Cleopatrina

Well, maybe if you wanted to be very thorough. Personally, I'd be happy with a short check list of things to google lol at least as a start. Just the bare-bones "these items are important to understand" like a trail of bread crumbs to follow and the rest would kinda fall into place. Like a reference list of what to consider when making a mesh (more specifically a rigged mesh) would go a LONG way to being helpful and wouldn't cause too much trouble to someone with the knowledge because they wouldn't be explaining in depth, just pointing down the right path. At that point, with a sort of scavenger-hunt list in hand, putting the pieces together is up to the creator's discretion regarding the project. I think I could work with something like that. I'm sure the info is out there somewhere, but if you don't know what to look for, finding it is almost accidental.

Ok....So, after the basics where do you go? Pretend learning how to use the program (like Blender) is easy. You found a lot of great tutorial's and how-tos, ready to make a thing and you do and it's glorious. That's all fine and dandy and totally doable. But now I want to know how to apply that, not to SL concepts but to actually use it on my avatar.... Now what? The idea of rigging is easy: attach your model to the right bones. But how do we get SL's bones? How do we know we're using the right SL model to weight on? How do we know weighting with SL's skeleton? Personally, I've found a TON of info on how to use Blender and all the tools relevant the kind of object I want to make. I have, in comparison, found maybe one website somewhere that makes a connection in terms of Bento and nothing in between. It's like going from point A to B to C to H...what happens with D through G? Where does a person find this info? There are videos on importing already made items and putting them together, but there's a lot of info missing in between. It's that missing info that causes a new creator to make leaps and bounds in confusion, hoping no to trip in the dark. If you haven't guessed, I'm new to mesh...and as such, I'm extremely interested and also lost lol As a comparative example, making textures for SL follows specific design rules: the texture needs to be a certain size, you have the blueprint to know where your paint will be applied on the avatar (if you're making clothing texture or makeup or something), you have to save it as a specific file type, and there are even guidelines on how to make that file type contain alpha portions... and let's say you're using photoshop. You know how to use the program, all you do then is paint your thing, save it with alpha info at the right size, import to SL and apply to clothing layer...boom, done But making mesh for SL? Learning the basics of a program is one thing, and utilizing it to its full extent is loads of fun, but after you're familiar with those basics where does a person go from there to get to their intended destination in SL? Where are the guidelines in this? (As a reference, I'm trying to make rigged mesh hair to practice the entire process from start to finish...besides the file type, there's a big gap between the object and its destination I'd like to learn about and have had little luck in finding info)