How to make suits with skirts?

I'm interested in making a suit jacket with a long bottom and I'm told the best way to do that is to use a skirt.

I am using Chip's wonderful templates. Any suggestions on how to make the pattern between the upperbody and the skirt seamless?

Is there anyway to test this other than by going into Second Life? I am able to test the upper body textures in Poser but is there a skirt prim I can use with Poser to make sure there is no seam between the skirt and shirt?

Thanks in advance.

Chip's templates come with a color-coded skirt seam matching guide. Take a good look at the upper body template and the skirt template. You'll see it. Not sure if it's on the jpeg versions, but it is on the PSD's.


Unfortunately, no. The downloadable av models do not come with skirts for some unexplained reason.

Umm, you might want to check the download again, Chosen. There was a skirt mesh in mine.

Unless by "comes with" you meant that it was possible to choose it from the Figure list in Poser, and have the Figure wear it like conformable clothing. Unfortunately, that isn't available. Sigh.

So, Tyg, you can Import it into Poser, and see what the texture looks like on the skirt. It's theoretically possible to do that, put Chip's templates on both pieces, match them perfectly, and then use that to make sure that the two pieces match up in SL. But it sounds like an awful lot of work, to me.

I think, really, your best bet is to be as careful as you can with the templates, and then upload and hope for the best. If you're using Chips, you probably won't have to adjust it much. Hopefully.

Hmm, looks like I'd been missing quite a few things. Looks like either they've added a bunch since I first DL'ed the models, or else the zip file was corrupted the first time around. In the attached image, the list on the left is the batch of files I'd been working with, and the one on the right I just downloaded now. As you can see, I previously had no SL Clothing folder, and no SL Avatar folder. The avatar files were all in one single folder, and there were no skirt files at all.

Thanks for the tip, Robin.

Chosen, is there anything in your Clothing folder? I have one, but it's empty. The only skirt I have is the Skirt Mesh Object that's outside the folder.

Because it occurs to me that if there's supposed to be something in the folder, then it's possible that there is a skirt that loads perfectly in Poser, and if so, then it would be possible to check the seams and things before uploading.

(And it would also be possible to export an .obj file that has them both, and just paint on them in BodyPaint or Deep Paint.)

I'll need to check that when I'm back at the other computer.

Oh, thank you, I found it.

Unfortunately, I get errors when I try to load it in Poser 4. Suggestions?

Yes, Robin, there are 2 files in the clothing folder, a png and a pp2. I was able to load them into Poser 5 as a clothing prop, no problem. This is going to be helpful. I'm very glad this thread came up.


Rando, I'm not sure how to help you with your errors, sorry. It would help if you could post what the errors say. My first instinct though is to assume maybe you didn't put the skirt folder in the right place. I've never used Poser 4, but I think it's got the same directory structure as Poser 5 (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Assuming that's true, put the SL CLothing folder inside your ...\Runtime\libraries\props folder.

Chosen, thanks! There they were, in the new download. Oddness in the files, for sure.

I, too, am glad that all of this came up.

Rando, do the errors say something like, "This was made with a more recent version of Poser, and I'm not sure it will load"? (I've forgotten the actual wording, but that's the gist of it.)

If so, go ahead and try to load it anyway. They usually do load fine, in spite of being saved from more recent versions of the software.

If it says something else, please let us know what that is, as Chosen said.

No, that's not the error I get. It says:

Cannot open Runtime/libraries/props/<directory>/<name>.pp2

(I don't remember the variables offhand, so I'm putting placeholders in.) Clicking OK does nothing.

Xenon must have added the skirt to the downloads. It wasn't in the version that I downloaded either. I did the skirt matching guide the hard way.

Can someone tell me how to use the skirt template in Poser. There doesnt seem to be any choice for skirt in the materials pulldown. All I have in Poser6 is Material_Lowerbody Material_Upperbody material_head and Preview. I was expecting a Material_Skirt.

I tried some Lace socks using a texture and a separate alpha graphic as Robin described in his superb explanation in this thread
/109/06/52400/1.html

Is the alpha effect supposed to show up in the preview window? I could only appear to get the correct result if I did a CTRL+R and rendered the figure. The applied texture seemed to show in preview but the Alpha had no effect as a lace.

Hi!

There is a Skirt_Material, but in order to get it, you need to change the Object to Props > SL_skirt_1. After that, it will be where you expect it to be.

But be careful; the skirt in Poser does not automatically fit the way it does in Second Life. Before you can see if your textures will match, you need to resize and move the skirt, so it matches the way it will in game.

I suggest that you do this by applying Chip's templates to both the Skirt and the Upper Body Materials, and then using the Parameter dials to match up the "match lines" on the two of them.

Then I suggest that you save the Female and Male skirts as props, so that you have them for future use.

(Of course, whether or not it actually matches will still vary across the Avatars in Second Life, because the AV sliders change the way the skirt fits on the Avatar. Unfortunately, there's no way to avoid that.)

And you are quite right. You do need to render in order to see the Alpha in Poser. Alpha isn't supported in the Poser Preview.

(Oh, and I'm female by the way. NP, common mistake, can't tell from the name... but just FYI. )