Not Sure Where to Start

[CheapInk]

Hello!

I've been using SL for a couple of years and Blender for several more than that. I've recently decided to give making my own mesh clothing a whirl since I'm using a mesh body and it limits my options a bit. At this point in Blender I've done animations, full armatures and the like so I'm not too worried about my blender skills so much as not knowing were to start regarding the SL side of things. The nice thing is there's a lot of tutorials it seems, the bad thing is that they're coming from such a dizzying array of viewers, generations of Blender and secondary programs I'm just getting lost in it all. I guess my main questions are:

1- Is there a way of getting a usable armature into Blender from SL that can be used for a weight transfer or do I have to manually set up the rig?

2- Is there an export format SL uses specifically like .dae or .obj? I know blender can be a bit funny with export so any favored settings would be appreciate.

3- Is there a means of exporting a mesh object or group of objects from SL so they can be used to model around? I only ask because while my mesh body's developer makes a low-poly version available I've got several additional body mods and it would be handy to have them all in one place so I don't have to waste time doing a mesh only to find out that I made the ol' knockers several inches too high or something silly like that.

I would appreciate a direction to any good tutorials (particularly text ones, I find them way easier to follow than youtube, but anything helps). Thanks in advance!

[Min Barzane]

I would say best start would be is to get Avastar (its an addon for blender made for SL rigging( fitted mesh support to ) and animation) .

You can get it here http://blog.machinimatrix.org/ or inworld (search Jass in places)

There are tons of tutorials on their blog and on tube https://www.youtube.com/user/gaiaclary/videos

For SL file type blender has options for SL dae(collada) in operator presets options when you export (Avastar has its own dae  export option directly from toolshelf)

[CheapInk]

Thanks! That really helps. I'm very excited to get started.