Mesh: why do designers not eliminate the void under skirts?

[Kerry Streeter]

Several years into mesh, why do most designers still not eliminate the void under skirts? There's a perfectly clear tutorial on how to do this at https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/See-Through-Gaps-in-Mesh-Clothing-Easy-Fix/m-p/2400645#M25076. I am not a designer or creator. I'm a consumer who's thoroughly fed up. I do have a sense of taste, and if I can't stand to look at my own avatar when I'm sitting down in a mesh dress, then I imagine others also find it off-putting.  If any creators of women's clothing who see this post have eliminated this problem, please send me an IM. Or if there's an easy fix I can carry out by playing with alphas (which I've never done). I'm tired of wasting time collecting demos of ravishing outfits and finding the same old void. And increasingly there's nothing else out there. Thank you.

[Sassy Romano]

Possibly because "most" of them aren't creating the original mesh but buying templates from a few actual mesh creators, thus the actual number of "designers" is totally skewed.

[Rhonda Huntress]

Interesting.  It seems like different clothing parts would not be as easy as a tee shirt, tho.  For example the sleeveless jacket shown in the beginning.  Which part would need to fold over?  We are not only see past the arm but looking through the front of the vest as well.

 

Around the arm, neck and waist of close fitting pieces the extruded ends work like pant legs on system pants such that they are tucked up and then into the body.  Skirts have a lot more open area to cover and would still need to clip through the legs just to prevent those Sharon Stone moments.  It would not be as easy but should certainly be doable.

[Astrid Kaufmat]

It al depends by the fact that SL has backface culling always active. Lindenlab could add an option to turn it off in case you need. Due to this the polycon is seen only on one side ( the one where the normal is) the other side is seen as transparent. If for instance you wear an oldbie skirt made by the classic sl templates you could see that skirt being ttransparent too. After all also that skirt is a mesh we just applied our own layers to it and it didn't have  folded edges.

The folding edges I do it too helps in many cases. In the specific case of skirts, due to animations and stuff rather than a single folding edge  could be better closing the hole under the skirt. Some adopted this solution.

Why aren't all the makers doing this many reasons. As it was told you above some might be using layers from other makers: for instance they just make the texture for an appplier of a mesh body that in most cases I saw is done without any folding edge. The folding edge could represent according to the geometry( mostly it doesn't) a problem behaving like a kind of holding edge The same that you get in any 3d program when you apply a subdivision surface and want to preserve some details by some edgy cuts.  Blhea well forget all this tecnical detail. Other reason I may thing of is the fact that many things I see still around are like those marvelous designer meshes not at all retopoed when I hit ctrl alt shift r to go in wireframe and inspect what the hell is going on if I ffeel lag I see a very intricated  mesh like made by spiders on LSD or on LSD plus crack and in that case folding edges becomes a puzzle , to not talk about UV MAp and precision rigging using  numbers consoles rather than rough weight paint by brush

[2Lips]

YESSSS....PLEASEEEE..... I finally found a brand that has a black underpant under all skirts and dresses...it is soooo much nicer then the big void canyon that goes up into your head.  There are such efforts made for realism...and then this happens.....COME ON!!  There should be a set of lingerie that can be worn for those that don't want to look down their shirt and see the floor!!  Kudos to the Logic (I think) brand for doing what they do for this problem....the rest need to follow suit....at the very least!!!

 

[ChinRey]

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2Lips wrote:

Kudos to the Logic (I think) brand for doing what they do for this problem....the rest need to follow suit....at the very least!!!

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Just in case Sassy's short explanation wasn't enough:

Not many designers have the skills required to make good quality mesh clothes. Some who don't do it anyway but many realizes their limitation and buy ready made full perm templates instead.

Other don't have the time to make their mesh from scratch. Spending days creating an outfit that will probably only sell 20 copies for 50 Lindens each is not everybody's idea of a good time.

The person(s) who made the full perm templates a while ago had this idea they could reduce lag by eliminating the inside of the meshes. They were right there but yes, they may have gone a bit too far in the saving.

The solution is to find some good mesh maker to create a brand new set of full perm templates for everybody to use. Unfortunately it's hard to find somebody who's willing and able to spend weeks on a dollar-a-day level pay for that.

[Persephone Emerald]

One solution to this problem is to wear glitch layers rather than alpha layers under your clothes. When mesh was new, some designers asked us on these forums which way we preferred. The consensus was that most people preferred alpha layers to glitch layers - which show through the mesh clothes rather than showing the avatar's skin.

You can make your own glitch layers for solid-color mesh clothing as long as it doesn't show big patches of your avatar sticking through. For instance, for a black skirt, make plain black glitch pants. For a white T-shirt, make a white undershirt. If you have system layer shirts and pants that are the same texture as your mesh clothes, you can use these too.