White seam at waist only - argh!

Ok, I'm not new to making clothes and know how to avoid the appearance of seams when creating the base textures however I just noticed a seam that I cannot manage to eliminate no matter what I do.

The clothing item is a combined texture between a top and bottom and I get a faint white seam between the bottom of the shirt and the top of the pants. Both items of clothing are black. I have the shirt in SL set to come down on the stomach as far as it will go and the waist of the pants set up as high as it will go.

The texture for the pants extends right to the edge of the template with a matching alpha. I confirmed that the color is solid right to the edge. Likewise I extended the bottom of the shirt texture well past the edge of the template with solid color yet I still get this tiny tiny white little line at the waist.

You can't see it at normal camera distances, it does not show up using the free clothing previewer. You have to zoom in really close on the AV to see it. I know that 90% of my customers would never see it but I pride myself on a quality and this is driving me nuts.

Here are a couple of pics of the template and then the inworld pics.
I left the mesh showing on both the clothing view and the alphas for reference. By default I extend pixels solidly outside the edge of the mesh template and my seams all dissappear.

I have the same outfit in several colors and while it is a lot harder to see in colors it is still there.

Pics here http://www.stormwerks.ca/sl/alpha.htm

Help?

Easy fix. Just make sure the white part of your alpha extends well past the bleed area on the templates.

I'd suggest reversing your thinking about creating alphas for clothing. You seem to be using an all black canvas, and turning it white just for the parts you want to see. Go the other way around. Start all white, and then paint black anything that you specifically want to have invisible, like the hand area, the neck area, etc. There's no need to mask the parts of the canvas that are outside the template. Leave all that stuff white.

You know I had never thought of only masking the necessary areas ... and your right I usually start black in the alpha and add white not the reverse. I'll give that a go.

Well I've discovered good news and bad news. Chosen I tried your suggestion. Recreated the clothing with only the transparent sections removed and a solid white alpha with black only in the transparent sections. The pants had a solid white alpha channel.

I uploaded the two new textures and applied them. I still have the same bloody (!@#$!@#%) white seam as before. I double and triple checked the textures in photoshop and there are no pixels out of whack. Thats the bad news part I.

So I got curious. I create a new texture - 512 x 512 solid black. I then created a solid white alpha channel on it. In the middle of the chest area I put a single black circle so I could see that the alpha was being applied but sure that it was no where near any seams what so ever.

I uploaded the new texture and applied it to a new shirt and new pants. Guess what. I still have that seam! I even set a color for the texture in addition to the texture itself of solid black and the seam is still there.

I also verified this on the test grid in addition to the main grid and same results. This is the bad news part II. I've opened a bug as there is no where in that last texture that a white seam can be introduced.

The good news is ... its not my textures. WOO!

Hmm that's weird. Do you know if the seam appears on all layers (undershirt and shirt) ? Also, is it visible on all avatar shapes, or just on some ?

And, do you know if the seam comes from the trousers, or from the top ?

I like the shading on that outfit a lot.

Hi Raindrop, I haven't tried it on all layers, just the shirt and pants layer as those are the ones I typically use the most (well except for my catsuits). I'll have to try the other layers and see.

I also tried changing the shape of the garment as well as the AV and it stays. I didn't try it on male AV's so I don't know if it is FUBAR'd there as well.

I spent a couple of hours last night trying to determine whether it was the top or bottom and I think (stress think) that it is the shirt where the problem lies because it immediately gets worse if I change the shirt bottom height from 100% to 99% whereas if I change the waist height on the pants it makes no difference until I get to around 94% or so.

Thank you for the compliments on the shading, its one of the things I am trying to use to differentiate myself.

That's really strange, Dante. Sorry my solution didn't work.

Definitely agree on the shading, Dante. Lovely work That is really odd though. I thought Chosen had nailed it so I'm surprised adjusting the alpha didn't get rid of it. I'd also be interested to know if it goes away on other layers. I've never noticed it on any of my skins, but I do have a couple of tops done as jackets that have similar issues at the waist seam, but I always figured I just didn't go far enough into the bleed area.

I use the jacket in these cases, you will not get the white seam. Use your lower texture for the bottom of the jacket, use the sliders to make the jacket just below the waist length.

I know that white seam! Here is my work around. For me it was appearing above the waistband of my pants. The fix: I made an extra layer that went under the layer with the pants fabric. I made the extra layer a flesh color that would match the skin of my avatar. I'm sure that seam is still there, lurking, but it is invisible because it is flesh rather than white. So perhaps if you make another layer under your fabric layer that is black (or match the color for your colored versions) your seam will be black and not show.

And btw, here is how I know it was NOT a photoshop issue. I put that pants texture on a prim, and guess what, no white seam.

-Sylvia

Still very strange. I've fairly recently done seamless bodysuits and one piece bathing suits and haven't had any issues with the waist seam.

I get this, too! I'm surprised to read that not everyone does, actually. I only get it on the shirt layer, myself. In one case, I got around it by including a glitch undershirt. Kind of a pain, but it worked.

Dante -

I admit I'm a novice, but one thing that's been catching me is the texture wrapping "bug" in SL, because many of my skirts have beaded or ribboned edging at the bottom but are solid at the top. Is it possible that you have any type of white shading at the very bottom of your pants layer, that runs along the entire bottom of the black texture? If so, you might try decreasing the verticle repeats of the texture to .99 instead of 1, and see if that helps.

I also tend to run my pattern a little further past the bleed area on the bottom of the upper template than you seem to have run yours.

Good luck...

Have you tryed the Glausens Blurr? I have used it for edges that are white or have the "hallo" and it works wonders... It can be seen here...

Adobe Photoshop – Robin Sojourner's Tutorial Video
For those whe prefer to learn by watching rather than reading. Click here for Robin Sojourner's excellent tutorial video. You'll also find other useful goodies on her site, such as advanced avatar templates, tools to help with texturing odd shaped prims, and much more.

Its in a sticky at the top of this thread in case the link isnt working.

I think you mean Gaussian Blur Zazas, and for the template seams I would recommend Motion Blur instead, The pixel information will get resampled in all directions with Gaussian Blur versus just the direction of the seams with Motion Blur. Motion Blur works well if it is done twice at 0 degree and 90 degree angles on 2 separate layers.

[edited] information was already covered

Wow lots of replies to this, glad I'm not the only one with this issue.

Chip - thank you for the compliments. I am going to try a sub layer to fill in the waist area. I can do it on this outfit but not on my catsuits as the catsuits are set at the underwear layer so people can wear things over top. At that layer I don't think it will matter much and I don't want to go to the skin layer. Too much confusion for most people.


Mavis - the jacket idea is a good one but I plan on adding an open jacket for this outfit so it won't help me here, it may be good elsewhere though. Thanks!

Rachel - I know exactly what you are referring to. I have an action that fills that outer single pixle layer in for me and was the first thing I checked when this appeared.

Zazas - I used to use the gaussian blur to build the edges out but it was kind of kludgy and made reselecting areas temperamental leter. I often get requests for my outifts in colors other than what I originally offered. I ahve started now just making the entire layer the base color and only cutting out the parts I don't want then matching the alpha to those areas as suggested by Chosen. Funny I do this when I am making a skin for myself but never thought of it for my clothes. I made two outfits yesterday and this made it all a lot faster than the blur technique.

Try Flaming Pear's Solidify plugin for Photoshop. It's part of one of their freebie packs. It makes extending color into the bleed area a one step process and I use it constantly (thanks to Robin Wood for posting about it a while back). You can find it here.

I have that now as well. I DL'd it yesterday. Definitely a useful addition.