Spinell

always thought the *.slm files were crucial, so I let them be. Didn't know it might get better if you delete them. Also, how could I get the blender version? Just to update the one I currently have so the"only selected" option works properly?

Hi everyone, need some photoshop advice. I want to make a tartan skirt. Found a lovely tartan pattern that I can multiply to make a seamless texture. Now, for the end of the skirt, I want to cut the bottom of the texture into little realistic strips of wolly fabric, like in real life. But I don't know how to get that effect. Any ideas?

I noticed that problem too, but sometimes the "only selected" option did work, sometimes it didn't. To me, it seems random, so honestly I dunno what's going on. But I really don't like the downloader: I think they just programmed it really badly.

Have I mentioned how much I HATE the model uploader? How on earth did they make something so broken? Everytime it's loading up a mesh or calculating expenses I think my game's gonna crash during that time (which, btw, did happen before). SO yes, I can't seem to be able to upload some rigged meshes I made, despite having uploaded the same meshes days earlier for testing, before I made some modifications. In blender, I right click to select the mesh, go to export->collada, tick the boxes that say "for SL" and "Only selected", name the file (with the extention .dae). In SL, I open up the uploader, the mesh pops up, I view if the skin weights are there, go to the upload options and check "with skin weights" (sometimes I also lower down the scale of the mesh), and go to calculate the price and LI. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and I wished to know why. Anyone here knows?

Hello everyone. Today I came looking for a shoe tutorial: either for pump heels or (preferably) for some female boots. The only tutorial I was able to find was the Shoe Quest by machinimatrix, but it's unfortunately incomplete, and even though I followed that tutorial, my shoes still looked fairly awful. So I'm looking for another tutorial to take a look at and get a hang of this. Any suggestions you can recomend, please? ^.^

There are still many details about rigging I still haven't quite wrapped my head around. I came to ask for two problems: First, a rigged mesh I did looks fine in blender, but after uploead onto SL and attachment to the avatr, I noiced some of the ends of the mesh are spiked. It seems some vertices got moved after rigging but it looks perfectly fine in blender. What happened and how to fix it? Second: I'm using for the firsttime the standard size avatars to create different sized meshes for my shop. I used the default avatar proportions to make all the modeling and I rigged to because I wanted to check if it worked and looked properly inside SL. So the mesh is rigged now. My plan was to make duplicated of the mesh and scale them acordingly to fit the different sized avatars of the standard size. My question is: does the rigging still look properly after I duplcate AND after I set it to a different sized avatar? Or do I need to duplicate+scale the mesh without it being rigged? Also, here's how I do my rigging: 1. Select the mesh and then the armature and select Parent to Armature with Empty Groups . Select the mesh and the avatr body and then use the Bone Weight Copy add-on, interpolation 2, both checkboxes checked (yes, this add-on works fine with blender 2.6)

