How Does a Mesh Object Become Clothing? (cross post)

[GManB]

I posted this in Fashion but not many ppl follow that forum so I thought I would cross post.

 

I've built, textured, and scripted a fair number of mesh objects and I thought I'd give clothing a try. Could someone give me a high level overview of how a mesh object,  that looks a lot like a blouse :), becomes a blouse? Ie., fits nicely on a body and moves, mostly, with the body. I tried just attaching the blouse to my chest with the obviously and hilarious results. Are there scripts that need to be added to its contents? If so, are such scripts available, and where do I find them (or do I write them)? What makes a piece of clothing specific to a body type? What typically comes in the developer kit I see for some bodies?

 

Any and all responses appreciated greatly!

 

G

[Chic Aeon]

You need to post on the MESH forum but these days most answers have to do with physics and not clothing so not sure you will get much imput there.  If you look up something like "rigging clothing for Second LIfe you will likely find an overview. These days mesh clothing is made for specific bodies and getting a "real" creators kit is very difficult and you need to prove that you already know what you are doing.   Rigging has nothing to do with scripting by the way and "developer kits" are for texture based clothing and  skins and makeup type assets, not rigged clothing. 

 

So lots more to work on before you get to rigging I suspect. You migth want to try some jewelry or non-rigged things like hats and such to get an idea of the BEGINNINGS of clothing creation. Good luck!!!

 

 

[KT Kingsley]

There's a process called rigging. You attach the vertices of the mesh model to the bones of the avatar skeleton, assigning varying degrees of influence (weight) to the connections.

There's a thing called Avastar that adds the SL avatar to Blender to help with this.

And that's the sum total of my knowledge of clothes-making in SL.

[GManB]

Thanks Chic and KT!

I now have the high-level view of the process that I needed to get started. Thanks so much, and best holiday wishes to you and yours!!

I purchased the MayaStar plugin for Maya as I use Maya for creating mesh. About to start viewing the tutorial videos.

Here's a pic of my first attempt at a women's silk blouse. Not the greatest but good enough to attempt rigging, I think.

https://gyazo.com/d231423b4fe291d37c5ef87b34963c68

I modified the human female shape that comes with Maya to match the proportions of a friend of mine who has a Maitreya Laura body. Rigging this to the rigged model that comes with MayaStar will, I am almost certain, provide me only with some skill and a lot of laughs...

 

About the 'difficulty' getting a 'real' creators kit.... [lots of expletives deleted] (got that off my chest a bit).... Wow, what a transparent attempt to keep clothing prices high... simply restrict who can make them... I did apply for a Maitreya kit and got zero response... seems like this artificially imposed oligopoly is just aching for disruption...

 

Cheers,

G

 

[Phate Shepherd]

2 hours ago, GManB said:

I modified the human female shape that comes with Maya to match the proportions of a friend of mine who has a Maitreya Laura body. Rigging this to the rigged model that comes with MayaStar will, I am almost certain, provide me only with some skill and a lot of laughs...

About the 'difficulty' getting a 'real' creators kit.... [lots of expletives deleted] (got that off my chest a bit).... Wow, what a transparent attempt to keep clothing prices high... simply restrict who can make them... I did apply for a Maitreya kit and got zero response... seems like this artificially imposed oligopoly is just aching for disruption...

 

Rigging clothing is far, far easier if you do have the dev kit. I doubt the Maya female shape weights are going to be anywhere near what a particular dev kit uses.... especially when you take into account fitted mesh with the added volume bones. It is far easier to build your mesh to the dev kit, and then copy weights from the dev kit. (There are a variety of steps that can help with this, like using a shrinkwrap modifier before copying weights.)

What you will run into really fast is the limit on total weights allowed per-vertex. SL only allows 4. This wasn't much of a problem with non-fitted avatars, but with fitted avatars, it can be a real nightmare finding a balance of which 4 to allow for each vertex, particularly in the pelvic area. Again, this is where copying weights helps tremendously, as the dev kit creator has already made those tradeoffs. You just have to be careful when smoothing vertex weights as you cleanup post-weight copy, so as not to pick up unwanted influences from other bones.

As for the difficulty getting the dev kits... there is a significant amount of trust the creator is granting you. They are giving you pretty much the keys to the kingdom to make and sell a rip of their body. (Many of them will trash the UVs as one level of protection, or omit distinct toes or other features in the dev kits.) 

Edited December 24, 2020 by Phate Shepherd

[KT Kingsley]

Note that you can (at least via the Firestorm viewer, most likely others) export an SL avatar shape to a COLLADA .dae file and import that into a 3D modelling program. I'm pretty sure that with Avastar, it can the attach that shape to it's model of the SL avatar skeleton.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

Yeah, dev-kit exclusivity sucks just like no-modify. The "human body market" is in shambles.

I'd recommend looking into furry alternatives, like the Kemono or Regalia. They're modifiable and have dev kits freely available.

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Sugarcult-Project-Regalia/18217485

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/UTILIZATOR-Kemono/6070005
https://utilizator404.wordpress.com/downloads/

The downside to these two examples is that you can't use regular LL UV skins with them, since they both use a custom UV map.

13 hours ago, Phate Shepherd said:

As for the difficulty getting the dev kits... there is a significant amount of trust the creator is granting you. They are giving you pretty much the keys to the kingdom to make and sell a rip of their body. (Many of them will trash the UVs as one level of protection, or omit distinct toes or other features in the dev kits.)

I don't buy it. You can easily create a "dummy" of the original product that has less detailed topology overall, along with the other things like unmapping the UV.

If the devkit offered by Maitreya for example is (mostly) literally the source file of the body, which I seriously doubt, they could still provide a worse but more accessible alternative. Even if a few people would upload the less-detailed devkit for their own use, the benefits of more creators being able to create more content for the body far outweighs the people who would actually try to wear or sell the devkit.

In fact, the limited access is exactly what drives people to look for shortcuts, like ripped versions / unofficial devkits. This is demonstrable in many industries, like music, movies, and video games. If people can't get it (poor service or no service that provides it), they will resort to piracy. People will take the path of least resistance.

Also I suppose someone at @Linden Lab should move this over to the Mesh forum.

Edited December 25, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator

[GManB]

23 hours ago, KT Kingsley said:

Note that you can (at least via the Firestorm viewer, most likely others) export an SL avatar shape to a COLLADA .dae file and import that into a 3D modelling program. I'm pretty sure that with Avastar, it can the attach that shape to it's model of the SL avatar skeleton.

@KT Kingsley

Could you post how I would export the .dae file with Firestorm? I have looked and searched but can't find out how to do this.

Thanks,

G

[KT Kingsley]

Looking again, I remembered it wrong.

You export the avatar shape to an xml file using the Developer/Avatar/Character Tests/Appearance to XML menu item. I used my now defunct Avastar to load that xml file into Blender.

The Avastar web page: https://avastar.machinimatrix.org/279/help/io/.

[GManB]

I thought I'd close this off. I got Mayastar, Marvelous Designer, and the Slink dev kit (applied for Maitreya but haven't heard a peep out of them). Watched a few of Cathy Foil's video series on creating clothing with MD and rigging with Mayasstar. Created and rigged two dresses so far and they don't look too too poorly... Still lots to learn. The rigging process is certainly an interesting approximation to the physics of material colliding with a human body as it moves. Very fiddly. The Maya plugins Cathy suggest are super helpful.

Not many female avatars wear Slink today so my potential set of models and purchasers is limited. Hopefully I'll get the Maitreya dev kit soon.

 

Cheers,

G