Creating a fitting body mesh

[hidden Loon]

Hello everyone! I am Hidden Loon and I am new to blender. I have also just came back to secondlife after a long break. This whole mesh thing is a new concept to me and from what I have herd I love it.

So far to my knowledge, mesh is able to some how fit your body, my body, and anyones body (this is what I have been told). Please correct me if this is wrong.

So I have an idea (if the above is true or to some degree) to make an object that fits to the person body (but slightly larger) so it can perform a ingame function. So my question is:

Where can I learn to make a full body mesh that will fit a persons body?

The next question is: Once created how do I texture the body object I have just created?

 

Thank you in advance!

[Bhakti Mimulus]

Hey, 

Welcome back. I always love when people come back. I will leave your answers to the experts, all I can tell you is thay you may have a long road to go since you want to make a pretty advanced Blender object. It can be fun though and i have found the Blender community to be mostly very nice and fun to deal with.

BM

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

Heya hidden,

that's a lot of questions and shows you are obviously also completely new to modeling itself

To cover all your questions in one answer would prolly be too much.

So let me get into a few of them:

Where can I learn to make a full body mesh that will fit a persons body?

There are many threads on this forum. And on youtube are also video tutorials about rigging, weighting and working with the secondlife skeleton.

To create a Mesh avatar there is much more needed then just the modeling of the body itself.
You also need to weight it / and rigg it to the SL armature so it will move along with the ingame avatar.

So maybe its best you start with learning how to model, then going into the subject of how weighting and rigging is done. (I'll post some links at the end)

So I have an idea (if the above is true or to some degree) to make an object that fits to the person body (but slightly larger)

It does not need to be larger, we have Alpha layers to render the underlying avatar transparent, thus you can create a mesh avatar of any shape, i.e. like this: 

It can be smaller, bigger, and you can even size the whole armature down and create real minis or giants. In addition to that fact and with the use of the Alpha layers there are no limits to 'what' bodyshape a selfmade avatar can have. (aslong as it of course fits to the skeleton and can be weighted towards this armature etc)

The next question is: Once created how do I texture the body object I have just created?

This is a completely different subject again. 
The texturing of everything when it comes to 3D models is done by creating so called UV maps, unwrapping the object to a 2D space and then assigning materials and textures to it, possibly even bake certain maps as Ambient occlusion, lights and material bakes in addtion to simply painting the textures based on the UV maps you have created.

So you might want to add UV mapping / unwrapping, and texturing also to your 'learning' list =)

If you go on this page : http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Mesh-Blender-Tutorials/m-p/1962565#M20513
I have posted there a full list of all helpfull Blender tutorials and tutorial ressources to start from.

( those links are valid should you decide to use Blender as 3D program to create your Mesh models)

Once you got a bit familar with modeling itself and understand certain principles and terms and want to start on a certain project it's best to return to here with screenshots of the project and direct questions about a certain problem or a question that popped up

[hidden Loon]

Thank you everyone! I shall begin working on much smaller scale projects to get more familiar then work my way up! I will do all the research possible to learn all I can like weighing the mesh, having it for a sl skeleton, and baking textures.

 

Any suggestions for a first time user of Blender of what to start making to get more familiar?

[Bhakti Mimulus]

Personally, I really recommend two things for people just learning Blender for SL. 

http://www.gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html

and

http://www.machinimatrix.org/

 

The first one is Blender in general, the second is for applying it to Second Life.

 

Have fun

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

(just to avoid copy pasting the the whole post here ) Have a look at the link i gave you in the last reply : http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Mesh-Blender-Tutorials/m-p/1962565#M20513

on the page bottom i posted a reply with all sorts of blender intro links and tutorials.

Those, and the ones Bahkti gave you should help you getting into that whole materia =)

[Nalates Urriah]

I found it hard to sort out all the information I was getting about SL Avatars and which files are what and how things work. So, I have a series of tutorials targeted for SL users. Click the link in the signature. Then find the menu and select The Stuff then Clothing Tutorial Index.

We also have a thing called the Mesh Deformer. This is a bit of code that allows a mesh to be based on a specific shape and to adjust according to the appearance settings. This would allow clothes made for any avatar shape to fit an avatar of another shape/size. But, that code is held up by various considerations.

This means that for now, clothes are made that only partially conform to differently shaped avatars. In general it is a big mess. If you want to catch up on that project and get your hands on the project viewer, search my blog for Mesh Deformer. There is a TAG on those articles so you can pull up all the related articles.

Machinimatrix.org has good tutorials and a retail product that makes this all much easier to understand and accomplish.