Mesh Bodies - The Creation of Layers

[Lexii Lungu]

     I am one of those people who have urges to make things for second life as products such as furniture or animations or clothing if I can.. and my most recent urge is orbiting around the creation of tattoos and other things like clothing but for mesh bodies specifically. 

What program does one use to create something for a mesh body and do they have templates for this kind of thing? 

     There are several questions I could ask but.. I think the simplest way to ask this is : Where do I begin? How do people make layers (clothing) and for mesh bodies (i.e. Maitreya Lara, Slink Physique, The Mesh Project, ect.)? Is there a tutorial out there that I just cannot find? Trust me.. Google has been the burden of my barage of questions but no answers scratch my itches.. 

 

Lexii Lenoire (lexii.lungu)

 

[Medhue Simoni]

I'm more of an animator, but I do make meshes and avatar meshes. I'm sure others will have other techniques, but since nobody else has responded, I'll chime in. To make a tattoo for a mesh body is not all that simple really. It requires you to make an exact copy of the mesh, and then scale it, ever so slightly to sit on top of the original mesh. Now, of course, depending on where the tattoo is, you could make them with out having an exact copy of the body, but that will take a lot of adjusting to get perfect, and the weighting needs to match that of the mesh body. Basically, making that tattoo layer takes all the same skill as making a mesh, cause you are making a mesh, it just sits above the mesh body.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

I don't know all mesh bodies, but as far as I know, the majority will offer what are called "appliers". So contact the creators of the mesh bodies you are interested in for the possibilities. When you have a development kit or whatever they offer for adding to their bodies, you can use the SL template as a base for your tattoos.

The mesh bodies I know have the same texture layout as the default avatar, so you absolutely do not have to build any mesh yourself. That also means they suffer from the same flaw, having mirrored arms. If you want to have unique left and right arms, you do need to build your own mesh, which is pretty much impossible to fit correctly. (and it will only fit one of the mesh avatars, not the lot)