Tailor Archive

and it wasn't even in game! *gasp* I was in a bookstore flipping through a magazine when lo and behold I saw a big ol two page advert for galaxies, and the guy in the center was wearing one of the nice bandoleers we can make.

Now what tickled me was the fact that they had had someone airbrush the bandoleer so it rested right and didnt' hoolahoop out from his body ... but then I got to thinking... they can take the time and spend effort to airbrush an addvertisment so it looks purdy, but they won't spend the time and effort to digital brush the actual thing ingame that's screwed up .

u got a point there. I hate the way bandoliers look in game. they should make em actually fit not buldge out like that then thye would be kool and i could make some money off em.

Aezo Copas/Tempest/Master Dancer/ Talior0-2-0-0/ Theed-Naboo

Give me a tell if you wabt clohting or Bio-Enhanced clothing

u got a point there. I hate the way bandoliers look in game. they should make em actually fit not buldge out like that then thye would be kool and i could make some money off em.

Aezo Copas/Tempest/Master Dancer/ Talior0-2-0-0/ Theed-Naboo

Give me a tell if you want clohting or Bio-Enhanced clothing

Sometimes bandoliers do fit. The problem with bandoliers, belts, and necklaces is that they do not automatically adjust themselves to the size of the owner. Thus, there's one "lucky combination" of race, height, weight, torso, etc. that they fit more or less perfectly on, and then they fit progressively worse the further you get from that ideal shape.

The ideal size and shape for most of these items seems to be a tall human male a few notches above minimum weight with a lot of muscle, but I haven't messed around with them in a while, so I can't remember exactly. There may be a few different combinations of weight/muscle that create the proper effect, but the height is more or less a fixed thing unless you want it to hoola-hoop at the shoulder.

You know what's worse than hullahoop? When you see a bandolier that's clipped by a vest or other piece of clothing *sigh*

What's particularly funny about this is that there was a bug a while back with the Tech Pack on women that made the pack ACT the way we want belts and bandolier's to act. This is to say, the pack was 'glued' to both shoulders and elbows and would just deform to match those four points as the avatar moved. I'm pretty sure they fixed it by removing the gluepoint from the elbows. Now, why is it so difficult for them to pick decent gluepoints for the belt and bandolier?

Can someone more knowledgeable than me explain why clipping is a frequent problem? Is it something one pretty much has to live with given the technical state of the art?

Clipping and hulahooping are the same problem (clip happens when the error is negative, hulahoop when the error is positive). This is also why you will notice that belts aren't nearly as thin (depth relative to width) as they are in the real world.

The core issue is that there is nothing 'solid' in the game engine. This is also why you can't put a birdcage down on a tabletop.

Because nothing is solid (which is to say, the surfaces don't actually interact with each other, they are display-only) you can't actually 'stack' two things on top of each other. The way the game actually draws a toon is this: Take a stick figure skeleton (possibly one per species, or could be just one for everyone with different 'knob' settings to adjust relative proportions) and stretch it to fit your body template (as specified at character creation, or during Image Design session). Then from this, use various points on the skeleton to stretch a balloon-like transparent skin. Then spraypaint on that, the texture and color of your toon's skin. On top of that, layer over various bits and pieces of clothing.

Now, here is where the trick comes in... the game uses exactly the same points to decide where to draw a shirt as it does for a jacket. When the artists create the shirt model, they have to make sure they are all thin enough that they won't poke through a jacket model. Then when they draw the jacket model, the artists make sure it is 'thick enough' to cover over any details that the shirts will have. Then with a bandolier, they need to create the model so that the 'inner' face is inside the 'outer' face of the tightest jacket, and the 'outer' face of the bandolier is outside the 'outer' face of the bulkiest jacket. The clipping/hulahooping is because they haven't gotten these models 'right'. This also, btw, explains why there is a 'gap' between the skin and jacket when you look at a female toon with no shirt wearing an open front jacket.

An alternative method of doing this is for the game engine designers to create a system where pieces of fabric have a built in 'thickness' and each lays on top of the one under it. The hard part about this is if you want something with varying thicknesses. Think about a shirt with a breast pocket. Stick something thick in the breast pocket (maybe the Datapad is a box about the size of a cell phone when 'put away for storage'). Now, lay a silk vest over the shirt. Everywhere except for the breast pocket, the shirt is very thin. At the breast pocket tho, the shirt sticks out (i.e. suddenly has a thickness of an inch or so) in a way very different from the underlying body shape.

It is understandable why the Devs did clothing they way they did, but they seem to need to do two things yet: 1.) more carefully define 'height from skin' for each of the layers and make sure clothing fits within those zones and possibly 2.) add more points on the skeleton to anchor to and use them for clothing.

One of my pet peeves about the clothing/bodyshape system right now is that they don't do a very good job of portraying 'over/underweight'. I think it is unlikely they will change it however.

I never wear a belt because they always look like they are 10 inches thick on my Avtar...

The art department has done such a great job on so many things but belts and bandoleers are just so wrong...