Mesh clothing bad news

[Hot2Trot Calamity]

Mesh is still fairly new to SL and have seen some great things built using it. And built some amazing things as a fellow creator.  Even shoes can be amazing if they can be sized. I have spent countless hours building custom shapes for people. They want to be individuals, each with their own personal preferences. Mesh clothing has absolutely no place in SL. It definately takes away from our individualism as the clothing cannot be shaped or modified.  I get countless questions from mesh clothing buyers, "How can I make it fit right" and the only response is, If you want to wear mesh you have to change your shape to become the avatar that the clothing creator built thier clothing to, and people are heartbroken. My best friend bought a dress this morning, and her calf muscles overshot the dress itself, after sizing down her calfs, she had toothpick legs, it was horrid. I had purchased a harness, it was completely off, and was told to send my countless hour custom shape, perfect for what I wanted to look like to the creator to have a new harness sized for an additional 800L. This is beyond rediculous, and not only for the money but then she has my exact measurements to use as she pleases.

[Charolotte Caxton]

I wear mesh and I don't have to adjust my shape. It is a shape I made myself before mesh came out. Some mesh items are not made as well as other mesh items. If something doesn't fit, don't purchase it. Almost all, if not all, mesh clothing I have encountered provide free demos to try before purchasing.

The best part is, no one has to wear mesh. It is an option. I still have all my system clothing, flexi skirts, and even some sculptie clothes I still wear and love.

The thing I don't like is the alpha layers when they are visible, but like everything else, some are made better than others. I have found some clothing that has alpha layers that you cannot see when the clothing is worn. Those are my favorite.

So, mesh has its place in SL, but it is not perfect. I understand your and your customers frustrations though. Maybe you can make custom clothing for their custom shapes? That would be awesome.

[Sassy Romano]

This is why we're waiting for the mesh deformer project to conclude although any existing mesh will need to be re-uploaded with the deform check box chosen.

It's not a failure at all, mesh just isn't finished yet but should never have been implemented without such a critical feature in the first place.

[Medhue Simoni]

I do not understand why LL is dragging their feet on the mesh deformer project. This is a project that should be out in the open to releive the stress that consumers are experiencing with mesh clothing. I don't see any reason that the deformer is not in the main viewer for all to use. The core of the project is not going to change, and it is better if all clothing creators, and customers get a taste of it out in the open to help to make the whole experience better, and to get the most feedback that LL can get. Keeping it behind doors is only making the whole process take longer. Plus, no matter what stage the deformer is at, it is still 1 thousand times better than making consumers deal with the current shape issues.

What do we expect tho, it's just another bad decision by a company that has a history of bad decisions.

[Medhue Simoni]

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Sassy Romano wrote:

This is why we're waiting for the mesh deformer project to conclude although any existing mesh will need to be re-uploaded with the deform check box chosen.

It's not a failure at all, mesh just isn't finished yet but should never have been implemented without such a critical feature in the first place.

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The crazy part is, that LL cried that they didn't have the man power or time to do this. Yet, Qarl, a person that was let go by LL, managed to write the core of the deformer, all by himself, in a few days to a month. All the changes from what he intially released, are somewhat minor in scale to the core. So, basically, if LL had any initiative at all, we would have had the deformer a year ago and never had to deal with this mesh clothing shape BS.

[SultryVixen]

This is why I do not buy mesh at all, my AV is very petite, small chest and waist. Most creators have a huge hourglass design, and personally cant stand it, it's not me. And if a shape creator were to custom build clothing then you are stuck with only that clothing creator. And a clothing creator would never give us there Mesh template to adjust to our personal demensions, so it is a catch 22. Hope this new release you are talking about remedies all this.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

LL doesn't have any financial incentive to push on the deformer.  Its no skin off their back if we can't wear mesh and have to wear system clothes. They still will collect MP commissions on clothing sold and tiers on merchants land.

[Chosen Few]

Where's the "news" of which this thread's title speaks?  I see no new information here.

There have been lots of discussions on the topic of mesh clothing over the last few days, some of which DID have news, reagarding the status of the deformer project, and that of so called "liquid mesh", both of which, when fully implemented can solve the long standing problems described in the original post here.  Still, those who wish to complain are compalining, and those who don't are doing more useful things.

