best supported male bodies?

[Trimmer Navarita]

I have both Aesthetic and Signature Gianni .... the clothes for Aesthetic ft really well but they are limited in range ... getting better, but slowly. They really need to release their construction data to more builders, it's rather short-sighted of them to be, frankly, snooty about it.  Gianni has a much better set of Alpha divisions than Aesthetic, much better and the basic skin from them is really nicely built. The shape is a bit round shouldered but that's a small point ... fitting of clothes is not as good as Aesthetic but it isn't too bad and as others suggest here, the volume of alpha spaces makes the job a great deal easier. I took a good few months deciding what to get other than my Aesthetic (first choice on returning, also after 5 yrs) because I'm a builder and wanted to offer my products to more than the aesthetic crowd ... Signature at the end of the day for me was a no-brainer choice and I think will become the most popular of male bodies ... but, who knows what might happen next ... Image attached is my Signature Gianni with no additions other than my own shape and eyes.

  

[umbrellamonk]

Wow, didn't expect this thread to be going still. 

So having discovered my old avatar is not in fact virtual worm food and successfully recovered him and his 8-year-old transaction limit, I've done my own legwork, which maybe others will find helpful.

in general, I've found male clothes don't require nearly as much precision fit to look good as female clothes.  Alpha cuts are the way to go, and in fact I've found that when given options between a piece of clothing that has versions designed to fit a specific a body, a fitmesh, or multiple sized options designed for classic avatars, I actually prefer to go with the sized classic option and alpha the pokethrough out for a more realistic look.  Otherwise, even the specially designed options look bulky, as if the cloth is floating rather than resting on the skin.

As for bodies:

Adam - In combination with the head, this is a really cost-efficient choice and is the only combination I've yet encountered that has zero neck seam under any lighting condition.  Support-wise, it's a bit of a problem with certain clothing styles, especially open jackets that have no undershirt.  The reason is Adam has larger lats than any of the other bodies (but consequently looks better for a muscular build, imo), but the alpha cuts for the sides of the torso don't go down far enough to be able to hide the sides of the body rather than an entire front ring section.

Gianni - People were right in that this is probably the most solid choice.  Imo the physique is not quite as natural, but I've yet to run into any issues.  I'm running with Catwa's Daniel right now, which is a super expensive setup that requires buying a whole bunch of extras and even with a fully matched head, doesn't quite eliminate a neck seam.

For me, the perfect mesh body would be adam's shape and out-of-box skin options and gianni's alpha cuts and hud design.

Here's how I ended up:

This is with Gianni with a shirt designed for classic. With Adam, his lats would have been poking out of the shirt mesh under the arms with no way of hiding it without ripping out the chest.  I did come up with a solution of sticking a pair of shoulder-holstered berettas underneath to hide the popout, but that's kind of tacky and blew complexity up.

And for good measure, what he looked like when I first dug him up.  2008 baby.  Look at dem' bullets!

Edited April 9, 2017 by umbrellamonk

[Chase01]

@Phil Deakins Phil, instead of manually enabling your HUD what I do is save my HUD as part of my outfit. Once I swap, I can then remove the HUD quickly either from on screen or from the outfit list itself. If I need it again prior to an outfit swap I can just enable it from there as well. This lets me put my HUD anywhere I want in my inventory.

[Phil Deakins]

@Chase01 Resident What a good idea, Chase. Thank you

 

[Chase01]

@Phil Deakins You're very welcome

I like to keep my inventory super organized. Having random objects in my main directory would annoy me to no end. lol

[Klytyna]

4 hours ago, Chase01 Resident said:

@Phil Deakins Phil, instead of manually enabling your HUD what I do is save my HUD as part of my outfit. Once I swap, I can then remove the HUD quickly either from on screen or from the outfit list itself. If I need it again prior to an outfit swap I can just enable it from there as well. This lets me put my HUD anywhere I want in my inventory.

Saved outfits are listed in the appearance tab alphabetically, so you can sort certain ones to the top of the list by prefixing the name with special characters and spaces...

