Appearance Editing: Can you get a true-to-life appearance?

I have found that there are several individuals in SL, including myself, who are rather dissatisfied with the results they had obtained while trying to customize the appearance of their avatar, specifically the head.  With the options that are available through the appearance editor’s menu, you are provided with several options that will assist you in changing many of the basic hair, ear, & facial features of your avatar. Now those capabilities provided by the appearance editor are quite satisfactory for those that are just playing a game. But since there is an ever increasing number of people, who realize that the SL environment is in essence not a game, they wish to have their avatar become a genuine representation of themselves by presenting a true-to-life appearance. Even many of those who are participants in any of the in-world RP (role playing) scenarios, desire to have themselves duly represented by their avatar. After all, they are in reality participating in the RP to either experience a specific time period in history, a culture, or just fulfill a fantasy. What better & more rewarding way for them to do this then to have a true to life appearance for their avatar! Now for those of us who wish to do some serious editing of our avatar’s appearance - the head & facial features in particular, you shall quickly find that there are several limitations & difficulties surrounding the use of the current built in appearance editor.

This desire lead me to embark upon a quest to find out just how to create a life-like appearance for my avatar. It was not long when I discovered that Linden Labs plans to eventually include a tool that will let you easily turn a photo into an avatar’s face. So they realize the potential benefit & value that they can provide to residents here. However, they did preface this comment with; “no delivery date set yet, so please be patient.” They made the suggestion that those of us that are rather motivated & who are willing to work at it, that it would be possible to place a photograph onto a layer within the face template, which is available here: Face_template.zip. Attempting this procedure requires some graphics skills coupled with the knowledge of how to use a high-end graphics program that can import Adobe® PhotoShop® documents, supports layers, & alpha channels (like PhotoShop®, JASC® PaintShop Pro®, or The Gimp). Now because of the way the texture is stretched on the avatar’s head, it may take a bit of work to get things to fit correctly, so be patient. Yeah right!

With my understanding of virtual reality & 3D graphics, it shall require a lot of effort to follow the above suggestion. This will yield a less then satisfactory result for the more discerning resident. This is because no matter what or how you stretch a graphics file over the face, the existing facial contours will not match those represented by the image being applied. Does this make sense? One of the base components of an avatar is a luv map, which signifies the changes in the contour or surface levels & looks very similar in fashion to an elevation map, which has a number of concentric lines that denote the elevation changes. The UV map serves a similar purpose. Now in order to correctly stretch your photograph over a base so that it would be a faithful representation of yourself, you would need to have an underlaying UV map that needs to have at least a relatively close mapping of the contour changes.

Now at the present time I am not sure if you took the time & effort to create the proper UV map required that it could be uploaded & applied to the SL avatar. If not, could one apply the UV map to a prim in order to generate a facial mask that could be worn as a seamless attachment to the face. If so, then would it be possible to script the required eye, lip, & mouth movements for expressions & gestures? Is there a easier solution that I am not aware of yet? For those of you who are interested, stay tuned to VTOR as I shall continue to seek a satisfactory solution to this & other related problems for us all.

On a side note: For those who might like to play around with customizing your avatar through the template overlay system, you will find a variety of other templates to help you modify many aspects of your avatar from hairstyles to clothing at: SL Templates Page.  These templates are very helpful in creating textures with buttons, pockets, tattoos and other features in the right place when you apply them to your avatar, because they provide a layer which represents the UV map. So with this, you have some sort of guidelines that assist you with the features that you desire. Now if you do not have the required graphics program or the $100 - $600+ USD required to purchase one, I recommend that you download the open source graphics editor called The Gimp, which is available for either the Windows, MacOSX, or Linux operating systems from: Gimp.Org.