[Perrie Juran]

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Chosen Few wrote:

Where's the "news" of which this thread's title speaks?  I see no new information here.

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Maybe it's a case of "no news" continuing to be "bad news."

[Medhue Simoni]

As with any business, pointing out the mistakes are a good thing. To hear the criticisms is to have more understanding about what the core problems are. Without these criticisms a business operates in the "Emperor has no clothes" paradyme, and nothing gets better. Complaints are part of the process. If a company refuses to hear the complaints, or tries to discourage them, it is not likely that the company will improve. As a business person, I want to hear the complaints, and I want to hear it from every single person that has the same feeling. This gives me the proper amount of information to respond appropriately. Complaints also usually come before the loss of customers or income, which means that if you listen carefully at the complaints, then you can avoid the loss of profits before they even happen.

I've never understood the reasoning behind complaining about the complaints, other than when the complaints are completely unwarranted.

[161488303349]

is dragging bc is not easy to engineer. resizeable mesh made to diffent ratios mix n match is one of the hardest things ever to do. is actuall impossible to do perfectly algorithmically. bc the mesh is lossy. is like trying to restore a jpg back to the original lossless bmp and then create a new jpg from it

example to show why is lossy

take 3 prim boxes and link them. then resize

the linked object stretch perfectly. why? bc the 3 boxes that make up the link object each retain their dimensions independently of each other

now make a new object just using the visible faces of the boxes. when you do this then you lose the independent dimensions data

so to stretch it perfectly you now have to guess/work out what is the dimensions of the orginal bounding boxes that the faces might have belonged to

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and thats the hard bit bc:

how many bounding boxes could have made those faces? and even if you do work them all out then which one was used for the texture applied.

next question after then is: that: how many possible textures could be applied to each face? for this particular type of mesh surfaces shape?

then maybe the most likely bounding box wasnt actually used. bc the artist/creator used a less likely one bc it had some property that enhance the actual texture they choose. and so on

+

when the deformer do make it into main release it will only be good enough for some things and not very many that deviate from the most likely in a narrow range. bc have to do the guessing in realtime

at this time the people working on the code have it down to about 20 seconds to get a kinda ok result. but even they admit is still is a log way to go and will never be perfect

the only way to make perfect will be to have deformer + mod. so that we can mod the faces ourselves. so linden have to make a blender type editor and put in the viewer

 

[Medhue Simoni]

You are right, it is never going to be perfect, the deformer I mean. The clothing will be perfect for some tho. The market will take care of the rest, if it is profitable. Much like merchants got together to create the Standard Sizes. Merchants will make choices to try and fill the needs of the consumers. To even assume that the deformer is ever going to be perfect, is pretty ridiculous. We don't need a perfect deformer tho. All we need is a deformer that reacts predictively, and the merchants will handle the rest.

Lets put forth a scenario where the deformer handles most of the average size avatars but the closer an avatar gets to the extremes, the worse job the deformer does. This is pretty much what we have now in the deformer. Well, any1 with half a brain, and any knowledge of SL history, would know that some merchants will cater to those extreme sizes. This is a very good thing for every1, especially the market. It only becomes a bad thing when we have a system where no range of mesh clothing can ever fit any1 but a tiny percentage of users, which is what we have now in SL with no deformer. This is catastrophic for the market. This is bad for every1, the merchants, the consumers, and for the whole platform. Despite this, we sit here in this state of no1 being satisfied.

Just think about the market if the deformer was released to the public today. Within months, we would have a series of brand new markets. Let's just look at the female clothing market because it is more complex. We'll have some merchants designing strickly for large breasted women. We'll have some merchants designing strictly for large bottom women. The designers that could never get their foot in the door, will have multiple markets to try their hand at. Eventually, reputations for merchants that cater to the specific specialties will get around. Wam Bam, thank you mam, the market comes to the rescue. It's not like we have a shortage of merchants in the female clothing market not to fill almost every niche. As long as the deformer can handle most things well and predictably, some1 that makes specifically for large breasted women will have clothing that fit almost every single large breasted woman, no matter whether their breasts are slightly smaller or slightly larger than another.

