Show us your Mesh Clothing!

[Vivienne Daguerre]

I wanted to start this up again here on the new forums. Here is a link to this topic in the archives for those who wish to look back at old entries.

And here is my latest mesh outfit! I will just post pictures here, and anyone interested in more details can find them on my blog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Monti Messmer]

OMG thats amazing work ! Not the clothes i usually wear but i love them.

And for show my work ... ehm.... na better not, still working on modelling and i am lightyears away from weighting.

Guess you guys will blow me off the markten after mesh is released. But i´m not mad or upset because this will kick SL forward in time and make it better for all !

Keep on with your work :smileyhappy: (sorry didn´t add something to your thread but i had to say this)

[linkin Slate]

Sorry for double post explore 9  doesnt seem to let my post show, nice work and  great to see others useing zbrush, did you create the clothes by extract from av mesh ? and did you  do all the textureing in zbrush also ?

 

[linkin Slate]

Reading your blog, you was saying about  maybe doing  your  out fit in parts and do all the detailing on single meshs, only problem i have seen with that is its hard to pull alot of detail out of the topology with out haven problems, and looseing detail.  you could try witch i been playing around with is merge   your sub tools in to one mesh, you can still have  textures for each area, like your jaket  3 textures  one for short and  one for pants, then in sl it be one mesh attached rigged but then its just a drop of texture to change pants color and rigging would be no more work that the body mesh  its self.

[Vivienne Daguerre]

I did not extract mesh from the avatar. I have not had much success with that. I find the results are somewhat messy. I created my base meshes in Blender and brought them into ZBrush as an .obj import to work on. I did all my sculpting in ZBrush, took it back to Blender to make UV maps, and then back into ZBrush to bake light and shadows and make texture. Gotta love spotlight!

I bake on an untextured high poly model and export that to photoshop, and then turn that texture off, and texture the model using spotlight. I export the texture to photoshop and combine them with the bake, using multiply. This gives me more control over the light and shadow. I can adjust the opaqueness of the bake layer, or even double it to get the effect I want. I can paint in more highlights and shadows if I want on yet another layer.

[Vivienne Daguerre]

Yes, I did use subtools and merged down with polygroups turned on. This was helpful, and the polygroups are preserved as groups when you take it into Blender as an .obj file. You can then select the subtools and hide the rest in Blender, even though it is one mesh. This is important for making UV maps.

I still had pieces, for I made the shirt, vest, pants, bracer and boots as separate meshes. I would keep the bracers and boots separate, but in future it would be easier if I made the shirt, pants and vest as all one mesh, with some subtools for details like buckles later merged in.

The problem is when you have meshes layered over top of each other. I deleted much of the shirt and pant mesh vertices which were covered by the vest. Even so, there remained some overlap and in some extreme animation poses a bit of the shirt or pants will poke out through the vest.

I will experiment more in my next mesh outfit, which will be another dress. I want to try making detailed bits and pieces and then try projecting them into the dress mesh. I don't know if that will be a good idea in the end or not. I will let you know! It's all a learning process.

[Suki Theas]

Really nice!

The potential for mesh (if its ever released) is huge.

[Ashasekayi Ra]

This outfit looked great inworld Vivienne. 

[Nacy Nightfire]

Oops! My post is blank.  I hope I didn't say anything offensive!   Actually what I posted was a compliment to you on another terrific design and execution. You are an inspiration to as all, Vivienne!

[Innula Zenovka]

Great clothes, Vivienne.  Thank you for showing them us.

Could I, though, ask a question about mesh clothes that's been bothering me?   If and when mesh is released on the main grid, and I download the latest viewer and go and buy some great-looking mesh clothes and wear them,  what am I going to look like for people still using Snowglobe-based viewers like Phoenix and Imprudence (or, indeed, earlier versions of the official viewer)?

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

Like you are wearing a pyramid.  That is the default representation of a mesh for non-mesh viewers.  Hopefully the Phoenix team will get their V2 viewer out by the time mesh goes live on the main grid.  Also, the ability to build up to 64m prim size and use projected lights is part of the Mesh Project code, aside from Mesh itself.  So hopefully people will upgrade.  The alternative is to stick with 1.xx series viewers and be half blind to all the cool new stuff people will make.

[Innula Zenovka]

Thanks.. I rather feared something like that would be the case. 

I don't have a problem with updating my viewer, but I do have rather a problem with the idea of going round looking to most people (or even a sizeable minority) like I'm wearing a pyramid, so I'm not too sure I'm going to be wearing much in the way of mesh clothes until not only have the Firestorm team got a mesh-capable viewer out but also that most Phoenix users have switched to it.    Let's hope that's sooner rather than later.

