Tag: Second Life Mesh Heads

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Your Guide to Free Heads and Skins at the LeLutka 12 Days of Christmas Event, Dec. 9th to 21st, 2023

The list of merchants participating in the LeLutka 12 Days of Christmas event

At 12 noon SLT (Second Life/Pacific Time) yesterday, December 9th, 2023, LeLutka and 78 other stores in Second Life launched the biggest-ever 12 Days of Christmas event! The notecard sent out to the LeLutka group states:

It’s a wonderful time of the year, and we want to express our gratitude to you, our loyal customers, by offering some amazing gifts for the December festivities. We are excited to announce that 79 stores are joining us for this event, making it even more spectacular.

As per tradition, Lelutka is offering one female and one male head as a gift from today until the 21st of December. After this date, the heads will return to their regular pricing. To access these special gifts, please ensure that you are wearing your LeLutka group tag, as this will enable you to teleport to the designated gift regions and claim your presents.

To get your LeLUTKA gift heads, you need to visit two special Holiday Gift sims. Gifts ARE NOT located in the main store, so please use the landmarks below to get there:

…

PLEASE NOTE that you have 10 minutes to visit before you will be teleported home.

We hope you have a joyful and festive season.

Best regards,
Your Lelutka Team

You can get a complete listing of all the participating stores (with SLURLs) in three different ways:

  1. A notecard titled 12 Days of Christmas List, posted to the LeLutka store group, and also available if you click on the LeLutka 12 Days of Christmas sign posted at each participating store, near that store’s gift (the sign looks like the image at the top of this blog post);
  2. the LeLutka website; and
  3. SeraphimSL’s LeLutka’s 12 Days of Christmas list, which very helpfully includes pictures of all the gifts!

Now, before I learned about the Seraphim list, I had actually enlisted my main female avatar, Vanity Fair, and my main male avatar Heath Homewood, to visit almost every store on the LeLutka 12 Days of Christmas list, and now I am going to show you some of my favourite gifts.

Now, I must forewarn you that I am going to be laser-focused this year! I do NOT have time to drag each one of my small army of alts through seventy-nine stores!! Therefore, I will focus on the LeLutka heads, and those head skins which either come with body skins, or match Velour skin tones (of which most of my alts already own at least a few skin tones). That means that I will not be showing you cosmetics, tattoos, hair, accessories such as earrings and other jewelry, and any skin where I have to buy matching body skins! Please use the other lists posted above to find those items.

PRO TIP: Please also note that you must join the store group in order to pick up each store’s gift. However, all the stores participating in the LeLutka 12 Days of Christmas event have set their store groups to be free to join for the duration of the event. So join those groups, as many as you can juggle, and STAY JOINED throughout the year if you can! Many of these groups, particularly skin and cosmetic groups, will charge a join fee again after December 21st, 2023. (The LeLutka, Velour, and Leronso store groups are usually free to join year-round, so you won’t need to stay in them. Ives Beauty is an example of a group that will charge after this event, so join now if you like their skins, and you will be able to pick up all the group gifts for free!)

And that reminds me to remind you: look carefully around each store to see what other group gifts are available! For example, Tres Beau has at least one more female skin fat pack, plus several other gifts on their gift wall, located behind the wall at the front counter of their store. And Traditional Face has six group gifts in additional to the event gift, three of them being women’s skin fatpacks!

LeLutka Heads

LeLutka has what I believe to be two brand-new Evolution X (EvoX) Bento mesh heads available for free, the Noel female head and the Kris male head. Both heads include head and ear skins in four skin tones. Here’s what the Noel head looks like in the Rose Kiss skin tone, using the included eyebrow shape and body shape:

I paired the Noel head with my new LaraX body, using the Snow skin tone, to show you what the default body shape looks like (obviously, this is just a starting point, from which you will make adjustments to the head and body sliders to get your preferred look):

Here’s what the LeLutka Kris head looks like (skin tone 6, included in the package). He’s quite the handsome fellow!

I paired this head with the new Senra 1.0 male body (Senra skin tone 3), using the default eyebrow shape and body shape included in the Kris package. Note that the included skins have a neck fade, which makes them easier to match whatever body skins you have in your inventory! Again, this is a starter shape, and you’re going to have to hit the sliders to adjust that super-long giraffe neck 😂, and probably tweak a few other aspects to your liking.

PRO TIP: Always work from the starter shape that came with your new mesh head, like this Kris head—there are a lot fewer sliders to adjust under the Body, Torso, and Legs tabs, then there are under all the various head tabs!

If I am trying to duplicate a body shape which I used before, I write down the slider values in order for each of the Body, Torso, and Legs tabs, in order from top to bottom, then made the necesary adjustments to the body sliders while wearing the new head and the starter eyebrow shape and body shape that came with the head. Then, once you have the body to your liking, fiddle with the head sliders.

Male Body Skins

I’m going to cover the male body skins first. In this section only, I will mention if there are non-Velour body skins required (the two most common ones are by Not Found and Stray Dog). If a store has both male and female head skin gifts, I will mention both in this section.

ALT3

Mei female skins (3 packs, matches ALT3 body skin, ALT3 fantasy body skin, and Velour body skin, all sold separately) and Park male skin (2 packs, matches ALT3 body skin and ALT3 fantasy body skin, also sold separately)

Avarosa

Kris male skin (matches Not Found and Velour body skins) and Noel female skin (matches Velour body skins)

Avi-Glam

PLEASE NOTE: The Amara Beauty/Avi-Glam region is currently overloaded, and the vendors do not work. Please come back later when things are less crazy! I was unable to pick up these gifts. UPDATE 12:25 p.m.: the problems with lag on the region are so horrible, that they have moved the Kris male skin gift and Carol (unisex) eyes gift here, to a completely different region. UPDATE 7:09 p.m.: Even on the new sim, the Avi-Glam vendor still isn’t working properly. It’s clear at this point that these vendors were woefully unprepared for the onslaught of freebie hunters! Right now there are 80 avatars waiting for their items. Please note that you have to pay the vendor L$1, and it is supposed to be automatically refunded, then you get your item. That isn’t happening, and rather than have you fight the lag and keep feeding Linden dollars into a black hole, I would just advise you wait until they get their act together. UPDATE 7:15 p.m.: I finally got my Carol (unisex) eyes, but this is, by far, the worst vendor experience of the entire LeLutka 12 Days of Christmas event, and I would advise you to steer clear unless you have infinite patience. UPDATE Dec. 14th: The chaos has died down, so now would be a good time to go pick up these gifts.

Kris male skin (matches Not Found body skins), and Carol unisex eyes fatpack

Brabos

Kris male skin (matches Not Found and Velour body skins)

Clef de Peau

Maghia female skin and Darius male skin (matches Velour body skins)

Fuoey

Yuri male skin fatpack (matches Not Found body skin tones)

Hype

Noel female skin and Ramon male skin (matches Hype body skins, sold separately)

Ives Beauty

Kaden male skin (Not Found, Stray Dog, and Veloue skin tones) and Noelle female skin (matches Velour skin tones)

MetaHumano

Talita female and Pablo male skins (1 skin tone each; matches Velour body skins)

Mister Razzor

Gabriel hairbases, skin and shape (matches Not Found body skins)

Not Found

UPDATE Dec. 14th: I don’t know whether I missed this gift the first time around, or they added it later, but there is now, in addition to the Kris male skin and the Noel hairbase, a female head skin, called Noella:

The Noella female head skin matches Not Found body skin tones, of which you will have some if you purchased an Inithium Khara, Kupra, or Kupra Kups mesh body, so check your body package!

