Monday, June 23, 2014

Some Problems with Mesh

I've resisted mesh clothing for a long time, but it's become so common it's difficult to find outfits made with prims and sculpts. Mesh has become ubiquitous.

Firestorm rezzes mesh just fine, thankfully. The problems I have with mesh aren't because it doesn't look right. No, the problems are more subtle. Here are a couple.

I had barely put on my first-ever mesh frock when I realized I could peek through the neck or armholes and see-- nothing. Alpha masks usually don't quite match up with the borders of garments, and this is the result.


This is a problem with practically every mesh garment I own.

I know I can alter my shape to minimize the effect, but it's MY shape, dammit, and while I'm willing to crank down my boob size a bit or reduce my musculature, I'm not interested in wearing someone else's shape just so I can be seen in a $395L outfit. Besides, who has the time?

Rigged mesh clothing (rigged mesh is the kind you can't move or resize because it's based on your avatar's bones) supposedly allows a better fit, but no, not really.

Designers offer a half-dozen or so sizes for their mesh wares, but most are sized for absurdly small body measurements. Finding the correct size is a tradeoff; on the one hand you want to minimize gaps like the above-- and on the other hand, you don't want the mesh cutting into your avatar like so:


That would be straightforward if our avatars stayed in one position, but they move about. The dress above fits horridly in a couple of my AO poses...


... and just fine in others:


I chose this dress (no, I'm not going to tell you who made it because this is not, repeat NOT a fashion blog) because it had a common and old-fashioned problem-- it came set to attach to my right hand. That meant that every time I pulled out my trusty watermelon gun or accidentally dragged a prim from inventory onto my avatar the dress was knocked off and I was left with an invisible torso.

I knew I could fix the problem by setting the dress to another attachment point, but I was afraid it would rez out of its proper orientation. Thankfully, that didn't happen. It works just fine on my hip and no longer gets knocked off.
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