Looking for good mesh clothing tutorials in Blender

[Phoebe Hazelnut]

I just recently started experiments with Blender and it can do so much! Just learning sculpting and did my fist steps in retopology methods and thought it could be a good practice to create fashion for SL since retopo is basically just putting a new mesh on an existing one. I figured like everyone uses Blender by now for clothings but I couldn't find any tutorials that cover the very basics like from scratch to build clothings and stuff for SL mesh avatars. Especially I am looking for how to create a piece of garment and have it autofit to the most used mesh bodies. Are there SDKs? The documentation about Dev Kits is somewhat confusing and I don't know where to get everything! Do I have to buy all the avatars and export them from SL?

[HunniHope]

  

2 hours ago, Phoebe Hazelnut said:

how to create a piece of garment and have it autofit to the most used mesh bodies

This bit is confusing, so just to clear things up, each mesh body is it's own shape, and each mesh body will have its own weights. For e.g. Hourglass Petite is not going to fit eBody Curvy.  So..

1. Get yourself a copy of each Dev Kit. Top branded ones like Maitreya, Slink, Belleza, Legacy etc will have an application form on their own websites for you to fill out. and some brands will have a kit you can pick up in their store
2. Get Avastar. Though rigging can be done with native blender tools, most dev kits will come prepared to be used in the likes of avastar. Avastar will also help in so many ways when it comes to rigging.
3. Make your base garment and then size it to shape of each mesh body, and then you will need to rig and paint it for each body.
4. Get a copy of each body to test your fitting. Demo bodies work just as well as full versions for this.
5. Get signed up for the Beta Grid so that you can upload your items for testing

If you can't get the Dev Kit you want most at this time its no big deal, build up a portfolio using other body types, then you can reapply later when you built up something they can see.

To get on the Beta Grid, if you do not already have permission, you will have to file a ticket with Linden Lab. And you will need to read and agree to the IP Terms on both Agni & Aditi accounts to be granted mesh upload ability. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Preview_Grid

 

2 hours ago, Phoebe Hazelnut said:

 thought it could be a good practice to create fashion for SL since retopo is basically just putting a new mesh on an existing one.

This statement I quoted sounds rather flippant. Retopolgy isn't just about putting new mesh on existing. For starters you gotta have an existing model to retopo and that means making it usually, it can be used for cleaning up geometry, making good edgeflow and, importantly for SL, reducing the overall triangle count. Rigging in blender has quite the learning curve, and the curve isn't reduced by having Avastar.  Familiarise yourself with the different bone types that SL uses, how to assign materials/faces etc in blender. Learn how to unwrap, bake AO's, bake normal maps from high poly to low. How to bake textures if thats the way you want to go. And some limitations that SL has in regards to mesh http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits#Mesh

Personally, if i was starting again, from scratch, I'd do the same as i did first time round. Start without avastar and using the default SL collada which you can get from the wiki, or better yet get the workbench files free from the avastar website, and practise. Practise modelling the mesh, practise basic rigging to just deform bones. then move up to get avastar and with the likes of eBody or Tonic which are easy kits to get in both stores, then practise with those dev kits, and adjusting sizes. 

 

I know i've missed stuff out, my brain kinda has things on auto pilot that i cant remember anymore it just "does it" lol. And whether we use blender & avastar or maya & mayastar or whether we stick to native tools, there's a ton of different workflows out there so you'll probably get different, and possibly conflicting answers. 

Don't expect to find many videos that takes you through from step 1 to step finished, if you are looking for tutorial guides you will likely find them broken down into different segments, there may be a video for making the original garment, then another for unwrapping, another for the baking, another for resizing, another for rigging and so on and so forth. The trick to the search is really to know what stage you are searching for, and though some videos may appear to be old, for the most part they are still relevant in some way, but the programme you use now may differ a bit to the one used in a video made in 2013 lol

[Phoebe Hazelnut]

thank you for your detailed answer I really appreciate but God why is this so complicated >.<

It's not like I want to start a professional shop and stuff just want to create clothing for fun and now I have to buy everything twice just to try if I like it on the long run.

Can't there be like just rigged base meshs?