Right now, no1 can possibly be happy with any mesh clothing they get. It's like winning the lottery if they are. Every current outfit needs a number of different alpha layers just to have the possibility of anything looking decent, which pushes the display cost even higher. The merchants have to do so much work, over and over and over for every outfit, it becomes quickly unprofitable for them. With a deformer that works relatively well and is predictable, the merchant can choose to only make 1 version of the outfit, and fit 60% of the consumers. If they want to jump this up to 90%, they'd likely only need to make 3 versions of the outfit.

Now, maybe LL could eventually create a morphing system that could be applied to any object. So, with a simple round resizable morphing tool, which weights itself to anything within it's sphere, any object or clothing could have the morphing spheres applied, and the user just resizes the sphere to bulge out certain areas on an object. DazStudio has a deformer like feature that works about as well as SL's current deformer, which they call Autofit. They also have a morphing sphere tool, like I just described.

Here is an example of how Daz3d does this:

 

Basically tho, just putting the deformer out to the public, will drastically improve the buying experience for the vast majority of shoppers, and the merchants will handle the rest over time. If LL wants to invest some time on a morphing tool, that would be awesome for every1, not just clothing creators, especially the consumer. It is not a must at the moment tho. What is most important is to stop consumers from having to deal with the ridiculous situation that we have right now.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Basically tho, just putting the deformer out to the public, will drastically improve the buying experience for the vast majority of shoppers, and the merchants will handle the rest over time.

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I think you're right by saying that. However, I think you are overlooking one huge issue.

If anything holds back SL it is the poor decisions made in the past, especially in relation to the SL av. Odd topology, poor UV mapping and by the looks of it rushed weight painting on the skin. As we all know this can't be easily fixed without breaking a ton of content, something LL always tries to avoid. Imagine all the animations you made over the years becoming clunky because LL improved the weighting on the avatar. I bet you would be upset to say the least, even outraged wouldn't surprise me.

If the deformer is released right now as is, before it's properly finished, imagine what would happen if some changes are made in 4 months. It's very possible all content made in those 4 months is either not working right anymore or not working at all, unless LL puts more patches and sticky tape on the deformer, slowing things down. The least of my concerns is the creator having to redo a part of all items made in that time period, then again, I don't build that much for SL anymore, if any. People doing this for a living or others pumping out a new product every week will have a ton of screaming customers.

We lived without deformed mesh for almost 10 years, a little longer isn't that big a deal is it? Let LL do it right instead of right now.

[161488303349]

the ridiculous part is that bc so much expectation has been built up over the deformer based on the existing avatar mesh then is going to have to be pretty much perfect if is ever going to get official released now

it really didnt help at the start when people went pffftt !!! i can do that easy. even take money off other people to do

now is a whole bunch of other people, like not lindens even many of them, trying to clean it all up. and them that are know that this is not easy and never was

has been way overhyped has the deformer. gleeful overhyped even by some people who think they are/were uberleet awesome and linden engineers dont know nothing. dont hear nothing from them anymore now tho. them uberleets. only people left in the game now are the serious engineers and codeys who knew what a pita it was going to be right at the start

+

i will be quite happy to get whatever they do. but ordinary normal customers are going to expect that deformable stuff they buy will fit to any shape bc is supposed to deform somehow. like what is the point of even letting me deform stuff if it doesnt deform properly

/rant off (:

+

where we going now i think is custom mesh avatars if we ever going to get out of this mess. avatar 2.0 ish

is actual easier to do this way. bc each set of clothes can then be made to fit the custom avatar shapes (made using the same ratios)

to enable then linden couldn make the slider dialog so that it only show resizing handles contained in the mesh files itself. then will all stretch/size perfectly within the slider tolerance parameters set by the creator

this the pathway to avatar 2.0 i think. allowing the creator to set the tolerance for each of the sliders for the custom shape they make and the clothes made specifically for that underlying deformable shape

if do this way then dont need any inworld faces editor. and we end up with something easy to mod for customers and looks good on them. and in time then the old system avatar mesh will go the same way as old system hair. down the plug hole

[Hot2Trot Calamity]

