Laurel Aurelia

I hit a few buttons in BD got this. I took this sideways and flipped it. I cropped it a bit but otherwise untouched in the editor.

@Eva Knoller I'd love to see your settings. I'm all about reverse engineering things to learn how they work. I do actually have that hud so I will try that next time too. @RowanMinx It's a bummer that people don't like to share. I probably over share. I get excited when people ask and would practically handhold you to the store in question if allowed.

I logged on this morning to take look before I went to work, and it seems to be working very smooth now. This happened a few weeks ago so it literally could have been anything, but I suspect some sort of id-10t error (missed a finger gunz or a fist explosion at the secret handshake when logging in) . No pie menus that I remember. On that day, I got it to log on for a second- just long enough to half load my surroundings, and Black Dragon scoffed at me "How dare you!" and quit straight away. If I ever have it happens again, and I can't figure out why, I'll post about it . I had forgotten how pretty everything looks in there. I was making circles around my avatar watching how the light hit when my home region decided to restart, and I figured I better go to work. Tonight, I will attempt a picture of my alien look I created for a party today in Black Dragon, and I will report back.

Hey Amber! In order to change your shape and brow shaper, you must wear another one. An avatar must always have a system shape, system eyes, a system brow/hair and that is what .Lelutka.Brow Shape and one below it. So if there are other ones you wish to wear, find those in your inventory and wear them. The old ones will be replaced with the new ones.

The last time I went in, BD automatically noped out (crashed) so I need to do a little research on what is going on there and familiarize myself with the controls. It honestly feels like going from a point and click camera to an actual SLR . Tons of new shiny buttons , but lots of opportunities to turn something on/off that will either wreck or make an amazing photo.Thankfully all fixable things I just need to take the time to educate myself . Have there been any guides you found especially helpful when taking your BD pics?

I have had an active SL flickr account since 2017, but all my stuff from that era was on a different account. Thankfully, I still have all my old pictures, and at some point I want to reattempt some of them for fun and mostly my amusement. One thing I detest about blogging an outfit is writing out credits because it is often very tedious work, and if I try to add some html , Flickr seems to HATE it. So even if I write it in notepad and paste it, I ultimately have to spend some time fixing it in that weird little window. Most of my pictures take me 30 minutes tops from start to finish. I maybe take 1 or 2 shots then I am off to my editor. Most of the time I crop an image and play with the color a little bit. Sometimes I have to fix things like a clothing or hair glitch I didn't see while taking the picture. Sometimes I get a little big for britches and attempt a style I thought was cool, but with varying results. I definitely think you have a style Eva! Your colors and editing seems very consistent across your work which I love. Not that there is anything wrong with doing it my way perse either. I am just a Virgo to my core, and I would like it be a bit more uniform in style and dimension. For me it might be easier if I try to settle on general size for pictures right now. All my pictures are MASSIVE, and while I love a big picture, if you leave them too big, people end up having to click multiple times on them and no one needs to look that close at my mesh nose hairs. @Scylla Rhiadra I definitely need to get into using Black Dragon more. I love how materials look in Black Dragon and have heard great things about the poser.

I've played with the idea of blogging off and on for years because I definitely have a certain affinity for putting outfits together and like to share. The place where I find I have the most trouble and what keeps me from moving forward with it as a hobby is sheer laziness and also not having found my voice so to speak with pictures. What I have found is bloggers who I respect have a certain style to their pictures that is uniform across all their work. I am still in the phase of just recklessly hitting buttons in my editor and so my results vary wildly. So if I ever look like I know what I am doing that is strictly on accident. So in the future, I think I definitely want to work on putting some more thought into my pictures stylistically and just in general. I also would like to inject more humor as that is more representative of me as person. I will try to post a picture here when I am able to take something. Question for anyone: How long does it normally take you to take a picture and edit it?

I would definitely recommend checking out Pepe skins along with the others that have been mentioned here in this thread. I am glad you found Skell's article helpful. I had thought about writing something up myself since I do help people make the transition a lot, but I don't think I could have written something that would be better . Feel free to hit me up in-world for more links.

Lots of options for skins, if you have a certain look in mind we can maybe narrow it down for you. As in other posts, I really recommend checking out Flickr to see what is out there for Legacy body and the Genus head. They both have groups there where you can see vendor ads of the newest creations. I would link them, but I think it might be against the rules. As for an explanation for how BOM works, no one does it better than Skell. He wrote a wonderful in-depth article on his blog that is helpful no matter what head/body you have. I suggest reading that, and giving it a go yourself. Remember to make a saved outfit of your current look while you play with BOM, it will save you the time of putting yourself back together.

