Your new Skin - Step 3 - Second Life

Hi, I'm back!   And we're ready for the last step - turning the textures we created in the last step into a skin.

Before we do that though we need to sign onto Second Life and do some housekeeping in our Inventory.  I'm going to assume you know how to sign on and get access to your inventory.  You may also have some nice skins and shapes that you are pleased with, so we want to be careful to not muck with them.  To do this, and provide a path for people new to Second Life - we'll copy a skin and shape (and hair and a few other things) from the library and modify those items.

Inventory - New Folder for Girl Next Door

I would suggest 'girl next door' so open your inventory window and look in Library->Clothing->Girl Next Door by Renegade Clothing & Adam n Eve.  Now click on the first line, then scroll down and click on the last while holding down the shift key and copy all those selected by pressing ctrl-c.   Next go back up into Inventory->Clothing and right click on Clothing, choosing New Folder. Select it and paste the items you have copied into your new folder.

Then open that New Folder and make a copy of the shape named 'Girl Next Door' and the skin named 'Girl Next Door Medium Skin", naming the first 'Girl Next Door - edited' and 'eloh eliot's starlight' respectively.

OK, the housekeeping is done.  What we have now is a placeholder for our new skin, 'eloh eliot's starlight' and a placeholder for any shape modifications we want to make after making the new skin 'Girl Next Door - edited'.  Excellent!

The next step is to make our skin.... but .... well.... you know, there will be nudity involved.  So you will need to find a safe place where you can go and people will not be upset seeing a naked avatar.  If you know of such a place, great!  Skip the rest of this paragraph and go there.  If not, I can't give you such a place... but I may be able to guide you a bit in finding one.  First - don't go to a PG place.  I shouldn't need to get into why - just don't.  An Adult place is probably best - but Mature may be OK too.  An Adult sandbox might be good - or some place that is not used very much.  As you look for a place - read the rules and respect them.  If they say no nudity, move on to another.  Sooner or later you will find a place where nudity is acceptable.

Next we need to upload the textures you created using GIMP in the last step.  At the top of the screen, choose File->Upload->Image, then navigate to the folder on your computer where you stored the textures we created in the last step.... select one and press "Open".  Then on the window that you get in the Phoenix viewer, check "Temporary (Free)" and click "Upload".  Do this once for each of the three files, and get them all uploading into your inventory.   You can watch them appear by opening your Inventory->Textures.  You will see each appear in turn, and you will note that the name is in italics - and that it is a temporary file.

Girl Next Door - standard shape - standard medium skin.

Ok ... now you should be in a place where nudity is allowed, so remove all your clothes and wear the "Girl Next Door - edited" and "eloh eliot's starlight".  These are the place holders and now we'll make them the real thing.  The image to the right of this paragraph is what you should see.

She is a nice looking girl.  Sadly though she has a rather nasty problem.  No nipples.  *grimaces* I don't really understand the whole no nipple thing, but we won't dwell on it.  The next step is to create our new skin.

Here's how to make your new skin.

Edit Appearances - Skin

Right click on your avatar and choose "Edit Appearances".   You will find yourself with a window that gives you lots of ways to change things about your avatar, including the skin you are wearing.  If you look in the upper left you will see "Skin" listed.  Once you click 'skin' you will see a panel with three windows open up: note the three red arrows pointing at the small windows in the picture to the right of this paragraph.

The topmost window is the one that will receive the "Face" texture.  The middle window is the one that will receive the "Upper" texture.  And the bottom window is the one that will receive the "Lower" texture.

Now open your inventory window and find the Inventory->Textures folder.  Click on the "starlight_face" texture and drag it to the topmost window within the Edit Appearances window.  Then click on the "starlight_upper" texture and drag it to the middle window within the Edit Appearances window.  Finally click on the "starlight_lower" texture and drag it to the lower window within the Edit Appearances window..... and click Save, then click Close.

Girl Next Door - Standard Shape - Eloh Eliot's Starlight Skin

It make take a couple minutes for your new skin to appear and become clear - but once it does it should look like the image at the right.

Yay!  Nipples!  She looks pretty good doesn't she?  *does a happy dance!*

Now... let us pause for a few moments and bask in your achievement.  You have made a skin!  Of course, since we used temporary textures uploaded for free, it won't last.  In a few days you'll find that one or all of the textures on this skin have been 'grey'd out' - meaning you've lost the temporary texture.  To make it permanent you'll repeat the steps we took above and NOT check Temporary (Free) when you upload.   (And you need to have some money in your account.)  Then when you drag this permanent texture to the skin, it will not be lost after a few days.

Now look your skin over.  Use your camera controls and move your view around.  Zoom in and zoom out.  It looks pretty good, right?  

If you're like me though, you're seeing some things that you would like to change.  This usually registers as a 'hmmm that's not quite right' feeling.  Of course, it is purely subjective.  What is 'not quite right' to me may be just fine to you - and that is a GOOD THING.  It would be a horribly boring world if we all looked alike and all thought alike.   That said, I'll give you my list of things that are 'not quite right':

• Hands... perhaps a bit large
• Shoulders .... perhaps a bit broad
• Face ... perhaps a bit long
• Lips .... upper lip is not quite right
• Legs ... perhaps a bit long

Most of the things above have to do with the shape, but the Lips certainly have something to do with the Skin.   We'll edit the shape later, but first let's continue our work on the skin.  As it happens, Eloh has given us several options in the files she has provided.  And one of those options is for a different 'style' of lips.  We'll play with that in the next post and see what happens.

See ya later!
robin