Seamless clothes/skins.... is there a trick?

I've been building and scripting in SL for a few months, but have not made any clothes until recently. I am pleased with my first creation so far, except for the pesky seams, which is more pronounced because the clothes are in greys and have lots of detail.

I think I figured out why there are so many black clothes in SL... to hide seams!

Is there any trick to getting seamless clothes, or is it a matter of tweaking and re-checking? Maybe a better template somewhere with a non-linear grid to match bits? The problem is made much more worse because the UV maps seem to stretch sides rather than being a 1:1 ration for pixels; one can't easily re-position elements near seams to get them seamless.

I wouldn't exactly say there's any single "trick" to it. It's more a matter of learning what goes where from the templates to the avatar mesh, and applying good old fashioned artistry.

You'll find tools such as the SLCP, stickied at the top of this forum, to be very helpful. You could also invest in a 3D paint program if you're so inclined.


Get Chip Midnight's templates, and Robin Sojourner's. Both come with extensive seam matching guides. You can find them linked in the stickies at the top of this forum.


Welcome to 3D. The avatar is a living, breathing, organic, morphable thing that moves around constantly. It's shape is always changing.

That doesn't mean there's no direct pixel by pixel correlation though. There absolutely is. The pixel that's at, say, (128:12 on the UV map corresponds to an exact spot on the avatar mesh, and it will always be that same spot. The shape of the mesh can be twisted and distorted all to hell and back, but that pixel's relative position will always be the same in relation to every other pixel. Stretch the portion of the mesh that that pixel occupies, and the pixel itself will stretch too, naturally, but on the 2D canvas, it's still just a single pixel. On the 3D mesh, that single pixel represents what could be defined as a percentage, or a fixed fraction, of the mesh.

That last sentence is the key, really. Think of the 2D to 3D relationship more in terms of relativity, rather than of absolution. If the space between two UV lines on the canvas is 10 pixels, then you know each pixel represents about one tenth of the distance between the lines. So, if something looks like it needs to be moved a third of the way from one line to the next, move it 3 pixels, and test it out. Make sense?

Aside from what Chosen has mentioned, and 3D paint programs (which can go a long way to helping you line up across seams) there are other issues that need to be dealt with in Photoshop, or similar applications. Being aware of these issues can help a great deal with seam matching/blending.

One issue is unmatched resolutions across seams. For example, the seam at the top of the forehead on the avatar has close to a 1:2 ratio in resolution. The front forehead and center of the face have the highest resolution. In order to blend it convincingly with the top of the head the pixel information must be blurred close to the edge of the seam at the top of the 2D image. When viewed in 3D on the avatar the blending will be smoother across the forehead area. Many other areas on the avatar exist where there are unmatched resolutions, each having a unique ratio to one another. Some of the worst areas are the shoulder where it meets the neck, the back of the leg where it meets the foot at the Achilles Tendon, the back arm seams close to the shoulders, and the forehead seam.

Another issue is seam bleed. You need to have a good amount of bleed outside the template boundaries in the 2D image to obtain a good transition across seams on the 3D image. The 'Solidify' filters by Flaming Pear mentioned in some other threads tackle this issue nicely. Of course there will be areas where the bleed can only be a few pixels in width (i.e. the inner mouth, teeth, and the back of the head). Keeping color and shading similar across these boundaries will minimize artifacting (that can sometimes be seen when viewing the avatar at a distance)

Finally, the symmetry issue can be a bit of a disappointing thing to deal with. The avatar is essentially a cripple with one arm, one foot, and a single eye. The worst area affected by this asymmetrical deficiency is by far the shoulder area. When dealing with 3D paint programs this issue always leaves problems that need fixing later in a 2D paint program. The dominant right arm will always blend best after work is done in a 3D paint program, but then the left arm looks terrible unless the symmetry is kept the same close to the seams on the chest and back areas. This is just something that we all need to keep in mind when designing bilateral asymmetry for the SL avatar.

Hi Aminom!

Just to clarify one point; you ask if there is a better template somewhere.

The thing you need to understand is that the "templates" aren't templates at all. They are UV Maps.

Just as the points that make the avatar have coordinates in X, Y, Z space, they also have coordinates in U, V, W space. The W value is the same for all the points, and so is ignored, leaving U (horizontal) and V (vertical) as a flat (2D) square with 0,0 as the bottom left corner, and 1,1 as the top right corner.

When the textures are applied to the avatar, the color of the pixels at the U,V coordinates for each point are applied to that point. The colors between the points are extrapolated.

You can think of it as super stretchy spandex pinned to the AV at the points of the mesh. (Where the lines cross on the map.)

We can tell where those points are by looking at the "templates."

But no matter what we draw there, SL will look for the points where the designers put them when they ordered the UVs. You can see this by putting the Upper Body map in the Lower Body slot.

So, even if someone made templates that were easier to draw on, they would be useless for putting the texture on the model. The whole thing needs to be remapped, which would break all the existing clothing.

The only way to have better "templates" is to reorder the UVs in a 3D program, and burn your texture to the Linden maps before you import them into SL. If that's something that you know how to do, then you already can. If not, then it's waaayy beyond what I'm willing to tackle here.

We're all hoping that, someday, we will have better avatars, and perhaps even a transitional period where you can choose which AV you are going to use. But given the scaling problems that the Lindens are currently dealing with, I'm not going to hold my breath.

And by the way, yes; you are right. The polygons on the sides of the Upper Body are considerably narrower than they should be. You can squish your textures there to compensate, but since they are only a few pixels wide, they will appear to be blurred in-world. Sadly, there isn't much that can be done, except to try to avoid putting important details in those areas, and to realize that everyone else is in exactly the same boat.

Hope this helps!