I'd like to start by saying that I'm NOT a master of Mesh making and I won't be giving detailed explanations of why I do certain steps and what those steps influence exactly, because most of the time I don't know specifics: I do things like this because they work like this. And that's enought for me! Onto the tutorial! Step 1: -Add a plane and subdivide it a few times Step 2: -Press 5 on the numpad to go into ortographic view (for convenience) and press either 1 or 3 on the numpad (however you like it) to go into a horizontal view. -Go into your modifiers tab and add a wave modifier. Uncheck either the X or Y checkbox to get the wave to spread from one side of the plane tot he next instead from middle outwards. Also, set the shading to smooth (on the left toolbox). Step 3: -On the bottom of the screen, press the "play" button to start simulating the wave. You can decrease the speed of the simulation to help you view your wave correctly. -A few details I'd like to talk about: *You can freely move the green stopper of the timeline with your mouse anyway you like, to better view your wave *I have also pointed out the values on the sliders to the right that I used to create the wave you see in the picture. You can use these as a general guideline if you need to. *The wave modifier simulates ONE wave ad multiplies it acording to the sliders. You can clearly see where that one wave starts and finishes. I have positioned the timeline stopper in a point where you can see that the wave is starting to form anew on the left of the plane. *It's very useful to identify this because you can easily multiply this place several time to create a very wide arrange of ruffles that repeat perfectly. For this reason, I'll actually select the edge loop containng the vertices of the left end of the plane and delete them. Step 4: -When you are absolutely happy with the way your wave looks, apply the modifer. The plane should now look like something in the picture. Step 5: Now we're going to "pich" the top of the plane to create a fan-like ruffle: -Rotate your plane into a vertical stance. -Go into edit mode and locate the vertical top of the plane. Select every other vertice like the picture shows. Make sure that the last vertice that you select (which should have a white dot instead of yelow) is in the spot where you want to center your "pinch". I chose the middle, but you try one of the end of the plane, for example. Step 6: -Go into the vertex groups tab (looks like a triangle) and add a new group by clicking the + button. Name it and then hit the button "assign". Make sure you assign! Step 7: -Go into Object Mode and, still in the vertex groups tab, go the shape keys section and click the + button two times. You should now have a Basis and Key 1. Step 8: -Go back into Edit Mode and, with the vertexes still selected the way you want them, we're going to do the "pinching": Enable proportional editing by pressing the letter O and then press S to go tino scaling mode. Before moving the cursor, press X (or Y, depending) to fix the scaling. Also before movingt he cursor, increse or decrease the radius of the proportional editing (the white circle) to encompass more or less of the plane, to your liking. -Move the cursor to "pinch" the plane in the middle. It should look something like this: Something's still not quite right with this though: it lacks some realism, some fabric uneveness and the waves seemed somewhat cut by the pinching. Let's fix that! Step 9: -If you go back into Object mode, you'll notice that the pinching is gone. Don't worry, it's till there, you can't just see it yet. Go into the phisics tab which is at the far end of the tabs. Add a cloth modifier and check the checkbox that says "pinning". In the box below, click it and select the group of vertices we used to pinch. Go a little lower and find the clocth colision section and check the checkbox that says "self colision", and make the quality 2. Step 10: Now comes the fun part, however I realised something: my computer doesn't have any problems simulation cloth in blender, but I know some computers are actually very slow. For this reason, I've decided to put 2 ways of doing this step, one for fast PCs and one for PCs who have trouble handling cloth simulation. Option 1 (fast PC): -Go back into the vertex groups tab. You'll see a slider below the shape keys we added called "value", which should be at 0. -Go to the timeline at the bottom of the screen and press "play" to start simulating the cloth. -Now here's the trick: as the cloth simulation is running, slide the slider bar of the "value" from left to right, and you will see the pinching effect we did. The cloth simulation with simulate the effect of fabric pinching in real time. You can slide the bar slowly or quickly for different effects. Option 2 (slow PC): -Instead of sliding the "value" bar while the cloth simulation is going (which might make your PC go crazy and even crash blender because it can't simulate the cloth changes), here's what you can do: before pressing "play", go to the vertext tab and slide the "value" vbar all the way to the right so you can see the pinching already in place. Only then do you press "play"; the effect will be slightly different -Do not forget to go back into the physics tab and press "current cash to bake". Now you can safely move the timeline bar along the simulation until you find the way you want your fuffles to look. When you're satisfied with your ruffles, apply the cloth modifer back in the modifier tab. That's it! Here are some final tips and tricks I'd like to share: -To make your ruffles look better: *Add more sigdivision to the plane at the start of the process: the ruffles look better if the wave looks better and the added subdivision helps create smoother, more defined waves. *Also, if you want to copy multiple planes and stitch them togetehr to make a longer set of ruffles, or if you want to use and array modoifier, I suggest doing it after applying the wave modifer, in other words, before doing cloth simulations. MODIFIERS Below are some modifier suggestions to make your ruffles look better after the process: -Smooth modifier: Helps soften out some of the ugly, twitchy creases from the cloth modifiers, in case you're going for a more smooth, silky look for your ruffles. -Subdivision surface: Helps your ruffles pop out and defines the curves a bit more. -Solidify: Essencial to make your ruffles look like fabric. Also, you can increase the thickness to make your ruffles look "puffy". Note: They don't have to be in that order. Nothing more to add! Hope this is somewhat useful. EXTRA: forgot to add, but I took most of the basic ideas about cloth pinning from this video:

Haven't checked this in a while: I'll be happy to make a quick tutorial. Give me a day or two.

Thanks for the input, Jennifer. I'm going to start providing my alpha textures as well.

Oh, so it was refering to the actual texture. I actually thought it was a completely different thing. Thanks for the info!

I like to do a lot of research into what other mesh sellers are doing so I can learn from them and I bumped into something I'd never heard before: A dress that selled: the MESH itself, an alpha texture, and a body alpha. I've never heard of a body alpha before. Can you guys tell me what is it, or what the seller probably ment by this? The alphas I've used so far are only simple textures that I apply to the ystem alpha program inside SL to hide body parts that poke out of the mesh (for example, like in the corsets I do). Now I'm curious, what other types of alphas are there? This info could be very useful for my building. ;)

I joined two meshes together and wanted to use clipping+auto merge to join the evrtices of the two meshes and "sow" them together, but for some reason, the clipping doesn't work anymore. No idea why. When I grab a vertice with the clipping, it doesn't detect the end of the other mesh, instead it tried to attack to the avatar model that's close by. So, it's still working, just not detecting the mesh I joined earlier. Do you guys know how to fix this?

