Tag: Second Life Bakes on Mesh Skins

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Group Gifts of Bakes on Mesh Skins from WOW Skins

UPDATE July 31st, 2020: Please note that the Wow skins and cosmetics store has moved; here is the SLURL to the new store. The Bakes on Mesh feet and finger fixes package I talked about in the blogpost below can be picked up from a shelf located on the second floor of the store (see the diagram with the green arrow).

The advent of Bakes on Mesh has meant that many people are now looking for BoM skins for their mesh avatars. Today, I wanted to share with you a true bargain: the group gifts from WOW Skins! It costs only L$99 to join the WOW Skins group, which gives you literally dozens of system/Bakes on Mesh skins, which works out to about L$2 per skin, a real deal! In some cases, the group gift skins come in only one skin tone, and in other cases, they come in a range of skin tones.

Just to the left of the main entrance to the store (exact SLURL), there is a panel where you can pick up the current month’s group gift, plus a gift box on the shelf below the panel, where you can pick up all the previous group gifts, all at once! Very efficient.

But first, without joining any group, you can pick up The Stay at Home Club’s free gift from WOW Skins, Sonia, which comes in a full range of skin tones:

The Stay at Home Club gift is in the gifts and lucky boards room, which is located in the far left-hand side wing of the main Wow Skins store. There are also a number of gift boxes with skins, if you join the various SL groups listed on the panels below each gift, such as Fabulously Free in SL and SL Frees & Offers:

Now, let’s take a look at some of these free group gifts!

This is the July 2020 group gift, the Malaika skin in the sandy skin tone, which comes in system/Bakes on Mesh versions as well as Maitreya, Catwa, and Omega appliers:

Here is the June 2020 group gift from WOW Skins, the Anita skin in the sandy skin tone:

And here is the group gift from May 2020, the truly lovely Elora skin in bronze:

Now, please keep in mind that for some of the older group gifts (a few of which date back to 2013), there will be some problems at the fingernail bases and the toes when applied to mesh bodies. For example, here is what the Dama skin looks like on the Classic female mesh body by Meshbody:

Fortunately, there is an easy fix for this! Just pick up the free set of Bakes on Mesh feet and finger fixes available at League (here’s the exact SLURL). They come in a wide variety of skin tones, and you should be able to find a close match.

UPDATE July 31st, 2020: I have just discovered that, tucked away on a shelf on the second floor of the new location of the Wow Skins store, there is a free set of Bakes on Mesh hands and feet fixes for older Wow skins! The advantage of this particular set is that they come in all the Wow skin tones, and will match these group gift skins exactly!

Here’s the exact SLURL; you’ll need to show the location on the map in your SL viewer, and follow the red arrow from the default spawn point on the sim. Just click on the box indicated by the green arrow, and buy it for zero Lindens:

With that problem addressed, let’s take a look at the group gift system/Bakes on Mesh skins from WOW Skins! Please note that all of these skins have the makeup baked in; you won’t be able to remove the eye shadow, eyeliner, or lipstick on any of these skins.

WOW Skins come in a variety of skin tones. If the group gift skin tells you what the skin tone is, I have listed it in parentheses after the name of the skin.

Dama

Janette (Tan)

Ryanne (Tan)

Angy (Caffé)

Nahia (Milk)

Savanah

Creamy (Bronze)

Rosalia

Noralie (Bronze)

Kendra (Bronze)

Gisella

Stella (Tan)

Suvi

Prezione (Tan)

Moon (Tan)

Angel (Tan)

June (Bronze)

Yolanda (Tan)

Kathy (Bronze)

Salma

Rory

Petals

Mady (Bronze)

Love (Tan)

Kesia

Jada

Ina

The avatar in these pictures is wearing:

  • Mesh Head: the Cat Calm head from Genesis Lab (more information here)
  • Mesh Body: the Classic female body from Meshbody (more information here)
  • Hair: Dolly hair in rich brown by Firelight Hair, a gift from The Free Dove (more information here)
  • Choker: the Nefert gold choker by Poison Rouge (a free gift from the recently concluded 5th anniversary round of the Três Chic shopping event)
  • Dress: the Nice ballgown by JUMO (a free Advent calendar gift from last December)

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!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Free Male Skins from DNA and Altamura

Every month, L’Homme Magazine SL, a quarterly digital magazine devoted to male avatar fashion in Second Life, offers a number of freebies to members of their in-world group, the L’Homme Magazine SL Readers Group (which is free to join). For November, I would like to focus on a couple of men’s skin gifts.

First up is a skin store that is new to me, called DNA (short for Digital Nude Art). Their generous free gift for November is nothing less than an entire Bakes on Mesh skin package for men!

There’s an unpacker HUD with four file folders, which you click on to receive the skins (there’s one set of skins designed for Signature mesh bodies and another set designed for the TMP Legacy mesh bodies; the Signature skins should work quite well on most male mesh bodies, though).

The package consists of base skin files in a wide range of 64 skin tones, plus 8 “phenotype” overlays to add more definition and realism to the base skins. There are also 8 different eyebrows and 8 different hairbases, both of which are tintable:

So 64 times 8 times 8 times 8 gives you no less than 32,768 possible combinations! That’s pretty impressive for a freebie.

Here’s just one base DNA skin/phenotype/eyebrow combination, shown on a Bakes on Mesh-enabled version of the Altamura Romeo full-body mesh avatar (please note that the hair base I used in the picture below is not a DNA one, but it is one of the ones included in the Altamura Romeo body HUD):

Please note that Altamura mesh bodies do require a couple of additions to support Bakes on Mesh:

  • A Bakes on Mesh relay for Altamura mesh bodies (which is available for free to Altamura group members at this exact SLURL in the store; please note that this relay only works with full versions of Altamura bodies, including the Romeo body which was a Valentine’s Day group gift earlier this year)
  • You do have to buy and install the Omega system kit on the body before you can use the Altamura Bakes on Mesh relay (it’s for sale for L$99 at this exact SLURL)

The November L’Homme Magazine group gift from Altamura is the Orion Ivan skin, in both Omega applier and Bakes on Mesh versions:

The skin is designed for the new Altamura Ivan full-body mesh avatar, but of course it will work well on most male mesh bodies that support Omega skin appliers, or support Bakes on Mesh. Here’s what the Omega skin applier looks like, once again on the Altamura Romeo avatar (using a hair base from the Altamura Romeo body HUD):

This avatar is also wearing the complete summer outfit which is a free group gift from Hoorenbeek (the group is free to join; more details here).