Allegro Gown

Introducing the BlakOpal Allegro Gown in SineSpace! This piece is simple elegance. This strapless floor-length gown is fashioned in a swirled textured fabric, with contrasting ruffle at the neckline and a large shell-patterned border along the bottom hem. There is also a contrasting waist band. The gown features high quality model, advanced materials with 4K materials support, and cloth physics (where available). Check out the video below to see the Allegro Gown in motion.

Years In The Making

I am not kidding when I say our Allegro Gown in SineSpace was years in the making. We originally released an Allegro Gown in Second Life around 10 years ago. When we arrived in SineSpace in 2016, we quickly realized that we did not want to do simple ports of our SL creations. We wanted to make new pieces, optimized to look their best in this next-generation virtual world.

After we got cloth physics working in SineSpace at the end of 2016, we made a list of several different kinds of pieces that we wanted to create. Longer dresses and gowns were at the top of that list! We bounced ideas around and talked about it for a few months, and decided we wanted to make a new incarnation of the Allegro Gown. We had the first model in summer 2017, and it took until now to finally get the gown working reasonably well.

Let me make a long story short. Getting cloth physics to work is hard. Getting it to work well is really hard, and that is just on a short dress or jacket. Longer dresses and gowns are a lot more difficult than that. We stayed with it, and as a result after countless revisions and attempts we have finally finished our Allegro Gown.

Advanced Materials Are Amazing

BlakOpal and I make a wide variety of art in the real and also the digital worlds. We love working with different tools and materials. I love how light shines, illuminates, and reflects off different surfaces. Take a look at the Allegro Gown in the video above or in the pictures below. The fabrics are incredibly detailed and the silks have a wonderful sheen.

Previous generation worlds like Second Life made an effort to support advanced materials. However, they fell short of a truly PBR (physically based rendering) model. It was pretty good at the time, but relied on tricks that designers pulled to force an item to look like it was in a particular environment. The results looked great in certain places, but not so great everywhere else.

SineSpace and Unity do support PBR, so our advanced materials render accurately in real-time. Consequently, the lights and shadows aren’t painted or baked on. Whether you’re outdoors, in a brightly lit room or at a virtual nightclub, the Allegro Gown looks like it is actually in the environment.

Working With SineSpace Client Quirks

From time to time, you may experience the dress material awkwardly snagging on the avatar’s leg. This is a quirk of the SineSpace client/viewer app. It doesn’t happen often, and has been getting better over time. If the dress snags on your avatar’s leg, toggling the F key to fly/land will reset how the fabric drapes on the avatar.

Available Now

The Allegro Gown is now available in ten colors in the BlakOpal Designs shoppe in-world. You will also be able to find it using the Shop button in the SineSpace client (in Clothes -> Outfits -> Dresses). In the meantime you can also preview it on the SineSpace web shop. Buy it for yourself or as a gift for a friend. The pieces look great as a set but you can also mix and match them to create countless different looks.

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