Clothing creation software

[isabellalecour]

Let me apologize before hand if this question has been asked before. What software do I need to create clothes for SL, including the new mesh items?

Actually, I'm looking more of what else I need. I already have Paint Shop Pro-Photo X2, Gimp2.6, Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 and Paint.Net along with Picasa3; all from previous graph design projects. 

I've picked up the alpha maps templates of Robin Woods, LL's set and one from CMFF.

I ran into the offer from DAZ 3D and have been downloading several of their freebies. 

Do I have a good set-up already or am I missing pieces to do this?

Are their plugins that I may need or anything else that should have that I haven't listed?

Thanks for your time. :D 

[Coby Foden]

For mesh creation you would need for example the excellent free Blender, or alternatively some commercial polygon modeller program (for example: Maya, 3ds max).

Blender is very feature rich.  With it you can do everything what is needed for mesh items to be uploaded to SL.  The only downside is that it tends to have a steep learning curve.  Anyway, there are tons of excellent tutorials for it in the net.

[isabellalecour]

Would the Daz 3D progam work as well for making mesh? 

[Coby Foden]

I have Daz 3D installed but I've had no time yet to play with it to see what it can do.  Maybe somebody else can enlighten this matter.

[Maeve Balfour]

The DAZ Studio program you are referring to is "scene rendering" software - as in, designed to IMPORT pre-made content which you arrange into a setpiece and create a rendered image or animation from. The figures, clothing, props and sets are all "ready-made" content which is loaded up into the scene, arranged, lit and so on.

As far as I am aware (I've been out of the DAZ loop for a while), DAZ Studio is NOT designed for creating meshes from scratch. However, it DOES have rigging capabilities with purchased add-ons - but I can't vouch whether these are suitable for rigging SL AV specific clothing or not.

Personally, I would recommend using Blender if you wish to get into mesh clothing creation. There is a steep learning curve for sure (but this is the same for ANY mesh creation software if you are totally unfamiliar with mesh creation - you will need to learn the essential general steps involved, in addition to learning the software interface as well). In this regard, Blender is no more difficult than any of the other software packages out there - just keep in mind you will be learning the software AND general 3D mesh creation procedures at the same time.

Please note I'm NOT trying to put you off of mesh at all (to the contrary, actually!). You just need to be aware that mesh creation - especially for clothing - is a LOT more involved than many people realise.

:matte-motes-smile:

[Bouttime Whybrow]

a great program that is free for creating meshes from scratch is sculptris. it's offered free from pixologic, the makers of zbrush.

you start with a basic primitive shape like a sphere, sculpt it free hand and then you can export it as an obj file so you can import it into blender where you can convert it to a dae file ready for sl.