Tangos to eBoobs conversions

USING LENS CORRECTION TO MAKE NEW APPLIERS WORK ON OLD BOOBS

It’s no secret among the busty clothiers that making an applier for Lolas Tangos and the various compatible breasts is a snap. But there’s a widespread misconception that making a texture for the pre-Tango breasts is too difficult and time consuming. Well, I’m here to show you one way to easily and quickly turn a shirt texture into something suitable for the many classic style breasts still sold and in use.

Before we get into it, a couple caveats. Most importantly, this is not a cure-all to the problem. This is a quick and dirty trick that will give you something passable, something a bit better than what the tangos applier will give. Secondly, this is NOT for making skin or bra textures for the classic style breasts. That calls for different tools than what I’m about to show here. Perhaps I’ll go into that another day.

For this mini-tutorial I’ll be using the T-shirt template from Robin (Sojourner) Wood, available here, and the Gimp paint program. The technique here will work just as well in Photoshop, Paint.net, or most any half-decent graphics editor.

First, open up your top in your favourite paint program.

Then crop it down to the top left quarter, exactly half of the width and height of the original texture.

I realize that making a simple white shirt fit won’t do much to convince you of just how well the following technique can work, so I’ll make it something more intricate.

There.

Now, the classic boobs make use of more of the texture than the Tango-types, so you need to pull the interesting bits of the texture out toward the edges. BUT you don’t want the central bit getting overly distorted. Fortunately, there’s a filter/plugin that does exactly that.

In the Gimp it’s called “Lens Distortion.” Other programs will call it that or “Lens Correction” or something similar. If your paint program doesn’t already have something suitable then it ought be an easy download to find.

In the Gimp, calling up Lens Distortion gives you this pop-up window.

Now, here’s where the magic happens.

Dial the Main slider down to -100%. That pulls the outer edges further out, but the middle is hardly stretched at all.

While you’re at it, slide the X-Shift to about 2.2% and the Y-Shift to around 3.1%. These adjustments will compensate for the fact the quarter-cropped texture leaves the shirt just slightly off-center.

Now you have something like this…

I know, the outer areas are looking horribly stretched. But the shape of the classic breasts shirt layer will concentrate those parts of the texture, you’ll see. Anyway, save that texture with a name that will tell it apart from your usual tangos applier texture and load it up to SL.

Ready for some good news? You need to put this new texture in just ONE applier. Pretty much all the classic-style boobs can use an eBoobs applier, as it’s one of the pre-Tangos “standards.” If you need the applier you can easily join the eCorp! group and ask. Or just IM me in world at ChalcedonyMao Resident and I’ll send you the applier set.

Here’s some pics comparing the classic-style texture on the Overfilled model of eBoobs against the tangos-style texture on similarly sized Silicone Revo vStrings.

Think a T-shirt is too easy, worrying about lining up any open spaces or straps? Okay, time for something a little trickier. How about this top for a glitter dress from Linda Kellie?

This isn’t an ideal test subject. With a starting size of only 512 pixels per side this will give us an applier texture measuring just 256 x 256, and that means more blurring when applied in world. For a quick demo of the technique I’ll let it pass. But for serious work, please start with a bigger texture when you do this.

Now that you’ve been warned, here’s the resulting old-style texture…

…and how it looks when first applied.

A bit off, sure. But some minor adjusting of the texture parameters will deal with that.

For comparison again, here’s the Tangos applier version on vString Revos.

And that’s it. 60 to 120 seconds in your paint program, 10 L-bills to upload, another 60-120 seconds to plug the UUID in the eBoobs applier, then get the word out to the clothing starved, die hard fans of the larger-than-life breasts.

You don’t think there’s enough of the old-types still around? Perhaps you haven’t seen them because you’re not catering to them. The classic style boobs still have their fans, and there is quite a selection available beyond the standard-setting eBoobs from eCorp. Many of the size queens, inflationists and balloon girls seem to have gravitated to the Super Overfilled model from the Verge. Almost the entire popular vString series from Violet Studios, including the Tangos-like Evo and Revo models, has a special shirt layer for compatibility with the old appliers. The MilkMade breasts from Mused has a very devoted following playing its milk production game. Also there are the distinctively shaped Bra Busters from Icon, the Corset Fillers from Vixen Wear with a unique “cups runneth over” look, the Christinas from Foxbean, several models from iBoobs, and a number of others still available on the Marketplace and in world.

If you’re interested in going further with support for the classic breasts then pick up a set of the free UV maps for eBoobs, available at the Verge.

While just about all the old-style breasts will take the applier, maybe you want to try your textures on the eBoobs themselves. Affiliate vendor boards for buying eBoobs can be found at
Bad Kitty, It Figures, Mountain Tops, Rogue Industries, Spanked,
TavWear, and Vooh. Or you can just get them off the Marketplace.

Again, I want to point out that this is NOT the way to make the best textures for the classic boobs. But for a Tangos clothier who wants to welcome those OTHER boobs into their shop, this is a short and simple way to do so.

That’s my rant for the day. Love to see what you all do with it.