MD or Blender?

[Lola Heartsong]

Hi everyone, 

Is Marvellous Designer or Blender a better software to create clothes for Second Life? I've seen a lot of people using Marvellous Designer, so I'm just wondering, is it easier? Does Marvellous Designer help to create higher quality clothing? 

Thank you!!

[Wulfie Reanimator]

They're different tools for different parts of the same workflow.

Marvelous Designer is "easier" or at least more intuitive when it comes to designing clothing, but "high quality clothing" doesn't just mean that it looks pretty. Well made clothing should at least try to be efficient, which the mesh from Marvelous Designed really isn't. Marvelous Designer needs a lot of information to make the fabric simulation natural and accurate, but Second Life doesn't work the same way so it should be simplified afterwards.

This is where Blender comes in. Blender can be used to clean up your mesh from Marvelous Designer, as well as unwrapping and rigging it. There are other tools that can do these things too, but really, the answer is "both." You can't (well, you can, but shouldn't) just make clothing in Marvelous Designer and put it straight into SL and call it "good."

Edited November 11, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Kyrah Abattoir]

What Wulfie said. MD is not a modeling tool, it is a physics driven design tool.

Start modeling in Blender, then start rigging models in Blender, once you are happy with your core modeling skillset, incorporate MD into it if you so desire.

[Lola Heartsong]

10 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

They're different tools for different parts of the same workflow.

Marvelous Designer is "easier" or at least more intuitive when it comes to designing clothing, but "high quality clothing" doesn't just mean that it looks pretty. Well made clothing should at least try to be efficient, which the mesh from Marvelous Designed really isn't. Marvelous Designer needs a lot of information to make the fabric simulation natural and accurate, but Second Life doesn't work the same way so it should be simplified afterwards.

This is where Blender comes in. Blender can be used to clean up your mesh from Marvelous Designer, as well as unwrapping and rigging it. There are other tools that can do these things too, but really, the answer is "both." You can't (well, you can, but shouldn't) just make clothing in Marvelous Designer and put it straight into SL and call it "good."

Thank you for your detailed reply Wulfie 😄