Seam lines for clothing

hi all I have been searching for a good tutorial on clothes making and there are many but none actually explain the arms/sleeves.. i have a problem lining these up and dont really see any clear lines on the templates. Is this just me or is this the biggest secret to clothes makin? lol ..searched sl forums and google and you tube. Im trying to make an off the shoulder sweater with arms / sleeves that dont go up over the shoulder .. I get a stretched look, kind of like the crotch look with some shorts or panties . any advice would be so much appreciated ty in advance

The area between the arm and the torso is a problematic area all the way around. Textures tend to stretch and look funky no matter what you do, so you learn to avoid wide lapels, details that cross the shoulder blades, and fancy stuff under the arms. I suggest painting those areas with as little detail as you can, and hope for the best.

You are quite right about it being difficult to figure out how the templates work on sleeves. The match lines are not where you expect them to be. It's VERY difficult to know exactly how to draw a line that looks right as it crosses the upper end of the arm, especially. I've found that it helps to upload the upper body template to SL and make a shirt out of it. Wear it and take a couple dozen photos from different angles as you assume various poses. Then study the photos very carefully to see how things line up and to see which parts stretch and should be avoided. [If you have CS4, of course, you can do the same thing by applying the upper body template to your 3D avatar body. You can also do experiments by drawing various lines directly on the model to see where they intersect with the lines on the template.]

As a final thought ..... For some outfits, you can cheat by covering the area with a prim attachment like a collar, a cape, a poofy upper arm piece, or an epaulet. That may or may not be practical for your project.

Ginna -- one thing you can do which can help a bit is to make yourself clothes out of your templates, wear them and photograph your av in them for reference. I should first of all ask you if you are using the Robin Wood or Chip Midnight templates as those are better than the ones LL gives us.

It's all the more difficult since the pieces are not to the same scale.

Yeah, that's a real head scratcher as well...

And just mho, but as far as making an 'off shoulder' top, many have tried and few have succeeded. And don't forget that different avatar shapes will affect how your textures and final designs look. You may want to concentrate on a different style for the time being and try that again a few months from now. ((Just thinking about the many many many hours I spent trying to do that same style before moving on... it's never a waste because you are always learning something... but i never did succeed to my satisfaction)

Yeah it's pretty hard to deal with. I have been able to partially take care of that discriptionacy by measuring the different pieces individually to help maintain a little more even look from front to back, top to bottom.

The Upper template:

Front: 484 pixesl wide by 632 pixels tall
Back: 458 pixels wide by 582 pixels tall

The Lower template:

Front: 439 pixels wide by 1004 pixels tall
Back: 458 pixels wide by 1004 pixels tall

The arms, feet, head and skirt templates I play by ear..........LOL

I've found that if you keep the layers scaled to the largest deminsion and the smallest deminsion change to fit, it pretty much evens out.......as long as you are working only on a top or bottom. Matching a top with a bottom is just plain hard for me However with knowing the different sizes in relation to the other parts does help in the matching. I need more practice but I'm getting there.

Actually I was just thinking about the top front/back and arm top/back - the rest is not so annoying.

thank you all so much for your help..