I’m coming late to the party on every account, and I had been telling myself yesterday that I would not let myself be distracted by all the new Mesh clothing trickling onto the main grid, because I sort of need to get into Mesh myself, but here I am. I just wanted to have a quick look at the Jane store and then saw more items there than previously glimpsed on plurk last night that I rather liked (plurk, I finally get how distracting you can be!).
So, what did I like ? Let’s start with the poncho ! I’ve always wanted a poncho to wear on SL, but they’re impossible to wear as attachments, so it’s good that one of the first things released as Mesh was one. It came in two sizes and I found the smaller one to be perhaps a touch bulkier than I might have liked, but only just slightly. It flexes rather well with the body, but while it’s nice to have rigged clothing that acts closer to how clothing moves with the body in real life, we’re not quite entirely there yet. In maybe two thirds of the poses I tried, parts of my body were still showing through, and I had to cycle through my entire set of poses to get a few pics where it showed well.
Now onto the pencil skirt. I love pencil skirts. I’ll even wear the system ones; I’ve gotten over its flaws by now (well it only took a few years). But now I really like how this one works; notice where I’m standing with my legs apart: no stretchy weirdness. The only downside with this skirt in particular was that the one alpha layer that came with it did not reach me high enough at the waist, nor low enough at the bottom, so that bits of my waist and my lower thighs actually were poking through (I cheated and cloned those bits out in the pictures). I’m told that alpha layers just cannot work the same with all shapes. I think it might help to offer a couple of alternative alpha layers to work with different hips and legs lengths. You can also make your own alpha layer to fit you better if you have to, though. And it has just occurred to me that I even once described how to make one here, so I might do that later. I would have liked to have been able to fix my issue by resizing the skirt itself, but unfortunately you cannot resize rigged Mesh attachments. Also, I could not discern a very noticeable difference between the two sizes included, larger and smaller, so I’m guessing neither of these will really work if you’re anything like curvy or even on the big side (on the other hand, the free Mesh jeans offered at SLink came in no less than 4 sizes, and I appreciated that).*
Now, that’s probably a few too many close-ups of the poncho than you really needed to see, but with depth of field being nice to me today, I found I spent a little more time than I probably should have fawning over myself. Note, I did not find it necessary to edit my shape, but I did switch to my “breastless” shape to wear the poncho — where my breasts are a little flattened and decreased — which I always have on hand for sculpted tops where my breasts poke through.
Lastly, the maxi skirt. No problems with this one and the larger size fit me perfectly. Rather more fond of this one than I expected !
I also tried the sack dress at the store and the hoodie, and they both work very well. And very importantly, there’s a free demo available for every Mesh product offered there; that’s lucky because I don’t think I would have bought as much otherwise (prices are very affordable by the way, everything seems to be 125-200L). And I hope that just as they do it for hairstyles and skins, free demos will become the norm for selling Mesh clothing, too.
As for the 3.0 viewer that is currently needed to view, use and create Mesh, well, I had been resisting converting completely to the new SL 2.0 viewer since it came about last year and have been using Emerald and Phoenix instead until now, but the Mesh feature has finally won me over. I mean, even when Phoenix will have integrated Mesh in its turn, I’ll probably be sticking to the official viewer from now on, even when just building or hanging around and not just to take shadow pictures anymore. After a year, or however long it has been out, the new interface has fiiiinally stopped bugging me so much and this was just the final nudge I needed to decide to switch for good. Also did you see your profile has some kind of Facebook Wall feature integrated there now ? It’s kind of like plurk too, I guess, but between you and all your contacts… Not sure how it works but I like that too !
Credits. Skin: Fashionably Dead (Toast Bard), Hair: LeLutka (Thora Charron), Sandals: Maitreya (Onyx LeShelle). 1. Poncho & Skirt: Jane (Janie Marlowe). 2. Top: Très Blah (Julliette Westerburg), Skirt: Jane (Janie Marlowe), Bags: Milk Motion (Marie Lauridsen).
*Speaking of rigged Mesh attachments’ shortcomings, there is a JIRA issue relating to that that was just opened. I did not read it all yet, but the gist of it is, it wants to remedy them. So, vote !
FieP is a lovely new skin from Dutch Touch ! Iki Ikarus has been making new tones too with new bodies, and here’s FieP in “Pale”. I love the eyebrows, sort of thick but soft and not overwhelmingly present, and the lips. Different eyebrow options come on seperate tattoo layers, as well as extra moles, teeth, eyeliner and hairbases.
