getting dressed - once you're done styling your avi, those HUDs should come off as they often contain a whole lot of scripts. Clothing HUDs can vary wildly. Some are very lightweight scripted, and only really 'tell' your clothes to 'apply this UUID' when you click the button. Others contain more complex scripts for resizing and whatnot. How heavy the scripts are depends on how savvy the script maker was, and whether they focused on adding bells and whistles or making a functional but simple script that does the job and leaves it at that. For genitalia though, it's not just the HUD, but the bits themselves, having very high triangle count as well as scripts (or as I put it, potentially laggier than your dance partner).

That's a terrible idea. If LL made MORE beginner mesh avatars (we've already got 'em, you know), it would change .. Nothing. People chose bodies based on their preferences of appearance and for how well supported they are by creators. If LL rolled out a mesh body today, it would still be years behind even the moderately popular bodies in content, and it would take a very long time for it to compete with the other bodies even if creators chose to support it. The one good thing that would come out of it would be that anyone would be able to create content compatible to it, as opposed to most bodies' super secretive and mega exclusive creator packs - but on the flip side that also means more unskilled creators making more unoptimized content. Measured just in triangles, and looking at my current getup, the body AND head are roughly 1/4th of the triangle total, and less than 1/3rd of the VRAM - and all of the accessories and apparel are within LL's complexity guidelines. My current FPS at my platform is at 246 - and if I have my avatar walk out of the frame and wait a moment to let it update .. It pushes up to 249. Same test on ground level, i.e. in my Linden Home neighborhood, 111 FPS with my avatar in shot, and when she walks out .. 113. Not the most scientific test, perhaps, but you're really focusing on the wrong thing. Some mesh bodies *cough*Legacy*cough* are worse offenders than others, but even so it's when you start heaping up on badly made clothes, accessories, shoes and hair that the triangle count begins to run off, and even then it's just graphical lag - it's when people wear highly scripted genetalia and HUDs that regions begin to tank and make the experience unresponsive.

In the body's folder there should be a body HUD, on it you've got this page for the alpha slices.

I tried it, but I just got so tired of all the questions. Like, "whose blood is this?!".

Check your body's HUD, some clothes have auto-alpha features which do not un-alpha the cuts when you take them off.

I like to think of it a bit like RL. For example - a bunch of people got their knickers in a bunch about photoshopped ads for cosmetics a few years ago; it's still a 'thing', but I guess media had a dry spell and decided to stir the pot a bit, and some people went absolutely bananas and wanted to make it illegal because twisted beauty ideals and unhealthy expectations for young, impressionable girls. Yet, those same companies are still selling cosmetics advertised with photoshopped models with Barbie-esque physiques, and the people who wanted to illegalize it, well, most of them still consume makeup. When my sister wanted to argue about it with me (because me not sharing her zeal ticks her off and she has to 'correct' me - which usually ends up with her crying because I simply don't care to engage), I just told her to vote with her money; it's the basic principle of democracy. If people really are that bothered, they shouldn't perpetuate it by throwing money at them. So in SL, same thing goes; if you want to make poor quality products and flog them to the ignorant masses who don't know any better, fine - but I'm not going to be buying those products, personally, because I rather enjoy being able to muddle around in my home without having any lag, and I can easily find better made alternatives that'll look as pretty but cause no issues. If 'the people of SL' want a less laggy SL, well, the 'people of SL' will have to educate themselves - it's not like there's a shortage of resources for learning these things, both in-world, in blogs, the wikis, the forums, vlogs, etc. Unfortunately, people like to scream that LL are incompetent or LL should fix this or that. Just like the painted women who screamed at government to financially ruin the companies that they themselves were throwing money at. "It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful."

Well, if the DPW are planning on expanding Belissiera for the coming 2 years because the Linden Homes are all gobbled up the instant they release a new region, I'd think LL aren't doing too bad. As far as the L$ value, yeah it goes up and down, but it's currently at roughly L$270 to the USD, which is what they said it was in an article from .. Several years ago (can't remember when, or what article it was), I'd say that's pretty stable. Considering many virtual currencies inflate fairly quickly, I think that the stability of the L$ is quite impressive. ... But I'm no economist either. Seeing LL investing the kind of time and resources into such projects though, and how successful they appear to be, I'd think is a good sign.

Pray your way out of this one, if you can.