Very well put Medhue, and that is just the case with the harness I had purchased.. Yes I tried on the different sizes bought the one that was close, and truthfully thought I could tweek it to fit properly from there. I sent a NC to the owner/creator and she talked to me like I was an idiot, never listened to my concern at all, will never buy another article of clothing from her again. Complaints are needed for any business owner to listen and try to rectify in any means possible. It is also a learning tool for your product. And this thread isnt only for the SL designers it is for the SL big wigs as well. Until the problem is rectified I think that a full disclosure at the top of all mesh clothing signs should be implamented that it is no Modify, and the shape it has once you try the demo is what you get. Or pull it completely and reintroduce once its right.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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16 wrote:

 

it really didnt help at the start when people went pffftt !!! i can do that easy. even take money off other people to do

now is a whole bunch of other people, like not lindens even many of them, trying to clean it all up. and them that are know that this is not easy and never was

has been way overhyped has the deformer. gleeful overhyped even by some people who think they are/were uberleet awesome and linden engineers dont know nothing. dont hear nothing from them anymore now tho. them uberleets. only people left in the game now are the serious engineers and codeys who knew what a pita it was going to be right at the start

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As far as I know it was Qarl who started the deformer project and as far as I know he is still the one working on it.

 

[Nefertiti Nefarious]

Don't buy mesh if there isn't a demo - some people have shapes it fits, others don't.

I was disappointed because altrhough it may look OK for some things, when you sit in a mesh skirt it bulges up (doesn't follow gravity) and lumps up in your lap.

 

I discarded the demos and didn't buy the real thing.

[leliel Mirihi]

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Nefertiti Nefarious wrote:

 

I was disappointed because altrhough it may look OK for some things, when you sit in a mesh skirt it bulges up (doesn't follow gravity) and lumps up in your lap.

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A deformer is not going to fix that. We'll need flexible mesh with custom bones or full fledged cloth simulation to fix that problem.

[Medhue Simoni]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Basically tho, just putting the deformer out to the public, will drastically improve the buying experience for the vast majority of shoppers, and the merchants will handle the rest over time.

---

 

I think you're right by saying that. However, I think you are overlooking one huge issue.

If anything holds back SL it is the poor decisions made in the past, especially in relation to the SL av. Odd topology, poor UV mapping and by the looks of it rushed weight painting on the skin. As we all know this can't be easily fixed without breaking a ton of content, something LL always tries to avoid. Imagine all the animations you made over the years becoming clunky because LL improved the weighting on the avatar. I bet you would be upset to say the least, even outraged wouldn't surprise me.

If the deformer is released right now as is, before it's properly finished, imagine what would happen if some changes are made in 4 months. It's very possible all content made in those 4 months is either not working right anymore or not working at all, unless LL puts more patches and sticky tape on the deformer, slowing things down. The least of my concerns is the creator having to redo a part of all items made in that time period, then again, I don't build that much for SL anymore, if any. People doing this for a living or others pumping out a new product every week will have a ton of screaming customers.

We lived without deformed mesh for almost 10 years, a little longer isn't that big a deal is it? Let LL do it right instead of right now.

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I have to disagree. Although there may be issues with the SL avatar, it was an innovation some 10 years ago. Today, the versatility of the default avatar still holds up, and the vast majority of SL residents use it and like it. Could the weighting be a little better? Sure. Nothing LL could do to the weighting could ever affect the quality of my animations. Could the hands be a little better with boned fingers? Sure. Whether you have bones, or you use morphs, it really isn't that huge an issue, unless you are talking female nails and putting rings on your finger. I'd rather LL fix the hand morph problems, rather than give me boned fingers. IMHO, the SL avatar is a scapegoat, and nothing more. The best complaint that I've heard about the default avatar is the typology around the shoulders, around the breasts, and the butt. It definitely should of had more verts around those areas. As a low poly model for a world that started in 2004, It holds up amazingly well in today market.