"!  Kyltyna - Mait Nude"

"!  Klytyna - Mait Nude Drow"

"Clothes - Black lingerie #4 Appliers"
 

"Clothes - River Goth Bikini"

"Clothes - Swimsuit & high heels red"

"Kink - Cuffs & Gag"

These will sort to the top because of the "!  " prefix, and these outfits contain the hud, the body hands feet, the ao, shape, matching system skin, hairbase etc, a complete nude avatar. These 'nude base' outfits are the only ones that are ever 'worn'. The other outfits do NOT contain a complete avatar, just the clothing/accessories that will be applied over a nude body, and are put on and taken off with "add to" or "remove from" right click options on the outfit's name.

Advantages of this system are that you can always find the essential bits needed to be 'you' at the top of the window, and when it's time to update a body to a newer version, you don't need to go through replacing all the links in every damn outfit you ever made, because the body, hands, feet etc., are ONLY in the top few outfits.

You can edit the contents of a saved outfit directly by adding or deleting 'links' to the relevant subfolder of "/My Outfits" in your inventory, you can copy/paste links from the "/Current outfit" folder directly into a saved outfit folder.

Firestorm... Last build I tried, refused to recognise any 'outfit' folder that wasn't created with the save outfit button  so you have to save 'blank outfits' so to speak. My usual viewer is far superior in this regard as it recognises any folder, so I can just create a new outfit without even having to wear the items at all.

These partial outfits can also be handy if you use appliers, you can have an outfit thats just your applier hud and the omega relay if its not a maitreya applier for example, so you dont have to scramble in your inventory looking for that applier for that lingerie you feel like wearing today, it's right there in your outfits in the appearance tab.

 

Edited April 9, 2017 by Klytyna

[Phil Deakins]

@Klytyna Coincidentally, just today I'd arranged my outfits list in groups as you described, but your idea of having one or two 'basic' outfits, and a number of add-ons outfits, sounds really good too. Being very new to the outfits system, that idea hadn't occured to me, and tips like that are really welcome.

[Marianne Little]

4 hours ago, Klytyna said:

Saved outfits are listed in the appearance tab alphabetically, so you can sort certain ones to the top of the list by prefixing the name with special characters and spaces...

"!  Kyltyna - Mait Nude"

"!  Klytyna - Mait Nude Drow"

"Clothes - Black lingerie #4 Appliers"
 

"Clothes - River Goth Bikini"

"Clothes - Swimsuit & high heels red"

"Kink - Cuffs & Gag"

These will sort to the top because of the "!  " prefix, and these outfits contain the hud, the body hands feet, the ao, shape, matching system skin, hairbase etc, a complete nude avatar. These 'nude base' outfits are the only ones that are ever 'worn'. The other outfits do NOT contain a complete avatar, just the clothing/accessories that will be applied over a nude body, and are put on and taken off with "add to" or "remove from" right click options on the outfit's name.

Advantages of this system are that you can always find the essential bits needed to be 'you' at the top of the window, and when it's time to update a body to a newer version, you don't need to go through replacing all the links in every damn outfit you ever made, because the body, hands, feet etc., are ONLY in the top few outfits.

You can edit the contents of a saved outfit directly by adding or deleting 'links' to the relevant subfolder of "/My Outfits" in your inventory, you can copy/paste links from the "/Current outfit" folder directly into a saved outfit folder.

Firestorm... Last build I tried, refused to recognise any 'outfit' folder that wasn't created with the save outfit button  so you have to save 'blank outfits' so to speak. My usual viewer is far superior in this regard as it recognises any folder, so I can just create a new outfit without even having to wear the items at all.

These partial outfits can also be handy if you use appliers, you can have an outfit thats just your applier hud and the omega relay if its not a maitreya applier for example, so you dont have to scramble in your inventory looking for that applier for that lingerie you feel like wearing today, it's right there in your outfits in the appearance tab.

 

I think I must copy this. My avatars are a pain to update, and every time I log in an avatar that's been dormant a month or so, I get a new body, head or another essential part. So the outfits I have made is just outdated and useless.

I use Firestorm only. I need to check how I can make "add to" folders. I am not sure how I can make outfit folders without the hassle of deleting all the bodyparts in the clothes folder. I am not even sure of how you make your outfits in your viewer, since I only use the save outfit button.

