What are the things you should know when creating a complete avatar or a cloth?

[xhyps]

Hi. I am new in SL and been doing some practice in 3d using Blender 2.63, I would like to ask if you could help me answer the following:

 

1. What are the basic things you should know when you want to know how to create a complete avatar or a clothing?

2. Does "retopology" is a critical thing to be learned and what does it do? (I have gone over different tutorials/articles about this topic, claiming it is for beginners but never told why they should be learned and how do they work :-( ).

3.  Does learning Scripting is required in creating a complete avatar?

4. Does animation is essential in creating an avatar?

Thanks fellas.

 

[Nalates Urriah]

There is so much to know I have no idea where to start...

I have a tutorial for setting up blender for mesh clothes making: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial

I have two short articles on retopology and they link to a good video tutorial: #SL Blender Clothes Retopology & Blender Retopology – Clothing Update.

And there is a recent warning of a problem with 2.63: Blender 2.63 Import Problem.

If you use the menu on my blog to open the Mesh Related or Clothing Tutorials sections you'll find more.

When working with clothing, you don't have to learn to script. If you want to make things no-mod you may need scripts to change color, size, and textures. There are public scripts you can use for that.

Animation is not necessary for making clothes or avatars. But, a related part, weight painting, is needed.

 

[Gaia Clary]

---

Nalates Urriah wrote:

And there is a recent warning of a problem with 2.63: 

Blender 2.63 Import Problem

.

---

For completeness: It is not a "Blender Import problem" but an "SL Importer problem". The SL importer takes its name information from the wrong place. The issue has been mentioned first here in this forum:

Blender 2.63 imported mesh naming gotcha

And Blender has been updated to support even that annoyance

[Drongle McMahon]

I have to agree with Gaia here. Since the <geometry> can be referenced by multiple <instance_geometry>s, using the <geometry> name leads to ambiguity. The more rationally consistent correspondence is <geometry> == data block;  <instance geometry> == object.

Unfortunately, the 2.63 exporter doesn't use the "name" attribute that is available for <instance_geometry>. In fact it doesn't use it's "ID"  attribute either. So there is nothing there for the importer to use. There is an "ID", but no "name" for the <node> that encloses the <instance_geometry>, but that isn't really satisfactory because a single node can contain multiple <instance_geometry>s with different IDs (which does occuur with the ourput from other software).

Since all these attributes are optional, the importer is effectively obliged to use redundant approaches to naming objects, ending up with the default "Object". Perhaps the old choice of using the <geometry> name was made because both name and ID were usually missing from <instance_geometry> and/or <node>? In any case, the problem really arises from the looseness of the Collada specification. If instead it insisted on a name attribute for all suitable entities, it would be obvious where to take it from.

Lets not blame either Blender or SL ... We can blame Collada instead. :matte-motes-smile:

[Ashasekayi Ra]

---

xhyps wrote:

Hi. I am new in SL and been doing some practice in 3d using Blender 2.63, I would like to ask if you could help me answer the following:

 

1. What are the basic things you should know when you want to know how to create a complete avatar or a clothing?

2. Does

"retopology"

is a critical thing to be learned and what does it do? (I have gone over different tutorials/articles about this topic, claiming it is for beginners but never told why they should be learned and how do they work :-( ).

3.  Does learning Scripting is required in creating a complete avatar?

4. Does animation is essential in creating an avatar?

 

Thanks fellas.

 

 

---

The basic skills you need to learn is traditional modeling and texturing:

• Complete modeling series: 
• Complete texturing series: 
• Rigging/Skinning: Look at the Blender/SL links at the end of the text.

2)

Retopology is a good skill to learn, But, you don't need it unless you plan to use high poly modeling techniques that need heavy poly reduction such as building a sculpted model in Zbrush or making a cloth simulated model in Marvelous Designer.

3) Scripting isn't *required*. However, if you plan to make a specialized avatar that uses a HUD or special animations, you'll need to either buy scripts or learn scripting.

4) Just like scripting, it isn't required. But, some specialized avatars do use special animations and scripts. Yet again, you could farm out that work or do it yourself. If you do plan on doing some custom animations for a custom avatar, I'd recommend checking out the Avastar plugin that Machinimatrix sells: http://blog.machinimatrix.org/2012/05/01/avastar-1-update-432/

 

Some Blender/SL mesh tutorial locations:

• http://blog.machinimatrix.org/category/mesh/