Also, if you missed them last year, you can pick up last December’s LeLutka event gifts from Not Found on a nearby wall (the male Jack and female Faye skins, and a long, long, looong ponytail with a hairbase).

Just join the Not Found group for free, and you can pick up these four gifts from last year’s LeLutka December event, as well as this years.

Here are this year’s other gifts from Not Found, a male skin and a hairbase to go with a ponytail attachment you can pick up as a gift at L’Etre/Doux. Note that all of the male and female head skins from Not Found match Not Found body skin tones, but if you bought any Inithium mesh bodies (Kario, Khara, Kupra, or Kupra Kups), the package will include some Not Found body skin tones, so you’ll probably find that you won’t need to purchase Not Found body skins after all!

Kris male skin (matches Not Found body skins, of which you would have received some if you bought an Inithium Kario mesh body, so check the body package), and the Noel hairbase (to go with the ponytail attachment gift from L’Etre/Doux)
The ponytail attachment for the Not Found hairbase can be picked up as a free gift at L’Etre/Doux, located at the spawn point of the store region.

Stray Dog

Kris male skin (uses Stray Dog body skins, sold separately)

Soul

UPDATE Dec. 11th: It took me a couple of days to figure out how to get these gifts! You don’t click on the signs; you click on the skin tone boxes marked with the LeLutka 12 Days of Christmas stamp (see the red arrows in the diagrams below). Please note that the other skin tone boxes cost L$350 each!

You have to pay L$1 (which is automatically refunded) to get one skin tone for female heads, which matches the Velour Icy body skin tone) and one skin tone for male heads, which matches the Velour Fair body skin tone.
Kris male skin and Noel female skin (matches Velour body skins)

Vendetta

The Kris skin matches Vendetta’s own body skin tones, which are sold separately

Female Skins

This list is much longer than the list of male skins. I will not be including any female skins that I already mentioned in the previous male skin list. And again, it will be a selective list, including only those skins which either come with body skins, or match with Velour body skin tones. Please use the 3 lists I linked at the top of this blog post to find other skin gifts; the Seraphim list includes pictures to save you the trouble of teleporting from place to place.

Amara Beauty

Like I said before, the Amara Beauty/Avi-Glam region is currently overloaded, and the vendors are not working properly. Come back later! UPDATE 12:25 p.m.: the problems with lag on the sim are so bad, that they have moved the Karol skin gift here.

Amara Beauty offers the Karol female skin (matches 3 Velour body skin tones)

Bold and Beauty

Holly female skin (2 fatpacks, 1 with Velour skin tones)

Cosmetize

Nao female skin (matches Velour body skins)

DeeTaleZ

Aurelia female skin (uses DeeTaleZ skin tones, but there’s a chart in store and in the package to explain how they match Velour body skin tones)

Guapa

Noela female skin (matches Velour skin tones, including some fantasy skin tones)

Heaux

Noel skin (matches Velour body skins)

Lueur

Sidney female skin (matches Velour body skin tones)

Moccino

Bia female skin (matches Velour body skins; please note: the gift is located OUTSIDE the store, and you have to click on the gift boxes, not the sign! See the red arrow in the image above.

NonNative

Tracie and Kira female skins (matches Velour body skins)

Nuve

Holly female skin (3 packs; 1 in Nuve skin tones which includes the body skins, one matching Velour regular skin tones, and one matching Velour fantasy skin tones)

Purple

Neolia mature woman’s skin (matches Velour skin tones)

Traditional Face

Noelly female skin (marches Velour body skin tones); don’t forget to pick up the six group gifts in addition to this gift once you join the store group, three of them are female skin fatpacks!

Tres Beau

Aspen female skin (includes a notecard explaining how to match the skins to various skin tones, including Velour). Don’t forget to pick up all of the group gifts in the store, which include 2 more female skin fatpacks!