[Vivienne Daguerre]

I think most people will switch to Viewer 2 or a third party compatible viewer for mesh and larger prims. I cannot imagine anyone willing to settle for a lesser experience of Second Life. They would constantly be missing out. Mesh is going to take off when it hits the grid.

[Innula Zenovka]

 

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Vivienne Daguerre wrote:

I think most people will switch to Viewer 2 or a third party compatible viewer for mesh and larger prims. I cannot imagine anyone willing to settle for a lesser experience of Second Life. They would constantly be missing out. Mesh is going to take off when it hits the grid.

---

 

That's not my point, though.   I'm going to be among the early adaptors to a mesh compatible viewer, as soon as Marine brings out an RLV viewer that can see mesh.   

But what I'm saying is that, despite being able to see mesh, I'm very unlikely to wear anything made of it, or use it in any builds, much as I might want to, until I'm confident that most other people can see it properly too.

I'm simply extrapolating from people's attitudes towards the old Emerald illegal attachment points.    When Emerald and then all the other TPVs introduced them I thought, "how useful,"  but then I realised that only people using particular viewers would be able to see them properly and that, if they weren't, they'd see my attachments floating round near me rather than where they should be.  

So, despite the fact the extra attachment points would have looked OK to me, and to most of my friends, I didn't use them because I knew they'd look very odd to lots of other people.

It's a bit like with RLV, which comes in various flavours.   I make things that work with RLV, and I often feel frustrated that there's all sorts of stuff I know I can do with the newest version that I daren't use in anything I sell until Phoenix and Firestorm have released versions that support it too.   But I know it's pointless to try to tell people they'll be able to make the product work perfectly well if they switch from Phoenix to Marine's RLV or to Dolphin or Cool VL, because they won't switch, so I have to wait until Phoenix and Firestorm catch up.

In short, what I'm saying is that while I'm going to be able to see, early on, how amazing mesh clothes and builds look, I'm not going to be using them until I'm sure most other people think they look amazing too, and that they won't keep on asking me why I'm wearing pyramids and that I'm not going to have to deal with a load of complaints from people who bought something from me on the strength of the great-looking picture in the marketplace advert and then rezzed it and found they appear to have been sent a pyramid by mistake.

 

[linkin Slate]

To me  all this veiwer talk drives me nutts, we dont see any 3d party veiwers on mesh beta grid and when it hits the main grid, i would hope,  the mesh veiwer is defult and  only one allowed.unless the 3d party veiwer is mesh compliant, havent we give every one time for this to get ready, its time to move forward. a new chapter in sl,comply or die.

 i dont have anything aginst 3d party veiwers , but i belive if they should hold all features as the defult sl veiwer to be able to link to sl, 

i find it insane that there is any idea of lindens not forceing all veiwers compliant for mesh on release day of mesh, and i personaly if this goes  as you all seem to think, that there will be nonmesh veiwers, that those of us that own our own sims be able to set sims to not let non mesh veiwer users to enter. its bad enuff  to deal  with all that cant use or see shared media and now to have to deal with non mesh veiwers, i run a business center  and rent out office  spaces and meeting rooms  so i am dependent on people to come and rent yes, but i can live with out there money ,that cant move forward.

[Ryozu Kojima]

To those who don't want to look like a triange to people without a mesh viewer, I want you to consider something:  It's their choice.  Don't let a minority of extremists, slow adopters and stubborn residents downgrade your Second Life experience.  I want to emphasize that it's not that these users can't see meshes and mesh avatars, it's that they choose not to.

[Vivienne Daguerre]

Here is my latest. It is a rigged mesh medieval style dress and non-rigged mesh shoes.

Here are some pictures of my progress along the way for those interested in such things, from Blender to ZBrush.

 

[Ripped Winkler]

Lovely work Vivienne :matte-motes-grin:

[Nacy Nightfire]

Vivienne, your dresses are gorgeous, as always.  I get the impression from your photos that there's an inflated rubbery looking bend thing happing  in the skirt area. Does the skirt respond like the default system skirt? Do you see this in action in SL or is it an illusion from the photo.  I don't see it with the men's pants you designed.

[Vivienne Daguerre]

The skirt does respond like the system mesh skirt with that kind of bending and ballooning up over the thighs. I was not able to get the skirt closer to the thighs for sitting, which would have been nice. When I tried it messed up the creasing at the hips, and of course walking would have looked terrible. I need the skirt to billow out over the legs. You could make a tighter mesh skirt that might adhere better to the thighs, but that would be a different style. Shape is part of the issue here as well.

