So, I grabbed some demos. And since I was going through the Shoe Expo anyway, I also grabbed demos from some other prim foot makers.

After much testing and tinting, my overall verdict would be that most brands don’t have enough texture to the foot, making it difficult to use with very detailed skins. Kalnins does fall into this category, I feel the skin is much too flat, but they still ended up winning the “make Freyja buy her first pair of prim feet” contest. I’ll get to why that is in a bit.

Out of the brands I tried, I thought Maitreya and SLink had the best skin texture by far. Maitreya, though, had two problems. The most serious was the lack of a hud with the demo. If I can’t test the hud and test the tinting, I am not spending that much. The second issue is more of a taste issue; I feel their foot is rather oversized, should it be straightened out. SLink, on the other hand, has a foot that looks more realistically sized. The demo also included the hud and allowed for customization, but unfortunately I found the hud rather awkward to work with, with no easy way (that I found, anyway) of adding and subtracting colours, or entering a specific RGB value.

So, what about Kalnins? While the skin texture is lacking, I like the foot size and the foot shape. And I really, really like the hud. It allows for easy addition or removal of red, green, blue and white, and you can enter specific RGB values. You can also get the exact current RGB value, for comparison with the value for your skin. Hands down the best hud I tried. Plus, the shoes are really nice. Well sculpted, well textured and versatile with the colour scripting. I picked up the Dragoness (seen on the full-body shots and in the left close up) and the Sonata, but there’s more to choose from in their store.