Creating clothes in second life.

[XsymbolicangelX]

I have installed the blender software, and i have decided not to spend money on avistar and have a 3d female model close to sl uploaded on blender. I'm very eager to learn and i know how to use templates and textures on gimp etc... But what is causing me all of the confusion is how do i even begin to know how to create clothes by itself, like actually the object of pants or a shirt, how do i actually make that? Or is there a place where i can download pre-made clothing to upload to blender? Thank you so much for any of the help i can receive it is greatly appreciated.

[Chic Aeon]

First of all, clothes are some of the hardest items to make for SL. So you really REALLY need to learn the basics of making mesh, topology, mapping, texturing in Blender or at least AO maps BEFORE you tackle clothes.

There are tutorials out there for making clothes. Some quite old but likely still informative. 

Almost everyone that makes clothes uses Avastar; while I do not make clothes, I am assuming there is a good reason for that. But not getting a subscription (that's how it is now I heard) was likely a good plan as  there is much to learn before the clothes thing :D. 

I suggest thinking of clothes as your endgame and work on other things like furniture to do your learning. If you try and learn too much at one time it becomes overwhelming. We have seen that time and again on the forums. 

Since it seem like you are new to Blender I suggest looking up some tutorials on the interface.  There is a good one here. Not terribly new but likely good enough. https://cgcookie.com/lesson/interface-and-navigation/

After that if you so choose, you can go through my tutorials (not clothes) here:

https://www.slartist.com/browse-the-tutorial-chic-videos-1-date.html

They are listed with newest first so going back to the introduction would be extremely wise :D.

 

After maybe six months of working in Blender you might want to look into clothes. It is a BIG commitment. It is also very rewarding after you make it past the learning curve. So it will depend a lot on how MUCH you want to make clothes.

I wish you all the best! 

[ChinRey]

6 hours ago, XsymbolicangelX said:

Or is there a place where i can download pre-made clothing to upload to blender?

Yes: http://www.makehuman.org/

Quite a lot of the mesh clothes you see in SL come more or less directly from MakeHuman, only rigged with Avastar/Blender.

[HarrisonMcKenzie]

The short answer is that if you aren't a 3d modeler, you aren't going to be able to make clothes. You need to be familiar with your software of choice (which seems to be Blender), skilled at polygonal modeling, UVW mapping, character rigging and animation, and additional skills like edge flow and mesh optimization. In addition to making the mesh, you will want to be a skilled graphics designer and be familiar with something like Photoshop as well as art in general.

Now, if that doesn't scare you off, I would look at a formal course in Blender, like the professionally taught courses on Lynda.com. This will walk you through basic modeling and such, and you can build up a portfolio of non-rigged mesh to get started. Once your better at modeling and know about character animation, you can start looking at clothing, but realize that that is basically the end of the spectrum, not the beginning.

[Sick Venom]

Then if you get past those steps, you can hope and pray the creator of the dev kit you want, sends it to you within a year.. or at all.

[FeralDew]

I just found this, I am going to check it out. I just want to make basic shirts and pants and add my paint designs or 3d models to them for seasonal clothing or something like that. Like a reindeer head sticking out of a pocket spot. Just basic stuff that takes little to no effort. But I am having a hard time understanding Blender, not like when I took Graphic Design/ Programming/ web-design and multimedia/ or Audio and film in Highschool. This thing is like...Some timewarp crud predating prehistoric times. Kind of like a bad math experiment except worse... I don't really know >_< Maybe Once I go through these tutorials it will refresh some memories, I graduated highschool 8 years ago and havn't even messed with this kind of of stuff since then. So, I am sure it will look like complicated.
I thought I was using Dreamweaver for 3d-Modeling in Graphic Design and my Programming class back in Highschool, but like I said, that was 8 years ago and I checked online and it appears that Dreamweaver dosn't offer 3d-modeling software, and if they did that it was removed from the market for whatever reason.... Wish I could remember though since it is the platform I was taught on, though I remember my teacher saying that it was hundreds of dollars

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Clothing_Tutorials

Edited November 29, 2018 by FeralDew

[Chic Aeon]

3 hours ago, FeralDew said:

I just found this, I am going to check it out. I just want to make basic shirts and pants and add my paint designs or 3d models to them for seasonal clothing or something like that. Like a reindeer head sticking out of a pocket spot. Just basic stuff that takes little to no effort. But I am having a hard time understanding Blender, not like when I took Graphic Design/ Programming/ web-design and multimedia/ or Audio and film in Highschool. This thing is like...Some timewarp crud predating prehistoric times. Kind of like a bad math experiment except worse... I don't really know >_< Maybe Once I go through these tutorials it will refresh some memories, I graduated highschool 8 years ago and havn't even messed with this kind of of stuff since then. So, I am sure it will look like complicated.
I thought I was using Dreamweaver for 3d-Modeling in Graphic Design and my Programming class back in Highschool, but like I said, that was 8 years ago and I checked online and it appears that Dreamweaver dosn't offer 3d-modeling software, and if they did that it was removed from the market for whatever reason.... Wish I could remember though since it is the platform I was taught on, though I remember my teacher saying that it was hundreds of dollars

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Clothing_Tutorials

Dreamweaver was a web page making software :D.

