Ahh the hair. Hair is one on the most fussed with items on your avatar and also one of the most difficult to create. As with your skin, you can use the system hair or create prim hair. Many men just use system hair and make it very short. Prim hair look more realistic and less “cartoony”. Your basic beginning avatar will most likely have system hair.
As with the shape and skin, I have created a tool to use to get all the slider values for your system hair if that is what you want to use. If you are going to use prim hair, you will need to create a bald head base, which is essentially system hair with no values. You need this so that the prim hair will appear cleanly with nothing underneath it.
To create system hair, or the bald base for prim hair, use Create->New Body Parts->Hair. This will show up in your Body Parts folder. Rename the hair and wear it. Now go into Edit Appearance mode and adjust the hair values by using the sliders. For a bald hair base you will make everything 0. If your skin does not have eyebrows, you will likely want to create them using the sliders. Once you are done, save as before.
You can export your look to xml as we previously did to run it through the tool or simply use the blank Hair Slider values card to record them.
There are two ways to create a skin for your avatar. One way is to use the system skin and adjust it by using the sliders like we did for our shape. This usually results in a decent, yet unrealistic looking avatar. The second way is to create skin textures and apply them to your avatar. This usually will create a more realistic looking avatar.
I have created a Slider Values Card and tool that can be used for duplicating your system skin if that is what you want to do for your avatar. I’ve also included your Eyes in this tool since there are so few values for eyes.
For the majority of us, we want a nice realistic skin texture. The skin consists of 3 files, one for the upper body and arms, one for the lower body and feet and one for the head and face. Templates for these are available on the web, mostly as Photoshop files. To create your skin you would take one of these templates to use as a guide and “paint” your texture for each of these three sections. On my links page you will find links to tutorials, templates and some pre-made skin textures. Download any source files to your source directory just to make things organized. Once you have created a skin you are happy with, save the files in your steamtrunk folder and upload them to Second Life.
NOTE: Some of the third party viewers (TPV) for Second Life have a temporary upload feature so you can test out your skin and clothes files before paying the 10L per upload. There is a link to the official TPVs on the Links page.
Create your skin the same way you created your shape. In inventory, click create->new body parts->new skin. This will also be in your body parts folder. Rename it then wear it. Go into edit appearance mode and apply each of your uploaded textures in the skin section. The textures go in the Head Tattoos, Upper Tattoos and Lower Tattoos boxes. Click each of the boxes and then navigate to the corresponding file. Once you are done, save your skin.
You can also create a custom eye texture but for most people the standard one with the color adjusted works fine. You will need to create eyes at this time as well using the same process as you did for your skin.
Your avatar is beginning to look good!
First let’s start with your shape. You can purchase, or find for free, existing shapes. You can also edit yours or create a new one and then wear it. We are going to create a new one and then save the values so we can recreate this same shape in other worlds.
Currently there is not an easy way to export and then import your shape, so we need to manually record them and then transfer those values to the next world. Creating an exact copy of a shape you did not create is a violation of most creator’s TOS. You can check with the creator to see if it is okay for you copy this shape into another virtual world.
A shape is separated into 9 sections. They are Body, Head, Eyes, Ears, Nose, Mouth, Chin, Torso and Legs. Each of these sections contain elements that can be altered using a slider bar. Your changes are immediately visible. All of these are listed in this handy Avatar Shape Values Card .
To make your own shape, in your inventory window choose Create -> New Body Parts -> New Shape. It will be created in your inventory in the Body Parts folder. You can rename it before continuing. Now wear this new shape. Go into edit appearance mode and start altering the sliders for each section. Changes are shown immediately on your avatar.
Once you have the shape you want, save it. Now go back through and record all the slider values in your Shape file and save it to your steamtrunk folder. Alternatively, I have created a tool which will allow you to generate all the values automatically.
NOTE: By using this tool you acknowledge that the shape you will be using was created by you and you have full rights to it!
Avatar Shape Tool
Linden Lab created Ruth. From Ruth we now have the noob (newbie). Every virtual world you enter will have you start out as a noob. Some of the worlds have freebies and pre-designed avatar sets. These aren’t bad but you will find you still will want modify, tweak and enhance your avatar.
Here I am as a new AV.
Your avatar is 3D. You can apply textures (graphics files) to your avatar to change their appearance. You can also attach objects to further add to the realism of your avatar’s look.
Many of the worlds we will visit have freebie shapes, skins, hair, clothes and shoes that you can pick up to lose the newbie look. Some may even have whole avatars in folders with names like Girl Next Door. These are okay to use, but we are savvy travelers and we want to come prepared so that we will keep a consistent look. However, pick some of them up if you wish, it is always fun to play with your appearance.
We will go through all the items you will need to pack in your steamer trunk. For now lets just create a folder on your hard drive to hold all our files. You can name it anything you want, I named mine SteamTrunk. You can also create this folder anywhere you want to, just remember where you put it. Now inside this folder we will want a new folder to hold all your raw source files. These are working files and will not be uploaded into the worlds. I named mine source. Now we are ready to get some real work done…
Greetings from the metaverse and welcome to my blog. The purpose of this blog is to prepare for traveling among the many virtual worlds out there. The main virtual world we will be working in is Second Life, created and maintained by Linden Lab.
From there we will prepare our Steamer Trunk of items that we can take from world to world. This will enable us to keep a consistent look and feel throughout all worlds. The grand dream is to have interoperability between worlds, however since that is not in the near future, we will travel with the needed items.
So follow me as we pack for our adventure into … Uncharted Worlds!