@CallieCutest If you can snap a picture of your worn folder we can take a look there. What it looks like to me though is you are wearing the applier neck fix that comes in the Legacy HUD. What I would do is reset the body which you can find on the first pink page of the Legacy HUD, at the bottom. This will momentarily break your BOM, but you should be able go back and re-enable it and the neck fix should be gone. Keep us posted!

Thank you Manu!

@Horus Salubrius You are almost there! Now go back into your folder for your head and you will see that you have two versions of it. There will be one that has the letters ‘SL’ at the end which is the one you want to wear with your Legacy Body. Obviously you don't have the Lake head, but they are from the same line so I figure they must have the same setup. The other head which you are currently wearing is made to fit seamlessly with other bodies. You should only have to switch them and the neck line should disappear. After you get that sorted, don’t forget to make an outfit that you can go back to in case something else gets borked. I am super impressed with how quickly you picked up everything. It's no small feat as most of us were YEARS in the making. Keep us posted on your progress!

@Horus Salubrius In case you have not figured it out yet! To reactivate bom on your legacy hud, go the second tab (the body with the sparkles) then on the far right underneath the "e" in style. Then click Apply BOM button that is also on the far right: That will turn BOM on and off . If you are wanting to wear an applier skin, wear your body alpha then reapply the applier from your skin's applier hud. The only way you can change a system skin is to wear another one in its place. If you have a tattoo face layer (meaning the face skin is separate from the rest of the body) that can be added and taken off like other bom tattoo layers. I hope this is helpful.

Thanks Jaimy! Halloween music has just become my mood for this entire year >.<

Tram actually does a pretty great job at doing strands of hair around the face so I think that is actually true to the hair. I love their hair textures too. If you like this style of hair also check out BarberYumYum.

@MickLang The top one is from Tram and it's name is J0109. I suspect the second one is from Dura and it's called B98.

That is very odd. I could see where they might limit the amount of posts you make within a certain time frame such as minutes or seconds to thwart spammers. Perhaps it is an issue with the new system they recently migrated over to last week. I would give it sometime , and try again. Rowan has an excellent point too and it would make sense, but it would nice to have some clarification from an Admin.

@Horus Salubrius Check out Gyazo. It is free program that will allow you to basically screengrab, and uploads it automatically to their servers . From there you can copy and paste link into a post. The free version is sort of limited in that you have a history of 10 pictures, but as long as you have link addresses , you don't totally lose the ability to see the other older pictures. So no need for Flickr yet unless you have an arty "De/Construction of an Avatar" project in mind. And like Skell said, we have to be careful about what we post here so when you take a picture of your avatar try to keep it from the waist up. Also don't forget that picture of your worn folder too! Sometimes its easier to diagnosis what is going on if we can get a basic idea of your attachments and wearables.

@Horus Salubrius If you can, show us some pictures of your avatar and your worn folder. Which body did you decide to go for?

If I knew then what I know now, I would have paid more attention to organizing my inventory from the get go instead of letting it get out of hand . I am currently hovering at around 67k , but it was much higher a few weeks ago before I savagely started deleting things. I made sure to make a folder of old things that I could not part with , but I kept that list small. Apparently, It is very easy for me to get sentimental over inanimate objects, but organization is imperative to maintaining my anxiety levels and sanity. As to Horus's questions. Updating an avatar can be very overwhelming process if you try to do it all at once, and not to mention expensive! I recommend taking a good look at yourself and deciding your priorities. Pick a specific thing you'd like to update first. Most people chose a body initially to get rid of aforementioned "paddle feet" and to take advantage of all the rigged clothing. Whats important to you? Are you going for a specific themed look? Check out SL forum picture threads or the huge SL Flickr community for ideas if the form of your avatar has not solidified yet. Look at Skell's blog where he has many in depth guides on creating a new avatar - http://www.virtualbloke.com . If there are specific aspects of setting up an avatar that are causing you trouble, make sure to give us some pictures of the wonky bits and your worn folder so that we get full picture of where you are at with customization. Keep in mind that this particular sub-forum is specifically for asking questions about Avatar appearance if you are wanting to hire someone to help makeover your avatar for a fee, post something in the Wanted section of the forum. All that said, I wish you the best of luck. We'll be here when you have more specific questions for us!

I've always read the separate head thing as a convenience thing for the designers. The big name stores have a ton of skins and usually different body style options (curvy, small breasts, athletic, etc),and on top of that they have to consider there are also different mesh bodies with different mapping that must be accounted for as well. Having the head and body separate allows them a lot more flexibility and freedom to create new things without the burden of having to constantly update their entire stock of skins should they decide they want to update the body skins or add another niche style. All that said there are stores out there that are still doing full head and body skins or even giving you the option of full AND separate layers. I really encourage people to check out flickr when shopping as there are groups you can join that will show you a lot of new products. Editing this to add that Session makes fully body/face skins for men and women, but there are definitely others out there .