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).
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.
If you are fan of the Gianni, Geralt, and Alice mesh avatar bodies by Signature, but have held off because of the cost, have I got a deal for you!
As the latest skirmish of the Great Bento War of 2020, Signature has sent out the following announcement via their group:
Today is the chance to get your favourite body discounted 😍
All Signature items, heads and bodies will be up to 50% OFF 🎉
We wish you the best, and as always thank you for your support!
Signature Body, the body for everyone <3
START : 15 MAY 12PM SLT — FINISH : 17 MAY 12PM SLT
Here’s s SLURL to take you to the Signature store. If you already have a Signature body, perhaps you might be interested in a half-off item from their small selection of clothing for Signature mesh bodies?
Happy shopping! Remember, this promotion ends at 12 noon Pacific Time/SL TIme on May 17th, 2020.
Update 3:48 p.m.: Just an update to say that I have visited the sim to see for myself, and the Giannai and Geralt bodies and heads (which are sold separately) are NOT 50% off; they are only 30% off, selling for L$2,800 each. The Alice body is on sale for 33% off, or L$2,300. However, almost everything else in the store is 50% off.
I note that the notecard above says “up to 50% off”, so this is not really misleading; I just read the card wrong, as many people will no doubt do (and obviously, as Signature is hoping, to drive up traffic to their store).
Sometime in the past month, somebody alerted me to a free mesh full-body (i.e. head and body) female avatar on the SL Marketplace, called the Viva Full Featured Mesh Avatar (Level 3). Here is the image used to illustrate that Marketplace listing, which I do not think shows off the body in its best light:
The creator writes in the product description:
I had originally set the price at L$3,500 and you’ll see why when you look at the Master HUD, but Viva really needs to develop a solid user base and it needs creators to make skins, clothing and other items for her.
Because the market is almost exclusively dominated by a couple of brands, it’s almost impossible for someone new to establish any sort of presence. So . . . for the time being, I am giving away the avatar free. Sometime down the road, I will need to charge. Right now, the Level 3 package is available at no charge.
Trying to launch a brand new female mesh body against the “Big Three” (Maitreya Lara, Belleza Venus/Isis/Freya, and Slink Physique/Hourglass), which is rapidly becoming a “Big Four” with Meshbody Legacy also becoming popular among designers, is a truly daunting prospect.
I bought the Viva mesh body from the SL Marketplace (link up top), and I was pleasantly surprised to see a neatly-organized series of file folders in my Received Files inventory section. No need to unpack anything at all!
So, I started trying things out. Thankfully, there’s a link to a Quick Start Guide on their website, so I started there (they even helpfully included a pose stand!). Everything seems to be controlled using one Master HUD, which takes up a lot of on-screen real estate, but can be easily minimized to a single button.
If you are already familiar with topics like skin appliers and Bakes on Mesh, what you have already learned from using other mesh bodies pretty much applies here too. One interesting feature of the Viva mesh body that I have not seen in other products is that you can you can actually add designs to your fingernails and toenails, in addition to changing their basic colour:
The Viva mesh body (with Bento hands) and Bakes-on-Mesh-compatible Bento mesh head both adjust well with the body appearance sliders, and take most Bakes on Mesh skins well (I did have a few problems with some Bakes on Mesh skins from Amara Beauty around the mouth area, so your mileage may vary).
Here, I used one of the BoM skins included with the recent Akeruka Limited head, with good results after a bit of tweaking with the face and body sliders and the eyebrow shaper:
This strapless dress came with the package, and you can even tint it using the Master HUD, using the instructions in the Quick Start Guide! I paired the dress with my trusty wardrobe staple, the free Sonnet heels from Hilly Haalan; the feet appear to be Slink-compatible, although the included foot height made the base of the feet turn white, so I had to set it aside and just adjust the shoe heights by hand.
The Master HUD includes a full component of alpha selections, which is good, because you are quite obviously not going to find a lot of clothing to fit this mesh body exactly! But, if you are prepared to invest some time and patience learning about all the features this full-body mesh avatar has to offer, I think you’ll find it compares quite favourably with other free and inexpensive options out there on the marketplace (and yes, even those that charge thousands of Linden dollars!).
For more information about the Viva mesh body, you can check out their website, including some user forums and a creator’s kit and resources. So, if you’re feeling creative, perhaps you might want to design and create some clothing for this body?
Well, Catwa has officially entered the thick of the battle of what in what I used to call the Bento Head Wars, but which I am now officially dubbing The Great Bento War of 2020. Never can I remember a time in Second Life when so many great Bento mesh heads and bodies are being made available for free or next to free!
Catwa has just released a free group gift of a Bento mesh head, called Freya! Please note that despite the name, this Bento mesh head is intended to be unisex, usable for all genders of avatars. Like all Bento mesh heads, you should be able to use the sliders to get as masculine or feminine (or non-binary gendered) a look as you desire.
To pick up this group gift, you must join either the Catwa store group (^;^CaTwA^;^) or the CATWA HEAD Friends group. Both groups are free to join.
To pick up your free group gift, you then must teleport over to the Catwa store, and click on the black circle with the name of the corresponding group:
Once you unpack it, here is what you receive:
The Freya head comes with two recommended starter shapes (“boy” male, or female) an eyebrow shaper, some talking animations, a face light, and three HUDs: a master HUD, an animations HUD, and an eyes HUD (the package comes with rigged mesh eyes).