Ok, I really didn't want to post again in the forums so soon, but this thing is bigging me: I can't fix a problem with these two modifiers. I want to copy and multiply the ruffles mesh I did earlier today around in a circle. So, I add a benzier circle (also tried with numbs circle) and then add the array modifier followed by the curve modifier, set to the circle. Problem is, the array doesn't follow the curve, it builds the mesh it's trying to copy in a horizontal stack. However, if I rotate the mesh a bit (with the modifiers active) I see that actually, it IS sort of multiplying in a circle, but in a horrible strange way: it's copying the mesh in a downwards spiral. 0.0 I have no idea what's going on or how to fix this. I just want to make a circular ruffles collar using these two modifers. I have a light suspicion this may have something to do with where the cursor is placed or where the mesh origin is, but I just can't figure this one out on my own. Sorry for all the trouble guys. You are awsome, every single time you put up with my silly questions. ^.^'

Thank you Gaia, you're amazing as always.

Something I've always wondered: Is it possible to save a certain mesh, that you have modeled just the way you like it, inside blender (2.6), so that every time you open a new blender file, you have the option to add that specific mesh shape?

I haven't tries your curve method yet, but I actually managed to find a great way to do ruffles. I had a bolt of inspiration and remembewred that ruffles look a lot like waves! So I researched it and found out about the wave modifier. So here's what I did: made a plane, subdivide a few times, applied the wave modifier so I got several waves passing through. applied it and then went to edit mode. I started grabbing every other vertex on the top of the place and assigned it to a vertex group. Added basic and first key shape and then used proportional editing to scale/pinch the plane in the top middle. Back into object mode, went to physics and applied a cloth modifier (with self colision). let it play and go back to the vertez groups and gently move the slide of the value of the shape keys. And I ended up with these lovely, relistic ruffles: What do you think? If anyone else is interested in this, I can do a picture tutorial. ^.^

Hi everyone, it's been a while sinc you've seen my face. XD I need your help to learn how to make ruffles in blender (2.6) for female clothing. I do victorian female pieces and a lot of the shirts of that time have ruffles on the chest. Now, I actually did a dress with chest ruffles made out of flexi prims. The result was a bit of a disaster when I sold it, as everone had problems fitting the ruffles. Ever sicne then, I scratched the "flexy ruffles" option and looked into makng sculpty/mesh ruffles instead, in the hope that it would work better, I'm planning on using the strandard 5 size models I got from the marketplace to fit various sizes of the ruffle mesh into different avatars, so that should take care of that problem, for now at least (until I get to testing). I came here for help on how to model the ruffles. I have not been able to find on single tutorial of anything related to ruffles or similar details (perhaps I'm just choosing the wrong keywords?) but I also noticed that almost all mesh items sold in the markelace are trendy, modern clothing. Hum... The most I managed to find were tutorials about the cloth simulator, all of which are way too basic and simple to go into fine details such as making flowy ruffles. No luck finding particularmodeling videos that helped either. So I'm turning to you guys. I need ideas and your precious advice. For inspiration, my ultimate, top goal is to make something like this one day: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2550/4046700127_7b55946b5b_o.jpg

Hum, I don't know why but it's simply not working. I go into edit, select>nom manifold, then back to object mode, add the modifier, and still get the error.

Yup, here am I again. AFter finally getting my mesh to show up in the uploader (weird error that I'll never figure out), no matter how hard I tried or how many hours I waited, it coulfn't calculate the price for the uploade and showed an error message. From my experience, this is, at first, because I have way to many vertices for SL to properly calculate in one go. I researched a few way to reduce vertice count and came across the Decimate modifiers. However, when I tried applying it... It gives an error called "no manifold mesh as input". I have no idea what this means. I'd like to ask for some help in figure out this modifier and, if possible, more suggestions on how to reduce vertice count. Note: I already removed doubles and turned tris to quads. Not sure what else I can do.

I love ruffles, especially on shirts and tops. I tried to make some for a top to sell, but a lot of people had trouble fitting them to the avatar. I've seem some lovely clothes on the marketplace that have ruffles in them, some look make out of flexi prims, some look make ot of sculpties or mesh. Since this is something I defenitely something I want to incorporate into my designs to sell, what's the best way to make ruffles? (Btw, I know how to make mesh, so no probs there ;))

Sorry Gaia, but for some reason the file is just way too big for pasteall to handle. It crashed every time. What I'm gonna do is boot up an older save of the mesh and play around with it to see if I can upload parts of it correctly to SL and see how it goes from there.

How do I do that? ^.^'

No, I tried with selection only, but still nothing.

I haven't uploaded a mesh into SL for a while now, so I'm a bit rusty. When I go to upload the model I saved in Collada, the mesh doesn't appear and the uploader says "nomesh has been found". The mesh looks fine in blender, so I'm not sure why it isn't saving i the collada file properly or why the uploader can't read the file correctly.

Oh...my...god... Ash, that just... blew my mind. Those are some amazing tips condenced into one awsome tutorial: I can't thank you enough. I'm going to try it right after I get up (off to bed now ). Thank you so much, and also thanks for ncluding pics!