As far as mesh clothing creators having to redo meshes if the deformer changes, whatever changes might possibly happen, it could never be as bad as mesh clothing designers releasing mesh after mesh after mesh knowing that the deformer is coming. They knew it was coming yet they keep releasing meshes. So, they either fully expect to put out updates, or they don't care and just want to make their money now. In either case, I don't blame them. As a creator, I've had to put out numerous updates to 10s of thousands of customers. Why did I do this? I did this because the technology in motion capture animation greatly improved, and I purchased a motion capture system. This meant that my old hand made animations were eventually not going to cut it in the market and I wanted to stay ahead of the game. This is what I had to do to stay competitive, and I can guarantee you that every single 1 of my loyal customers greatly appreciated the move to mocap and all the work I had to do to update my products. Technology advances, and that is just part of being a creator in a digital world. You only get screaming customers when you put out a product that is deficient from the start and are unwilling to rectify the problem with the customers. This is exactly why I pleaded with clothing designers to wait for the deformer, as it would not be humanly possible to make the customer happy without it.

A finished deformer is based on opinions. Given the extremes of the SL avatar, which the whole of the community would never want to give up the avatars versatility, any deformer is going to have a hard time with it. Based on what I see on other platforms, primarily those being DazStudio and Poser, our current deformer reacts comparably to the system that daz and poser have implemented. Their version of a similar tool is not better or worse. They ran into the same exact problems. Thankfully, their management was smart enough to understand that it would be better to release it and create other tools to make up for any downfalls. Daz and Poser have the only platforms were the characters have similar extreme versatilities.

Here is a test render that I did in DazStudio were I morph the character from a normal female to a werewolf:

Notice how the clothing doesn't hold up in a few areas. I could have corrected these areas using Daz's morph creators, but this was a test and I didn't want to spend more time on it. I also chose limited clothing, cause if I had put full body clothing on her, then you would see alot more poke thru.

Yes, we did without a deformer for 10 years, but mesh was not released until a year ago. You can't have mesh clothing without a deformer. LL could work on this project for another year, and it is not going to get much better. As I said before, I don't think the core of how the deformer works is going to change much. This would be the only thing that would create havok.

[Perrie Juran]

It is only quite recently that I started using Mesh Enabled viewers for my daily SL.  They were giving my computer terrible heartburn but I (cross my fingers) believe I have now got that problem fixed.

So really I am seeing "mesh" for the first time.  And I seriously don't get what all the hype is about.  I can pretty well pick out who is wearing mesh.  Just as readily as I can recognise for instance, flexi skirts.  Each has their unique pros and cons. 

Most of the mesh dresses I am seeing are nothing more than tossing a wrapper around the avatar and coloring it.

I used to advocate boycotting Mesh clothes until LL had the deformer in place.  But then I realized it would be no skin off their teeth.  All they would have lost was some commissions on Market Place sales.

At this point in time, I'm just not all that impressed.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

I don't think the core of how the deformer works is going to change much. This would be the only thing that would create havok.

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You can think all you want, but can you be sure? So sure it's not worth waiting another couple of months?

As for the avatar, yes it still works reasonably well, but you are completely missing my point. The point was any rushed decision can lead to problems down the road, some minor, some major. It's better to wait a few months now than to have years and years of stacking issues. Anyway, the avatar was just an example since its problems are so well known, but if you want to bring it into this specific discussion, there are a couple of things.

If the topology wasn't so strange, the deformer would work a whole lot better. Nobody in their right mind would use the same topology for their clothes, so it's hard to match the avatars movement. If you could more or less use the same topology, everything would stretch very predictably.

From what I recently read, the hands on the avatar are a huge hurdle in the deformer. Had LL used bones instead of morphs, we wouldn't have any issues. The problem in the thread I am referring to wasn't described, but it's pretty obvious it's anything besides hands or gloves attached to the avatar hands getting mangled in all sorts of ways.

I completely disagree with there being any problem with mesh clothes being sold with the knowledge those clothes will be both easier to make and easier to fit in the near future. I'm not exactly a daily shopper, but litterally all the mesh clothes and hair I bought came in enough sizes to make them fit perfectly well without changing my shape. Some people might have problems, but the majority will be fine. If knowing your product will be easier to make in the future and it will look better in the future, we can all close our stores. I mean all of us. There isn't a single thing on sale that will look or perform as good as the same item will in the future after future upgrades.

I don't understand the comparison with poser and DAZ. Neither are realtime environments and neither is made for the masses. If something is off in anything I build here on my computer, I know very well how to either fix or avoid it. That's not an option for the SL residents for various reasons.

