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UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals and Freebies: Free and Inexpensive Mesh Heads and Bodies for Female Second Life Avatars

Ryan Schultz

WARNING! THIS BLOG POST IS VERY OUT OF DATE AND SHOULD NOT BE USED!

PLEASE NOTE! Caroline Walker (MizCarol) has taken much of this information provided here, and compiled a list of currently available free and inexpensive mesh heads and bodies for both men and women here: The FabFree Mesh Body and Head Listing. There are a few items listed in MizCarol’s list that are not on this list, so it pays to check both! (Thank you for your hard work, Caroline!)

PLEASE NOTE: For a current, up-to-date list of free options for male mesh avatar bodies, please see this blogpost. 

Mesh heads and bodies can be very expensive! This blogpost is my attempt to summarize all the options available to you if you can’t afford a pricey Bento mesh head or body, but still want to replace your old system avatar with a fully mesh one.

First, let’s just recap all the options for free or inexpensive mesh avatar bodies for women:

Here are step-by-step instructions on how to remove the heads from the Altamura freebie bodies:

  1. Attach the included Altamura HUD.
  2. Click on the white head in the HUD once to remove the head (this only works on the Juliet gift, the 2017 Women Only Hunt version of Jenny, and on the Emannuelle gift formerly available at the Altamura mainstore, but unfortunately NOT on any of the other free Altamura bodies);
  3. Remember to also click the eyelashes, teeth, and hairbase buttons to remove those as well!
  4. Then everything from the neck up should be removed, so you can add your own mesh head.

Now, let’s talk about free or inexpensive mesh heads to go with those bodies!

Akeruka

If you haven’t yet joined the Akrueka group (called [AK] Heads News & Support) for L$150, you should really consider it. If you had joined the [AK] Heads News & Support group for L$150 three years ago, you would have picked up no less than ten fully-featured, fully-adjustable Bento mesh heads by now—which works out to only L$15 per head! So join the Akeruka group and keep your eyes peeled for announcements of freebie or dollarbie mesh heads every six months or so 😉

Boataom

Now, here’s the Takaru mesh head from from Boataom for only L$10, which comes is six different static versions with different facial expressions, and which you can change the lipstick, blush, and eyeliner on, using the included HUD:

(It’s got a bit of a Japanese anime look to it, which is not exactly to my taste, but it might suit your needs perfectly!)

UPDATE June 21st, 2019: I have been told that if you join the Boataom group for L$99, you can pick up the Disella static mesh head as a group gift:

This is what the Disella head looks like. It comes in two skin tones, with two separate, adjustable sets of ears to match and a HUD with six different colours of lipsticks:

I tried, but I could not adjust the size of the eye opening, which I think leaves Disella with a perpetually surprised look! You might have better luck with a different set of (system or mesh) eyes from your inventory.

Genesis Lab

UPDATE Jan. 9th, 2020: The Genesis Lab group is now free to join, but I don’t know for how long! More details here.

If you go to the Genesis Lab mainstore and join their group (called GenesisLab, all one word) for L$99 (there is a group join panel on the Group Gifts wall at this SLURL), you can pick up three lovely mesh heads as free group gifts: Makena (an albino head), Lara, and Kenna:

The Lara head comes with a HUD to control the included mesh eyes (4 different eye colours), plus 4 options for the eyebrows and hairbase (red, blonde, brown and black), 4 options for eyeshadow, 4 options for skin tone, and 8 options for lipstick. Here’s what she looks like:

Genesis Lab – Lara Mesh Head

The Kenna head, which is probably my favourite static mesh head, comes with a HUD to control the included mesh eyes (8 different eye colours), plus 8 different eyebrow and hairbase colours, plus 8 choices for each of the head’s lipstick, eyeliner and eyeshadow. Here’s what she looks like:

Genesis Lab – Kenna Mesh Head

The Makena albino mesh head from Genesis Lab comes with mesh eyes, but it does not have any other options. As you can see, she’s quite striking:

Genesis Lab – Makena Mesh Head

Altamura Maya

Perhaps the best option for a free mesh head is the Maya head, available from the Altamura mainstore. This is a totally free gift (you do not need to join the Altamura group to get it), but it’s kind of tucked away in a remote corner of the store, so use this exact SLURL to locate it (just use the Map feature in your SL viewer, click on the Show Selection button, and follow the red arrow). This is a static mesh head with one HUD to change the skin tone to one of four options, plus two HUDs for makeup options (again, I have paired it with the Curvy eBody mesh avatar body). This is the Maya head with all the makeup options turned off, so you can see the features more clearly. I think it’s quite attractive!

So there you go, all your best options for free and inexpensive Second Life mesh avatar heads and bodies! You do not need to spend a small fortune to have a good-looking mesh avatar in SL!

So, have I missed any bargains in mesh heads? If so, please leave me a comment, thanks!

300mg

There is a vendor on the SL Marketplace called 300mg, who is selling 6 free mesh heads, of which one is a female head called Amra. Here’s the picture from the vendor:

But when I tried it on, I found that it wouldn’t work with the default system avatar eyes. And (despite the assertion on the product listing that it has Copy/Modify permissions), I found I could not resize the head to fix the problem. So you will have to use the Amra head with a complete body alpha which removes the system eyes, and use mesh eyes instead (such as the ones which are part of the Genesis Lab mesh head packages). Make sure you take a copy of the mesh eyes first and use the copy, as you will have to adjust them to fit this head. The free Amra head comes with a HUD with six static facial expressions, but it does not come with eyelashes, so you’ ll have to buy those separately. Here’s the result, with the mesh eyes from the Kenna head and the Curvy eBody mesh body:

As you can see, it’s quite a striking look, and definitely an option for those of you who wish to have a darker-skinned mesh avatar but don’t have a lot of Linden dollars to spend.

Yabusaka

Yabusaka sells a kit which allows you make your own customizable mesh head for L$9,999, but she also sells a demo version of the kit for free on the SL Marketplace, which includes the following free sample mesh head, which you might want to try out:

Strawberry Singh blogged about this head, and also created the following video:

UPDATE Sept. 26th:

Safybelle

Someone on the official Second Life community forums sent me a message:

Safybelle has a mesh head you can “earn” by playing her in-world traffic game. All you would need is some time, a group slot, and L$99 for the Omega plugin.

So I went to the Safybelle store in-world (here’s the SLURL), joined her group for free, and started playing her game:

You can play the roulette-wheel game up to 10 times every 24 hours to earn points:

You can find other locations to play this game on the Safybelle website. (There only seems to be the one location at the moment.)

Once you earn 30,000 points, you can get this Jessy 3 Bento mesh head for FREE! (I only earned 2,110 points in my first ten tries at the roulette wheel, so it’s probably going to take about 15 days of playing to earn 30,000 points.)

If amassing 30,000 points seems like too unattainable a goal, there are also two other prize vendors within the store itself (here’s the SLURL), where you can get the Jessy 2 model Bento mesh head for only 16,000 points, or the Elwing elf Bento head (with animated ears) for only 19,900 points:

After that, all you will need is the Safybelle Omega relay applier (available on the SL Marketplace for L$99), and you will be able to use any Omega-compatible skin with your Jessy 3, Jessy 2, or Elwing Bento mesh head!

Thanks for the tip, Fionalein! 🙂

UPDATE Oct. 7th: Well, I finally collected the 30,000 points to get the free Jessy 3 Bento mesh head from Safybelle, and it is definitely worth all the work to earn those points! Here’s what the head looks like, along with the HUD:

The Jessy 3 head comes complete with:

For a free, fully-adjustable, Omega compatible Bento mesh head, this is truly a super deal! The Jessy 3 head compares quite favourably with Bento mesh heads costing L$5,000 or more! So head over to the Safybelle store and get that roulette wheel a-spinning! And, even better, if you’ve already used up your 10 turns for the day, you can still play the sploder pig to earn more points!

