Is all clothing required to fit within template boundaries?

I have a bit of an odd question, and I hope I can explain it properly.

I want to make clothing that has a bit of drape to it. I'd also like trousers to have a bit of flair or a baggy look. Now, my question is, am I limited to work within the template only? If so, then all clothing will look more like a second skin. I've seen trousers and skirts in game that exceed the limits set by the template. I do not think these are flexi prim because they do not move in the manner flexi's usually do.

Any help would be appreciated.

I have learned so much from reading the posts here and would like to thank everyone for sharing their techniques.

What they are doing is setting the appearance settings for the clothing on the avatar, things like how loose the clothing is, wrinkles, etc.

Go into your avatar's appearance mode and make a generic piece of clothing and play with the sliders, and you'lll see.

Ahhh, I see. So it is entirely possible to make just a basic outfit conform to the template and then adjust it in Second Life? What if I want to texture it? Should I do this in SL or in photoshop prior to uploading it?

What if I later want to give the item to another avatar, will my adjustments remain or will these be lost and have to be recustomized?

I'm sorry for all these questions, but this is new to me. This board is great, even if someone here sneezes I learn something new

Thanks so much for your quick response.

These are good questions. One way to answer them is to *try it*..

If you have a friend in SL, you can try on each others clothes. Also, this is a perfectly good reason to have an alt. You can log in to SL twice, as two diff avatars, and use one of you as the model.

I am pretty sure that you should add fabric to the templates in some outside tool such as Photoshop or the Gimp. There is a lot of technical detail about making patterns line up at seams, and adding folds and wrinkles.

Have you ever seen one of those t-shirts that has muscles or breasts painted on it, that look sort of realistic from far away? SL works like that too. The drapes and the folds can be *painted* on in photoshop.

Notice that I did not say this is *easy*.

Yes. I'd define it as more than just "possible" though; it's standard.


SL has no internal texturing tools. All texturing is done in 3rd part programs like Photoshop. That's what the templates are for.


Once you've assigned slider settings to a garment, they remain properties of the garment, not the avatar that's wearing it. So, if you make a shirt with loose sleeves, the sleeves will still be loose when you give it to someone else.

Lee, Chosen,
Thank you both very much. The clothing aspect is a lot clearer now. Infact, thanks to your messages, I even got the confidence to dabble in it a bit and come up with something that looks rather nice. Wrinkles and realism is another aspect that I want to tackle once I can work my way through those dreaded seams.

Chosen thanks for explaining about slider controls.

Cheers to everyone here for their help and encouragement.