Day: October 4, 2018

Have you joined the RyanSchultz.com Discord yet? More details here. 

PLEASE NOTE that 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! (Thanks, Caroline!)

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Not too long ago, I wrote up a popular blogpost outlining all the options for free and inexpensive mesh avatar heads and bodies for female avatars. So I thought it was time I did the same thing for male avatars.

First, let’s just recap all the free/inexpensive mesh avatar bodies for men:

• The two versions of the free Altamura Max avatars at the freebie stores at UniHispana Crea and Ajuda SL Brasil (see here for more details). Note that you cannot remove the head to replace it with another mesh head.
• The free Altamura Robert avatar from the Freebie Megastore at London City (see here for more details). Note that you cannot remove the head to replace it with another mesh head, although, if you were lucky enough to pick up the previous version of Robert (which was a Men Only Hunt gift last year), you can remove the head to use another mesh head with it (like the recent freebie mesh head from Akeruka).
• The free Altamura Tommy avatar at the Altamura mainstore (you do need to join the Altamura group for L$50 to get this freebie; see here for more details). Again, you cannot remove the head to replace it with another mesh head. UPDATE: This gift avatar is no longer available at the Altamura mainstore, sorry!
• If you were lucky, you picked up a free Altamura avatar called Aaron, which was a limited-time TeleportHub.com gift in late 2017 at their mainstore (you had to join the TeleportHub.com group for L$10 to pick up this freebie). You can remove the head to use another mesh head with it.
• Finally, there is the freebie version of the EXMACHINA avatar (which you can “tan” to any skin tone you wish; more information is available here). Note that this avatar does not come with a HUD so you cannot remove the head or set any alpha sections. You basically have to buy all your clothing from EXMACHINA (although the free body does come in a version with a built-in bathing suit, so it’s the perfect freebie mesh avatar for the beach!). UPDATE March 13th, 2019: this free version is no longer available.
• Rick Bijkerk of the Secondlife Facebook group alerted me to two inexpensive male mesh avatar head and body packages from Alantori. More details on this option can be found at the very end of this blogpost!
• UPDATE Jan. 24th, 2019: There is a new dollarbie male mesh avatar body by META on the SL Marketplace (see here for more details).
• UPDATE Feb. 14th, 2019: If you were on the ball, you were able to pick up the free, fully-featured Romeo mesh head and body package as a Valentine’s Day gift from the Altamura booth at the eBENTO Event. More details here.
• UPDATE June 22nd, 2019: The Clay Bento male mesh head is a L$1 group gift from Akeruka, but only until July 6th, 2019! Here are all the details.
• UPDATE June 26th, 2019: If you join the Alantori group for only L$50, you can pick up the Rick male mesh body for free from their Midnight Madness board (more details here).
• UPDATE Nov. 29th, 2019: I have added an inexpensive male head from Adam to this listing.
• UPDATE Dec. 14th, 2019: Altamura has now made fourteen full-body male and female mesh avatars available for free in their store!
• UPDATE Jan. 20th, 2020: I cover a couple of dollarbie and freebie Bakes on Mesh full-body male mesh avatars from the SL Marketplace from **SD** and Heavy Industries, at the very end of this rather long blogpost!
• UPDATE Feb. 8th, 2020: I write about a free Bento mesh head called Akakor, a hunt prize from Altamura in the Menstuff hunt, here.
• UPDATE March 27th, 2020: Alantori now has a free group gift, the Marco Bakes-on-Mesh compatible Bento mesh head (the group costs only L$50 to join)…more information here.
• UPDATE April 17th, 2020: The Ultimate Meshbody is celebrating its first anniversary by giving away dollarbie male and female versions of their original, Classic mesh body! More details here.
• UPDATE May 3rd, 2020: Catwa has released a free group gift of a unisex (i.e. male or female) Bento mesh head, called Freya! More details here.
• UPDATE May 30th, 2020: There is a new, free full-body (i.e. head and body) male mesh avatar body on the SL Marketplace called Roth 2, Version 2. More details here.
• UPDATE June 22nd, 2020: I review the free male mesh full-body avatar called Onupup here.
• UPDATE July 7th, 2020: Sweet’s has a L$1 male mesh head and L$1 male mesh body which I review here.
• UPDATE July 20th, 2020: If you join the TeleportHub.com group for L$10, you can pick up a free, Bento, Bakes on Mesh male full-body avatar called Stay With Me over the next month! Details here.
• UPDATE July 31st, 2020: The free RothTooRC1 Bento, full-body male mesh body is now Bakes on Mesh-compatible. More details here.
• UPDATE Oct. 24th, 2020: Until November 6th, 2020, LOGO is offering free Bento, Bakes on Mesh heads for both male and female avatars!
• UPDATE Nov. 17th, 2020: There’s a new, free Bento, Bakes on Mesh male head called Viktor on the SL Marketplace; more information here.
• UPDATE Nov. 19th, 2020: If you join the ALANTORI group for L$50, you can pick two different Bento, Bakes on Mesh male bodies (Rick and David), plus a Bento, Bakes on Mesh head I had blogged about before (Marco). More details here.
• UPDATE Dec. 9th, 2020: LeLutka is giving away a brand new group gift of the Bento, Bakes on Mesh-compatible Alain head until December 26th, 2020; please click here for more details.
• UPDATE Dec. 18th, 2020: Akeruka has a new group gift of a Bento, Bakes on Mesh-compatible male mesh head, called M02, for only L$151. More information here.
• UPDATE Dec. 19th, 2020: Altamura is giving away a free, Bento full-body male avatar that is Bakes on Mesh compatible, called Take My Way! More details here.
• UPDATE April 4th, 2021: Meta is selling a L$1 version of their Neo male mesh head and body package; more information here.
• UPDATE April 16th, 2021: If you were on the ball and picked up the free Chase and Chelsea heads from LOGO last October, did you know that you can pick up a new male or female LOGO Bento mesh head for only L$300, each and every month? More details on LOGO’s Group Deal of the Month here!
• UPDATE May 7th, 2021: There’s a new Bento, Bakes on Mesh head-and-body package called BROX by DNA, which is yours for only L$1!
• UPDATE May 25th, 2021: Ca’lum has three dollarbie Bento, Bakes on Mesh-compatible male heads for sale on the SL Marketplace.

