Update: See Mesh Deformer Changes for an update on mesh clothing.

There are several people that make tutorials for Second Life™. Others explain aspects of Second Life. We can find their stuff in blogs, web sites, on YouTube and Vimeo, and amazingly enough in the SL Forum. Of all those the stuff in the forum seems to be the hardest to find. So, here are a couple of the forum jewels.

In modeling mesh that moves, avatars and clothes, the arrangement of the vertices and how they form loops of quadrilateral polygons is an important concept to understand. Arranging them well determines how well the model can flex. The arrangement of vertices and faces is referred to as the model’s topology.

Mesh Modeling Topology – By: Codewarrior.

Codewarrior Congrejo has a couple of good tutorials in the SL Forum. I think both are too good to just be buried in the forum. They will get little love from Bing & Google. Quickly they will scroll out of sight on the forum. So, I’m putting links here on my blog.

One is: Topology – the often neglected entity. The tutorial extends over a number of posts, so don’t stop after reading the opening post.

List of posts in the tutorial:

• Topology – the often neglected entity – Opening Post
• Extension 1 – Loops and Edge Flow – Shirt Example
• Extension 2 – Edge Flow – Pants Example
• Extension 3 – Poles, Loops, Edges, N-Gons – Topology Examples
• Extension 4 – Retopology – Revising Topology
• Extension 4 Addition – Retopology – Explaining the Benefits
• Extension 5 – Blender Material and SL Faces
• Extension 5 Addon – Zbrush and Multiple Materials
• Work Flow Video – By: Rahkis Andel – 10 minutes – Plus Blender 2.66 Tips on New Features – This goes really fast and covers lots of stuff. Remember. It is about work flow more than a tutorial. It is a bit humorous in places. Worth watching a number of times.

Another is: Ways to fix a problematic Avatar Rig. In this tutorial he was helping someone fix a problem rig. There is a second post in the thread that is very similar to the post: Problems with Vertex groups on Blender 2.6.

Yep. That is a Problem.

Both of these tutorials can help those modeling clothes and avatars. This is some of the basic modeling knowledge needed presented in a way applicable specifically to Second Life.