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Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style
With all the talk of Second Life's 10th birthday, I can't help but think about everything that's changed over the past ten years... Especially when it comes to virtual fashion. There have been so many developments that turned SL fashion on its head over and over again, shaping it into what it is today. Flexi prims, tattoo layers, even prim hair... Just thinking about them all (and the kinds of things that used to be considered to absolute height of virtual style) is enough to boggle the mind. We've come pretty far, folks.
So strap yourself into my ultra-chic time machine and let's take a trip back to revisit some of the most influential innovations in the history of Second Life style. oh, and just a heads up: There's loads of absolutely cringe-worthy oldschool Iris Ophelia after the jump, so don't say I didn't warn you!
10. Materials Project (2013)
Considering that the new viewer only went live yesterday, it's still far too early to say for sure just how influential the Materials Project will be. I'm willing to bet that if I was making this list a year or so in the future, I'd be pushing Materials much closer to the top of this list. Just take a look at the picture above, a gorgeous comparison by Damien Fate of the difference that Materials can make. I feel quite confident when I say that SL Materials will usher in a wave of even more realistic looking fashions and designs in Second Life, we just need to give it a few months to take root.
9. Flexi prims (2006)

Flexi fashion was some of the first virtual fashion I ever wrote about, just a few months after joining SL. I ambitiously put every shred of flexi I could find after it was first released into a monster of an article. It might be difficult now that rigidly modeled sculpties and mesh have all but overwritten the impact flexis had at the time, but the idea of a skirt that moved, hair that flowed, tails that could swish without awkward clockwork animation behind it -- even the massive ballgowns (at the peak of their popularity) went from stiffly starched to fluid and flowing. It felt absolutely gamechanging at the time, even though the bleeding edge of SL fashion has long since abandoned the flexi prim.
8. Tattoo Layers (2010)

Though it took a little while for people outside of the tattoo community to see the value in the tattoo layer that was added with the debut of Viewer 2, they've since become an absolute staple of SL fashion, especially when it comes to women's skins. Because it's the only layer other than the skin layer that covers the face, makeup has become the dominant use for these layers, though it's also not uncommon to see them used for enhancements like freckles, moles, cleavage, and even underclothing. The tattoo layer has made skins and SL fashion in general much more versatile and flexible, and in a lot of ways helped turn the consumer's avatar from an essentially finished work back into a canvas to be experimented with.
7. Windlight (2007)

Windlight turned Second Life photography and machinima on it's head by breathing life into the virtual environment. Reflections in the water and clouds in the sky that looked far better than the built-in puffballs Second Life had before.
Windlight also offered incredibly fine control over all of these elements, turning any environment into something that could be bent to a player's will, or an artist's creative intentions.
6. Local Lighting (2006) and Dynamic Shadows (2009)

Even though these two innovations have a few years between them, their impact was pretty similar. Much like Windlight, local lighting and dynamic shadows gave us much more control over the world beyond our avatar, control that has been especially well used by SL artists and fashionistas. Local lighting was also used by fashionistas to put their best face forward in the form of facelights, an invisible light source attached to the avatar's head to keep the face evenly (and flatteringly) lit. Although facelights are now more of an annoyance than anything else, both of these features shaved hours off of the discerning SL photographer's workload by dramatically reducing the amount of work that needed to be done in Photoshop to make a picture taken in SL look like more than just a picture taken in SL.
5. Multiple Layers (2010)

It's all about versatility, and the ability to wear multiple layers that came about with Viewer 2 all but ended an age-old problem for many designers, who until then as a courtesy often sold their items on multiple different clothing layers so that they could be layered properly with other pieces. There are still reasons to include these different layers of course, but it's much less of an issue than it once was. It was also very timely alongside the addition of tattoo layers, allowing someone to wear lipstick from Brand A, eyeliner from Brand B, and tattoos from Brand C without a second thought. Without multiple layers, it's unlikely that the tatoo layer would have taken off to the degree that it has.
4. Skins (2004?)
You'll never catch me saying that all innovation in SL has been pushed by developments in the client; for example, we have residents to thank for the skins that we still enjoy today. Though it was a bit before my time, here's how I understand it went down: Early on, the texture slots in Second Life's skin editing window were intended for tattoos, until a few clever residents asked themselves "Why not put a whole new skin texture there instead?" Skins as we know them were born, sparing us from the utterly hideous world of default SL skins.
3. Prim Hair (2005?)
You can more or less reread the previous point, but replace "skin" with "hair". Second Life's default hair is absolutely horrific. if you've never played around with it, I would recommend that you try. It's... Enlightening, and it will make you grateful for even the crappiest most torus-heavy hairstyle you might have lingering in your inventory from the gruesome pre-sculpty days. Prim hair started with prim attachments like buns and pigtails meant to blend in with your default SL hair (the birth of the SL "Hairbase"), eventually evolving to cover the whole head, and even make use of alpha textures for a more soft and natural look. Washu Zebrastripe is most often cited as the "inventor" of prim hair, and her legacy is undeniable. According to LL, women's hairstyles are currently the most purchased items in all of SL.
2. Mesh (2011)

