[Beginner Mesh Clothes Creation]

I made rigging tutorials for Maya. they are a bit dated but the concept is still the same. you do need the body kits to make your clothes fit them

 

I def need to make new ones. also please note, the dress in this one particularly is too high poly to be uploaded for the game. however the process of rigging / skinning remains

[Where is this warehouse building?? Rkkn as seen at Nutmeg]

it's a custom build from Hattie Panacek for them and is not for sale at all

 

[Most embarrassing SL moment]

years ago I was standing at a sim with bunch of people, reading profiles. decided to zoom in on one and this person was right in the middle of it with their partner. I accidently clicked again and the doubleclick tped me mid of their bed.... I NEVER logged out that quickly.🤣

[Who made these glowy wall stars??]

these are by Kraftwork 

 

[Show off your most recent creation(s)!]

my most fav set I have made so far

[If any designers are reading this, money awaits... (aka what's your wishlist?)]

40 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Trust me if I say that most designers in SL have their plates full with projects already. And maybe, some stuff in your wish list is in there too. The problem is: maybe you are willing to pay for it, but maybe others don't. Who will know?

I bet designers on average have more experience with what sells and what does not than the average consumer.

as a creator I 100% can confirm this. 

however, I find this thread super interesting as there is lots of inspiration and ideas that can be adapted nicely! at least I find myself already browsing and sketching ideas from pieces I read in here. so thank you to everyone contributing ideas!

[iMac 2021 and SL]

I am a die hard apple fan and have been working and designing on Macs since 2000. last summer I had to switch to Windows mainly for SL. as much as I love Mac, and I have both on my desk now, for SL I use Windows only. if you have a powerful Mac, you can surely access SL just fine too, but you will have way more issues on various levels. I still cuss at Windows daily cause I simply can't get used to it. as painful as it is , my heart bleeds but for some programs as well as SL Windows is the better option. anything Adobe though runs MUCH nicer on the Mac. 

[Best subscriber kiosk without monthly fee?]

Sastech subscriber. hands down the best out there. webbased too. first set up might take a little time and reading but once set up, it's an easy breeze and works super and reliable. It also allows customer to subscribe ( and unsubscribe ) to all stores using this system. makes it incredibly handy for store owner as well as for customers

[Is it possible to hire a listing poster safely ?]

13 hours ago, Evita Leeder said:

 

On side note I would avoid shops that inflate the price, I never purchase from those that charge 10% simply because I don't think I should be covering their fees, that's like asking customers to pay your taxes. Just raise your prices if you want to cover higher fees, like in real world. MP is convenient quick way of shopping and I wouldn't pay extra as a customer to a store that requires me to go to inworld to pay less. It seems unfair to people who prefer MP shopping.

the customer does pay the tax of the product in RL..it's what is added to the base price on top. the tax does not stay with the merchant

[Is it possible to hire a listing poster safely ?]

On 2/6/2022 at 5:40 AM, Evita Leeder said:

Hey if that's the case sure, but what she said "They have to give me the product's information like permission, price(original price/or +10% fee), details. I can provide an Excel file if they need it." implying they have to list what prices and/or additional 10%. It makes it sound like price should be changed with the optional extra 10% LL takes. The 10% is the MP fee from the sounds of it

 

 

this has changed in the TOS a while ago. it used to be against the TOS to have different prices from MP to inworld but not anymore . I also clarified that with a ticket to LL to have it confirmed. it's perfectly fine to have the 10% higher prices on mp compared to inworld

[Flat and Breasts chest rigging.]

On 1/6/2022 at 10:00 AM, MeshPromo said:

When rigging same top for a flat chest avatar and another larger breasts avatar, what is the best way?