I dislike Omega relays that have to be worn every time. Slink has such a good system, I only wear the Omega relay once with a new body, and then the Omega is installed and done. I know how annoying it is to dig out the Omega relay for Maitreya....

[Rhonda Huntress]

1 hour ago, Marianne Little said:

I am not sure how I can make outfit folders without the hassle of deleting all the bodyparts in the clothes folder.

Just before saving, right click the base nude outfit and remove it.  That way you only have to delete the shape, skin, eyes and hair base from the folder.

[AlleyCat Tyles]

I had a most frustrating couple of hours trying to find and wear clothing with my Adam body. Rather than start a new thread, I will add to this one. I also want to see if I am understanding what was said by Klytyna and Phil above.

I have the Omega hud for the Adam body and it works fine. My question concerns applied clothing. So I put on a shirt (apply using Omega) and it comes down to my belly button. I put on a pair of pants and they are half way down my hips. I tried a number of shirts and a number of pants. There is always a gap between the top of the pants and the bottom of the shirts. That may be a fashion statement for some but not for me. I want to tuck my shirt into my pants, figuratively speaking. Am I just missing something here?

Klytyna and Phil: I like the concept of “outfits” discussed above. The more I read, the more I think I better search the forums some more, so I can ask an intelligent question.

[Alwin Alcott]

6 minutes ago, AlleyCat Tyles said:

My question concerns applied clothing. So I put on a shirt (apply using Omega) and it comes down to my belly button. I put on a pair of pants and they are half way down my hips. I tried a number of shirts and a number of pants. There is always a gap between the top of the pants and the bottom of the shirts. That may be a fashion statement for some but not for me. I want to tuck my shirt into my pants, figuratively speaking. Am I just missing something here?

yes you miss something important .. applied clothing only fits on eachother when it's meant to fit... mix and match will not very likely work or give disapointing results

("jackets" (also the shirts ) below the belt, are in fact two textures, you need to show the top and pants layer.)

Next to that... use mesh clothes.. much easier... applied clothes are in fact the same as the really old system clothes...and most used textures now for the appliers are older than the original system layer clothes.. bad... ugly.. and rarely really nice, there always been problems caused by low resolutions of the pictures used to create the texture.

[AlleyCat Tyles]

Ok, Alwin I see your point. Let me see if this makes sense: I go to my Adam hud, I look at the layers tab. Adam has a “Fashion” layer (outer most layer, I think), which I will assume corresponds to the shirt and pants on an Omega applier. The top of the pants fashion layer is at waist level, well above the hips. If the layer is that high up the body, it would seem reasonable to expect that pants applied to that layer would appear to start at waist level. I hope I said that succinctly. I think my logic is sound. I do avoid any pants described as hip huggers.    

[MIstahMoose]

TMP for me was the only one I actually liked...
 

[Klytyna]

1 hour ago, MIstahMoose said:

TMP for me was the only one I actually liked...

 

LOL The OP question was doer SUPPORTED bodies...
 

[Chic Aeon]

Since this thread got resurrected I wanted to add that I have not purchased a male body yet, but I have tried most of the BEST SUPPORTED (which would currently be Slink and sadly TMP as there are a lot of those bodies out there). Those are what I see most often in the male clothes blogger boxes anyway).

THAT being said I did try Belleza not long ago and I was very impressed. It is a slim body so no way to get terribly "beefy" but  I LOVE the hud (as much as I explored it). So I would say that it is the up and comer. I haven't found a combo head and body that works for what I want though (this is for blogging not walking around in LOL).  While I was looking I found that Aeros had completely redone the shop since I was there a month ago or so. The old system skins are gone or maybe still on the marketplace. There are some impressive looking Catwa head appliers. And there is a vendor setup holder for Belleza. The free Akeruka head is quite nice but it doesn't really fit the Belleza body. I noted in a post from Berry awhile back that she mentioned the Akeruka male head worked with Slink but not others (Belleza wasn't out then yet -- I think anyway.

