Why?

Why do people tolerate seams on clothes in SL?

I can understand clothing designers that incorporate the avatar template seams into a particular design of jeans or shirt, but what I am talking about are clothing texture designs that completely ignore the transition from front to back, top to bottom, or just pretend that the shoulder seams are invisible while the beautiful continuous pattern suddenly dissappears at the seam and suddenly reappears out of alignment on the other side. Granted, the avatar UVW design sucks worse than explosive decompression, but you just don't see seams like that in other professionally produced content for games like MYST Online or WOW. The seam problem, from my observations, is seen across the market from well established designers to beginning designers with a few noteable exceptions. Is the clothing market undervalued, or do people just not care, or are the avatar UVW's THAT bad? I know the problem can be avoided because I design skins, and people don't buy skins with seams. So, why do clothes with seams sell?

Two words: No refunds.

Perhaps because there are clothes in real life with seams?

Usually you cant see the seems on the vendor pictures - and you cant try on the clothes before time.

One word back: Demos

I suppose if people keep buying poor quality products then there is a market for them.

Buyer beware. There are so many "designers" trying to make a buck quickly and quality takes time to master. However, some of those designers will get very good at seams one day and it makes sense to keep your eye out

Demos - I get them for hair, but are rarely seen for clothes. If I could demo clothing, I wouldn't buy stuff with seams.

I have noticed that too. Why are there no clothing demos? Too much time invested?

Ah Nam, you just answered your own question! I have a pile of clothes in my inventory that looked good in the picture, but have bad seams, cuts, fills, the list goes on.

There are no demos becuase of SEAMS! (and other imperfections they would like you not to notice until they have your L$).

More likely it's due to prim useage. I've thought about adding demo versions for my clothing but I have several hundred items on display. When every item requires two prims instead of one it would be a problem not only in terms of prim allowance, but an even bigger problem in terms of wall space. High ticket items like skins and such should always have a demo version (both because of price and because most are no transfer making returns or exchanges problematic). All of my clothing is transferable so that if anyone buys something they're not satisfied with they can return it for a refund or exchange. It's probably the best argument in favor of making clothing transferable rather than copyable.

This is sad if people hold this to be true in general
But, if this is true then any clothing designer that did produce seamless clothing might do exceptionally well in a market filled with low quality clothing. Why are there so few designers taking advantage of this? The answer has to be a little more complex than just plain deception otherwise the market would have compensated, don't you think?

I spent the weekend looking for a white dress jacket--every single one I purchased had seams at the shoulders, at the waistline, or both. The only exception to this was a designer whose name I won't mention here (but she's well known for doing quality work and has the intials VV in world), but the cloth wasn't was I was looking for. (I still bought a copy of it and am loving it.) In all honesty, though, when it comes to finding clothing that is of any quality, I've simply started having everything custom made--that way I can keep sending it back until it's what I want. Yeah, it costs more, but ultimately I'm a lot happier.

You get what you pay for, in other words.

Kam

I don't see why so many clothes have seams. It isn't a matter of skill, it is a matter of attention to detail. All one has to do is check the preview before uploading, and tweak if necessary. Then once it looks good in preview, upload and try it on, and perhaps tweak more if need be.

I've tried making some clothing....mostly shirts. All were just for me. It is hard to line up things on clothing such as a line. In Photoshop if I were to draw a line all the way across the front and the back template for a shirt it probably wouldn't line up. Patterns are easier and can blend if you're lucky, lol. I just wish the preview option when uploading a texture was a little more accurate. How about a 3d program that lets you preview your creations on an avatar template. I've heard they exist, but I don't know where to find them.



P.S. Chip, the icon next to your name makes me laugh every time I see it, lol.

Gaybot, try running a Google search on SL Clothing Previewer. It's a decent previewer for when the Preview grid is down. Not perfect, but better than some.

The prim excuse seems a little shakey. I'm not even close to maxing out my prim usage on 1/4 sim with hundreds of demo skins for makeovers. My building design for the store is a prim hog too

The rest of what you said makes complete sense. I would probably make transferable clothing if I sold it. Too bad we don't have 'Wardrobe' files that could link uncopyable items to multiple outfits no matter where they sit in ones inventory.

