Ophelia's Gaze: 5 Signs of Low-Quality Second Life Fashion

Exclusive to NWN, Iris Ophelia's ongoing showcase of all things stylish in SL

I've decided to give you a pretty pic up top because it's going to get real ugly after the jump, believe me. There's been a lot of discussion going on lately about the value of highly critical fashion blogging in SL. Do you gloss over the flaws or zero in on them? Even if you aren't a blogger, how can you tell if the item you're wearing is truly well made? It's a fairly broad subject to cover, but I've got five points and some very valuable advice for anyone who wants to start poring over the contents of their virtual closet with a little more scrutiny.

So if you want to be critical of SL fashion, or you just want to be a more discerning consumer, here's what to look for...

Seams

Seams have been the bane of both the designer and the consumer's existence in since fashion commerce in SL began. In some cases they're essentially unavoidable, and frankly a little seam problem on an item is usually not enough to spoil it for me. If you're not sure what I mean by seams, I'll get into a little lesson first. It all begins with the avatar templates. All clothing textures are fit to these templates and uploaded, so they sit on the right place on an avatar. Pictured on the left is Chip Midnight's torso template, which I'm showing for two reasons. First, you can see the layout of the avatar mesh (the black lines, remember them for later!), and second, Chip has colourmarked the edges to make it easier to match up seams. A "misaligned" seam happens when the texture on the back, for example, isn't aligned along the sides with the texture on the front, or even where there is more texturing on the back than on the front which results in a "hard" seam. Aligning any seam is not easy, however misaligned seams (pictured in the top left image) are usually easier to fix than hard seams (on the top right), but still require a lot of patient darting back and forth between SL and Photoshop. Some designers will do that, and some will just get it close enough and move on. Seams bother some people tremendously, and others not at all, so you'll need to decide for yourself where to draw the line.

Grainy Photosourcing

Photosourcing has always been a fact of life in SL, and for that matter in other platforms that support user-created content like The Sims and IMVU. In the Official Guide to SL, Aimee Weber even provides a guide on how to photosource a sweater. Legal photosourcing can be a great way to get high quality details into a texture, if you do it right and don't overdo it (and as for illegal photosourcing, let's quietly note that this picture of Adriana Lima from NARS looks like a dozen skin lines out there, and it's unlikely that any of those designers have the rights to use the image for profit). Many of my favourite pieces in SL are a mix of photosourced material and handpainting-- the combination of the two can be incredibly effective and is what is most widely accepted as good semi-realistic texturing in SL now. However,  if it's done improperly, up close the texture can look like a grainy, pixellated mess, and from far away it can just look disjointed and out of place (think of the Uncanny Valley... but with pants).

Lack of Shading

An unshaded piece of clothing, even if it is cleverly designed, tends to look like it was plucked straight out of 2004. Isn't this why we're always bugging Hamlet about his old suit? We're getting to a point where many of us won't even buy a house with unshaded walls or furniture without a dropshadow, so clothing that completely lacks shading should be long gone by now, and thankfully most designers worth their salt have embraced the art of shading.

Halos

Halos are so repulsive to me that I can't actually find an example in my inventory of one because whenever I find an item with a halo I delete it knowing I won't ever wear it again. Haloing is when there's a little bit of white around the edges of a texture, usually a piece of clothing or a tattoo. When cutting the neckline of a shirt for example, designers use alpha layers in Photoshop to get a much cleaner edge than the clothing design tools in Second Life can provide. However, if they don't get the alpha cut exactly where it ought to be on their texture (and didn't bleed the texture out over the edges on the template a little just in case) a halo is born.

Mesh Bleeding/Distorting

This is a tricky one to judge frankly, and one where a lot of us can get caught up. Take a minute to scroll back up to the picture of the template and look at those blank lines that represent the shaping of the (female) avatar mesh. It doesn't look very consistent, does it? Unfortunately, there are a lot of areas on the avatar mesh that stretch and distort textures placed over them. if you've ever had a pair of underwear or a swimsuit in SL that smudged down the inside of your thigh, that's why. A lot of designers are very skilled at avoiding these areas (which is also why most women's underwear and swimsuits can be a little bit revealing in the front, depending on the skin), but some aren't. More importantly however, sometimes they just can't be avoided at all, for example in the image above where the design itself is doomed to be distorted by the mesh. Smeared or not, it is still a very cute top. An excellent item will be very strategically textured to avoid too much of this distorting and bleeding, but an item that might have problems here can still be great, it all depends.

Bonus Tips: Flaws Are Not Always the Designer's Fault -- Investigate For Yourself Before Criticizing

This brings me to a point for those critical blogging hopefuls mentioned earlier: be careful that what you're criticizing is actually something the designer could fix. Some mesh issues are unavoidable, some textured prim elements might need to be adjusted to fit you before the textures will line up (for example the miniskirt prim in my picture at the very top), and for that matter if a prim attachment seems darker than the rest of the outfit it's probably tinted slightly grey from a few months ago when Windlight was affecting the colour of prim attachments.

The most important tip I can give, though, is to try everything out yourself first. Way back when I was less than 2 months old, I wrote my first SL Fashion article. It was about flexible prims, and yes this was long enough ago that I could fit every single item that had been released with flexiprims into one single article.

Well, in this article, I criticized a dress Nephilaine Protagonist had made because there was a "gap in the texture between the skirt and the shirt". Well, anyone who has any experience with mesh skirts knows that that's a gap in the mesh itself, and Nephilaine couldn't do anything about it so it was an incredibly foolish comment to make. It didn't take me long to realize how stupid what I'd written was, and after that I started experimenting with clothes, skins, shoes, hair-- everything I planned to review-- so I could hopefully avoid making such stupid criticisms in the future. That experimentation gave me a much better idea of what a designer can and cannot be held accountable for, and more importantly it gave me a lot more sympathy for designers.