Happy holidays, and happy freebie shopping! Remember that some of these regions where the gifts are located are currently very busy, so you might want to wait until later to pick up these and other gifts. But don’t wait too long, this event ends on December 21st, 2023 (which, based on my past years’ experience with some stores, means midnight Second Life Time/Pacific Time on December 20th, 2023)!

UPDATED! The Biggest Problem with the New Senra Blake and Jamie Mesh Bodies in Second Life (and TWO WAYS to Fix It)

I have spent my weekend testing out the new Senra line of mesh starter bodies, Blake and Jamie, which were launched in beta last week. While I think that there is a lot to like about these bodies, my investigation has led me to the following conclusion: that these mesh bodies, while nice in many ways, have a big problem.

But first, I want to talk about what I do like. I really like fact that Linden Lab has, finally, created a mesh starter avatar system that gives new users an out-of-the-box, modern mesh body, with a generous, mix-and-match unisex capsule wardrobe to get them started.

For example, here is my oldest male avatar, Morden Winkler, hanging out at the bar, listening to the music at FogBound Blues. I used an old Belleza male skin called Ewan from my inventory, and if I may say so, he looks damn good for a completely free avatar (an important consideration because, unlike the many options for women, men have relatively few free/inexpensive mesh body choices in Second Life):

The Senra bodies and wardrobes I like; it’s the heads that are giving me conniption fits. Let me explain.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion, after trying on innumerable older skins on both the Blake and Jamie bodies, that they all have this weirdness to the eyebrow and upper eyelid area, such that any SLUV skin (i.e., any skin based on the standard system avatar mapping) is simply not going to work with these heads. 🙁

Morden may look great in still pictures, but watch this 8-second video and see what happens to the eyebrows on this old Belleza skin when he blinks:

You see how his eyebrows get deeper when he blinks? This problem, as near as I can tell, happens with all SLUV skins. It means that the older skins that many of us have in our inventories will be absolutely useless on the Blake and Jamie heads, no matter how much fiddling we do with the eye and eyebrow sliders (and trust and believe, I tried everything!). It’s a problem with the underlying mesh of the Blake and Jamie heads. It’s incompatible with SLUV skins.

I shared this problem on the Second Life Community forums, and someone suggested I try a Bakes on Mesh eyebrow concealer from Izzie’s (exact SLURL; it’s also available on the SL Marketplace), for L$149. It comes in a variety of skin tones to match just about any skin, and they are tintable to match any skin.*

Picture showing the Izzie’s Eyebrow Concealer on an old Izzie’s skin, Bonita

Here’s two pictures showing another old female skin I had in my oldest female avatar’s inventory, the “photorealistic” Bella Snow skin from IC Skins (a store long since vanished from the grid and the Marketplace). The picture on the left is the skin as it looks on the Senra Jamie mesh head (where the eyebrows do move when the avatar blinks). The picture on the right is the same head and skin, using the Izzie’s eyebrow concealer and the Jamie brows, taken from the hair folder in the Senra Jamie package.

Jamie Senra head with IC Skins Bella Snow skin
Jamie Senra with Bella Snow skin, Izzie’s eyebrow concealer, and Jamie eyebrows

You can very clearly see just how much higher up the Jamie brows sit. There is a lot of real estate between the eye and eyebrow, which is fine if that is what you want. But I set the eyebrow height slider to its LOWEST level, and they are still sky-high compared to the regular brows! I’m sorry, but this is a deal-breaker for me.

At this point, it is very clear to me that entire eyebrow/upper eyelid area on the Blake AND the Jamie mesh heads is VERY different from the SLUV used on most older skins, and it is therefore unlikely that any will work with the Blake and Jamie heads!

I do consider this a MAJOR problem with the Blake and Jamie heads, and frankly, I’d rather just use one of the free LeLutka heads I picked up at previous Christmases than try to find an old SLUV skin in my inventory that will work with it. It’s extremely disappointing; I was so looking forward to being able to use all the old skins in my avatars’ inventories with these heads.