So far what i do is first make the flat chest top then adjust it for the larger breast avatar just before rigging, this will end up larger texture scale over the breasts area then need to re-map then HUD also need different texture upload.

if you want to use the same texture , the way you described is the best. a larger breast just naturally has very different shadow cast than flat chest and obsiously needsa different space distribution in UV, so using the same texture here is an issue from the start. if you want it to fit nicely, you would indeed use 2 different textures that are lit accordingly. also if the texture is detailed like fine lace or something, the stretch can't be avoided unless like you already said, adjust the UV. 

[Error: DAE parsing error. (not simple)]

a clothing mesh that comes straight from MD, needs retopology first. that is not meant to be uploaded as is at all. it will be way to dense in topology, depening on areas it can even have ngons that will also give a dae parsing issue. retopo the mesh first to have a suitable and clean low poly version, then apply your materials and rig it. then you can upload

[What is Your RL Job?]

Fashion designer in both worlds. Although after 15 years of it in RL, eventually fashion design in SL became my full time RL job now

[Help with Physics please!]

make a separate simple physic shape that can be just a plane with a square cut out where the arc is. and use that in the uploader as the physics model

 

[Mesh Problem (beginner!)]

what body did you bind it to and in which pose?

 

[What is needed to start creating clothes?]

a common mix of programs is Marvelous Designer for realistic cloth simulation, Maya / Blender for tweaking , UV ing and rigging + animating, Zbrush for high poly details scultpting, Substance Painter for Texturing, Photoshop for texture tweaks. I would not recommend to start with all at once. you will get overwhelmed. Maya and Photoshop is a good way to start, then when you are comfortable with the programs, you can add more and improve your skills

[Learning Mesh Clothes cration need help please.]

46 minutes ago, BrookeCarter01 said:

What has really been throwing me off and I guess it gets confusing when you have made 3d mesh stuff and try to relate that to clothing. in Blender we would map faces out and assign material to it even blank ones so you can just throw textures onto it in SL in world. SO creating a blank mapped off faces. When you are in Marvelous Designer and you save your obj file off with it's maps let's say right, how does the uv map know you want say 4 faces on the same top or something how do you map it out in Marvelous please? Or do you do that in blender to the uv map before rigging the mesh? Baking is for uploading so the textures cannot be edited after upload right so what I wanna do is just save the mesh off mapped faces to pass to my husband to do the texturing part he is better at that. My role is mostly going to be fixing his meshes and then rigging it he will either help create or just do the texturing. We both use our best skills when we work together  But I figure it is good for both of us to know all the steps first then we can figure out who's gonna do what.

I'll try to explain one by one

even if you assign blank faces in blender, you do not want to throw just a diffuse texture on it in SL. At least not if you want it in nice quality. You would want shadows in there , which you need a Ambient occlusion map for as a minimum base. You do not want to export a mesh from Marvelous to use directly in SL at all. you can export textures of a set material there and place your UV's too but that is really not the strength of Marvelous. You would do that in belnder before rigging it. and then either export it to photoshop to texture there or to Substance.

Baking maps doesn't have anything to do with the mesh not being modifiable or not. it's for preparing the actual texture. baking doesn't mean you bake it into the mesh itself. it's the term to create your various maps that you need for your mesh. like baking information from high poly to low poly. This doesn't bake into the actual mesh but only gives you various maps. In substance you can bake height maps for example and have them show in the diffuse maps , so your texture becomes very "alive" so to speak, and gives the illusion of 3d information like fabric surfaces, wrinkles etc. The normal map will enhace that . In SL you can plug in 3 maps: diffuse, ( your coloured actual texture), Normal map and Specular map. 

[Learning Mesh Clothes cration need help please.]

also, there is really no "one right way " to do it. there are many options. in the end it will depend on personal preference and workflow and that will vary a lot from creator to creator

[Learning Mesh Clothes cration need help please.]

