Mesh for Men

Lewis Luminos

The Gingerbeard Man
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Let's have a thread for mesh heads and bodies for male avatars. What's good, what's not, especially if we want to use something that's not Signature Gianni and Catwa.

Here's a few others that I or my alts have tried or are using.

Signature Geralt - all the quality of Gianni, but with less steroids. A leaner body-shape. Not as much yet in terms of clothing support but it's growing fast, and most Gianni stuff will fit reasonably well anyway (except underwear). Oddly, the alpha cuts are not the same as Gianni, there are fewer of them in the abdomen and lower back for some weird reason.

Belleza Jake - Falls somewhere between Gianni and Geralt in body shape, still fairly muscular in the arms. Moderate clothing support but fits standard sizes better than Signature does, on the whole. The big caveat with this one is while the hands are bento, there is no AO included; you need to buy a separate hand AO otherwise you'll be constantly doing the splayed hands thing.

Lightstar bento head - There are a whole bunch of these and for the price of L$1000 I think they are really good. They are very responsive to the sliders without distortion as you can see here:


This is two looks, same head, same skin, just different sliders. (The heads don't all look this youthful, I selected this particular one for that reason). They work with Omega (relay purchased separately). The default skins are... not very good... the built-in beard and brow options only work with those skins, but it supports layers so you can use Omega ones from elsewhere. My alt here has a freckle tattoo added, he sometimes wears make-up in addition to that. There's no animations and I haven't tried any third party animations with it (yet). Big bonus - these heads are also modifyable. Another caveat - if you use this head without mesh body or hands, the blink animation somehow causes the Classic body hands to go into the splayed pose. Removing the blink script fixes this, and it doesn't seem to be a problem if you have animated bento hands.
 

Sid

Lord of the plywood cubes.
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Thanks for the info Lewis.
Is there more to be known about a mesh body before one starts to buy one?
I'm a total noob in this matter, but I think it is time to switch.
I find 2 things important:
- I don't want to look like a gorilla with a sixpack
- there has to be enough clothing available for the system, from beach to casual to formal.
HELP.
 

OrinB

tutti fruitti
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I've not really had much experience of different heads. I made a big commitment to change to my current Catwa head and made it work with various different bodies. I like it because the the included expressions and animation hud and the neck options fit most of the bodies out there correctly. Neck connections are the biggest problem with all the heads and bodies.

As for bodies, i think Signature Gianni & Geralt and Belleza Jake are the current main bodies that most of the clothing creators will default to. I'm not that keen on any of them tbh. I have Jake and Aesthetic on Noco and Gianni on another alt. Jake a find really difficult to proportion correctly. The arms only really look good when too short! The rest of the time all clothing appears stretched in very odd place. At least with Gianni and Jake there are alternative body skins available by some of the more common head skin makers. Some looking less muscular than others. It is more of a lottery than it used to be. Men are having to come to terms with doing a hell of lot more than just using something out of the box - IE one system skin including head is now 2-3 different head layers and 2-3 body layers with alpha masking issues and blending stuff to deal with.
 
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Sid

Lord of the plywood cubes.
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So I have to prepare for weeks of studying, testing, fiddling.......... eeeek.
And here I was thinking: that body with that shape and skin + that head = done. :confused:

I now have the feeling a troublesome shopping experience is waiting for me next weekend.
Thanks for preparing me for that upcoming shock and for the useful tips.
 
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Val

n00b!1
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I will cover few other bases as I have lots of avatars and some do not fit any SL moulds thus had to settle for second bests:

1) Anime-like bodies would be Avatar 2.0, Kemono and Kuroo.
2) Seen one creepy slendermanish body by The Prop Shop
3) Bigger Bodies would be Piggu
4) Androgynous would be PSI and their body line or chest mods like Slink Petite and V-Tech (for Maitreya).
5) And lastly a humaney one would be Adam which is about same support level as Aesthetic.

If you are brave enough - can always go for TMP as currently retired and not bento supported but it exists. Slink is okay but oddly phased out by creators so not sure if it is a good idea to buy it nowadays.

As for heads ... they all mostly are similar and nothing to rave about. On personal avatar I use women's because features are more defined (but neck gaps haunt me). Otherwise you can find some at Samurai, Genesis Lab, Akeruka, LOGO, Ravenbell, GA.EG and Adam.

Overall - I am pleased some creators do put new features and quality has improved a lot but not pleased with whole woman/man polarisation thing as would be great if all'd be in the same pot. True, SL skeletons favour that divide but one can dream.
 
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Archer

Not a Robot
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One of the biggest issues for me was finding a skin I liked for both head and body that matched. The neck line thing really bothers me. I ended up buying a Catwa head just so I could use Nivaro head and body skin that matched.
 
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Seawitch

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My husband has an avatar though I buy every thing for it . He has the Jake body and find clothing fits very well. Gabriel make clothing for it
and also has Gacha's that have gotten outfits for a good price. He has an Adam head ( it was a free one a bit out dated now) and a Akeruka
head was $150 - free when you joined the group. I had a full body and head avatar but was not too happy with it . brand will update later.
WIll log him in and post more later.
 
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Spirits Rising

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Just wanted to pop in and say that thanks to this - oddly brief - thread I was able to find a decent, inexpensive mesh head to go with my recent purchase of Jake.

My only complaint with the Lightstar head? Unless I am missing something (or have forgotten some setting somewhere) the lips don't move when you type.

That aside? Between Jake and Robin, I have a damn good base for my humanoid and hybrid forms now! Much closer to what I was originally aiming for!
 

Spirits Rising

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Anyone have recommendations on a tan or bronzed skin that will work with both the Jake body and Lightstar head? Bonus if it can easily be matched by Lightstar's elf ears ....