Making clothes for men and women.

So my friend are trying to make some uni-sex clothing, and when using the previewer, it looks like that the model figure changes between men and women so much, that the images get distorted. I also figured out that all av's torso's are mostly different, so re-arranging the clothing wont really make a huge difference.

So my question is, what would be the best way to make universal clothing? Should I build it with primitives? Or is there really a technique or scripting that would make the clothing texture to conform to the body shape?

I tried searching for this, but I didn't really come up with the results I'm looking for to answer these questions. Your assistance is MUCH appreciated!

As far as unisex clothing goes I'd say to keep away from putting any detail in the lower chest area. That portion gets the most distortion between male and female avatars. The back also gets distorted too. The collar area, sleeves and even the lower torso areas seem to have less problems and you can add more detail or place your logos there.

Honestly it is not that hard to do unisex clothing, so long as you keep the size of the lettering down and place them in out of the way places.

When i say out of the way places i mean using the template for breast placement, put above and below the breasts, between works as well, but not on the breasts. If you place something on the breast it is deformed by breasts, the degree of deform varies by the size of said breasts.

I have done a few unisex shirts, it's really simple so long as you follow what i said. Also the back becomes distorted because if you cover the whole back, a man will extend the letterings, a woman perhaps will shrink simply because the templates are modeled on the generic size of the avatar. Now if you keep the lettering small and the pictures if any centered, you will have little to no problems.

Oh and for a good template, get the CMFF templates if you can find them, they are the best I have seen and what I use. The one you get from the SL site is way to vague.

Thank you for your input, what about suspenders? I was thinking of doing the suspenders with prims. Do you recommend that?

Oh and one more thing, are sunglasses hard to make or is there a tutorial in SL that can teach me this. Thanks.

i wouldnt recommend using prims for suspenders as it might look funny when ur body moves like when u dance or something like that... it depends on where u attach it really. I havent really tried but this is my hypothesis.. also different ppl have different body shapes thus it might vary in fit.

Its much better to do it as a texture that way it just fits nicely no matter what body shape u have...

as for sunglasses there are two ways to do them from my understanding. One is to construct it purely by using prims meaning to say that u use the prims for frames glasses etc etc... it takes a whole lot of time but once its done it would look just realistically awesome..

as for the other way its way faster. basically what u do is to use a texture of a sunglasses pic and paste it onto a prim and voila glasses!

Suspenders make another item of clothing, so they fit everyone no fuss no muss. If your lazy draw them over the shirt and have it as just one peice of clothing, shirt undershirt or jacket.

I think a better way is to make the suspenders a seperate peice so you have a shirt and a jacket for the suspenders. That way if say someone wants to be a redneck, they can lose the shirt and have suspenders on.

Making the suspenders a separate piece? If you're saying making the jacket have the suspenders as the texture of the jacket? How would that be done?

Easy! Draw the suspenders on layers without any background. Meaning, you can have one layer for the basic suspender and other layers for the details, all transparent.

When done, use the basic suspender layer to make your alpha channel. You can do this by holding CRTL and clicking on the little window with the suspenders in the layer. You will then get a selection consisting of only the suspenders. You can tell because the marching ants will be going around the suspenders.

You use this selection to make your alpha, Select/Save Selection. Now activate the alpha and everything else should be reddish. Save the file as a tga and upload. When you go into appearance, make a new jacket and drop the suspenders texture into the top box. Save and you are done.

You don’t need to worry about the bottom box unless you want the suspenders to go down all the way to the pants. If you do, they will have to be drawn in two images, upper and lower. This may be harder because, you will have to make sure the top and bottom parts line up correctly. Be aware that you made have to fiddle with the top and lower drawings to get them to fit correctly.

I hope this helps,

Jen