Updated male templates? Clothes previewer?

I'm having some problems with some of the clothes I am designing. Are there any current or updated male templates anywhere? I can't find any. Further, any info I do find is dated 2006, 2007. I have gone to Chip Midnights site and all the templates I find there are female, or maybe The template is used for both, I don't know. I realize it's a women's world, but give me a break... *grinz. I am also using an outdated clothes previewer and can't seem to find one that is newer. I'm not sure, but I think the avatar used in this older previewer is different (older mesh?) and my textures don't fit right once I get them uploaded, despite the fact that they look ok in the previewer. The other issue is, I'm having one heck of a time getting a texture aligned on the 'lower' or 'skirt' layer. The texture I created has a pattern on it and I need to make a lower texture with it, but I cannot seem to get the pattern to line up on the lower layer. I understand that textures stretch and such on the avatar mesh. I know that there must be a way to do this. Any suggestions?

There's no difference between the male and female UV layout. There's only one avatar base model, and it's female. It's called Ruth. All avatar shapes, both male and female, are just morphs of Ruth.

The reason for this is because, geometrically, it's far easier to alter a female shape to look male than it is to go the other way around. All you need to do is shrink the breasts, narrow the hips, bulge the crotch area, widen the shoulders, square off the jaw a little, and it's male. There's no new geometry to add. But attempting to go the other way, it would be easy to make certain mistakes, like forgetting to include enough polygons for the breasts, which would necessitate the construction of a whole new model. If you're gonna have just one, then making it female is always the smart way to go.

Nature does the exact same thing, by the way. All human fetuses start out female. At a certain point in the development, for males, hormones are introduced which trigger the alteration toward a masculine form. Otherwise, the shape remains feminine.


As for your "outdated" mesh, I'm not sure what you mean. The avatar model has not changed at all in five years. (It's long overdue for an overhaul, but that's a whole other topic.)

Thanks Chosen, I appreciate the info. Kewl, I'll just got with it. I wish some one had told me this a long time ago...LOL. I'm not familiar with UV mapping as of yet, but learning.

While it is true that there is no difference between the *templates* for male and female avatar, there definitely *IS* a big difference as to how that template is laid out on the avatar mesh.

I've discussed that problem some time ago on the XStreetSL forums, feel free to read this thread (and take a good look at the images) if you're interested:

http://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=66994

The male morph target has slightly tweaked UV mapping (mainly in the chest AFAIK), as do some of the other more extreme morphs to compensate for stretch. When the templates were made there was no way to get the UV mapping for the morph targets. Since the full data set was extracted I've never gotten around to redoing the templates, and I'm still not sure it would be worth the effort. I've never run into any problems from having the templates not account for those variations. What changes the most between male and female are the areas of stretch and distortion. Those mostly aren't due to changing UVs but to the morphs changing the polygon sizes. The templates never helped with that to begin with. You just get used to where the trouble spots are.

Yeah, somewhere in the middle of the SLCP thread (good luck finding it though, that thing is looooong) someone noticed that the male UVs in SLCP are a little different from the UVs in SL. So wait, the full data set is available now? I suppose I should correct the male avatar in SLCP now.

Johan, see the "Complete Avatar Dataset" sticky thread. I haven't ever tried to do a comparison to see how much the UVs vary across morph targets but I don't think it's much until you start adjusting certain shape sliders towards their max.

Thanks for the replies. I guess I didn't ask the question correctly, I do have the SLCP and that is what I was asking. I use it to preview my textures, but while they may look fine in SLCP, they usually don't look right in world. That is why I was asking if the 'mesh' (in SLCP) was different. I guess at this point it is a moot issue, I just try to compensate for it. I also have AVPainter, and have been trying to use it for previewing, with some success.

I appreciate the comments everyone

Someone (I think it was Chosen) posted a topography guide for the male and female avatars. I have found it very helpful, when used with the grid, to help with male clothing. I'm sorry I looked but probably not hard enough, it is in one of the stickied threads I think.

Edit: or maybe it was Chip, and maybe the thread is like 2 threads below this one (I was looking in the wrong place lol)

/109/eb/155651/1.html

/red face

hehe, the various templates and whatnot are spread around in several threads but you can always find the links in the top post of the sticky template thread.