Wesley Spengler

Wishing you were still here with me...

Next-up on my list. Thanks much.

Yeah, Love, totally agree. Let's see how much extra cash I'm willing to spend on a solution... 😉

@SabrinaCooke, thank you! I'm not a Discord user (yet); might be a good time to try. But I think I'll write-up a notecard, upload the image to SL so I can reference it there, and reach out to Dean, as well as the contact at Avi-Glam, and just see what they have to say about it. At least after the responses here, I can cite a fairly long and comprehensive list of stuff I've tried! 😉 I think the main issue is that I love the NF body skin — far better than the Velour I also tried, IMHO — and I do actually REALLY like the Avi-Glam face, especially the realistic and beautiful lips. (Funny the details one notices, eh?) I guess I'll figure it out... or accept the tradeoff.

First, I really appreciate the responses. Let me address everything in one place: @Persephone Emerald I think I'll do exactly that (notecard to the vendor), probably starting with Avi-Glam, and see what happens. I now regret going with an Avi-Glam head skin, but in truth, I do love the lips and some other features better than any Not Found head skin I've demoed (several). One issue with the Not Found demos? They left the UV mesh layer on when they output them, so it has the exact issue I mentioned... There's a white line at the seam, so you can't even judge the result from the demo. Having already bought one wrong head skin in error, and then the second I'm using, boy do I hate buying a third just to see if it solves the problem — but I might. @Rowan Amore Thanks; I did try that (even going back to the same exact spot I took my photo, same environment settings), and no difference. @Jenna Huntsman Do you happen to know which skins he's using? Would be very useful to know if this problem doesn't happen for him. @SabrinaCooke You would think so. I did go back to NF, grabbed the blenders, and tried them. Oddly enough, it barely made a difference, while obliterating the Adam's apple and muting the detail in that area (as one would probably expect). But, this does sort of suggest that the issue isn't really the skins, but rather the next point here... @Orwar While I'd love to hear more about your strong feelings about Jake, your third bullet is ultimately the likely answer here, which is basically: It's just sorta the way it is in certain conditions, with certain settings, etc., etc. Somehow, I kinda thought so. Bottom line, I'd love to spend another great big pile of Lindens to compare different bodies and heads and skins and whatever else in an effort to get a better result, but... Well, I really don't want to spend another great big pile of Lindens. Creating a decent avatar by today's standards, for those of us who want to do that sort of thing, seems like a great big trial-and-error effort of mixing and matching vendors' products, followed by crossing your fingers, saying prayers, burning incense, and meditating... then realizing none of that helps, while getting your wallet back out might... Except it probably won't. Maybe a leather dog collar at the precise location of the seam is the answer? 🤪 Alas, he's not into that scene...

Before I say another word about it, I'll say that I'm using current release items, and I've already read other posts here, watched videos, read blog posts, etc. about this issue, and yet — here we are, with yet another post on this oft-discussed problem (with my apologies for dredging it up yet again). Using newly-acquired and current versions of: Belleza Jake body LeLutka Wade EvoX head Not Found tan body skin (offered as a full-body skin vs. a tattoo layer) Avi-Glam NF-matched tan head skin In most lighting environments, the neck seam is barely noticeable, but it's there, and in some lighting environments, especially with colored lighting, it's an utter disaster that makes me wish for the older, simpler days. Here's an example: @Rowan Amore mentioned in an older post that layer ordering is a potential cause, but since the Not Found skin is a full body one, it appears unrelated. @Persephone Emerald mentioned neck size mismatch, but it appears that's applicable only to female avatars. I've also read that the graphics shadow settings can affect this, but I see no difference between None and anything else. And finally, I know gloss settings can affect this too, but playing around with that between the head and body hasn't seemed to change anything, even when I completely remove it. I get this sick, sinking feeling that I'm missing something fundamental. This is even more frustrating because all the demo versions of skins seems to not just have "demo" markings but embedded UV map overlays intentionally left in-place, which masked everything and did not allow me to even see that there was an issue before purchase — and I suspect that this is at least in part due to using two different vendors for the head and body skins (despite being marketed as being directly compatible). Hoping someone with way more men's mesh body experience than I have can shine a light on where I went wrong. (Ideally a light that doesn't make the neck seam even more visible. 🤣) Or, perhaps, clarify that yeah, this is life in the mesh body era; get over it. 🙄