Demo clothes is a great idea

A lot of us whove bought clothes in the past and Hated them after buying would love the idea.

Seems are a pain

so is color leak on your thighs with panties - or even panties that are crotchless and arent supposed to be.

Also Skirts 90% of the time look better on the wall than they do when you wear them.

I think if someone immplimented demo clothes and word spread a lot of people would shop there - since its a very good statement that the owner is confident in the clothing quality, and thoughtful towards their customers.

(Chip youd be a good candidate- your clothes dont have many of the seems Nam is complaining about. Plus a lot look very realisitc)

Prim count isn't a problem for me either, yet, but wall space is a big problem. But most people don't own a quarter or more of a sim and many retail space renters pay by the prim.

I'm guessing something could be scripted around this, though. (For example, you could add a script to the vendors that changes "Sit here" to "Get demo". When the user "sits" on the vendor, they don't actually move - the sit target is a long way away from the vendor wall - and the vendor immediately unsits them and gives them the demo.)

Of course the problem with this is the lag caused by the extra scripts.. that in turn can be solved but it means linking the vendor prims which is a lot of bother to set up.

That unfortunately is called a "sit teleporter" and will throw the avatar up to 300m away.

However, one COULD easily make a vendor "touch for demo, pay to own"

Why not throw large quantities of demos into a single prim? One entire wall space of demo clothing could be stuffed into a single prim and the customer could then browse thier inventory for the item(s) in question rather than click individual prims on a wall to get the items. Stuff of little interest could simply be deleted as it is gone through. As long as names are accurate matching the items off the wall with those in inventory wouldn't be too difficult.

Um, who said the sit target had to be that far away from the vendor? Just have it set the avatar back in front of the vendor again.

Unfortunately, aside from printing "DEMO" in large ugly letters across an otherwise lovely outfit, there really is no way that I know of to provide a demo for clothes. And if the clothing includes prims, it's impossible, unless you want to give your prim work away.

I don't have enough free prims to add extra vendors for "demo" versions of my clothes. It would double my overhead, because I would have to double the number of vendor prims. A "Big box o' demo Freebies" is a very poor way to offer a demo of a dozen or more multi-piece clothing outfits. Making demo versions to give out free/cheap in-world would also require doubling my texture upload expenses, as I would have to upload marked demo versions of every texture that I use in an outfit.

Personally, I work very hard to match seams on my clothes that I sell. But even with the best work, sometimes different avatar shapes screw up the work.

Makers who sell clothes with bad seams rarely get repeat business from me. Those who match seams well, I go back to time after time for repeat business.

I cant speak for any other designer out there, so take this with a grain of salt....

I dont really think it is fair to assume designers don't provide demos because they want to trick people into buying sub par clothing. perhaps some designers do this, but dont make a generalization.

as far as why the seams are there in the first place.. well, once again, cant speak for anyone else... but for instance.. some patterns such as plaid, argyle, etc.. are very difficult to line up in certain places (shirt and pants.. as texture is distorted on pants... leg and foot.. also distorted) and while i am sure it is possible, some people do this as a hobby and dont have hours to spend trying to figure out how to distort their plaid pants to make it line up with the shirt layer. Some people just dont have the skill to do it. Long, long time ago i remember one particular very popular designer making a disclaimer in her blog that no, her seams did not always line up because she hand draws everything and does not intend it to be perfection. Some people just dont have countless hours to spend lining up every tiny pixel. It can be very daunting. Perhaps they should price their wares accordingly (i definitely keep my clothing prices low because i am not always perfect and never claim to be) i do think the seam issue is very largely affected by the crappy UV map. if it were more like.. the poser UV map, for instance, where the top and bottom are one joined unit, you would never see waist seams.

However, having made both clothing and skins.. i have to say lining up all the seams on my skin was much, MUCH easier than lining them up on some of the more complicated patterns on clothing.