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What is the best way to create mesh clothing?


ShiningStar92
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Hello all, I'be been on sl for several years. I decided to come back not to long ago, and things have drastically changed. I used to design clothes here as a hobby in Photoshop, but I never got to truly pursue that dream. I notice that mesh clothing is extremely popular, and not many people are interested in buying traditional textured clothing.   I decided to look at MD, but it seems that you have to have some knowledge about sewing in the real world, and patterns. I also thought about modeling clothing in blender or maya. However, I found more tutorials on MD then modeling clothing in a 3d program.  Can someone tell me the pros and cons of both methods, or suggest a better one? Does anyone know any good tutorial s?

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MD will do a nice drape but that's where it ends.  To make it "work" in SL, the resultant item from MD needs to be exported from there and imported into a program that can be used to bind it to an armature and add vertex weights such that it moves with the avatar skeleton.  MD can also result in very high topology and needs work afterwards to reduce it, there's a very easy tendency to be able to create what could be considered "realisitc" clothes but which are too complex to be practical in SL, not that this stops people.  The latest avatar de-rendering thingy does become an issue though.

Blender also can do a similar function of stitching parts and performing a physics cloth drape although it's somewhat more work, MD does make it fun and easy.

Blender is free, MD isn't.  MD alone won't be enough.

I didn't include Maya here as a) I have no experience of it and b) it's not free (aside from educational discounts which preclude you from commercial use anyway).

If you want to make mesh clothes, you're going to be in the realm of Blender (assuming you want a low/no cost entry) whatever.

There are plenty of modelling tutorials, it doesn't matter if they're SL specific for many of them but I suggest that you also look for tutorials on Avastar, which is a NON free plug in for Blender, specifically aimed at SL and is created by an SL resident with very active inworld support.  It's less than a months subscription to MD, I don't know why people expect the efforts of others to be free, it's not expensive in my opinion and totally worth it.

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Besides creating the item, you also have to worry about rigging (getting it to move well with an av) and fit. The fit part of it is rather complicated with all of the different mesh bodies in addition to the classic av. I think those are expected to be fitmesh as well now. (There will be info on fitmesh elsewhere. It's an attempt to make worn mesh sort of size adjustable.) The clothing market has become fragmented and awkward.

You don't have to try to create for all of that of course, but it does help to understand it somewhat.

Have you looked into purchasing texturable full perm mesh clothing? Lots on the marketplace, some dreadful, some excellent, most in between. Unfortunately many don't have demos and, unless the DAE files are available to purchase as well, you don't have control over UV layout. But if you can find ones which suit your preferences, they can be a useful way to get a start, especially for those whose skills are in texturing.

Unrigged mesh can be resized manually, like prims. (Rigged can't, thus the need for either fitmesh or set sizes. Probably should have worked that into the first paragraph.) Things like jewellery and hats rarely need to be rigged so there are fewer things to worry about when making your own. And fewer things to worry about can be very helpful when learning all of this. :matte-motes-smile:

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If you can make nice texture clothing there is still a market. You would need to learn how to put your clothing into APPLIERS for the verious mesh bodies (Maitreya, Belleza, Slink for sure) and could still sell them as regular texture clothing to the folks that have legacy avatars. Mesh has definitely replaced texture clothing in some areas but things like leggings, sweaters to be worn UNDER mesh clothing etc are still in need for mesh bodies. 

Making and rigging mesh clothing is about as difficult as it gets creation wise. Then there are the huds for texture change :D so think about starting slowly or as someone suggested trying to texture full perm mesh clothing. And on that subject I would say be SURE and buy ones with demos. I see a lot of badly made full perm mesh clothing out there. Better to buy a good template that can be used in many ways than one that only looks pretty in the photo and won't move or is baked with super dark areas. 

Good luck and have fun.

 

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Sounds like a good idea.  I think for now I'll stick to texturing and looking into premade meshes. I love mesh especially how the clothes look so realistic. I recently went to utopia and the designer still makes textured based clothing. It's some what sad how things got so complicated. You have to accommodate so many systems, and there's still new one's coming out. I'm getting the Maitreya body for Christmas. Perhaps I'll make clothing for that system. 

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