Quote

For starters you gotta have an existing model to retopo and that means making it usually

Yes yes that's what I am doing right now! I sculpt which usually looks like a mess on the wireframe because it creates a load of triangle thingies of different sizes that are impossible to rig and weight paint and texture and so I use Blender tools to create a new mesh out of quads. Blender has really alot of tools that make that simple like shrink wrap, F key to fill whole areas, snap to face with offset and so on, It's not quick but simple, you still sit hours and hours pushing faces around it's like playing jigsaw when you try to resolve your loops and I use pictures from existing meshes made by professionals in Blender to help me with how my loops should flow and where I can make stars ect. So I thought I get a mesh body for SL and use the same technique to put like a shirt mesh on it - and then just rig it to the bento skelly!

PS btw Just tried your wiki link and It sent me to https://secondlife.aditi.lindenlab.com/my/account/ip/accept.php where it says I need my payment info but the page to add my payment and the link to add my paypal is on cashier.aditi.lindenlab.com which is server not found also the terms of service links I had to agree are 404

Edited May 21, 2020 by Phoebe Hazelnut

[HunniHope]

Beta grid doesn't require PIoF, the L$ you work with there is like monopoly money, looks good, feels good, but its worthless lol the error on accepting the IP terms is a bug and should be reported to LL via a ticket or Jira.

22 hours ago, Phoebe Hazelnut said:

why is this so complicated >.<

It isn't not really, each mesh body brands owns the IP/copyright/whatever to the mesh bodies they produce, and only they can authorize anyone to have a dev kit, some do it freely, some want to see that you know what you are doing by seeing products you have already made. And the final decision of who gets it is up to them. Personally I wish more would do it that way, some folk would rather see more freely available. 

Then there's the matter of programmes, I don't think you will find many who make mesh and rely on one programme, no plugins etc, some of those are gonna cost ya. If it's just for personal use you can try get a dev kit for just the body you wear, and do without avastar and try doing it the native blender way. If you can't get a kit for the body you wear then you're SOL i'm sorry to say.

And then you have the limitations of SL. It is what it is and we work with it. 

22 hours ago, Phoebe Hazelnut said:

now I have to buy everything twice just to try if I like it on the long run.

I'm not sure why you think you have to buy everything twice. As I said, you can use a demo body to test the fitting of mesh., your inventory in the main grid will be updated into the beta grid around 6am the day after you log in and out so your inventory in beta grid will always be relatively uptodate. But you cannot move things back from beta grid to Main

22 hours ago, Phoebe Hazelnut said:

Can't there be like just rigged base meshs?

There are. But they are not as widely used as the branded types. You have the standard SL body, 5 sizes, and you can get free workbench files for it on the avastar website, you also have the Ruth & Roth mesh bodies for example, they're free and come with dev kits. If there was a base mesh body that we all wore we wouldnt have the diversity of avatars that we have now, we'd just be clones in different skins

 

[Pure Sohl]

Super helpful response @HunniHope! Thank you. 

[Phoebe Hazelnut]

"Beta grid doesn't require PIoF, the L$ you work with there is like monopoly money, looks good, feels good, but its worthless"

Yes I am aware of that (they post 40000$L on my account), of course just for testing purposes!

If I now could just get access to the grid but the wiki says I need to go there and when I go there it tells me to apply payment info to get access to beta and when I try to set it, it says server not found

[Phoebe Hazelnut]

17 hours ago, Pure Sohl said:

Super helpful response @HunniHope! Thank you. 

Yes it was very helpful and that it's so complicated is not her fault. At least someone answered with details!

[Nalates Urriah]

Machinimatrix makes training videos showing how to use AvaStar. I think most of them are on Vimeo. You can also find them from the https://blog.machinimatrix.org/ site. Their advanced tutorials require a subscription. I think they are worth it.

Blender, 3D Max and Maya are most commonly used for SL modeling by which I mean things. These and several others are used for making clothes. The work flow is probably different for each designer. Some tasks are easier in a specific software while subsequent tasks are easier in another. So, some of us move from program to program as we build.

SL has some legacy restrictions and a few GOTCHAs. AvaStar handles most of those so you can ignore them reducing what you have to learn. I think that makes Blender-AvaStar the easier to learn and more popular. Those that use 3D Max and Maya for work or other reasons tend to stay with those. They also have a better understanding of 3D modeling and the various complications so they quickly learn the SL in and outs.

As to why not a basic avatar... that is what we started with. It didn't work out. Just think of it as a free market thing that gives THE PEOPLE more creative freedom.

Edited May 23, 2020 by Nalates Urriah
basic avatar