UPDATE Oct. 9th: Well, I’ve had a few more days to play with the Safybelle Jessy 3 Bento mesh head, and I am going to have to retract my statement that the head is “fully-adjustable”. It turns out that many of the head appearance sliders (particularly those under the Head and Chin sections) do not change the features of this head, as they would with a fully Bento mesh head by Catwa or another maker. You can still make some adjustments to the eyes, nose, and mouth, though. I still think that this is a great deal for a mesh head, I just wanted to add that clarification to my earlier enthusiastic comments.

Here’s a picture of the Safybelle Jessy 3 head with the elf ears enabled. The ears can be animated, and it’s fun to watch them move and twitch!

Ruth 2.0

Another option for those of you without Linden dollars to spend is the entirely free, open source female mesh avatar head and body package, called Ruth Too RC3, which is available on the SL Marketplace by Heavy Industries. There are three packages available, which include not only the mesh head and body, and HUDs for 9 different skin tones and alpha selections, but even starter hair, a dress, and shoes! 

With the included alpha HUD, you can pretty much make clothing designed for any other mesh avatar body work with Ruth. Here is Ruth wearing the free Clover dress from the Baby Monkey capsule wardrobe available at the Free*Style store (more details here) as well as the free Sonnet pumps from the freebie store at Hilly Haalan (more details here). I had to adjust the pumps a bit to feet the feet, but it worked out okay. I added the free Alli & Ali Marilyn hairstyle from the selection at The Free Dove, and here’s the final look:

Looking good for zero Lindens!

Heavy Industries is not the only vendor selling the Ruth 2.0 mesh body. You can also get one for free from Vlad Blackburn, or for L$1 from The Body Studio Store. Duck Girl also sells a Ruth RC3 hands, feet and nails update for L$1. I’m sure there are others if you search on “Ruth” or “Roth” on the Second Life Marketplace.

The Ruth and Roth mesh avatars are already quite popular on the various OpenSim virtual worlds, so it is no surprise to see them make an appearance in Second Life. Here is a link to the Ruth and Roth Avatar Project page on GitHub.

Altamura Leila

UPDATE Dec. 19th, 2018: The 8th day Advent gift at Altamura is a fully-adjustable, Omega-compatible, female Bento mesh head called Leila (you do have to join the Altamura group for L$25 to pick up this gift; more information here):

This head is only available until Christmas, and then it’s gone, so hurry down!

Here is what the Altamura Leila head looks like with all the default makeup removed, the free LAQ Joline Omega skin applied, and a dollarbie Omega lipstick by Poema added, with a Maitreya Lara body (LAQ body appliers to match the LAQ skintones are L$300 per tone):

Looking very good!

Sahara Mesh Avatar, Skins and Basic Mesh Head

UPDATE July 29th, 2020: This body seems to no longer be available, sorry!

I discovered that I had overlooked yet another option for an inexpensive female mesh avatar, called the Sahara Mesh Avatar body. At this SLURL (warning: adult-rated sim), you can pick up the following items:

The sign indicates that the Sahara Mesh Avatar is Maitreya Lara compatible, and I found that clothes and shoes designed for Maitreya did indeed work well with this mesh body. The Basic Mesh Head is non-Bento, and it does have some flaws around the neck seam area, although an included seems to fix the situation somewhat. (You can replace it with any other mesh head, as I did in the second picture below.) Not that the body is not Omega-compatible and it does not have hands.

Here is what the final result looks like, along with the HUD to select alpha sections:

Actually, not a bad result at all for a Maitreya-compatible body for only L$31 total! Here’s what the body looks like with the Akeruka Maia Bento mesh head that was available last June as a group gift:

The hands on the Sahara mesh body are particularly lovely (especially compared to the hands on the freebie eBody mesh bodies), but they do have one small problem: although there is a fingernail texture applier HUD included in the package, there are no fingernail textures! So the default fingernails on this body are a grey colour.

However, I was able to use the fingernail texture applier HUD with a light pink texture already in my inventory, and it worked out okay.