19 minutes ago, BrookeCarter01 said:

I want to ask you couldn't we just use Photoshop for texturing rather then substance painter? And ty for links I will watch them been looking around for videos that guide you from creating mesh with all the steps all the way to upload in SL. My goal is to make great quality low poly mesh but with as little steps as possible.

you can absolutely use Photoshop too. but just know that Photoshop is removing its 3d functions, so eventually those will not work anymore. atm you still can open a dae file and texture . but you can not bake high poly to low poly in photoshop. I often use a combo of both. but nothing beats Substance in bakes imho. you have all the control over your maps and you can get very very realistic results. 

 

[Learning Mesh Clothes cration need help please.]

Quote

4 hours ago, BrookeCarter01 said:

Thank you so so very much for this information it really does clear some stuff up. When I learned 3d mesh object creation like 2 years ago right, re topology was used to reduce poly counts so that you don't lose the main structural details or whatever. Are you telling me you have to retoplogy every single mesh item you create? Weight painting scares the hell out of me now to know that you need to retopo everything hmm not sure it's worth the effort it is a lot of work to create mesh clothes. I have a lot of respect for those who create their own and would love to do it from scratch. Not sure I have the patience lol. Now in Blender with 3d objects you can just reduce polycount by decimating it with one click in edit mode and removing lose faces and vertices with some clicks I know how to do that. Can't we do that instead of all this retopo stuff?

 

yes, I retopologize every mesh I make. you do need the retopo to reduce polycount but no auto-retopo will give you a proper useful result because as Fluffy mentioned above, you need a good edge loop flow for animation. so you need to pay attention where joints are, those areas need a specific loop flow and also a few more edge loops than the rest , so they animate nicely. I did make a few tutorials for substance on my youtube channel, geared to SL use specifically. maybe those can help you a little . older ones cover rigging as well but I work in Maya, so those are probably not so useful for Blender

 

 

[Learning Mesh Clothes cration need help please.]

Marvelous is a cloth animation software not a texturing software at all. The most common / industry standard  to texture your mesh is Substance Painter. You bake all your maps in there and can bake the info from your high poly model to your low poly model which you then upload. You do not take the mesh of Marvelous to upload either, because you would need to retopologize is first ( although you can retopo nicely with the MD11 tools now, so that would work). For substance painter it's best to use a fbx mesh file. Generally obj works too but in my experience it often creates issues, so I would always recommend to export your mesh as fbx for substance. 

the normal and spec map you plug in inworld into your mesh, you do not give those to customers. ( unless you want them to modify and redo those, of course you can, but that would require some creating skills from cutomer side). So normally all the maps are already set with your mesh and you can make a hud to change colours and/or materials as well. 

as for the number of materials, the goal is to use a little as possible to achieve the best quality as possible. The more materials you add, the higher your render cost will get. So it's always a bit jugling about how many you really need to have nice quality (also what size!) but also keeping render cost low. Not everything has to be a full 1024 texture either.  On that note, you also would try to bake the info of your high poly model into your low poly model. Not every tiny fold needs to be actually modeled into the ready to upload mesh. All the detailing happens in the high poly. Finding a good balance there is not easy but def comes with experience and practice 

[Recommendation please ... pretty BOM panties?]

I offer a fatpack of BoM lace panties as a group gift

 

[Setting up my first in-world store, any advice?]

I would highly suggest to join the "creators supporting creators" discord channel. it's full of SL creators, supporting each other in any possible field. starting from sharing store spaces to help in various software and also just chatter. being a creator you can apply to be invited here: https://forms.gle/vgeFMrSj1VUH2q1F7

[Marketplace reviews and comments are now anonymous. Thoughts?]

36 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

How does it open up a path for bullies when the creator will still know who wrote a review and retaliate?

Because a lot already misuse it and not having their name next to it, even when it’s sent by email, does make it more anonymous and I think it’s clear from many different websites where people post anonymously, that manners and respect disappear even more , replaced by passive aggressive, disrespectful speach. 

[Marketplace reviews and comments are now anonymous. Thoughts?]

I have mixed feels about this. Probably certain items might get reviewed now that people felt uncomfortable to review before, but much more I feel that creators already have little to none protection and this just opens very much the path for bullies on top.