Since I’ve owned my Maitreya body for what seems like forever, I decided to start out my Bakes On Mesh (BOM) testing with it. There are already tons of blog posts out there about how to use BOM, so I’m not going to spend a ton of time reviewing it all.
The Maitreya body is not BOM ready. You have to purchase a relay in order for BOM to work (as well as making sure that you are using a BOM viewer). The relay for the Maitreya body is free on Marketplace.
Basically, to start, take off everything. Body, feet, hands, hair, clothes, alphas – everything. What you’re left with is the original system avatar. Previously, you needed to wear alpha layers to hide the system avatar. With BOM, you don’t need the alpha layers. Essentially, the BOM system takes the layers you wear on your system avatar and ‘bakes’ them onto your mesh parts – hence “Bakes On Mesh.” It also hides the system avatar so it can’t be seen under your mesh body parts.
Once you’re down to the system avatar, put on your Maitreya body, hands, and feet. Add the Maitreya HUD and the Maitreya BOM relay. (I can’t remember if you have to click the relay or just wear the first system skin, but once you apply a system/BOM skin, you don’t need to continue to wear the BOM relay.)
I was going to just take photos wearing the Maitreya body, but the deformed system head from my Bento shape was hideous, so I ended up adding the LeLutka Simone head as well to test. LeLutka sent out updated heads that are BOM ready, you just have to click on the HUD to activate it.
Once I had all that done, I hunted around in my inventory for a system skin. The first one I found was a skin from 2015 – DS Lyberty Spelt Quartz. (Don’t mind my bald head – I didn’t want hair to distract from the skin!)
It actually looked pretty good. So I tried a few more. This is a Belleza skin from 2013 – Mya Pale BBB 1. The make up looks good on the LeLutka head.
The next skin I tried was LAQ Martina was 2013. This skin was my go-to skin for a long time. You can see, however, the tip of the nose and upper lip area under the nose look odd. The shading is off. Ah, well, I didn’t expect everything to work out perfectly.
Next I tried a skin from Lumae – Fae 6 Cinnamon Plum Delight from 2015. This skin has freckles – you can see that they applied to the Maitreya body with no problem as well. I did try a few of the old ‘cleavage’ tattoos – remember those? Some were better than others, so in many instances you’re just going to have to try things on and see what works and what doesn’t.
The last skin I tried was my most recent go-to skin – Glam Affair’s Margot India Dark from 2015.
After testing quite a few other skins and finding out that most worked well, I decided to try messing around with some makeup.
I have to say, this is the part that got me the most excited. I used to have a ton of system layer makeup and tattoos. Once mesh bodies and heads hit the grid, they’ve basically been languishing in my inventory. I don’t know why I didn’t box them up like I did everything else.
Because BOM supports system layers, you can now once again layer makeup and tattoos – up to 62 layers, if I remember correctly. BOM will bake them onto one layer and then apply them to your mesh parts.
For example, here is some system layer face paint I got from who knows where:
Here’s some snowy winter makeup I found:
In addition to single layers, you can add multiple ones. In this picture, I am wearing a blush layer, an eyeshadow layer, and a lipstick layer, in addition to the system skin. BOM applies them all to my mesh head. The eyeshadow is a bit off, but the blush and lipstick look great.
Once I had playing around with skins and makeup out of my system, I decided to focus on what I knew would be problem areas – the hands and feet. However, this post is long enough, so I’m going to discuss those in Part 3 of this series.
A Kat and A Mouse 