Help - Mens Cloths

[HarperDenton]

I put this in the avatar forum and I hope this is the correct place to ask.

Where are places to find good men's clothes? I found Hoorenbeek but I bought some outfits and the alpha mask is wrong and no one from the store will respond to my problem; so I have written them off. What other places offer good quality men's clothes?

Please help, and thanks

Harp

[MoiraKathleen]

3 minutes ago, HarperDenton said:

I put this in the avatar forum and I hope this is the correct place to ask.

Where are places to find good men's clothes? I found Hoorenbeek but I bought some outfits and the alpha mask is wrong and no one from the store will respond to my problem; so I have written them off. What other places offer good quality men's clothes?

Please help, and thanks

Harp

It would be helpful if you can provide some additional info, so that responses will hopefully be relevant to your situation:

- which body you wear (either that you are wearing the system body, or if a mesh body, which one)

- if you wear a mesh body, is it BOM-enabled

- for the outfits that you purchased, in which way were the alpha masks wrong  

- what style of men's clothing are you interested in.

[HarperDenton]

1 minute ago, MoiraKathleen said:

It would be helpful if you can provide some additional info, so that responses will hopefully be relevant to your situation:

- which body you wear (either that you are wearing the system body, or if a mesh body, which one)

- if you wear a mesh body, is it BOM-enabled

- for the outfits that you purchased, in which way were the alpha masks wrong  

- what style of men's clothing are you interested in.

Thank you, these are questions, I would not have thought to pst.

I have a classic avatar. It is not mesh just a skin on a shpe.

The outfits I bought had an option for classic avatars and it worked great until I added the jacket. The alpha mask stopped at the T-shirt arm length. When the jacket was added my arms show though the sleeves of the jacket. I bought 4 outfits and all four had the same alpha mask. There was not demo available. I have contacted them via notecard as they request and  no response in three weeks after three attempts. I figure they have something going on because others are having the same issue.

I tend to live in a suit in RL so I feel comfortable doing that in SL, So suits, or business professional outfits is what I am looking for.

I am sorry, I do not know what BOM- enabled means.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Lillith Hapmouche]

Dead Wool still has their system body suits out.

[MoiraKathleen]

I was thinking of Deadwood also - I was just looking at their Marketplace page, and saw some suits that say they come in standard sizes* should work for you (though I can't tell from the ad whether they come with alpha layers or not - but they do have demos, so give them a try).   

Regarding the alpha layer issue, if you can find male alpha layers for long sleeve shirts, you can use those for the outfits that you purchased already.   Alpha layers that come with one outfit or suit can often be worn with other similar outfits or suits that need the same area of the body alpha'd out.   

I'm not really familiar with where to get male alpha layers, but I did find this pack on the Marketplace which might be helpful for the suit top issue:

Second Life Marketplace - Alpha Layers for Jackets 2011 - BOM Compatible 2020

If you get clothing demos which include alpha layers, save the alpha layers even if you don't purchase the clothing item - the alpha layers may come in handy for other similar clothing items.  

===============================================================

BOM is 'Bakes on Mesh' which is a relatively new functionality which allows mesh bodies to be able to use system skins and wear alpha layers (instead of alpha cuts on a HUD).

* Standard Sizes usually refers to mesh clothing that was intended to be worn on classic system bodies - so generally those include alpha layers (at least they do in the female clothing arena)

[Marianne Little]

Demo is your friend. If a store does not have demos - you risk the clothes do not fit and you have wasted your money.

If the demo won't fit or is missing the correct alpha, the full priced product will not be better.

Since you are a guy who prefer suits, it is more easy for you to fit in clothes. It does not matter how many alpha layers you wear - use "Add" and add one after another. You may have to be creative. Often, I find that a "triangle" just over the suit tie is transparent because the alpha layer is cut too high. If you use a v-neck tee alpha and an open jacket alpha together, that solves it.

For a suit, you need a perfect fit two places: Around your wrists and around your neck. You can actually demo clothes for mesh bodies as well. As long as the neck and wrists fit, no problem to cover all below and between. It does not matter if the suit is made for classic avatars, Slink Physique or another mesh body.

I know you can buy clothes, but Kauna has had all their male clothes out for free in a mega pack. Last landmark I had for Kauna: https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Time Portal/246/130/1930

They are not made for meshbodies and has three sizes, small, medium and large. And comes with all the alphas you need. The pack has a lot of clothes for the "professional, business" type and also some for leisure, like a jeans and boots combo all guys should have.

Edit: it is some mesh body sizes too, in addition to the classic ones. Some for Slink and TMP.

Edit 2: The Kauna clothes can be worn with other meshbodies too. I include a link to a blogpost, because the box of clothes is huge. Really huge. And you can unpack "for ever". So it can be nice to know what to look for. I had totally forgot the shawl cardigan. https://billybeaverhausen.com/2018/07/28/kauna-is-giving-it-all-away/

Disclaimer. I picked up Kauna last summer (2020), but I don't know if it's available now.

 

Edited January 23, 2021 by Marianne Little
added more info and link

[Zeta Vandyke]

The Mens Department is a monthy event http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/TMD/110/80/22

Cold Ash is a nice casual mens wear store http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Cold Ash/107/54/24

 

[Nalates Urriah]

14 hours ago, HarperDenton said:

Thank you, these are questions, I would not have thought to pst.

I have a classic avatar. It is not mesh just a skin on a shpe.

The outfits I bought had an option for classic avatars and it worked great until I added the jacket. The alpha mask stopped at the T-shirt arm length. When the jacket was added my arms show though the sleeves of the jacket. I bought 4 outfits and all four had the same alpha mask. There was not demo available. I have contacted them via notecard as they request and  no response in three weeks after three attempts. I figure they have something going on because others are having the same issue.

I tend to live in a suit in RL so I feel comfortable doing that in SL, So suits, or business professional outfits is what I am looking for.

I am sorry, I do not know what BOM- enabled means.

Thanks for your help.

 

You'll bang into a problem being in a Classic avatar. I don't know of anyone that makes mesh clothes for the Classic body. The history and development cycle of SL sort of eliminated that option by taking people down a different route. It is technically possible. But few, if any, mesh designers bother now.

What you will find is some older Standard Size mesh clothes. You can find the 'Standard Size' shapes in the marketplace for free. At the time people wanting mesh clothes had to shape the avatar to the clothes. So, it is a bit of a confusing mess getting mesh clothes that fit the Classic avatar. Do the demos!!!

If you mostly wear suits, you can alpha out the body, excluding hands, head, and feet when they show. Then you can wear nearly any mesh suit as the body type/brand will be irrelevant.

BOM = Bakes on Mesh... that probably doesn't help much. -- In the development of SL there was a time that each viewer downloaded all the textures needed to render an avatar. At the time the Classic avatar (system default avatar) wore system layers for skin, tattoo, underwear, clothes, and jacket. Each layer had its textures. The viewer downloaded and then baked all the textures into the three composites that got rendered as the avatar; head, upper body, and lower body.

Every viewer that could see you did the same thing. That is a lot of downloading and baking.

To improve performance the Lab created Server Side Baking (SSB). The back-end service read all the layers on your Classic avatar and baked them into the three textures every one needed to render to see an avatar. They sent that to you and everyone that could see you as a temporary set of 3 textures. End of a massive amount of downloading and baking.

Mesh bodies came along and we ran into a proliferation of textures that needed to be downloaded and baked by each viewer. SSB composite textures could ONLY be applied to the Classic avatar. So, the Lab decided to improve SSB and provide its output so that the resulting composite textures could also be applied to mesh items; bodies and clothes. So now SSB can bake on mesh... and they called it BoM. Very creative name. 🙂

Result: Now you can wear system layers and see them, the result of the bake service, on a mesh body.

If you are fully a Classic avatar, you want BOM stuff because it provides the system layer stuff your Classic avatar uses.

Edited January 23, 2021 by Nalates Urriah

[Claireschen Hesten]

8 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

I know you can buy clothes, but Kauna has had all their male clothes out for free in a mega pack. Last landmark I had for Kauna: https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Time Portal/246/130/1930

Didn't see any mega pack however whatever's left is still there and free 
Gabriel has a section of their store with clothes for men in system sizes and everything  is priced at L$1 http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/GABRIEL/51/118/23

[Skell Dagger]

1 hour ago, Claireschen Hesten said:

Didn't see any mega pack however whatever's left is still there and free 

All of the Kauna items are still there, including the 'mega pack'. It's on the left side wall of the store, marked as 'Misc. items' -

All of the more historical items (ones that would suit the roleplay regions around Time Portal) were separated out into individual frames, but the majority of the collection - including all of the three-piece suits - are in that Misc. items pack. And yes, everything in there is free with the exception of the pipe gacha, which is still something like L$70 per pull.

Marianne is not wrong, by the way about "unpacking forever". You really do need to sift and sort when you're unpacking some of the Kauna items, as several of their suits are modular, with options for different ways of wearing them. For example: this massive folder (click to view full size) is for just one of the three-piece suits:

First order of the day: find the size (S, M, L) that fits you best, and delete all the other sizes. (You can keep the original box, in case you ever change your avatar later and want to unpack fresh copies to use a different size.) Then look at the naming options. The shirt, tie, and waistcoat that are marked as [UNDER] are intended to be worn under the blazer and are only partial pieces (no sleeves on the shirt, for example; like a dickey/false front shirt). The shirt, tie, and waistcoat not marked that way are full pieces that are intended to be worn with the trousers as-is, without the blazer over the top of them. Likewise, you have three options for trousers:

• long with a belt
• short with a belt
• with a belt

Those three versions are different lengths. In fact, the 'with a belt' versions that don't list a length are the 'medium' length trousers.

My suggestion would be - once you've found the size that fits you best and deleted all the other sizes - to create a sub-folder inside that suit folder called 'with blazer' and another called 'without blazer'. You may also want to separate out the 'with blazer' options that have an open collar (no tie needed with those!) into another sub-folder. Then pull the [UNDER] shirt, tie, waistcoat, and the blazer into that 'with blazer' folder, and the other (non-'under') shirt, tie, and waistcoat into the 'without blazer' folder. That way - whenever you want to wear the full suit with the blazer - you don't have to go digging through all of those options to find the ones you need; instead you just add everything in the 'with blazer' folder, followed by the trousers at the length you prefer.

Edited January 23, 2021 by Skell Dagger

[Claireschen Hesten]

6 hours ago, Skell Dagger said:

All of the Kauna items are still there, including the 'mega pack'. It's on the left side wall of the store, marked as 'Misc. items' -

Thanks, clearly wasn't paying enough attention when I packed the mAlt off there. got everything so loads to sift through when I get time