Well, you raise some good points there, honestly... Obviously, I can see this only through my own lens, and it served its purpose for me. As for the onboarding process, it's always been (and continues to be) the subject of a lot of debate. I found the learning curve daunting in 2006, but given what I just went through the past two months, Senra or otherwise, I think it's ridiculously complicated these days. The Senra stuff is well-intentioned, and I still think it has its place. But yeah, I'm quite sure that it doesn't smooth the onboarding process in the least, and it might arguably make it worse.

Another excellent suggestion, and I'd add that even AFTER I'd figured-out the basics, Skell had a lot of really useful information on his site.

Anaryane, really nice work with both your Senra avie posts, especially sticking with free or nearly-free options. It really does go to show you can do a lot with pretty much nothing, and I think it demonstrates nicely what I think Linden Labs itself was getting at with this project — something that sits in the middle between the old and commercially-available new, without unduly disrupting the business interests of the latter.

Makes 1,000% sense to me. I can't even tell you how I struggled to remember how to fly — let alone how to attach anything, find anything, or frankly DO anything. I thought my 10 years away was a lot; 12 years, huh? Well, welcome back to both of us. As for figuring out that stuff, I guess after discovering just how many of my oldbie friends were still around, I succumbed to peer pressure, watched a few Boston Blaisdale videos on YouTube, and dove right into the deep end. Not for the faint of heart, and absent some motivation or reason, it feels like it's mostly just caving to the palpable shift from content creation to content consumption that was always slowly happening, but now seems pretty much complete. So far, I've taken a similar approach. I do plan to do what I suggested in my very last comment above... Clean-up the old, and put the new in the usual places. With markers on the playback timeline by year, so you can dive-in at the point you made your exit!

I need that line on a T-shirt... in SL and RL.

Reading your post gave me the thought that I could probably make a lot of this easier on myself just by spending an hour or so creating appropriate sub-folders, and dragging a lot of stuff en masse into them. Like you, waaaayyy back in the day, I had stores, and I want to keep the merch, scripts, textures, storefronts, etc. I used to build them, just for old time's sake. But they certainly do not need to remain at their current level in the folder hierarchy. (As one example, among others.) Which brings-up something I wish LL had done... Allowing sub-folders in the Outfits. But per my earlier post, at least appropriate date-based numbering (e.g., 2009/10 Fred Flintstone Halloween Costume) means I can scroll through that stuff fast enough...

Coming back to SL, one of the hardest challenges is reacquainting myself with the inventory, and how I struggled mightily from the very start with organizing it well, being able to find anything, and how today I'm paying the price of 18 years of poor inventory hygiene. But, I can't let go of it. There are memories intertwined with a lot of it, and even if it is utter junk I'll never want or use, I have neither the time nor the interest in rezzing-out or wearing every single thing to make that call. One particularly weird example... This past weekend, I spent at least nearly two hours just renaming all my outfits; I'd used three different date-driven naming conventions, so I moved the dates in the name to a consistent format, just so they auto-sorted by date of creation — knowing full well I'll never wear system avatar outfits again for any reason other than nostalgia. Which I suppose is a good enough reason. Just finding that one favorite old very prim-heavy version of "me" had an avatar complexity of around 253,000 gave me enough of a laugh to make it worth the time... 😂

After returning to SL after a long absence, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with upgrading to mesh, and for a couple of months, used a Belleza Jake body (for modern clothing compatibility) with a Senra Blake head, paired with my old prim hair, and an old Redgrave David skin (which I'd used for a long time on my system avatar): Not a bad "transitional" avatar, I didn't think. My only real complaints were the very almond-like shape (very narrow at the chin), and the lifeless expression that I could find no reliable way to animate. Regardless, using some Senra was a nice, affordable, and quick bridge to something more elaborate.