So, let’s take a look at some free or inexpensive mesh heads.

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 free Bento mesh heads every six months or so 😉

LV Designs

If you missed out on the Akeruka freebies, you can pick up a very handsome Bento mesh head from LV Designs for only L$500. The Matt head (SL Marketplace link) may not come with all the bells and whistles of the pricier Bento mesh heads from Catwa and other vendors, but it certainly does the job at one-tenth the cost, as you can see:

 

Cheerno

There’s a free (non-adjustable) mesh head available from the men’s section of the freebie store at Ajuda SL Brasil, the Andrey head from Cheerno (here’s the exact SLURL to find it):

300mg

There is a vendor on the SL Marketplace called 300mg, who is selling 6 free mesh heads, of which 5 are for males.

I found that these five heads wouldn’t work with the default system avatar eyes. So you will have to use these heads 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, or you can pick up this free set of adjustable mesh eyes from eyden & yves, which comes with a 9-colour HUD). Make sure you take a copy of the mesh eyes first and use the copy, as you will have to adjust them to fit each of these heads separately.

The Marcus head comes with an expression HUD with six different facial expressions but, strangely, no ears, so you’ll have to find those elsewhere. I had a great deal of difficulty getting the mesh eyes to fit properly, this is the best I could do:

Honestly, I’d probably give the Marcus head a pass. It’s just too much of a hassle.

However, I did have much better results with the Travis mesh head, which comes with ears and an expression HUD with 6 different facial expressions:

This picture of the Travis head includes the HUD for the freebie mesh eyes from eyden & yves, showing you the nine different colour options which are available:

Looking good!

Here’s a picture of another free mesh head from 300mg, which has a darker skin tones. Here’s model S1 (again, no ears are included, and there’s no expression HUD either):

There are a few more male heads on the 300mg SL Marketplace store, if you’re interested.

