Questions about mesh clothing

[LoriLexa]

Hi everyone,

Maybe you can clarify some things for me regarding mesh clothes.

1. With some mesh items, the "material" looks very thin while others look thicker. I thought mesh was mesh, are there different ways to create mesh clothing?

2. Some mesh breaks with movement while some does not. I'm assuming the mesh that does not break is rigged?

3. How come some skirts (same length & they move with the avatar) stretch and look distorted but others stretch and look ok?

thank you for any info

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

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LoriLexa wrote:

Hi everyone,

Maybe you can clarify some things for me regarding mesh clothes.

1. With some mesh items, the "material" looks very thin while others look thicker. I thought mesh was mesh, are there different ways to create mesh clothing?

2. Some mesh breaks with movement while some does not. I'm assuming the mesh that does not break is rigged?

3. How come some skirts

(same length & they move with the avatar)

stretch and look distorted but others stretch and look ok?

thank you for any info

 

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1. All mesh is basically an invisible net of points that is connected by flat, textured polygons - usually this filled net is only textured on one side and is invisible from the other. However, some mesh clothing makers essentially make this "net" so it is either folded over on the edges or make the entire garment a closed object, which means the texture will be everywhere you can see.

2 and 3 - All mesh clothing that moves with you is "rigged" to an invisible "skeleton" that matches the skeleton of the default avatar. The visible mesh filled net is given instructions telling it to move along with the various "bones" of this skeleton - this is called "weighting" the mesh. Any given point on the mesh can move along with no more than four different bones and it may respond differently to each bone. Also, the mesh can be "weighted" so that the some of the mesh points move less than neighboring ones do to make the mesh behave more like real fabric. If the weight changes are abrupt you can see it break and distort. It requires careful, painstaking weighting to have the mesh behave close to the way real fabric does and not all mesh makers have the ability or patience to do this, so some mesh items look better than others. It doesn't help that the default avatar mesh itself isn't really weighted very well and tends to break and stretch oddly itself.

[LoriLexa]

I wondered what people meant when they said textured on both sides and now I understand. It connects with this thin/thick look that I'm referring to. That makes sense now.

On the other info you supplied, I now have a better understanding of how much work goes into making quality mesh clothes.

Thank you so much Theresa, I appreciate the valuable information. :matte-motes-big-grin: