Dressing My Avatar

[ChrissyMelodious]

Ok I have kind of a neginner question.  I have a Maitreya body and when I add or  wear outfits that are marked with just a shirt or pants icon rather then the box they do not appear.  How do I successfully wear these items?  Do I have to remove my maitreya body?

[Nalates Urriah]

You've run into a BOM thing.

Items in inventory with pants and shirts icons are System Clothes, which are from the pre-mesh-days of SL. These items are sort of painted on the classic avatar body, aka the system or default body built into the viewer. Our mesh bodies fit over the system body. BOM (Bakes On Mesh) transfers... relays... projects... whatever... the system layers (skin, shirts, pants, etc) onto the mesh body.

If you wear a system item and it doesn't show then you likely do not have BOM active on the body.

The history of SL is one of steady progress and change. Initially all avatars were System Avatars and there were no mesh bodies. Clothes were either System Clothes - simply textures painted on over the skin texture, or prim or sculpty clothes. When mesh was added we got about 3 styles of mesh clothes. First were standard size clothes made for the system avatar. We adjusted the shape of the avatar to fir the clothes. That sucked. Then we got mesh bodies and mesh clothes for those bodies. But we have Appliers that were used to place system-like clothes and skin on the mesh bodies. For appliers to work mesh bodies had to have numerous layers (onion skin over lays). This solution created very high ACI/ARC (Avatar Render Cost). BOB was developed to reduce ARC. BOM allows us to move back toward the simpler System Clothes concepts.

It gets tough for the new people to sort through.

Edited February 15 by Nalates Urriah

[Persephone Emerald]

Items with a shirt, pants, or similar icons are system layer clothing that would be essentially "painted onto" a system avatar. You can wear these on a mesh avatar if it has Bakes on Mesh (BOM) enabled. This option bakes textures onto your mesh avatar's skin, just as they would be baked onto a system avatar's skin.

For the Maitreya mesh bodies (and most mesh bodies and heads), this option can be enabled on one of the tabs on the HUD for the body. Look for a button that says [BOM] and click that.

System layers that work with BOM include skin (person icon), tattoos (dragon icon), Universal tattoo layer (used for EvoX ears), undershirt, underpants, shirt (👕), pants (👖), jacket, skirt, socks, gloves, and alpha layers (invisible parts). As would be normal in real life, skin would go on the lowest layer, then tattoos or makeup, then underwear, then shirts and pants, then jackets. We can wear multiples of these layers by Adding them, instead of Wearing them.

If you can't see any of these on your mesh body, you probably need to enable BOM with your HUD.

Mesh clothing and mesh bodies, on the other hand, will have a box icon, because these are considered objects that are worn on our avatars.

[ChrissyMelodious]

Thank you Ladies for your help!

[Marianne Little]

If you like to read instead of watching videos (I think written tutorials are best) Virtual Bloke has some really good BoM tutorials.

They are a few years old, but still good. The only thing that's really changed is that the HUD's are a bit different. And the Lelutka heads are now 100% BoM, you can't activate skin appliers on them no matter what. (Well, it may be some really old discount heads in the store yet, I am talking about current heads)

It is still makeup appliers for the heads, and special effects for stuff like body glitter. So appliers is not all gone, they are just not popular for skin anymore.

For skin, it is either BoM or appliers. If you use an applier for the skin, you cover everything on the body under. You must also use an alpha layer for the mesh body, it render everything under the mesh invisible.

When you use BoM skin instead, it is no alpha layer to turn everything under invisible, so the layer clothes, layer tattoos, layer freckles etc etc show up on your mesh body. The benefit of layers is that you can add a lot of them. I think it is 60 layers that is the limit. I never use so many layers. You can use body hair layers, skin adjustment layers, like freckles, birthmarks, stretchmarks, red skin from spanking, dirty soles, sun burn, bikini tan lines, modesty covers (skin tinted patches for naughty bits), tattoos, blood drips, wounds, band aids, bandages, stickers, underwear on layers, stockings, leggings, all sorts of tight clothes to wear under mesh clothes....