One of the most common questions I get asked on my IMVU page is how I create my avatars to look so clear and crisp. Well, it’s not difficult – but you can’t use the snapshot tool in IMVU to do it.

Very quickly, here’s the process I use on my own IMVU avatars.

Important Note: Any time that you use the screenshot tool in IMVU, it will replace this avatar. You’ll either want to start avoiding the screenshot tool, or keep a copy of your “main” avatar on your computer to fix the change with.

Set Up a Scene

Get your 3D avatar all gussied up and looking spectacular, then pose it in a scene that you like the look of. Seriously, think of this as a photograph or a fashion shoot. The background in your shot will go a long ways towards a great avatar. If you have some of the old backdrop scenes that have trees, these usually make great images. For mine, I’ve posed my avatar on a floating chair.

Print Screen

Check out your keyboard, and you’ll find one key that says “Print Screen” or “Prnt Scrn”. It’s usually over the calculator pad.

Before you hit the button, make sure you’ve got your IMVU window as large as you can get it, and that your scene is lined up pretty well. This way, you’ll start with an image much, much larger than you need – making it easier to keep the quality up.

When you’re ready, hit the print screen button on your keyboard, and open your graphics editor (technically, even Microsoft Paint will work – I’m, obviously, going to work with Photoshop for this).

Paste in an Editor

As soon as your graphics editor opens, go to “File”, choose “New”, and then click “Edit”, and choose “Paste”.

When you hit Print Screen on your keyboard, the contents of your computer screen were copied to your clipboard. So, you’re now just pasting that into your editor.

Avatar Sized Canvas

Your avatar can, technically, be pretty much any size you want it to be (up to 160 x 220). However, the largest it *should* be in order to display properly both on your IMVU page and in the forums is about 150 x 200 pixels.

Open a new canvas (File, New) that is sized whatever you like – I’m using the dimensions above – in RGB mode with a white background.

Set Up Your Avatar

All that’s left is to drag your image on to your new canvas and resize it, decorate it, generally play with it.

If you use a background in your print screen that you can delete (one of the green screen rooms, for example), you can remove it out completely and place a background of your choosing behind your image, really spiffing up your avatar.

When you’re happy with what you’ve done, go to IMVU and click the “Account” button. In here, you’ll be able to upload your new avatar right from your computer … and look snazzy.