Alicia Chenaux has made her first video tutorial. It is a pretty neat idea that she presents. You can see it here: Smile Shape Tutorial. Iris Ophelia pointed me to this from her article in NWN: Learn How to Make the Perfect Smiling SL Avatar Shape With This Video Tutorial.
If you have ever used the built-in smile, you know it is pretty hideous. But, Alicia shows you how to fix it by adjusting your shape. In her tutorial she demonstrates how to fix the built-in smile emote.
In the image the left image is just my standard avatar face without any emote applied. In the next image, second from left, I’ve applied the Toothy Smile emote. It is pretty bad. In the third from left I’ve adjusted my shape to improve my smile as Alicia teaches. In the fourth from left or the right image, I’ve removed the emote and retained the shape changes. This last look is not something I’ll be wearing everyday…
I think the smile in the 3rd image is better than the plain emote. I didn’t spend much time on it. I could probably play with it and do better. Whatever, for now I have saved that shape in to an Emotes Shapes folder. I’ll probably add more as I need them.
Making all these shapes to tweak the emotes is sort of going to be a pain. But, for photography use setting up the shot by changing a shape isn’t that bad. And it will simplify the follow-on Photoshop work.