Mesh has its drawbacks. Another problem with mesh skirts, both new mesh and the system mesh skirts, is that they do not handle crossed legs, standing or sitting, very well, and I do not see any way around that. Some people don't like the look of mesh skirts, or at least long ones like I make.

I am thinking that some people will prefer the long flexi skirts to the long mesh skirts. Mesh will be great though for jackets, tops, anything that you want to move with the arms and torso, although there will be fit issues that can be overcome mostly through the use of alpha layers.

For my next women's outfit, I am going to try something with a mesh tunic and undershirt with long sleeves combined with a long, flex prim skirt under it. the tunic will still cover the thighs and there may be some rubbery ballooning there, but I think people might like the flex prim bottom better. The ballooning is part of the cost of having the top part move with the torso, pelvis and hips.

Clothing makers will experiment and play around, and customers will respond through their purchases. We all put up with some oddities of SL. What people want and buy will determine in the end what we designers make. Mesh will not make other tools obsolete. It is just another tool in our tool box.

[Ravage Genesis]

That look is amazing.  I havent done anything with mesh.  I have played around in daz studio a while back but what my main concern for this whole mesh upgrade is, how is it going to effect the skin makers?  Are their whole new templates?  Will it be based off those models you get in daz or other 3d programs?  How does the texturing go for that?

 

Any help in this would be greatly appreciated!

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

If you make a full body mesh avatar, like I did:

Avatar Photo

Then you can define your own UV templates.  I used 8 texture maps, with separate parts for each limb and areas to color finger and toenails.  If you are good at both modeling and doing skin textures, you can provide it as a complete package.  In my case, I am not so good at painting humans, so I plan to release the avatar and UV templates, and let other people provide the textures for it.

By the way, the dress is another mesh, with the same "bone rigging" as the avatar, so they move in sync properly.  You would have to get permission from Daz or other model creators to use their items in SL or to sell them here.  What I did is use the SL avatar as a reference in 3ds Max, and shaped my avatar based on that and human reference photos.  It takes quite a bit of time to have the shape correct, and especially the rigging so it animates decently.

[Ravage Genesis]

All of my sources are either from creators in sl who I have purchased templates from or from my own photography sources so I wont have to worry about that.  Thanks so much for your help.  This should turn out interesting on how this is all going to work out.  I am sure there are a lot of people who are not going to like their new mesh body but overal I think this is what SL needed.

[Vivienne Daguerre]

People will be able to make and sell complete avatars, but the lips won't move when you speak in voice, facial expressions won't work, and they will not be able to customize those things that are morphs, like breast, belly and butt size or muscularity. They can customize height, shoulder width, hip width, arm length, etc. because those things are controlled by the skeleton and mesh will conform to skeleton slider changes.

People do love to be able to customize their avatar, and for this reason I think mesh avatars will be used mostly for non-human avatars. The customer will care more about being able to fully customize than they will about messy UVs at the crotch area and other problems with the current avatar. The customer will continue to demand that commercial content creators deal with those problems to give them the best product possible.

As a skin designer, you should continue exactly as you are. The default avatar will continue to be the most popular I think.

You may be approached by makers of mesh avatars to make skins for their avatars. If there is a popular mesh avatar arise that makes available its UV map to other creators, you might then be able to create custom skins and clothing for it. Who knows what will happen?

I don't think mesh is going to decrease your chances for creating commercial skins. I think it may open new opportunities to you. The skills to make good mesh and UV maps do not always go hand in hand with the skills to make great textures. You might have new opportunities to collaborate!

[Nacy Nightfire]

Thanks for your response to my question Vivianne, I apologize for waiting almost 2 months for expressing my appreciation..I somehow missed it.  I'm still struggling with the set up and customization of the SL forum..too much more fun things to create and do then fiddle with it - or so I tell myself :matte-motes-nerdy:

I imagine I'm not alone in experiencing a  continuing round of emotions about how the mesh thing has evolved.  I spent hours and hours of time learning the "ins and outs of sculpty making" for clothing accessories in particular, and I've purchased a fair amount of somewhat/relatively costly sculpty making inworld aids so I was both glad and sad to think that it might be come obolete...I still feel both relieved AND disappointed that it will be sticking around..weird, huh?

Well, I'm happy to settle on mesh, rather being the "great new thing to over rule all other forms of creation in SL" to settling into just one of 3 main choices to build things, depending on one's needs.  It both provides new challenges (and I can't wait to see what people come up with on the main grid...someone always defys everyones idea of what's possible)  and at the same time all past efforts in learning and creation aren't for naught.