more conservative/casual clothing, possibility of opening a shop

I hope this is the right place to post this, I have only posted on the forums a few times. First, I would like to say that there are alot of great clothes in SL and many talented designers. I shop alot in SL, more than in RL and I have many great oufits. I have been discussing with several other women lately on SL the desire/possibility for more shops that specialize in more conservative and casual clothing (again not taking away from all the great stuff on RL.) By more conservative, I mean longer skirts, shirts with sleeves/longer sleeves, looser fitting, etc. for times when "you" want to wear those kind of clothes. Unfortunately, I have a limited amount of energy and "making" clothes, building, scripting do not appear to be among my talents. But, I would like to be involved perhaps in partial ownership of a shop/provide whatever ideas and support I am able to. If anyone is interested respond to this post or IM me inworld. Again, I would really like to thank everyone that designs clothes for SL.

Coreshadow B.

So this post doesn't fall away and because I am interested, although not sure I am talented enough (heh!) I am working on making enough clothes for a shop. I am planning on more mens clothes but I will make ladies clothes (it seems that most fashion designers do women's clothes. Or is it me? )

So no promises but we can talk.

There are several reasons that so much of women's clothing in SL is 'daring'. Short skirts and tight, clingy fits. The fact that much of it is actually purchased by males for their female alts, or is purchased with the intent to entice males, is actually a rather small factor. It's primarily due to limitations in the structure and texture mapping (UV Mapping) of the SL clothing parts.

Long skirts:

The UV mapping for the center front and center back of a skirt in SL is horrendous. It streaches a narrow triangle down the center into a very wide triangle when the feet are moved apart, and terribly distorts any pattern that is not solid, or horizontal stripes. For that reason a lot of SL clothing designers stick with very short skirts, which cut off above the distorted triangle. Anything longer than a miniskirt has this glitch.

Long skirts (and long pants) that are tight are also a problem for furry avatars, who often have prim parts on their lower legs and feet that poke through a long dress or long pants. So long skirts have a somewhat reduced market, as furry females can't easily wear some of them.

Loose clothes:

Experiment with the sliders that allow clothing to be looser, and you'll be apalled at how the textures on the shirts and jackets distort. What was once a nice clean horizontal band across the chest now looks like Charlie Brown's zig-zag patterned shirt! And no matter what you do with sliders, it is simply impossible to get rid of the "wet t-shirt cling effect". The chest area utterly refuses to bridge the gap between the breasts in a realistic manner.

The shape of sleeves is very limited in SL. You can have bell-shaped cuffs, but not shirt cuffs that hang naturally down, like a 15the century French Houpeland, or the sleeves on a proper Japanese Kimono. Sleeves that are loose and wide at the armpit and get narrower toward the elbow and/or wrist are also impossible.

Pants are better. You can make loose, comfy pants fairly well, but still can't make a baggy set of sweat pants, nor can you really make 'harem pants' with a loose leg and a tight cuff.

So what else can you do?

Some designers are getting around these limitations by using prim parts, or parts made with flexi-prims. It takes a lot of experimentation to do this, and often results in an outfit that only properly fits a certain size and shape of avatar.

I appriciate that info as well as I start building my collection. I used to make clothes and skins for Sims and other 3d games (like Dungeon Siege etc). And knowing what is almost impossible to fix saves hours of aggrivation. Has anyone suggested to the Lindens the possibility of either an off line prim builder or the ability to upload obj files that can be converted to prim?

There is a way to do this... hunt Scripting Tips for threads started by Jeff Gomez. It's not pretty though, or rather it's elegant code, but as primmy as hell.

I have to ask... although there are a number of truly horrible builds in SL, there are also a plethora of truly lovely ones. You know, as well as I, that they've all been built in world. There are always people from a 3D design background who bemoan missing x, y, z tool (subtractive joining and extruding being the commonest two I've heard), but we still muddle along with these good builds despite that.

I also remember, to steal his words from him a post from Chosen Few, who is a professional 2D and 3D artist. He used to moan about the tools compared to his prefered 3D software (Maya I think?). Now he finds his SL building is improving his already high quality skills because minimising prims to fit into plots has helped him learn how to minimise polys in the outside world even better than before.

That is what I have been hearing. Right now I need time. Lots of time.
I got Gomez's tool and I miss my Maya as well, ( a glorious gift!) but oh well, I get to learn prims and with all the business opening up in SL it will look cool on my Resume.
I am shooting for a mix of styles, men women uniforms, dresses, old world, couture. Anything that is fun for me. Most will be photo realistic ( I love my Photoshop CS and PSP 11!)If I can I will walk around in my actual clothes and or a 5000 dollar bespoke three piece suit