Thanks much, Leora! As for activities, in truth, I am slowly finding my way to some things, including stuff I don't remember working very well in the old days, like vehicles... (Riding trains in Bellisseria, or riding a jet ski around its waterfronts, can be weirdly enjoyable.) One day at a time, right?

Coming back to SL after nearly a decade (mostly) away has been an interesting experience, in every possible meaning of that phrase. But revisiting my dated, circa 2014 avatar was a real slog. So much has changed while I was away, and just digesting all of it has been hard enough, let alone actually putting the pieces together. After 2+ months ramping-up and tweaking, I think I have the SL "me" in a pretty good place at this point. Now I just need to figure out where to go, and what to do with him... 🙄 Location: Kersplash Station, Bellisseria

Inspired by all these great (and often amusing) posts, most recently from @vanettda Lassard, I decided to pull one together with the "me" of March 2006, and the latest "me" — finally complete after 2+ months of learning what's changed since I've been gone (for nearly a decade), what the options are these days, and trying to figure out how to put it all together... Wow, can't believe it's been 18 years now.

I've been secretly stockpiling a list of your hairstyles and the stores selling them for future reference... 😂

I'm hoping that either way, it stems from a place of laughing with you, not at you! 😉 For me, so much of this is dependent on my mental state at any given moment, which can be highly variable. My brain seems to spend a lot of time in some weird, in-between place where I want to be alone, and yet socialize with people. Somehow that doesn't seem to work very well... And, as @PheebyKatz said: ...which is another excellent point. Sometimes that comes so naturally, I wonder if someone else took over my computer keyboard. And then, of course, there's the rest of the time... 🙄

I can't say I know exactly what they meant, but I suspect I have a good idea, as I feel the same way. To borrow a phrase, idle hands are the devil's mental health playground, for me anyway. Keeping the mind engaged is pretty important as a result. Similar to the other points you and @Persephone Emerald made, being in SL provides a framework for sculpting that inner world you mentioned, and an outlet for it, with an adjustable and dynamic balance of social connection and solitude that mostly works, most of the time.

Wow, I honestly thought I was the only one... A lot of my SL friends seem to want to TP me over in order to have a chat. I'd honestly just prefer to just keep riding a train around Bellisseria, continue looking for the store that sells the thing I still can't find, or even just stare at the walls of my Linden Home, than TP somewhere and "hang out" with someone. The chat window simply doesn't know the difference. Call it solo togetherness, or group solitude, or whatever else, but in all its forms, it's a strange aspect of SL I'd not really thought much about.

When I first read that line, I thought the part about "you're doing it wrong" was a bit harsh. But honestly, I think there's way more truth there than I realized. I'd only add that "figuring it out" can also involve leaving it behind. I wound-down my involvement in SL after eight amazing years in 2014; it just wasn't fun anymore. I think I logged-in maybe three or four times in a decade. Then, an old SL friend sends a RL text message in December, and I was sucked back in. I sort of wonder why I left, but the nature of the fun has shifted too. I'm just thankful that lots of oldbies on my friend's list are still around; meeting new peeps (back to the OT) can still be challenging — just like RL.

🤣 I didn't see that in the last one until you mentioned it! So true. All were just plain Leonardo.ai. Unfamiliar with the tool, and limited to the free allocation of tokens, I was sort of guessing at what to put in the prompts or settings, apart from setting image-to-image mode as the blogs (New World Notes, etc.) have noted. I've played some with Adobe's Firefly, which I know you've been incorporating too, and so far, the results aren't worthy of sharing. This is a lot of fun though, and you've gotten some particularly amazing results. SL, our avatars, etc. have always sort of messed with my brain cells a bit (or a lot). Life-like AI renderings only dial it up more...

Yeah, extremely cool result, actually.

After seeing it mentioned a lot the past few days, I decided to try Leonardo myself. Interesting, but underwhelmed... Unlike Cristiano Midnight's results, it didn't exactly turn my avatar into the swarthy human cover guy I was hoping for... 🤣 But, fun for those of us who don't have the inclination to dig into the toolsets very deeply. The three examples were from three different attempts at describing the desired result.