If you really want to be a critical blogger, or for that matter a truly discerning consumer, make some time for this experimentation, it will be well worth it.

Iris Ophelia has been featured in the New York Times and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan.

Comments

[Sioban McMahon]

Great article, Iris. Mismatched seams make me crazy.

[Sasy Scarborough]

Great article, it really does make a difference knowing how the mesh works, how the template is, and how lighting and body size can play a big part in a completed look.

Thanks for a great and insightful article.

[Otenth Paderborn]

What an excellent article! Thank you!

[Gahum Riptide]

Great points to look out for. I have to give designers MAJOR props who battle with matching patterns along seam lines. It's not easy but it can be done, and is very effective. However, I sometimes say that if you aren't good at matching patterns across seams, then play UP the seams. Even in RL patterns don't always match across seams (look at RL kimono made of printed fabric, such as the one here), and I love when a skilled designer actually does show seams, but does them properly.

Kal Rau sells a full perm shirt template that does just this. It has shading along the template seams, but also wrinkles along the seams showing the "stress" you'd get.

On the other hand, there's not really a good excuse for things like hems not matching, and halos around the edges.

[Chestnut Rau]

Excellent post!

[Madame Maracas]

All very good points!

When I look at promotional images for clothing by a designer I don't know and trust their diligence, if I cannot see their shoulder seams, under arm seams, over the hip/thigh seams, I will presume that they didn't bother to align them properly and move on.

I'm a picky stinker that way.

It is a pain in the butt to get that stuff aligned, but if I can do it I expect others to do the same before I part with my hard-earned L's.

- Madame

[Leeza Catteneo]

I really hope that LL will introduce a new meshed avatar soon instead of leaving it to the residents to handle a 7 years old Poser 1 "anatomy" and it's poorly developed and totally messed up (nearly untexturable) spots.

Some of the triangles on the mesh doesnt even make sense and make it way harder to design without guessing and "endless" trial and error.

The whole mesh was obviously not developed to get an paintable UV-Map. Not getting deeper into "fingers" and the rest od the "anatomy", now.

It's just kind of a joke that LL is pretending to build a future orientated platform with the most outdated mesh available in the virtual world.

Maybe this could be the next *shout* LL is listening to instead of 55.000US$-behind-a-firewall-SL-surprises which have the same avatar. It would enrich the SL experience for everyone and suit LL's real customers.

[Rodion Resistance]

@Leeza

If LL did that (i.e. change the avatar mesh), what happens to the zillions of clothing being sold currently inworld?

[Leeza Catteneo]

@ Rodion

I'm sure there could be a transition period and maybe even an option to choose a certain avatar. I think it's already possible.

But in the end of the day new clothes for a well developed and new meshed avatar would look even better. And it's not only clothes. It's the whole appearance of avatars walking around in SL.

And a lot of designers are actually begging for this for a long time now and for real meshes instead of sculpties.

Those 2 things would be groundbreaking news and add new challenges and therefor FUN to create new things. And I think it's about time.

[isisprincess]

i have thought for a long time that they should come up with a second mesh to choose from in apperince mode (i am picturing a button to switch between the two like how you can switch from male to female in app mode). so that when you want to wear an outfit made for the first mesh you still can. designers could then tell people which mesh there clothing was made for (female mesh original or the new advanced female mesh) maybe designers would even sell two versions so that people could deside. it sounds exciting and very much something i would be happy to have in my apperince mode to choose from. and more advanced sliders for the new mesh would be great

[Menno Ophelia]

Great post Iris!

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I'm not a 3D expert, but wouldn't it be possible to implement an optional function to mathematically convert existing clothing textures from the old mesh to the new(regardless of perms)? It wouldn't be a perfect solution, but it might save my 'Last Call' from the back of the closet in the event of a mesh upgrade.

[camilla]

Its nice to see a post about texture bleeding in a popular blog ! Stretch/bleed is something I always have to fight against when creating new clothing, and the fact that most of the bleed is due to the poor texture mapping of the avatars needs to be known and widely spread !

However, some of these stretching areas COULD be adressed with very little work from LL, WITHOUT altering existing content.
I allow myself to place here a link to a jira report I made some time ago, about the top of the tigh area. Click on the two gif images to see what could be done. Left is the solution I propose, right is what we have now.
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-13850
I crawl at your feet for you to vote for it ! This fix would allow us to create many things that are just impossible to make today without the ugly stretch we all know.

I alos put my +1000000 for a new , well thought and crafted SL avatar, that could live beside the old one as an option.

camilla

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Aww excellent article, Iris! I've passed it along to an acquaintance who is doing her academic research in this area...

[Momoko Pekli]

There is another underlying issue with body shapes. Some shape settings will:-
- turn straight lines into wavy lines, especially boob settings that are high or low.
- stretch textures on womens' boobs
- stretch textures for men. Many male shapes have such wide shoulders and narrow hips that very little will look good.
- hide shoulder detail if the shoulders are narrow.
- distort the waist if the hips are too high or low

[Archie Lukas]

Very interesting

i'm afraid what really bugs me is the hexagonal boobs and other polgon shapes instead of curves in SL

Time to update the tech behind the avatar
well overdue

[Christina George]

This might be old today more of the high script and complexity but if the outfit is rigged right. But since bom is now well I feel people should learn the alpha system right.