How to Paint a Skin on Your Avatar for "Second Life" in CS5
Linden Lab's "Second Life" offers a fully customizable world to players. When you join "Second Life," you create an avatar called a resident. Once inside the virtual world, you create anything your avatar needs, including an appearance. Players create shapes, eyes, hair, fingernails and skins for avatars. To customize a skin in Adobe Photoshop CS5, you work with the skin's textures rather than the skin itself.
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Instructions
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Launch your "Second Life" viewer and log in with your username and password. Open your inventory by pressing "CTRL" and "i" or by clicking "Inventory" at the bottom.
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Click on your "Textures" folder and navigate to your skin's textures.
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Double-click on your skin texture to open. Skin textures come in two parts: upper and lower body. When you open the texture, click "File" then select "Save Texture As." Select a save destination and click "OK." Your skin textures save as .TGA files.
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Launch Photoshop CS5. Open each .TGA skin texture for your avatar.
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Click on the "Brush" tool icon on the left in the toolbox palette. With this tool, paint colors and shadows. Change the colors by clicking the foreground box.
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Set the color to black. Change the opacity to "20" in the options menu at the top. In "Mode" at the top, set to "Overlay." Create shadows and define dark areas by brushing lines and shading. For example, add shade around the corners of the nose and eyes, paint a line of shadow underneath the jaw line or darken your avatar's eyebrows.
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Click on the "Brush" selection tool in the option menu. Drag the slider to resize your brush to a smaller or bigger size.
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Set the color to white. Just as you created dark shadows and lines, highlight the cheeks and shiny areas of your avatar's skin. Use a larger brush size to add an overall highlight to shoulders, arms or legs.
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Change the "Mode" to "Multiply." Select blue, yellow, red and green colors to paint gruesome effects. For example if you wanted to create bruises, paint a dark blue with a low opacity, then use a light yellow around the edges and finish by brushing a green tint.
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Paint bleeding effects from the nose and mouth with a smaller brush size. Use "Multiply" mode to create dark blood and "Overlay" mode to create bright red or flesh toned blood.
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Click the foreground color box to load the color dialog. Your mouse turns into an eyedropper. Click on a flesh area of your avatar's face to set your skin color. Click "OK."
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Brush around any wrinkles, eyeshadow or lines that you want to smooth. Change your avatar's eye makeup by choosing a new foreground color and setting the opacity to "20."
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Stroke over the area to paint the shadow. Add different colors or highlight with "Overlay" mode. Darken around the lashes and liner with a black foreground and "Multiply" mode.
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Save your textures once finished. Choose the file format .TGA when saving. Click "OK."
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Open your "Second Life" window. Click "Upload Texture" and select your new .TGA files. Click "Open." The new skin textures go onto your avatar.
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Click "Edit," select "Appearance." Click the "Skin" tab and select "Create New Skin." Drag and drop your upper and lower body skin textures into the texture boxes on the left. Click "Save" and enter a name for your new altered skin.
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Tips & Warnings
To buy skins with textures and templates for your avatar, go to Second Life's Marketplace website and search "skin templates" on the main page.
For free skin textures, check out Starlight skins or find free textures on Second Life's Marketplace.
Look at blank skin templates to understand seams and edges. Stay away from coloring near the edges of your skin's face and body. While adding new features changes your look, changing your avatar's overall skin tone or painting bright colors near the edges will dramatically change the realistic quality of your avatar.
If you bought the skin from a seller in "Second Life," you don't automatically get the textures, just the skin. Ask the creator if you can alter the skin and explain your reasons why to the creator. In most cases, you have to pay extra for skin textures.