So for me, I will be watching Belleza and Aeros. and THEN look for a head that will fit both -- at least that's my plan.

The free Akeruka (group join fee) gals head works fine with Maitreya as a friend got that. The male head fits pretty well but has one spot near the Adams Apple that is definitely not right and a good skin doesn't fix it. 

That's what I know ! 

[MIstahMoose]

2 hours ago, Klytyna said:

LOL The OP question was doer SUPPORTED bodies...
 

chill

[Rhonda Huntress]

20 hours ago, AlleyCat Tyles said:

Ok, Alwin I see your point. Let me see if this makes sense: I go to my Adam hud, I look at the layers tab. Adam has a “Fashion” layer (outer most layer, I think), which I will assume corresponds to the shirt and pants on an Omega applier. The top of the pants fashion layer is at waist level, well above the hips. If the layer is that high up the body, it would seem reasonable to expect that pants applied to that layer would appear to start at waist level. I hope I said that succinctly. I think my logic is sound. I do avoid any pants described as hip huggers.   

Men don't get all the cool layers like women.

OK, lets start with some pictures

This is the Adam HUD as I could find it.  It may be updated but this will do OK for now.

 

The fashion layer is broke up into parts which correspond to the system body.  Roughly, it is something like this below.  Kind of like the way it is blocked out on the Adam HUD.

 

What happens is the shirt gets applied to the top part and pants are applied to the bottom.  Then you get this look.

 

OK, so far this is nothing new.  The waist seam is too high up to look reasonable.  In the old days the bottom part of the shirt would be on an underwear item you wore with the shirt and pants.  What is probably happening is you are wearing the shirt on the fashion layer which will apply the texture to the shirt and pants areas.  Then when you wear pants, it overwrites the pants section so the shirt texture that was there gets replaced.

I am not totally familiar with Adam appliers, but do you have an option to wear a shirt on the Tattoo layer?  If you can, wear the shirt and set either the tattoo layer or the Fashion layer to Masking mode.

[AlleyCat Tyles]

Thank you Rhona. Yes that is the current Adam hud and you have described the situation perfectly. I do believe I can apply the shirt to the tattoo layer. I will see how that works.

[Bobbie Faulds]

A properly made applier shirt will have the shirt set up with the upper and lower shirt. I use templates that have both.  

For mesh clothing, demo them. I find Lapointe and BastChild works well. They have everything from a Tux to shorts. Most support Aesthetic, Slink, Signature Gianni and they are updating to include the Belleza. Many of the bodies don't have a good fit because the creator hasn't released a developer kit with the rigging and weights that the designers need. So you can blame them rather the designers.

[Tom Cloud]

Just to add here the belleza jake body is out and getting well supported by creators , my view owning all the male mesh bodies jake is way ahead 

 

https://gyazo.com/cbed57ebb998c38341dd777a7977d6b4

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, mastersinn said:

 my view owning all the male mesh bodies jake is way ahead

it's a good one yes... but still enough flaws to be at the same level as Adam, Gianni and Slink.. good but not special. (yet)

[Marianne Little]

I was late to demo Bellezas Jake, but oh my god, that body has an ultra low rendering weight? I forgot to write it down, but I think it's under 6000. Beats Signature Gianni and crushes NX totally in rendering weight. I think Slink is rather lightweight too?

First time I was able to use my male alt in a mesh body and outfit, under 80 000.

It had a good Catwa mesh head fit, from what I could see...

[Alwin Alcott]

11 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

I was late to demo Bellezas Jake, but oh my god, that body has an ultra low rendering weight?

yes that is really great, can keep my av's far under 50.000 in total now while the others easely hit 150.000 or more when fully dressed.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Much as I like Belleza, both the male and female are the best bodies on the market; those low render weights are from a trick using LOD and triangles in the low LODs. It renders still because it's attached.

 

[Alvina Nova]

The male Belleza bento mesh body "Jake" is out and awsome. But that is the minimum we can expect.
The HUD is amazingly nice, efficient, logical, A second Hud allows setting the bento hands.
Compared to previous primitive, incomplete or buggy huds for other nice male mesh bodies, this is a revolution.