The “BOM Skin A Makeup Alpha Pack”, when unpacked, contains a complete set of alphas in various combinations (head, eyes, body, full avatar), plus a huge set of Bakes-on-Mesh blush, brows, eyeliner, freckles, hairbases, lipstick, and neck and ear tattoos. The folder includes a complete set of Bakes-on-Mesh skins from TheSkinnery (in a range of eleven skin tones, with and without eyebrows) and a couple of skins from Deetalez (again, with and without brows).
Note that there are no male skins included in this package; if you want a male look, you’ll have to go do a little shopping around! However, if you want a female avatar, you should be able to use these included skins with any Bakes-on-Mesh compatible mesh body (such as the still-available dollarbie Classic body from Meshbody) to get a good look without having to buy anything else!
The “HD Lips Pack Freya” package includes high-definition lips and a lips HUD.
Here is what the Freya head looks like straight out of the box, with the included default female body shape and eyebrow shaper, default skin and eyes:
After applying my favourite Daria skin applier for Catwa heads from TheSkinnery, and adding the HUDs, here’s what we’ve got:
The HUDs on the Freya are the full-blown versions you would expect to find on the full-price Catwa heads. The eyes HUD gives you twelve different colours (here, I picked one of the brown ones). The Catwa HUDs are quite complicated, with many features, and I would strongly urge anybody who is new to them to read through the comprehensive user documentation available on their official Catwa website. There’s even a “crash course” video on Catwa Bento mesh heads by former mesh body über-blogger Strawberry Singh, now better known as Strawberry Linden since she got hired by Linden Lab!
According to the group notice that was sent out, this is a limited-time offer, so I would try to get down to the Catwa store as soon as possible! Here are the SLURLs provided in the original group notice:
Catwa Clip sim(BUT PLEASE SEE THE IMPORTANT UPDATE BELOW)
As you might expect, the Catwa sims are absolutely jam-packed with avatars picking up the Freya head, so I would advise you to either wait a while for the crowds to die down a bit, or use a tool like the handy free Teleport Hammer to fight your way in. (Also remember that Premium accounts get priority access to sims that are full.) Good luck!
P.S. I forgot to mention that, if you are looking for some free skin appliers to use with the Freya head, there are currently generous group gifts available at both Amara Beauty and at Essences for skin appliers for Catwa Bento mesh heads. Happy freebie shopping!
IMPORTANT UPDATE May 4th, 2020: Due to extremely high demand, the Catwa store has sent out the following announcement:
CATWA GIFT UNISEX HEAD Freya [LIMITED OFFER 3rd to 24th MAY 2020] The gift is is NO LONGER at CATWA mainstore! Activate any of the CATWA groups before going. Detach meshes so you can rez quicker. Please give chance to other by leaving the sim after getting the gift. Gift locations:
Also, I spent some time playing around with the Freya head and the dollarbie Classic mesh body from Meshbody. I found that, once I was able to match the included skin tones between the Catwa Freya head and the Classic mesh body as best I could, I was able to use the included neckfades in the Classic Meshbody package to achieve some pleasing results without any noticeable neck seam (and there are clear, step-by-step instructions on how to apply the Classic neckfades to Catwa heads).
She is looking fabulous at Frank’s Jazz Club tonight! This avatar is wearing:
Mesh Head: Freya Bento mesh head by Catwa (free group gift; group is free to join)
Lipstick: HD Lips Pack Freya (included in the Catwa Freya head package)
Hair: Gigi hair by Yomi (free group gift; group is free to join)
Dress: Kay dress in blue and gold by Tiffany Designs (free gift at The Free Dove; you must join The Free Dove group for free to pick up gifts there)
Shoes: Scarlett shoes in gold by Nala Design (free gift at the excellent freebie store at Ajuda SL Brasil; the shoes are meant for Slink feet and I had to adjust them a bit to fit the Classic feet on this avatar, but they worked)
Animation Override: Lessie AO by GoldSquare (free group gift; group is free to join). The ankle lock, an essential add-on, is a free gift from Baby Monkey (just grab the blue bag at the reception desk).
TOTAL COST FOR THIS AVATAR: Only L$1! (for the Classic Meshbody)
UPDATE May 6th, 2020: I have been tinkering around with the Freya gift head over the past couple of days, and I must say that I am impressed at just how versatile this head is! Here’s a couple of completely different looks I put together.
This princess look consists of the Freya head paired with a Maitreya Lara body, using the starter female eyebrow shaper and female shape that came with the Freya package, and the Madelyn skin applier in olive from Amara Beauty (a free gift!):
And this completely androgynous drag queen look uses the Freya head with the Altamura Romeo mesh body, with the high-definition Freya lips and some makeup from Dotty’s Secret! The male eyebrow shaper and male shape for the Freya head were a free, full-perms gift from the NoYourOtherLeft gift pickup spot listed above (just look for a large box opposite the row of kiosks).
And finally, here is a male avatar I created using the free Freya head with the dollarbie Classic male body from Meshbody. I used the same male eyebrow shaper and male shape for the Freya head from NoYourOtherLeft as my starting point, only making the jaw a little more square, and using one of the Bakes on Mesh male skins from Digital Nude Art (DNA) that I picked up here (a store which, unfortunately, appears to have now closed):
So, as you can see, you can pretty much take this free gift head and go in any creative direction you want with it! Be sure to pick up the Freya gift head before this offer expires in May 24th, 2020. In addition to the three pickup spots I listed above, you can now also buy the Freya gift head, for free, from the SL Marketplace!
