Building a better blazer?

Has anyone managed to build a realistic looking sport coat/blazer? I have tried a couple of things without much success. My goal is that I want to be able to wear the blazer with a shirt underneath, so I think I *have* to build at least a jacket.

Approach 1: Build a jacket only.
Problem: A sport coat should cover my fanny to some extent. For some reason the "jacket" texture is tight to the skin all the way down the legs. This means that if I build a "long" jacket, I end up with a *very* visible crack in the back. At this point the jacket really doesn't look like a jacket at all.

Approach 2: Build a jacket + skirt.
Problem: This looks much better: Just build the jacket to go down to the top of the skirt, then texture the skirt with a matching texture. Put pockets and the bottom button on the skirt. The problem with this is that the top of the skirt inter-penetrates with my avatar's back! This means that I can see my back (or the top of my pants, bottom of my shirt) THROUGH the skirt...the skirt goes inside me. This isn't very pleasing: Though it looks a lot better, it still doesn't look very good.

One problem with both approaches is that it does not seem to be possible to build a jacket that fits "loosely." You will *never* see a blazer that is skin-tight! Loosening the shirt does not work, because it is still tight at the waist.

I want to avoid going the "attachment" route if at all possible. I really don't want to have to build a whole new model for my avatar just to get a nice looking jacket.

Good question. You've outlined the two main ways to do it and I've done both with good success.

I like the look of the skirt as the jacket bottom, but a simple jacket does have it's place. There's not much more we can do. You just have to work with what we have and find workarounds.

For option #1, the simple jacket, try keeping the jacket bottom high enough that it doesn't go too much over butt and add a crease/flap in the middle so the butt crack doesn't make the jacket appear to be in it.

For your #2 option though, continue the jacket fabric down past the skirt top, even down over the pants--that way, wherever the skirt intersects, you will still see jacket fabric and not the pants or shirt.

Hi OneBigRiver!

The "reason" is that our clothing is just painted on. It's not clothing at all; simply a texture applied to the avatar on top of the underlying Skin texture. (Or, in the case of a jacket, the underlying Skin, Underware, Shirt and Pants textures.) That's why we use the very same template for all of it.

And I know from your post that your AV is male; the skirt interpenetrates the back of the Male AV, but there's a gap all around for female AVs. Less than optimal, either way.

As Blaze said, the solution is to make a short jacket, or to make a jacket in which the Bottom Texture is completely transparent except for a flap of jacket material that covers the polys that will be intersected, and use a Skirt to form the bottom of the Jacket when you are wearing it.

You can see which polys you need to cover by wearing a UV suit. (It will show you what the wireframe for your avatar looks like. If you need one, you can get one for free from my Texture Tutorials in world. (That will save you the Lindens you'd otherwise spend to upload your own.)

Hope this helps!