Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: The Free Roth 2 Version 2 Male Mesh Head and Body

A blog reader alerted me to a new, free, full-body (i.e. head and body) male mesh avatar that was brought over from OpenSim, called Roth2 version 2. You can pick one up for free from the SL Marketplace.

This mesh avatar comes with seven skin appliers included in the HUD, or you can click on the Bakes on Mesh button and use any Bakes-on-Mesh or system skin. You can use system eyes with this avatar, but mesh eyes are included, and there are five eye colour options in the HUD. In addition, you can select the Bakes on Mesh option for the eyes, and use any BoM or system eye texture on the included mesh eyes.

The Roth 2 HUD, showing one of the 7 included skin appliers on the mesh body
and one of the 5 included eye appliers on the included mesh eyes

Please note that if you are not using Bakes on Mesh, there are no alphas included in the Roth 2 package, but you can use the alphas that come with other mesh heads and bodies (for example, there is a complete set of head, body, and eye alphas in all combinations included in the recent group gift of the Freya unisex Bento mesh head from Catwa, which you can use here).

The default Bakes on Mesh skin that comes in the Roth 2 package
(with the system eyes that came with Bitsy, one of SL’s starter avatars)

After tinkering a bit with the body sliders, here is what the Bakes on Mesh body looks like (wearing the separate system-layer underwear that came in the package):

If you are looking for some inexpensive male skins for this or any other Bakes-on-Mesh compatible avatar, Cat Pink SL has produced the following video, showing many L$1 and L$10 skins available on the SL Marketplace (the URLs are in the text description below the video):

After watching this video, I spent L$10 on the Brandon skin from Fuku.toku from the SL Marketplace, and I tried it out on this avatar, which resulted in a look I like much better than the default Bakes on Mesh skin that came with the Roth 2 package (I did have to play around with the Mouth sliders a little bit).

I love the bushy eyebrows on this skin!

Here’s what the Roth 2 avatar looks like with some hair and clothes (the free male starter outfit, including shoes and socks, comes from the freebie wall at the No Shot store in London City):

In summary, this is a fairly good mesh full-body package at a price that can’t be beat: free! However, there is one serious drawback: the included alpha sections on the HUD, which are really quite basic (they work with both the mesh skin appliers and Bakes on Mesh, however):

Of course, if you are using the Bakes on Mesh avatar, you can always use the alphas that come with the mesh clothing you buy, in addition to (or instead of) the alpha sections on the Roth 2 HUD. (In the case of the No Shot outfit in the picture above, I used both the HUD and the alphas that came with the clothing and shoes.)

In addition to the free body, you can also pick up for free from the SL Marketplace:

  • an Extras package, which contains separate avatar mesh parts so that the Roth2 version 2 can be used with classic or other mesh heads, etc. It also contains the default skins as used in the Mesh Avatar HUD, a number of useful alpha masks, extra underclothing and attachable (unrigged) elf ears
  • a Resources package, which contains Roth 2 skins, textures for skins, eyes, textures for eyes, textures for the HUD, basic underwear, textures for underwear, etc.

Thanks to paragonfanfare for the heads up!