Ocacin Standard and Voluptuous

One inexpensive mesh body that I have not yet talked about is by a company called Ocacin. They don’t seem to have an in-world store, but they do sell both the Ocacin Standard Mesh Bento Body version 2 for L$250 and the Ocacin Voluptuous Bento Fitmesh Body version 1 for only L$100 on the SL Marketplace.

The Ocacin mesh bodies come in only one skintone, and they have only one HUD, to control the alpha selections, which are arranged rather strangely. While both Marketplace listings say that these bodies have Bento-compatible hands, I found that neither would work with my Bento AO. In this picture you can see the alpha HUD and the Ocacin Standard body, paired with the Akeruka Lulu Bento mesh head (a choker hides the slight seam at the neck):

I did find the toes on these bodies to be a bit ugly. You can use the HUD to hide the default high-heeled feet, and replace them with four other kinds of the feet from the Add Ons folder: flat, mid heels, and killer heels, plus a pair of feet which are compatible with MAP brand feet. Oddly, when you remove the default feet and replace them with another pair, the red toenails of the original feet are not removed! Adjusting your avatar’s hover height should fix this irritating bug, though.

I can’t figure out how to change the toenail or fingernail colours, or adjust the fingernail length (which by default is rather long).

NI9HT

When I first came across the Mrs. Philips avatar in-world, I did a complete double-take. She looked so real! The texture work is amazing!

And when I discovered that you could buy the Mrs. Philips full-body mesh avatar for only L$300, I snapped one up right away! The body comes with Bento hands, and includes the outfit, jewelry and hairstyle. All I did was make the arms a little longer, and the head a little smaller, and I added a free purse, a group gift from Belle Epoque at the 7th anniversary of the FaMESHed event on now.

Of course, there’s a catch. And that is that the clothing is part of the avatar mesh and cannot be removed. (The nacklace and bracelets are a separate attachment.) So if you’re not too fussy about what your avatar is wearing, but you want a completely different look from all the young-looking people around you, this might be your thing. It’s my new favourite avatar to slip on when I wander around the grid exploring!

NI9HT also sells custom full-body nude avatars. Again, you won’t be able to dress them (no clothing will likely fit the custom mesh bodies and there’s no HUD with alpha selections available), but if you’re just wanting to use one for dancing/stripping/escort work in SL, or you only hang out at nude beaches, they might be perfect for you.

Here’s a link to their store on the SL Marketplace, if you are interested to see what other custom full-body avatars NI9HT has to offer. Warning: some of the images of the nude avatars are NSFW!

UPDATE Jan. 16th, 2020:

Djana Bakes on Mesh Avatar

The dollarbie Djana Bakes on Mesh avatar from the SL Marketplace by **SD** is a complete head-and-body mesh avatar (based on Ruth 2.0) which supports Bakes on Mesh skins and makeup. You can remove the head and use any other Bakes on Mesh-compatible mesh head. Both the head and the body are fully adjustable using the sliders, but the head still has a bit of a blocky look to it, despite my best efforts.

Even more perplexing, the included shape is no modify, which is frankly useless. For these pictures, I used the Gretchen starter avatar shape as my starting point, along with the Gretchen ballgown. No skin was included, so I used one of the system skins which were part of one of the free group gifts from Genesis Labs, their Cream skin with black eyebrows, and I added one of the black Jumo system hairbases with the Janelle updo (a recent Advent gift).

Here is what she looks like (there is a slight but noticeable seam between the head and the body):

The hands are Bento, but the feet do not appear to be Maitreya or Slink-compatible, and they come in only one foot shape (high), so you might have some difficulty finding shoes that fit this avatar. I finally found a pair of (unrigged) Sonnet pumps from Hilly Haalan for Maitreya feet that worked, but I had to leave off the foot base (which turned the feet white!) and adjust them to fit manually.

I’m still fiddling with the shape and the head is still a little blocky for my personal tastes, but overall, it’s a good mesh body for just one Linden dollar!

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