Lesson Learned in Clothing!!

Recently it had been brought to my attention that my Shirts I had been tinkering with were too small and were showing my Middrift.

So I started pursuing finding out why. For 3 days off and on I worked with Char Linden on this and I have finally came to one conclusion after spending $200 uploading and reuploading files. The Shirt Template that we make shirts on is inadequate.

It seems to me that the layering system works like this.

The Jackest act like Jackets
THe Shirt acts like a Vest
The Undershirt acts like a Shirt
so that means we are seriously lacking an applicable Undershirt.

Another thing I have noticed is the fact that the templates are based on a small female frame. If any graphic is put on a template for a Large muscular male such as myself it stretches the graphic out of shape and no longer looks correct. Hence the "Pixilated Dragon" someone mentioned earlier in one of the threads.

So here finally is what I am asking does anyone else think we need to have at least one more layer for the clothing?

Also do we need to develope a "Male" Template for the avatars.

Its sort of flustrating to work on something and then it go bad when you put it on your avatar because of the way the templates are. I like making T-shirts but if I dont have the right templates then I need to stop for a while till I figure out a way to get them modified right without wasting a lot of money to upload textures.

Any Helpful hints or tricks would be welcomed

Sincerely, ShadowWeaver

Hi Shadow,

There are a couple tricky issues with the avatar when creating clothes textures.

All avatars use the same base poly mesh. The sliders and M/F button just morph and distort that one mesh. This allows any texture to work interchangably between any avatar. Also, this means that there only needs to be one texture template since that is the state of the model in it's default, unmorphed, position.

But, as you've discovered, a texture that works well on one avatar may look stretchy on another. If you are making a shirt texture for a particular avatar, you can minimize the strechyness through trial and error by distorting the stretched area in you paint program and reapplying the texture. It's a bit like trying to draw on a balloon and then inflating it to see the results, but that's the best way to minimize texture distortion for the time being. And once you get one texture looking good, you can pretty much tell which areas of your avatar are stretching and adjust all your textures to compensate. (Still, that "unstreched" texture you've worked hard on will look even more distorted on an avatar that has different proportions than the one you were working on.)

In short, there can be no one perfect texture template except one you create yourself for your particularly shaped avatar. But at least the one we give you does indicate how the base model relates to the texture which usually gets you 90% of the way there.

Another potentially tricky area is the jacket layer. The jacket sliders actually work across two texture areas, the upper and lower body. This makes creating a seamless texture for the jacket layer challenging, since you have to match texture edges across separate texture files. This is admittedly not the most user friendly way to allow users to create jackets, but unfortunately it's the only way we can do it at all with our existing avatar technology. The lower body template does indicate the area of the mesh covered by the jacket sliders.

I'm not sure what's causing your shirt textures to expose your midrift. The templates provided do cover the entire mesh. I've noticed some avatars with a similar problem in the past, and it turned out that the texture they were using had an alpha channel that made the tummy area of the shirt transparent. If you happen to be using one of those textures as a template, you might be inadvertently using that alpha channel. You can check the alpha channel in your paint program against the templates we provide to make sure this isn't what's going on in your case.

Good luck!

-Xenon

Thank you Xenon, I appreciate that however, Dan Linden had told me to do the same thing. I went in and deleted the Apha layer and it still happend when I uploaded and use the Texture on the "Shirt" template. I had checked all the sliders and the shirt length was at 100 so it should have went into the pants. However, others were still seeing my Midrift where as I was not. Once I switched over and started using the "Undershirt" template I have not had that problem. Just to explain when I am saying Shirt and Undershirt I mean when I am in apperance mode and I click Create a New Shirt then apply the Texture that has been uploaded it creates a short shirt even with the sliders at 100. But when I do Create New Undershirt and apply the texture it works fine.

I have been tinkering with Meshes and Textures in other 3d modeling programs and I understand that your system and methodology may be different than what I am acustom to. Therefore I am open to any suggestions because the problem is still there I checked it again last night.

I also did what you said and checked the one alpha channel that had been used in the past and overlayed it on both the "Black wire frame Mesh Template" that Dan Linden gave me when I started and the >PDF mesh that I downloaded off the website. The Alpha channel was in such a mannor that it had plenty of Overlap for blending. The problem has been just on the Shirt Texture Models so far. I havent attempted Pants or Shoes as of yet but I plan to in the future.

I have a Friend in the game that has the same problem with the shirts and the shirt templates she has gone as far as using the Jacket Model to make her shirts with and she is one of the best Clothes Designers I have seen so far. Fey Brightwillow.

Xenon, if you have any questions on this about my particular situation Char Linden worked with me on it for like 3 days. It finally got her flustrated because one minute it was right the next it wasn't and it was all dealing with the Shirt Model.

Hope you get a chance to look into this for us all.
Sincerely, Shadow Weaver

I'm sure it's much too late to suggest new features but here's what I think would be wonderful in regards to clothing... have one more layer for front (chest) and back decals. It would be a standard size and you'd use an alpha channel. It would be a straight planar projection applied *after* any body morphs. Of course the engine would need to be capable of supporting more than one set of UV coords per poly and I'm assuming it doesn't currently allow that. Having a decal layer would sure make clothing design and tattoos easier to create.

I'm probably just being blind, but I can't find the templates on the redesigned web site. The section under Guides & Tutorials containing the clothing how-to PDF has a link to the textures section, but there don't seem to be any templates there. Can someone toss me a link?

Chip there is a place for Tattoos to stay permanent on your AV without having to use an extra layer. Go to the Skin on the lower left side of the view window of apperance you will see where you can select 2 textures for Tattoos one is for upper and the other is for lower body....Hope that helps.

ShadowWeaver

Downloads >>>Textures and Extras>>>look to the right and click Fashion...SOrry I didnt get a link but my I lost it somehow getting back to here.

ShadowWeaver

Aha! Yeah, it's under Fashion.

Lindens, could you please change the link on https://secondlife.com/download/guides.php to https://secondlife.com/download/textures/fashion.php? It's currently pointing to https://secondlife.com/download/textures.php, which is the page with the samples of clothing rather than the templates as promised.