Saturday, January 12, 2013

The Map is Not the Territory...

...but it can come pretty close with a good cartographer and good data.

In particular, one advantage cited for Lolas! new Tango mesh breasts is that their UV map matches that of the stock Second Life avatar.

(No need for sunscreen; the UV map is the computer graphics version of a problem man has faced since the great Age of Exploration: how to accurately represent a three-dimensional shape (the round earth) on a flat sheet of paper (a map)? Here we aren't talking the great globe itself, but instead breasts, and having a consistent UV map makes life easier for clothes makers.)

Reading that in a comment in "The Explosion of Breast Implant Fashion in Second Life" (on Soul Train's SL and MMO Blog, and thanks to the ever au courant Maggie Bluxome for mentioning it on her blog) made me start rummaging through my inventory. I knew I'd read that before...

...and I had.

In particular, at Rygel and Lustbaby's Workshop web site, on the page describing Pixel's Paraboobs:
Pixel's Paraboobs are different because they were carefully modeled and UV mapped to match up with the default SL Avatar. This means that skin and clothing creators can make a single design for regular outfits/skins and those same textures will work on the Paraboobs. This saves a lot of time in the creation process and it also allows designers to make things for regular users and Paraboob owners all at once! This also means that it might be possible to get your favorite fashion and/or skin designer to take 90 seconds and create an "applier" for you.
Note the date at the top of the page: January 24, 2012.

I'm extremely happy that many clothiers have taken an interest in Tango--I just hope that interest spreads to other breast attachments as well--but I do wonder: why not a year ago?

1 comment:

Aliasi Stonebender said...

Honestly?

I bought a set of Paraboobs awhile back. (I'm not so much for the exaggerated chests, but I do like something more rounded-looking than the rather pointy default, and having a shirt that stretches properly between the breasts is a bonus.) I suspect they'd be right up your alley, but I can see why they weren't very attractive to most. The nipples are huge and prominent, that I recall, and the shape itself is more cartoonishly big than the more 'natural but well-endowed' look the Lolas breasts cater to. In addition, the clothing layer IS plastered right onto the chest, so no advantage over the default SL avatar there, either.

Which is not to say they're a horrible product, not at all. But I can see why it took the tweaks the Tango set has to really take off.