Nice vid as always btw and kudoes for updating all your animations for free. Not everyone has, wants to or can make that time though. I'm sure your customers really appreciate it.

[Medhue Simoni]

Do you really think 2 more months or any amount of months will change anything, other than thousands of more annoyed clothing customers? Was the deformer vastly different 2 months ago? How about a year ago? If anything, all the improvements have been minor, at best. I do know that Qarl made a major change in what the deformer used as it's reference, but beyond that, it is still the same deformer he created a year ago.

Sure, you don't have many issues with mesh clothing as is, but do you consider that the creator had to do 6 or more times the work? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but we are men, not women, and women have infinitely more issues with mesh clothing. I'd rather the merchants and creator spend their time more productively and put out different types of clothing rather than repositioning verts on 1 mesh a dozen times, not to mention reweighting them all.

Mesh gloves? Seriously? Any1 that knows anything would never even consider mesh gloves on a morphed hand. How this is even something any1 in management would allow to hold up the project, blows my mind. I recently read about others trying to deal with the facial morphs too. This seriously pisses me off that these things are even considered, because when the jira was originally created, I mentioned that It would be smart to create the deformer in a way that even mesh avatars could use it to take advantage of all the sliders, making our mesh avatars just as versatile at the SL Avatar. I mentioned this because then there would never be a need for SL avatar 2.0, as all our mesh avatars would be SL avatar 2.0. Immediately after I mentioned this, the red notice to keep the comment on topic was put up. Dealing with the hand morphs and the facial morphs is outside the bounds of why the project was started. Yes, anything is possible, but if we are going to deal with those issues, then we should go all the way and do what I mentioned. The proper way to handle the hand and facial morphs, is to allow creators to retarget the morph regions on our meshes.

I brought up Daz and Poser because the issue is exactly the same. The only difference at all is the realtime aspect. In both situations, they are trying to accomplish the exact same result, and in both situations, they are having the exact same problems. In the case of Daz and Poser, they dealt with this years ago. LL could learn alot from them and how to handle the problem.

Thanks about the video, and the updates. Updating all my products was and is no small task.

 

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

As far as Poser and DAZ are concerned, the basic technology of figure movement and of clothing is the same, and there have been deformers to match clothing to non-default figure shapes for five years, at least. It's a mature technology, which is part of why Qarl could get as prototype out so quickly.

From my experience with Poser, I also have some idea of the problems of making good clothing, and Second Life adds the LOD problem. Good low LOD meshes don't come from an automated process.

Making a good Mesh garment is a lot of work, and making good low-LOD meshes adds to that. I have a feeling that Oz Linden has a poor appreciation of that complexity. He almost-whispers a plea for test clothing, and then complains more loudly when it doesn't appear within a few days. And, if you want to make a good low-LOD model, you need to know what the low-LOD avatar looks like.

You can see what can go wrong if you look at the Navmesh for a region. It's a low-LOD mesh for the terrain, and there can be bits of the visible ground mesh poking through the Navmesh. Small bumps in the middle of big Navmesh triangles.

Some aspects of the AV mesh and rigging are poor design, and were revealed by the Mesh Deformer project. You can see them with clothing: some components look their best at a particular shape, and as you move away from it, straight lines start to wobble. And, the way a Mesh Deformer works, the vertice movements that throw off the UV mapping will do the same to a mesh being deformed.

Changing the morph data doesn't have to change anything else. Textures would look the same. The Lindens could have improved the AV without breaking anything. It does look as if Linden Research, for many years, didn't employ anyone who knew enough about CGI to even ask the right questions. They do have people who can work on the render engine, but they need somebody such as Qarl, and he might not be the right person to work on revising or replacing the default AV.

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Do you really think 2 more months or any amount of months will change anything, other than thousands of more annoyed clothing customers? Was the deformer vastly different 2 months ago? How about a year ago? If anything, all the improvements have been minor, at best. I do know that Qarl made a major change in what the deformer used as it's reference, but beyond that, it is still the same deformer he created a year ago.

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I haven't played with the deformer myself, so to be honest I don't know what changed. But I do know that when things change, the end user (creator in this case) also has to change things. It's not a process of making the base then making it a bit better every time. It's a process where there's a base and things get changed every time. So if someone makes clothing that is optimized for version 1 it might not work properly in version 3.

