Materials-Ready Second Life Fashion from FATEwear, Coming Soon to a Virtual Poolside Near You

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

If you're eager to take a piece of materials-enabled mesh fashion for a spin in Second Life, FATEwear is a brand worth paying attention to. Designer Damien Fate has been sharing some of his experiments with SL's Materials Project Viewer (I wrote about one of these early demonstrations/tests here), and last week he announced that his upcoming releases, starting with the supremely sexy men's swim trunks shown above, would include materials-ready versions for those interested in trying them out.

Curious? You should be...

 

Damien recently plurked the video above, along with the following explanation:

The materials viewer is coming very soon so with that in mind I will be providing 'materials ready' versions of the FATEwear releases between now and materials viewer launch. Here you can see a comparison between 6 objects that are the same mesh.

The top row is untextured (no diffuse), the bottom row is textured. The first column has no material shaders applied, this is how things currently look in Second Life. The second column uses a combination of normal mapping and specular maps to acheive a more realistic sheen look to the trunks, the third column is a 'wet' look, since these are swimming trunks you might want them to look wet. All three versions will be provided in the one package.

Exciting times ahead!

Materials are a natural fit for swimwear, allowing for a convincingly "wet" look without baking a static lighting effect directly onto the texture itself. Of course you'll still need the Materials Viewer to take advantage of these stunning new effects -- download it here so you'll be ready to take a look at FATEwear's materials the second they're released.

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Iris Ophelia (@bleatingheart, Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.

Comments

[EhrmanDigfoot]

Can't wait!

[Damien Fate]

Iris! Thanks for sharing this haha, for anyone interested these will be out this Wednesday <3

[FlipperPA Peregrine]

Damo, you rock. Always pushing the limits!