However, the Senra line of starter mesh avatars will provide an opportunity for creators to make new skins which will work with the Blake and Jamie bodies. But part of me is also hoping that Linden lab is taking the word “beta” seriously, and listening to the feedback from users like me, and are willing to make some changes to these starter mesh avatar heads so that they do work better with older SLUV skins.

Also, please keep in mind that this is an experienced SL user talking here (almost 17 years), and most SL newbies will not be aware of this issue, not have any older skins in their inventories, and be happy enough with the Jamie and Blake bodies as they are, until they decide to upgrade the head and/or body to another brand.

I guess we’ll see, won’t we?

*I did test out the Izzie’s Eyebrow Concealer on the older Belleza Ewan skin that Morden Winkler is wearing in the top photo, and unfortunately, it does not completely cover the bottom part of that bushy male eyebrow, so I cannot use it with that skin. It’s a shame, because I really liked it a lot, and wore it a lot, back in the old pre-mesh days.

UPDATE Aug. 15th, 2023: I was discussing my frustration with using SLUV skins with other SL users on the Second Life Community forums (in this thread), when Theresa Tennyson suggested:

Strip the blink script out of the head. Think of it—when was the last time you actually noticed someone blinking in real life? The blink animation in the head is unrealistically slow, and I’m not sure, it’s even possible to have a realistic instant blink by animating bones anyway.

And I went and tested this on both the Senra Blake and Jamie mesh heads, and it works! Both Senra mesh heads are modify/no transfer, so here is how you do it, step by step:

  1. Make a copy of the Jamie (or Blake) head first, by right -clicking on the head in your inventory, then selecting Copy from the drop-down menu.
  2. Then, click on or in the folder you want to place the modified head in, right-click again, and select Paste to save it.
  3. Find a place with rez rights, like a sandbox, and drag the head you wish to modify from your inventory onto the ground.
  4. Right-click on it, and select Edit.
  5. IMPORTANT! In the first tab, change the name of the head to indicate that it is non-blink, e.g. “Senra – Jamie Head NOBLINK”. Otherwise, you’ll never know which is which! 😉
  6. Then, click on the Contents tab in the Edit window, and delete the blinking script (there is only one, you can’t miss it).
  7. Close the Edit window and take your modified, no-blink head back into your inventory.

I have tested this, and it works well! The head no longer has that slow blinking motion which seems to deform the skin around the upper eyelid and brow, but the eyes still have natural, looking around movements (you can see all the eye movement animations in the same Contents tab as the script you just deleted).

Please note that this is a solution for older, SLUV-based skins to get them to work with the Senra Blake and Jamie mesh heads and bodies, and it should not be necessary for any skins created specifically for the Senra line. In fact, one quick-working creator, Alaskametro, has already released a line of female skins for Jamie, and an associated shape (SL Marketplace link) . The skins cost L$50 per skin tone, and the (modifiable) shape is only L$10 (I used it as my starting point in the pictures below, fiddling with the head and body sliders a bit until I got my desired look).

I found it very interesting that, even with a skin designed for Senra, and using the default body shape from Alaskametro, that the inner parts of the eyebrows still deformed, ever so slightly, when my avatar blinked. So I stripped the blinking animation out of a copy of the Senra Jamie mesh head, and used the non-blink version instead.

I’m quite happy with this avatar look, and after spending only L$60 grand total, I think she would blend in seamlessly in a bar or club, mingling with other avatars wearing much pricier, brand-name mesh bodies and heads!

So now you have two different solutions to the problem with the upper eyelid and eyebrow area on the Senra Jamie and Blake avatars! Personally, I am just going to go with deleting the blink script from these heads, since I do want to be able to use older SLUV skins from my avatars’ inventories with them, and that solution is cheaper (in fact, free!) than purchasing Izzie’s Eyebrow Concealer I mentioned up top, and using the brows that come with this body, supplied by Linden Lab.