 

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Sure, you don't have many issues with mesh clothing as is, but do you consider that the creator had to do 6 or more times the work? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but we are men, not women, and women have infinitely more issues with mesh clothing. I'd rather the merchants and creator spend their time more productively and put out different types of clothing rather than repositioning verts on 1 mesh a dozen times, not to mention reweighting them all.

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Yes people have to make several sizes, but UV mapping, texturing and even the weights can be copied from one to the next, so it's not 6 times the work. I have several avatars, I only bought mesh for females and like I said I didn't have any issues finding a proper size.

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Mesh gloves? Seriously? Any1 that knows anything would never even consider mesh gloves on a morphed hand. How this is even something any1 in management would allow to hold up the project, blows my mind. I recently read about others trying to deal with the facial morphs too. This seriously pisses me off that these things are even considered, because when the jira was originally created, I mentioned that It would be smart to create the deformer in a way that even mesh avatars could use it to take advantage of all the sliders, making our mesh avatars just as versatile at the SL Avatar. I mentioned this because then there would never be a need for SL avatar 2.0, as all our mesh avatars would be SL avatar 2.0. Immediately after I mentioned this, the red notice to keep the comment on topic was put up. Dealing with the hand morphs and the facial morphs is outside the bounds of why the project was started. Yes, anything is possible, but if we are going to deal with those issues, then we should go all the way and do what I mentioned. The proper way to handle the hand and facial morphs, is to allow creators to retarget the morph regions on our meshes.

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You misread what I said. I said anything attached to the hands besides gloves will give trouble. Making gloves shouldn't be an issue, since the mesh gloves will follow the morphs. The problem occurs with all other things. Can't think of many purposes, but the SL community as a whole is a whole lot more creative than I am. I can think of robot hand attachments for example.

Allowing custom morphs would be nice, but it wouldn't solve the hand issue unless you can turn off the morphs on the "avatar 1.0". If you make enough morphs btw, you could scrap the entire deformer.

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I brought up Daz and Poser because the issue is exactly the same. The only difference at all is the realtime aspect. In both situations, they are trying to accomplish the exact same result, and in both situations, they are having the exact same problems. In the case of Daz and Poser, they dealt with this years ago. LL could learn alot from them and how to handle the problem.

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Same issues same problems doesn't mean you can use the same solutions, not always anyway. Let's say the SL shadows don't look realistic enough. I can fix this easily in a non real time renderer by using raytracing or light bounces. The problem is a scene I render can take up to hours for a single frame, not 0.02 seconds. That of course doesn't mean LL can't learn from other programs, I won't deny that.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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WolfBaginski Bearsfoot wrote:

As far as Poser and DAZ are concerned, the basic technology of figure movement and of clothing is the same, and there have been deformers to match clothing to non-default figure shapes for five years, at least. It's a mature technology, which is part of why Qarl could get as prototype out so quickly.

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It then also means looking at those two apparantly wasn't enough for a good working deformer in SL. Of course the base is the same, rather than tracking the bones, the skin is tracked. That's the basic technology, but my non scripting non coding gut tells me there's a whole lot more to it.

 

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From my experience with Poser, I also have some idea of the problems of making good clothing, and Second Life adds the LOD problem. Good low LOD meshes don't come from an automated process.

Making a good Mesh garment is a lot of work, and making good low-LOD meshes adds to that. I have a feeling that Oz Linden has a poor appreciation of that complexity. He almost-whispers a plea for test clothing, and then complains more loudly when it doesn't appear within a few days. And, if you want to make a good low-LOD model, you need to know what the low-LOD avatar looks like.

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I'm glad there are people who see this issue, but to be honest, none of the clothing I have bought has hand build LoDs.

 

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Changing the morph data doesn't have to change anything else. Textures would look the same. The Lindens could have improved the AV without breaking anything.

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Changing the morph data changes the...morphs. So it would change every single avatar on the grid that doesn't have all the settings at 50, so that's every single avatar minus one or two jokers. Some morphs could do with a touchup though, for example one vertex of the breast pokes out.