what is this maya of which you speak?

The most sadistic application on the planet. The more you use it, the more it destroys you. And you'll love it as does it, because if you don't, it will only get worse.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=7635018

Go check it out if you dare. You can get a nearly unlimited trial edition for free as a download, or atleast you could before Autodesk bought it out, you might not anymore. But if you can get the Personal Learning Edition, it will do everything you would need for modeling SL avatars, you just also need the exporting script which you can find on the SL Wiki.

Wow nice work, but I wonder how you intend to put that texture onto an avatar, since the basic avatar model's head can't be modified in a way so that you have a muzzle and all (basically any foxshape = impossible :P)

So people usually add those by "wearing" the whole head as a created object made out of many so called "primitives" (basic shapes...like making a head out of a ton of torus and spheres)
And it's not just easily possible to slap one texture onto the whole thing, though I'm not sure if you can make youre texture there work...Unless you like having a perfect texture slapped onto a flat human head =/

Also I'm not sure if animated textures show up as such at all on the basic avatar skin. Would have to slap that on a created head then anyway (like all furry avatar creators do)

This is no criticism ^^ just telling how you it is, so you don't work so hard and in the end it's all for nothing :(

So far this looks really nice for a skin! Probably better than anything I've seen heh

You are correct that the conventional way of creating fur heads out of primitives would not allow for such a texture as this, and that SL does not support animated gifs (or gifs at all, actually).

However, both of these I've gone past. By using maya and exporting the 3d model to a targa (an XYZ vertex to RGB pixel conversion) I can then import the model and apply it to sculpted geometry and have a solid, one piece model head that textures perfectly with this.

And to get past the lack of animated gifs, I actually imported each frame as a separate jpg image and wrote a script to "blink" every 4 to 7 seconds.

^.^ thanks for the compliment! I'm really rather proud of this skin myself, best I've done I think.

Oooh right that works :D

*slaps forehead* I didn't think of the sculpted prims! hehe (they are still fairly new)

And for me they are way too complicated :p I'm not into 3d modeling programmes, but seeing how you did this you must be really awesome at it.

Make sure to give us a picture once you get it into secondlife!
That could be one of the best furry work I've seen so far in sl hehe (most furry avatar just started working with sculpted prims and I haven't seen any real results yet)

I just hope it'll work out, since sl compresses your texture sooooo much that the sculpted prim often ends up really messy :/ (it's what most people are complaining about). From what I heard it uses jpeg2000 compression to compress your texture and even if it is already in jpeg2000 format it gets double compressed...

I didn't have too much trouble with the compression, I just had to exaggerate certain features so they were not lost. The trick is to use a non-compressed image format to import from. If you do jpg2k, normal jpg, or other compressed formats, you double up the compression artifacts, and it gets ugly. So thats why I used a targa, since that is a raw format.

It will be a little while before I get the avatar fully done (have to do me clothes to!). But when I get it to where I'm happy, expect a screen shot. At the moment its really goofy looking and rather amorphous.

Hehe as usual, good results take time ;)

Well, I'm looking forward to it! hehe

I put a watch on you, so I won't miss it ;) *I hope*

yah i can understand how to create textures for sculpties either. i do understand that when i use a regular texture for it i get some totally bizzare screwed up shape that is pretty much useless in most cases.....most cases...i built a few using textures i already had that actually turned out surprisingly well for crystalline shapes.

ofcourse nothing turned out so well for practical use such as creating a low prim avatar head such as you are talking about doing. anyway i like building cars (check my FA gallery for some) and if you ever want to hangout and see how that is done just IM Drayko DeSantis in game. (for that ish me)

a friend of mine loaded "wet paint" into the sculpted prims and ended up making a pretty sweet looking wing.

i have a texture by that name. i wonder if its the same one.

its red and blotchy

yup i got that one. tis a freebie texture that i never use.

That wing odin made was pretty bitchin' But totally doesn't fit him XD

0.0 the eye blinking thing just startled me. XD ^_^ that was really cute, I look forward to seeing your second life avatar!

wow that's incredible! very impressive!