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UPDATE Oct. 5th: 

Alantori

Rick Bijkerk of the Secondlife Facegroup group alerted me to an inexpensive male mesh avatar head and body package from a store called Alantori (here’s the exact SLURL):

These mesh bodies are only L$99 (or L$90, a 10% discount, if you join the Alantori group for free). So I bought the clean-shaven Mark body (the sign on the right in the picture above) and tried it on. The body comes with a fully-adjustable Bento head and Bento hands, he’s got a basic HUD with a decent set of alpha selections, and it would appear that you can tint his fingernails and toenails, which are separate attachments:

The body comes with underwear, but you might have some trouble finding clothing to fit this body properly. The sign in the store said that the body “fits all Adin and Onupup clothes”, but I had never heard of those clothing brands before. (I assume that most standard-size male clothing can also be made to fit, with all the alpha selections on the included HUD.)

The Alantori body comes with menu-driven facial expressions and hand poses, which is rather different from how most other bodies are animated using an AO. (I tested the Alantori body with a Bento male AO from Tuty’s and it worked just fine.)

Here’s a close-up of the Alantori Mark body’s head, which actually looks pretty good (the mesh eyes are included, or you can just use your system eyes):

In addition to the clean-shaven Mark body, there is also bearded, hairier Paul body for the same price (L$99 without the group, or L$90 with the free group join). It’s definitely an inexpensive option for those of you with limited Lindens to spend on a male mesh body, but you still might want to try out the freebie Altamura bodies first.

Thanks for the great tip, Rick!

Altamura Akakor

IN December 2018, Altamura was giving away a fully-adjustable, Omega-compatible male Bento mesh head called Akakor, as one of the 12 Days of Christmas gifts under the Christmas tree at their mainstore. You had to join the Altamura Design/Mesh Avatars group to pick up all the Advent gifts (the group join fee is L$25 during the Advent/Christmas season; usually, the fee to join is L$50). It’s worth it to join the group and stay subscribed, since Altamura often offers special deals to group members throughout the year. UPDATE: the group now costs L$100 to join.

Here’s what the Akakor head looks like (for more information, visit this blogpost):

Adam

Adam has a relatively inexpensive male Bento mesh head which supports Bakes on Mesh, called the Adam Mesh Head, It is available for L$850 from the SL Marketplace.

**SD** Raphael Bakes on Mesh Body

A company named **SD** is selling a Bakes on Mesh-compatible full-body male mesh avatar (i.e. head and body) called Raphael for only L$1 on the SL Marketplace. You can remove the head and replace it with any other BoM mesh. Here’s a few pictures of the Raphael body, and I must say it looks quite nice. (I used the free Bakes on Mesh male skin appliers I picked up from DNA late last year.)

However, there are a couple of problems with this mesh body. First, the included shape is no modify, which is useless, so I tossed it out and used the shape that came with my Altamura Romeo mesh body as a starting point (I had to do a lot of tweaking of the head as a result to get it to look decent).

The second problem is much more serious: I can’t find any mesh clothing that fits this avatar properly! Even the jeans in this picture don’t work quite right around the waist, as you can see here:

Every single article of clothing I tried, I encountered the same problem. You will have to use the alphas that come with the clothing or hunt out alphas elsewhere, since the Raphael body does not come with a HUD to alpha out parts of the body. Honestly, given the problems I had, I would give this one a pass. You’re better off going with one of the freebie Altamura bodies, which at least have a decent HUD with alpha sections.

Heavy Industries RothTooRC1 Bakes on Mesh Body

UPDATE July 31st, 2020: The free RothTooRC1 Bento, full-body male mesh body is now Bakes on Mesh-compatible, and the alphas that come with clothing now work properly with this body. More details here.

This is a free Bakes on Mesh-enabled full-body male mesh avatar (head and body), for sale on the SL Marketplace. Here is what it looks like, using the same shape I used for the Raphael mesh body above, and a slightly darker DNA skin applier:

It comes with several HUDs, including a Bakes on Mesh applier HUD and a HUD to tint the fingernails and toenails, but again, there is no alpha sections HUD. And for some strange reason, I could not get any clothing alphas to work with this body at all, so you are basically stuck with using only system-layer/Bakes on Mesh clothing, like these camouflage boxers which come with the body. Again, you might want to give this one a pass.