Mesh has allowed a huge leap up in quality alongside a notable step back in terms of that quality's impact. What once would have been 100 prims can now count as 10 without losing nearly as much of the original model's fidelity.
It's been huge for almost everyone, well beyond the just realm of virtual fashion. What more can I say?
And yet... It's not at the top of my list. Why not? Well, let's not forget the impact of...
1. Sculpted Prims (2007)
Sculpties truly raised the bar in terms of the kind of realism we expected in Second Life, as well as the kinds of items that could even be recreated in the virtual world. They laid the groundwork for mesh, both in terms of what we wanted and expected as consumers, and in terms of preparing designers to deliver it. In some ways, sculpties were our pre-mesh trainign wheels. They opened up an amazing range of new shapes and designs that were next to impossible with the standard prim shapes built into SL, and even though we're now quick to turn our nose up at them in favour of their more attractive cousin, their importance to Second Life fashion and design is utterly undeniable.
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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.
Great article, certainly a trip down memory lane! :D
Posted by: Damien Fate | Thursday, June 20, 2013 at 09:53 PM
I'm wondering about LL's timing with the materials project. The latest version of the server showed slower rezzing times, and with the materials project requiring the viewer to download 3 texture maps for each object instead of one, naturally rezzing times will climb possibly 2-3 times as well. Will newbies or even veteran players wait several minutes for a great sim to rez?
Posted by: Ajax Manatiso | Friday, June 21, 2013 at 06:14 AM
And i fear ssa code will not be the solution!
Another project that nobody asked but a few and that will make SL loose a lot more, cause it will make more users quit and less new ones arrive and enjoy (Does nay really tried a material viewer, if so did any noticed the dullness that the world looks now if any uses reg ll default day cycle?
Posted by: zzpearlbottom | Friday, June 21, 2013 at 07:03 AM
Sorry but i do feel sad, i had a wonderful last days experience on Sl and yesterday i did login with a chui and materials viewer ready, to see all around lost all beauty and become a grey dull world!
Posted by: zzpearlbottom | Friday, June 21, 2013 at 07:14 AM
thank you Iris. it's much appreciated. :)
Posted by: qarl | Friday, June 21, 2013 at 09:51 AM
You missed multiple attachments.
Posted by: Monalisa | Friday, June 21, 2013 at 10:33 AM
@Monalisa Good point, whoops! For the sake of argument let's tuck them in with Multiple Layers, though. :)
Posted by: Iris Ophelia | Friday, June 21, 2013 at 03:07 PM
My personal favorite SL innovations, which really fit in with mesh, maybe in a sub category, are mesh hands and feet.
Shoes and prim feet have progressively gotten better during the last couple of years, but this year alone, the bar has been raised with Gos and N-core's website data base of precision skin matching. No more fussing with RGB numbers. And then SLink took it one step further with providing huds so skin makers could make applier huds for SLink hands and feet.
I never, ever take my hands off now. And now Siddean (Slink) has created digital 'shoe lasts' so creators can make shoes to fit the Slink flat and medium arched feet. Hucci has made some fantastic shoes, and so has Leverocci.
It's just hands and feet, yes, but it's an illustration of how residents have taken a second life limitation (in this case, pretty unattractive basic avatar hands an feet) and figured out a way to create something better.
Posted by: Tracy Redangel | Friday, June 21, 2013 at 06:31 PM
Great article! I love that sculpted prims to you ranks #1 next to mesh, and I believe so as well. Sculpted prims were definitely our training wheels, and also truly gave not only creators but artists in secondlife a way to shine. They had to make something so bulky and restricted come to life and thats an artform by itself.
Lovely to look back and see all these advancements, we've come a long way!
Posted by: Anya Ohmai | Saturday, June 22, 2013 at 08:02 PM