Meanwhile most of what is on that Wiki is from before I was born (like over ten years) so won't be very helpful.  

Even basic stuff is VERY VERY VERY HARD. So do'nt be surprised. We try and tell folks this and they seldom listen LOL. But sayin' it again. 

[Klytyna]

11 hours ago, FeralDew said:

But I am having a hard time understanding Blender, not like when I took Graphic Design/ Programming/ web-design and multimedia/ or Audio and film in Highschool. This thing is like...Some timewarp crud predating prehistoric times. Kind of like a bad math experiment except worse...

Yeah, well, if you are used to high school courses in "web design & multimedia", something that is *complicated* like 3D modeling and UV mapping *might* seem a bit much to cope with.

11 hours ago, FeralDew said:

I thought I was using Dreamweaver for 3d-Modeling in Graphic Design and my Programming class back in Highschool

Dreamweaver is a WYSIWYG web page editor, nothing more, it NEVER did 3D modeling. Ever.

11 hours ago, FeralDew said:

though I remember my teacher saying that it was hundreds of dollars

8 Years ago? at a high school? Might have been 3D Max, which cost 4-500 usd if purchased with an "educational licence" or best part of 3 grand if purchased normally.
 

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

18 hours ago, FeralDew said:

I just found this, I am going to check it out. I just want to make basic shirts and pants and add my paint designs or 3d models to them for seasonal clothing or something like that. Like a reindeer head sticking out of a pocket spot. Just basic stuff that takes little to no effort. But I am having a hard time understanding Blender

Buy some full perm mesh clothing and add your own textures. No need to scale Mt Blender when you just want to stretch your legs a bit  

GIMP is free and what a lot of us use for working on textures. It has a learning curve but nowhere near as steep. Look for FP mesh with an AO (ambient occlusion) layer. This will put shadows on top. In GIMP, you'll need to set that layer to Multiply. (I don't know if PS and other software use that term or something different.) Then put another layer underneath for your fabric and an additional layer inbetween with your reindeer. If they're on separate layers, you can play around with things like scale and contrast more easily.

Export your image, then open that version up again and Remove Transparency so it doesn't alpha glitch on you. You probably won't get it 'right' the first time, so use either the Beta grid or the local texture feature to avoid the 10L$ upload fee until it's finished.

[Stephanie Misfit]

This is a tutorial that shows you one way you can texture full perm mesh templates, using the AO maps as mentioned above. The tutorial uses Photoshop but I am guessing the general principles would apply to GIMP as well.

It's probably also worth mentioning that if you buy rigged full perm clothing to texture, you will not be able to attach another unrigged mesh object to it (like the reindeer head you mentioned), so that can be a bit of a limiting factor, but you can still have a bit of individuality by being creative with your textures and by making outfits that use pieces from different mesh creators. As a lot of people use the same full perm mesh templates, you need to make your final product stand out from the crowd a bit. OH, and be aware that there are some disreputable sellers of full perm mesh clothing templates on the marketplace who sell stolen work, have a good look at the seller's store before purchasing, check reviews, make sure that any logos in the item images match the seller.

 

 

[Klytyna]

4 hours ago, Stephanie Misfit said:

It's probably also worth mentioning that if you buy rigged full perm clothing to texture, you will not be able to attach another unrigged mesh object to it (like the reindeer head you mentioned)

Completely WRONG.

In point of fact, attaching unrigged items to rigged/fitted full perm template mesh is not only possible, it's pretty much an industry standard.

Usually it's just a cube with the retailers store logo on, containing the BOSH script for receiving texture hud info. But it can easyily be something like unrigged antlers, it just means that the finished linked item has to be attached to the point where you want the unrigged parts attached, 

4 hours ago, Stephanie Misfit said:

I am guessing the general principles would apply to GIMP as well.

I'm not guessing, and even without watching the video, I can tell you that the principles will be common to Photoshop, Gimp. PSP, Coreldraw, or any other multi layer based image editing app made in the last 20 years.
 

[Kyrah Abattoir]

The primary reason people buy avastar is because its creator made a perfect (nearly perfect) replica of the SecondLife Avatar in Blender. All the sliders behave as close as possible to the one we use in SecondLife. So when a creator make a piece of clothing and rigs it, the result they get in Blender with Avastar is very close (if not identical) to what the result will be in SecondLife.

Linden Labs doesn't provide tools themselves so that's essentially what you pay for with Avastar.

 

But as others said, Blender has a pretty steep learning curve and while I'd like to encourage everyone to give it a honest try because being able to create your own objects is really a fun and empowering experience when combined with SecondLife, it is not going to be quick or easy.

Your first steps should be to learn the basics on the blender interface and workflow, and the basics of polygon modeling. Armature rigging (clothes) comes much, much later.