This will outline the basics of how to make your head and body skin match up.
There are a few options for matching skin of body and head
1. Use a skin for your face that comes in one of the Velour skin tones from the Lara HUD.
2. Use any skin and get an applier from the skin maker of that skin for the Maitreya body.
3. Use your present skin, choose a tone in the HUD that is close (but lighter) and tint the skin to match
4. Get matching appliers for your mesh head and Lara body at a skin store
5. Use Bakes on Mesh for your head & body
********** THE DETAILS **********
OPTION 1 - Choosing a Velour Skin (Default Head or Mesh Head)
The skins in the Lara HUD are from Velour.
The skin tones are (from left to right):
Frost, Blush, Glam, Icy, Porcelain, Snow, Valley, Rosekiss, Dune, Sunkiss, Illa, Praline
(Second row):
Brownie, Amber, Mali, Moonlight (Fantasy tones): Poison, DarkElf, Dusk, GreyAlien
You can use a classic skin or a head applier in any of these Velour skin tones and they will match.
For a default head, be sure to turn on the Neck Fix, turn it off for a mesh head. (*)
OPTION 2 - Use a body applier to match your existing skin (Default Head or some mesh heads)
Most skin makers offer Maitreya or Omega appliers that will work on the mesh body. This will give you a match. (**)
For a default head, be sure to turn on the Neck Fix, turn it off for a mesh head. (*)
OPTION 3 - Use your present skin, choose a tone in the HUD that is close (but lighter) and tint the skin to match (Default Head Only)
Manual Tinting
On the Skin/Base page of the Maitreya Lara HUD, at the bottom (left side) you'll find the "advanced" button. Pressing this will open up a panel with tinting. You need to make sure to select the "skin" button next to the tinting square.
You fist need to change the L value (by moving the curser down on the lightness slider, or by using the small arrow next to the L to lower the value). If the L value = 100 no tint is being applied. L=100=white (no tint). This is why you start with a tone lighter than what you eventually want. You can tint darker but it's impossible to tint lighter. When you have added some darkness to the skin you can now also add some Hue (color, tint) and/or Saturation (color intensity) to the skin, by either using the arrows next to the H and S to increase the values, or by pressing and moving your cursor over the tint panel itself.
If you are manually tinting your mesh body to match your head, it's best to do this while the neck fix is turned off. When you have matched the skin reasonably well you can turn on the neck fix and the small differences in tone can be hidden by that.
OPTION 4 - Use any mesh head and matching appliers for it and the body (***)
Most skin makers offer appliers for the body, Maitreya or Omega. (**) It doesn't matter if they have a head specific applier and Omega Body - it will work perfectly fine. Be sure that the body applier is the same skin tone from the same skin designer.
OPTION 5 - Use Bakes on Mesh for your body and head.
There are BoM versions of the preset Glam Affair skin tones included with the Lara body, but you are not limited to only those tones. You can use any BoM compatible skin on the Lara body.
You can read more about BoM for the Lara body here: What is BoM? and more find info on how to enable it here: Skin/Base Page
********** THE FOOTNOTES **********
* Any option using the Neck Fix may cause undesirable shadows if you have Ambient Occlusion enabled in Graphics. The is not a glitch or a malfunction, this is Ambient Occlusion doing what it's meant to do. It just happens that in this case, what Ambient Occlusion is meant to do is at odds with what we are trying to accomplish.
** Omega Appliers do exactly the same thing Maitreya Appliers do. But you will need to also wear the Omega Maitreya Relay HUD for Omega appliers to work on the Lara mesh body. The concept of Omega appliers is that one applier will work on all mesh bodies. In case of skins this isn't ideal, because every mesh body has unique uvs for toes and other details like fingernails and neck sheath, a skins needs to be made for the specific body for a perfect match. Therefore it's recommended to use Maitreya appliers for skin.
*** When wearing a mesh head your mesh body's neck size does not need to correspond to your body fat, it only needs to correspond to the neck size of your mesh head. You can change neck size with the numbered buttons next to the Neck Fix button (Skin/Base HUD page). Most mesh heads have neck size 0 or 5. The best place to see any mismatch is the back of the neck, looking from the side.
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