Tag: Sweet's

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Free and Inexpensive Male Skins for the Senra Blake Mesh Body

As I stated in my original review of the new, free Senra Blake male mesh body, while the six included head and body skins Linden Lab provided for it are prefectly serviceable, I still find them a little too unblemished, flat, and “pretty” for my tastes.

I’m not happy with the skins Linden Lab included with the Senra Blake avatar

So I loaded my oldest male avatar, with the actual legacy name of Morden Winkler (shoutout to all the Manitobans!), created on March 14th, 2007, whose inventory has never been cleaned out in almost 6,000 days (16¼ years!) and therefore has lots of older skins intended for classic, system bodies.

And man, I gotta tellya, I hit paydirt with one old Belleza male skin, which was a particular favourite of mine back in the old days! I can’t remember where I picked it up (I think it was a hunt gift), but it’s called Belleza Ewan 0 tan (0 stands for clean-shaven, I seem to remember; it also came in various versions with facial hair). Here’s what Morden Winkler looks like with the Belleza Ewan skin paired with the Senra Blake body (click on each image to see it in full size):

There are only two problems: one, the fingertips will be a different colour (see image one below), so you will definitely need to use something like Sweet’s free tintable Quick Nail Cover Fix on the SL Marketplace (see image two below).

And the second problem? When he blinks, the eyebrows get slightly deeper! Something you can’t tell, obviously, from my still pictures. So, while I loved the final result, I decided to spend my Saturday afternoon looking around the grid for free and inexpensive skins that would work well with the Senra Blake body, with a minimum of fiddling and fuss.

My first stop was, of course, the Belleza store, where (if you join the Belleza group for free), you can still pick up two packages of older men’s skins, which date from 2013/2014:

Here’s what some of their gift skins look like on the Blake mesh body (see image captions for skin names; all these skins are tan, but they also come in other skin tones):

Belleza Mathieu 2013 Xmas
Belleza Jacob 2013 Xmas
Belleza Ashton 2013 Xmas
Belleza Ashton chest hair
Belleza Jacob
Belleza Ashton 2014 Xmas

Belleza Mathieu 2014 Xmas

Again, you will have the problems I outlined above with the Ewan skin: white patches on the fingertips, and some eyebrow movement when you blink.

My next stop was a store, Brox, which features L$1 skins for male avatars. I had picked up a free package of eight of their skins as a past L’Homme Magazine gift, so I tried them out on Morden, and I was pretty pleased. Here’s what they look like (again, please click on the images to see them bigger):

At first glance, I thought that these Brox skins did a good job of covering the fingers, but then I noticed a small white spot on the thumbs, so you will probably still have to use something like Sweet’s Quick Nail Cover Fix on them anyways:

Also, I noticed that the toenail textures for these skins didn’t apply correctly to the feet! Again, you can try the Sweet’s nail fix (they also have one for toes in the package), and if your avatar is wearing shoes, nobody will notice it. But it is rather odd.

Next, I tried out some skins from the SL Marketplace. Sweet’s has three L$1 sets of Basic Male Skins, Tones 0 and 1, Tones 2 and 3, and Tones 4 and 5. They come in Classic Style (for calssic, system avatars), and Mesh Style (intended for mesh avatars). Here’s what Tone 3 (Mesh Style) looks like on the Senra Blake body:

There is a separate package of matching head skins with four different styles of beard, which you can unpack and try on for size:

But again, when your avatar blinks, the eyebrows distort; here’s a quick video, so you can see the problem for yourself:

This video shows you the problem with the eyebrows on the Sweet’s skin when the avatar blinks

I’m starting to think that any of the older male skins are going to have this problem, for which I have not yet been able to find any sort of workaround (I tried adjusting the sliders on the eyes and the eyebrow shape, to no avail).

Anyway, I will stop here and keep investigating, and if I find out anything, I will update this blogpost.

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Sweet’s Bakes on Mesh Male Mesh Head and Body

Please note that I am taking the entire month of July off as a self-imposed vacation from the blog so I can focus on my other work, except for sponsored blogposts and the occasional review, such as this one. See you in August!

In writing about free and inexpensive male mesh heads and bodies for Second Life avatars, I discovered that I had overlooked two products that can be used together, or you can mix and match them with other Bakes on Mesh-compatible heads and bodies:

(I had written previously about the Sweet’s female mesh head and body here.)

