With the implimentation of Mesh Heads to the grid, there are now exciting new HairBase possibilities, just like the ones I showed yesterday from LeLutka. Hairbases on mesh heads are usually their own layer, Slink Visage has a NEW Hairbase layer in their recent update in march.
While wearing hairbases is wonderful and really adds to the overall look of a style, it also gives you the oppurtunity to wear styles that are made as attachments for hairbases only. Slicked back looks and so on. Now with hairbases prior to the mesh heads, you have hairbases on the tattoo layer of your head, so all was fine and dandy.
To achieve the same look with mesh heads, the creator needed to use an alpha channel texture that means the hairbase is full of alpha, and will clash with other alpha – example, when your hair seems to cut away the windows in your house and other things – this is NOTHING to do with the hair creator doing something wrong, this is a very well known SL Bug with alpha sorting.
Hair creators will have to keep that in mind when creating new styles for the mesh head population, and some already have styles that work really well. But there are others that can be ‘fixed’ so to speak. I use the fixed word loosely, because there is nothing wrong with the hair, or how it is made, it was just created with no alpha conflicts possible at the time, but now that is more likely due to heads.
A lot of hair is still MOD, some may show no mod because of the huds they use, but if you can rez it or go into edit on it while worn, you will be able to tell. If it is no mod, then this wont work. You could contact the creator and request that they make their hair mod, as some tend to think no point with rigged hair, as you cannot move it anyway, but things like this come up, and it makes everyones life easier when the customer can do the quick ‘fix’ themselves.
This may not work for all styles, as it will depend on the style, how the alpha and other textures are created, and whether the faces line up properly. I will show you before and after pics, and explain the process.
This came about because Justice put on this first hair earlier, and was sad to see she would not be able to wear it. I thought about it, asked her to rez it and try what I was guessing ‘MAY’ work, it did…and now she can wear the hair, and I decided to share the outcome.
1. Either wear or rez the hair on the ground – depending on your editing abilities, ground may be easier for some.
2. Choose SELECT FACE in your edit menu, and then click on the area the alpha texture is on the hair. You will see in the texture window if you have an alpha selected or not, as it will not be filled in completely.
3. Change the transparency to 100 – do not use an alpha texture to do this, or you will end up in the same boat. Transparency and alpha are two different things in SL , and how they appear/sort with others differs. We are removing the alpha components by making it transparent.
4. Check you have all selected or do them one at a time, if there is more on the hair attachment or hair that conflicts with the hairbase layer.
5. Close edit and gaze at yourself, and say things like “Dayum I am the hotness!”
6. IM all your friends and repeat the words of step 5 to them.
7. Go through your whole hair inventory, and find every style that this will work with. Now you have more hair to wear :) and also know what will work with styles you come across in the future, make sure always that the hair is Modify.
I did some GIFs to watch the process also
The hairs I am wearing in this post are Aida by Wasabi Pills, Ellie by Lelutka, Swish Ponytail (part of full hairstyle) by Lelutka, Cachet Ponytail (part of full hairstyle) by Lelutka
