Creating

[BlkPassion]

I just opened a shop in the marketplace, and I would like to make clothing in the different mesh sizes available. Do I have to purchase all the mesh sizes in order for me to make products for it? Can someone please help me? I'm fairly new to SL and still learning how things work in here.  Thank you!

[Rolig Loon]

I'm not quite sure what you are asking.  If you are selling things, you do have to own them.  If you are making the mesh items yourself, then yes, you either make versions in multiple sizes or you make fitmesh that will be compatible with the buyer's avatar.  If you are selling clothing that someone else made, then you have to get versions of the various sizes and styles that you will be selling.

[Lindal Kidd]

While you should make mesh clothing to fit either the Standard Mesh Sizing shapes, or fitted mesh (fitmesh for short) to fit several of the most popular mesh bodies, you don't have to "purchase all the mesh sizes."  The Standard Mesh Sizing shapes are free on the Marketplace, and mesh body creators offer "developer kits" for creators making products for their mesh bodies.  These may be free, or may be available at a (usually) very reasonable price from the mesh body creator.

[Nalates Urriah]

You are starting out. So, the basics are:

There are System/Classic avatars. These are more less the original avatar built into the viewer and have been around for a long time.

There are Mesh Avatars that are the newer iteration of the avatar. Basically these are a custom user made mesh body attached to the system avatar that covers it. A second skin...

There are system clothes and mesh clothes. System clothes are like decals painted on the system/classic body. You essentially only have to make a diffuse texture to make these clothes. Mesh clothes are attached and cover the body, mesh or classic. These are custom user made 3D models with weight painting and texturing. There are two types of mesh clothes, rigged and fitted are our jargon. 

Rigged clothes are rigged to the animation bones in the avatar skeleton. They are NOT affected by many shape sliders in the Appearance Panel, like Body Fat. The result is these clothes are made in 5 standard sizes and users fit their body to the clothes. They are not very popular these days.

Fitted clothes are rigged to the collision bones and are affected by most shape sliders. The Body Fat setting works. These are generally made in sizes related to the mesh body brand being worn. So, sizes are for Slink, Belleza, Maitreya, etc.

To make fitted clothes one gets the Dev Kit from the body maker. They generally provide a model usable in Blender or Maya that lets you design for that body and match the weight painting to the body for good fit and conformance during animations.

[Chic Aeon]

Just a bit more info as the other posts made getting the mesh dev kits sound easy, and it is not. You can get a development kit for most mesh bodies if you want to make TEXTURE clothes that currently go on with an APPLIER. If you are going to make your own mesh clothes, even having the body (say Maitreya) to test on won't let you transfer weights over to the mesh you are making. You cannot download a copy of the mesh bodies (Maitreya, Belleza etc) once you buy the body. Obviously that would be disastrous to the  mesh body creator.

So getting a mesh body kit for the popular bodies is difficult as many many folks have reported on these forums. You need to prove to the body creator that you already know how to make good clothes and are a viable candidate to make things for their brand of clothes. I don't see that you can do that at this point with just a storefront and no products.

IF you want to texture mesh clothes that OTHERS have made and sell them, then that is easier for sure. Be sure and test the templates demos WELL and make sure that the fit the corresponding bodies. Reasonably you only need a demo body to test the fit of the templates you are considering.

You question was a little confusing and so you are getting a lot of different types of answers as we really don't know EXACTLY what you want to do.

 

Good luck, whatever that is!

 

[Fionalein]

you might want to go a way between creating original content and just recolouring templates. Some Fullperm merchants sell templates with Blender and/or Maya files. Changing previously made and pre-rigged stuff could be a way to get into the creation process (at least I hope it is prerigged - I never bought one myself - but I'm sure the merchants will reply to an inquiry)

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

9 hours ago, Fionalein said:

you might want to go a way between creating original content and just recolouring templates. Some Fullperm merchants sell templates with Blender and/or Maya files. Changing previously made and pre-rigged stuff could be a way to get into the creation process (at least I hope it is prerigged - I never bought one myself - but I'm sure the merchants will reply to an inquiry)

Rule of thumb - if the mesh is already uploaded inworld, it should be pre-rigged (for clothing). If it's a DAE file, you'll have to do the rigging and weighting yourself.

I've never encountered it different to that but this is SL so there's always the possibility.

[Nalates Urriah]

On 7/24/2018 at 12:41 PM, Chic Aeon said:

...  If you are going to make your own mesh clothes, even having the body (say Maitreya) to test on won't let you transfer weights over to the mesh you are making. You cannot download a copy of the mesh bodies (Maitreya, Belleza etc) once you buy the body. Obviously that would be disastrous to the  mesh body creator.

So getting a mesh body kit for the popular bodies is difficult as many many folks have reported on these forums. You need to prove to the body creator that you already know how to make good clothes and are a viable candidate to make things for their brand of clothes. I don't see that you can do that at this point with just a storefront and no products.

I haven't had any problem getting the Dev Kit Models that I can use to transfer weights. Sometimes getting them working is a PITA. But, AvaStar is working with the various brands to have the models provided to AvaStar and then they'll just be built in. One would select the body brand and model with the appropriate weights.

I have the most experience with Slink. I had no problem getting the Dev Kit and didn't have to prove anything. I haven't asked for the Skin makers kit. I suspect many are more sensitive about who they give those models to.