Here is what the Sweet’s head and body look like, right out of the box, with the included Bakes on Mesh/system underwear (in this picture, he is wearing a male BoM skin I picked up as a free introductory gift from a store called DNA/Digital Nude Art, which has unfortunately since left the grid):

The Sweet’s head (but not the body) is based on the open-source Roth 2.0 mesh avatar project (which I believe was started in OpenSim and moved over to Second Life). According to the product description of the Sweet’s head:

Based on the Roth Project Mesh head – based on Classic SL head.

This is a basic mesh head, a bit jagged – but OK to start with and it works nice if you want to go mesh and still keep the look of your old system avatar. It actually works best with skins for classic avatars.

And I can attest that the head does look a bit jagged up-close. There are other options for free and inexpensive male mesh heads that could probably give you a better look, but if you are wedded to a particular facial look from a classic, system avatar, you will probably be able to easily reproduce that look on the Sweet’s head.

As for the Sweet’s body: the biggest single problem that I have with this male mesh body are the hands, which are among the ugliest, most misshapen hands I have ever seen on a mesh body, with short and stubby fingers:

The fingernails and toenails are separate system/Bakes on Mesh gloves/socks, or tattoos if you prefer. The feet do look better than the hands:

The Sweet’s male mesh body comes with a HUD with some rudimentary alpha sections, which means you should be able to get most clothing designed for other brands of male mesh bodies to fit fairly well:

Here is my Sweet’s male avatar all dressed up with some hair (the Tom hairstyle is actually included in the package, and it comes in a wide variety of colours):

I picked up the top and pants as free prizes from a recent hunt at Etham, and the sneakers are the unrigged Karmenov hightops, a free group gift from VERSOV (here’s the exact SLURL; the VERSOV group is free to join, and you can pick up three other high-quality sneakers as group gifts).

In summary, this is a perfectly serviceable male mesh body for only L$2, but I do think that there are more attractive-looking male mesh heads and bodies out there on the market. (Sorry, but those hands are a deal-breaker for me, personally!)

In addition to the mesh head and body, Sweet’s also sells men’s classic/Bakes on Mesh skins, in a set of lighter skin tones and a set of darker skin tones, for only L$1 each. Second Life vlogger Cat Pink SL recently published a YouTube video of several inexpensive (L$1 to L$10) male Bakes on Mesh skins available both in-world and on the SL Marketplace:

If you are looking for eyes, you can start here for a good selection of free system and mesh eyes (Sweet’s also has a nice free set of eyes available).

I have added Sweet’s to my comprehensive list and inexpensive mesh heads and bodies for male avatars.

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Sweet’s Ruth 2.0 Bakes on Mesh Bento Mesh Head and Body for Female Avatars

If all you have to your name is a couple of Linden dollars, you can still get yourself an attractive, fully-adjustable, Bakes-on-Mesh-enabled, Bento mesh female avatar head and body for only L$1 each!

Here is the SL Marketplace link for Sweet’s Ruth 2.0 BoM Bento Mesh Head (for sale for L$1):

The Sweet’s Ruth 2.0 BoM Bento Mesh Body (with Alpha HUD) is also available from the SL Marketplace for L$1:

Cat Pink SL has done her usual excellent job of explaining how these products work in the two YouTube videos below:

She explains that most clothing and shoes designed for Maitreya Lara mesh body works well with the Sweet’s dollarbie mesh body.

SL vlogger NovataSecondLife also has a YouTube video on the Sweet’s mesh head and body (note that most of her voiceover is in Spanish rather than in English):

So I thought I would try out the Sweet’s mesh head and body myself, just to see how well they work. Here I paired them with a lovely free system skin gift from Genesis Lab, the Ade Hurrah hair gift from last year’s Hair Fair, a green clover dress from Baby Monkey, available for free from the Free*Style store, and the free Sonnet pumps from Hilly Haalan:

This Bakes-on-Mesh body allows you to use both the alphas that come with the clothing you buy, or if you prefer, there is a separate version of the body that comes with an alpha selections HUD, which you an use instead to alpha out parts of your body that poke through your outfits.

The detail on the hands and feet is particularly nice, and the hands work well with Bento animations. I did also test the Sweet’s mesh body with some Maitreya shoes and they fit the feet well.

There is a slight seam visible at the neckline between the head and the body, which is easily covered with one of the two tintable chokers included in the mesh head package. The mesh eyes I used here are also available from Sweet’s on the SL Marketplace for free, or you can use your regular system avatar eyes if you prefer.

The package even includes an ankle lock and a facial animations AO!

All in all, for only two Linden dollars, this is quite an attractive avatar! Even more proof that you do not need to spend a lot of Lindens to pull together a high-quality, full-body mesh avatar!