Help Making Dresses

[Zapphoria]

Is there any kind of dress template? Or are people just making dresses in software such as Blender?

[Lindal Kidd]

It depends!

Clothing in SL consists of two different things.

Clothing layers.   These are bitmapped textures created in GIMP or Photoshop and painted directly on the avatar.  They always fit, but they are skin-tight.  They are not, therefore, the best type of clothing for every purpose.  You can download free clothing templates to guide you in painting this type of clothing.  Google "clothing templates Second Life."

Attachments.  Attachments can be made of ordinary prims created with the Second Life building tools, or sculpted prims made with UV weight maps created in Blender or other 3D modeling programs.  Most often these days, though, attachments are mesh objects made with a 3D modeling program.  Blender, along with an add-on called Avastar, is a very popular choice.  There are scads of tutorials on YouTube and elsewhere on the web on Blender and creating mesh for SL.

If you aren't a skilled 3D modeler (many clothing designers are not) you can buy pre-made mesh templates from people who ARE primarily modelers.  Then you can apply your own unique textures to them and re-sell the resulting products.