As weird as it "seams"?

I have a seams problem, a very frustrating one and I hope this makes sense.


In my male clothing shop I have done every piece of clothing in the "Jacket" layer because the length is preferred. About a week ago I thought up a way to allow customers to buy the tops in a "shirt/undershirt" layer and still keep the legnth.

Here is how I would do it:
In the jacket layer you have 2 parts to it, right? The top and bottom template.

I would create a shirt and use the jackets "top" template file i created, and then id create a pants and underpants layer and use the jackets "bottom" template file. The customer would wear both of the files to give it the look of what a jacket gives you in one file.


However ive ran into a big problem. The jacket layers look perfect. but this way leaves me with random gaps where the 2 layers connect.

How come when I use these SAME files in the form of a shirt/pants layer and wear them together to create the same look the 'jacket' gives you...theres spaces of skin showing through? But when i use these SAME files to create a jacket...theres no gaps?

I found the problem lied in the upper body template file i created somewhere. But when I check it out, I have the artwork as low as it will go without touching the arm`s section.

I checked the alpha channel too for maybe some more 'greyish' color near the bottom of it allowing for transparency down there- nothing. its solid white! So why is this happening?

The weird thing of it all is if I wear the shirt AND undershirt at the same time, everything is perfect, but if i take off a layer, it shows skin again. This continues to lead me to believe somehow the artwork needs to be further down, its almost like im cutting some off and allowing for a gap- but i cant see it ANYWHERE.

But when i wear this as a jacket layer, everything is so perfect. So shouldnt this be, too?

This is boggling my mind and driving me insane.

Any helpful tips or someone who knows what theyre doing willing to take a look at this photoshop file (minus my designs/fabirc textures)?







-edit-
editing to add that ive been playing around with this and perhaps these combinations just dont line up. I have even deleted the alpha channel of my clothing and uploaded it and the gap is still there

Have you checked the sliders for the shirt and pants? There are sliders that control how high the pants go and how low the shirt goes. Possibly those aren't set to the maximum and are introducing a gap.

yeah i have everything set to the highest.

It's not the sliders, I have the same problem. I'd very much like to find a solution!

Oh dear god lol Thank you for speaking up!

I was seriously going crazy over here, infact, im STILL playing with it but i`ll stop now

ive tried everything, like i mentioned- getting rid of the alpha channels and such.

The ONLY solution i found, and its not a good one at all, is if u color the layer pure black with the tint options it seems to decrease by 95%. but then that covers up your shirt.

And also if i wear 2 layers at once it also goes away.

Oh well, guess i cant do what I planned! ............yet

does anyone know of a solution?

Jesseaitui, I can tell you a little bit more about what it (the skin exposure) is not. The slider alphas in the client menu were the first thing I thought of when you mentioned this. They all checked out, meaning I could clear the UVW boundaries within the 1-100 grey scale slider range. BTW, changing those specific client side alpha textures in any way while running SL will crash the client the moment you enter appearance, so don't go there!

I think this is a combination bleed/layering problem. This makes sense if all clothing items reside on separate stacked layers prior to baking. The jacket, however is a single item of clothing with 2 textures, just like a skin is a single body part with 3 textures. Jackets and skins never have this issue. Perhaps skins and jackets escape this issue because they treat the embedded textures as a single layer prior to baking. That's clue #1.

Clue #2 is that the undershirt changes the color from whatever bleeds through from the skin to whatever bleeds through from the the undershirt, and not the pants or underwear. this confirms that the texture inconsistency is not bleed from the lower body section.

Clue #3 is that the bleeding of color does not increase the same way it would on a UVW boundary cropped texture as one pans out from the avatar. This rules out bleed from outside the UVW boundary.

Clue #4 is any fully opaque full coverage texture gives the same result (that annoying little bit of bleed). This rules out any errors in the texture it's self.

My conclusion is that the problem is hard wired into the client side baking process, and a proper solution involves coding fixes to the avatar mesh instead of texturing fixes. Sorry I can't be of any more help. I guess it's just one of those things we all have to deal with like flickering alpha textures. I'm glad I only produce skins.

I recall seeing threads about this problem a long while ago. Here's one...

/109/00/140041/1.html

I think you are right.

And thanks for your input.

I finally just loaded 2 solid textures on both the shirt and pant layer and it would not line up, at all.

Its not noticeable from far away, im way too anal to release anything like this though so i guess i have to stick to clothing on jacket layer only which is really terrible and allows for almost 0 flexibility esp cause these days it seems many men here in SL are into the low rise jeans. so to pull the jeans up to meet with the tee on a shirt layer is just tacky.

Thank god someone delved so deeply; I was driving myself to tears of frustration over this same issue. Since I'm "special" at photoshop, I thought it had to be me, but I tried some of the same tricks to the same effect.

To everyone else who's much more knowledgable about the texture-baking process and the alignment of layers, thanks for the run-down here. It's made me feel less like a gimp, at least.

<3

Aw lol.








But yeah this is a shame. I thought i was all cool "omgosh I figured out a way to make it on the shirt layer and still be long!!" Then when I looked closer it wasnt pretty.

Oh well. No wonder I have not seen anyone do this. I guess you could, and some probably do do it, but if youre anal like me its not good to have gaps in the clothing.

psst, jesse: the customers never notice it

I have a couple of blouses that are on the shirt/ underpants layer (as well as the jacket layer, both options included on the pack), and i noticed the seam problem not long ago (well, I'm a bit slow)... anyway, I have sold a bunch of them, and no one imed me about it. Talked to some friends about it, and none of them have noticed either - and all of them agree it's a minor problem considering the flexibility it allows.

I plan to release more multi-layer shirts in the future, and I will include a notecard explaining the seam issue. Then, it's up to the customer to decide if they want to wear it or not.

Youre probably extremely right and this crossed my mind as well.

Normally I try to line up the seams of course, and then the shadowing PERFECT but at times the shadowing is a pain so i leave it to where it looks "good"..and no one ever even notices it, its real minor minor things but I know its there and it bugs me. I have redone clothing in my shop multiple times over little things that no one notices but me. Theyre like "Ok what did you redo?"

i wish i werent like this but i cant help it lol. I was thinking of , like you, putting a notecard in and explaining as well and also telling them if they were the shirt AND the undershirt the gaps are gone.. But i was like.........well people rarely read notecards first of all. And 2nd of all what if someone did not read it and saw the gaps (either purchaser or passerbyer)..and judged my clothing quality as poor with 'gaps' in it..dunno if i want to risk that.

But since doing this would make all my clothing no trans, each buyer would be 'forced' to receive the notecard so could not trans the clothing and the new owner be without the notecard. also the reason for this is so they could wear jackets over it--which even more so hides the gaps. But i dunno. I hope theres a work around

Hi, mine are like this too. And the gaps are there. its very noticeable on black clothing, not so much on the lighter colors.

I even went as far as to create a new shirt and pants layers..put a solid texture (Like that used for building) with no alpha channels, infact it was probably a jpeg... anyway, i put that as the texture for the shirt and pant and the gaps were still present.

Can you tell me your shop name and the name of the item? id be interested in picking this up just so i can see for myself where they meet.