A great example of fitted mesh

The other day, in a group for builders, the usual anti-mesh brigade were doing their usual anti-mesh brigade thing (which, oddly, only ever seems to concentrate on mesh clothing, as if mesh is never used for anything else in-world, ever) and this time they were hating on fitted mesh and how it doesn't seem to make any difference at all. Of course, facts didn't seem to matter one jot to them.

Today, while trying on a demo for a mesh male catsuit (something that's very rare, very very rare, please, if you make mesh clothing, do consider helping make things like this not so very very rare), I sort of stumbled on a great illustration of the difference between plain rigged mesh and fitted mesh. While this isn't news and will come as no surprise to anyone who's being paying attention, and while I doubt it would convince anyone mentioned in the first paragraph, I thought it would be fun to grab some photos and post them on my blog for future reference.

So, here's me wearing the demo rigged but not fitted version (apparently sized "medium"):

Laughably useless, right? With the alpha on it's even more hilarious:

I mean, fine, perhaps it's very tight latex, but that tight.... I'd need to find a blue skin pretty quickly.

Now, this time, with the rigged fitted mesh version:

Suddenly it's looking more promising. While much of it is still inside my body it's outside my body at the important parts, and the parts that will be hidden by an alpha would be, in RL, the parts that are, you know, helped to look a little trimmer. With the alpha on it still looks like my shape:

Sure, it's pinched in at some points, but like I say above, that makes sense. It's a tight-fitting latex catsuit, you'd expect it to do that to some degree. This is also, for me, a good illustration of why I find it silly when people point out that fitted mesh still needs alphas as if that's a bad thing. This is a combination of mesh and alpha achieving an effect that normal "fabric layer" clothing could never manage, at least not without wearing a custom shape (which would be extra ironic given that shape-modifying is the #1 complaint made against rigged mesh clothing). Meanwhile I got to do all of the above without changing my shape one bit.

Of course, it's not all perfect, and I'm still trying to decide if I should go for this catsuit or not. My mesh feet clash a little with the bottom of the legs:

but then again the same issue is visible with my "normal" feet:

That said, my ankle cuffs (with I'm almost never without) more or less cover that issue up.

Also, I'm not 100% convinced by the backside. It seems a bit too angular in places:

On the whole though I think it's a real step in the right direction and it is, without a doubt, the best-fitting male mesh catsuit I've seen yet (come to think of it I've only seen one other and it looked all kinds of wrong on me).

PS: Bonus animated gifs. Non-fitted vs fitted without an alpha:

and non-fitted vs fitted with the alpha:

That second one might possibly be the silliest thing I've seen this week.