This is the second tutorial in a series. The previous tutorial is: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial. The next tutorial is still a work in progress.
The direction I’m going with tutorial is toward making clothes and weight painting. But, this tutorial will provide information for those building both objects and clothes. I am limiting this tutorial to just the modeling and the tools we need for making the model and the lower poly models we need for Second Life.
This is not your standard tutorial. There are loads of modeling tutorials. Making avatar clothes is a special type of 3D modeling. There are a number of tricks to be learned, especially for making Second Life® clothes. I’m going to focus on the things I had a hard time figuring out how to do.
I’ll lay this tutorial out with indexing so you can quickly find the various tricks. I need that because I tend forget a step here and there and need to look it up.
Index
Page 1 – First Decision – Which shape to use.
Page 1 – Deformer – What it does.
Page 2 – Modeling – Start the modeling tools.
Page 2 – C-Select – A better select tool.
Page 2 – Redoing Topology Trick – Snap with a good video.
Page 2 – Snap – Details on using snap.
Page 3 – Scaling – How to use Alt-S scaling.
Page 3 – Shrinkwrap – How to use shrinkwrap.
Page 4 – Triangles vs Ngons – Getting into Ngons and Bsurface.
Page 4 – Bsurface – How to use Bsurface.
Page 4 – Grease Pencil – Needed for Bsurface.
Page 5 – Reducing Poly Count – Needed for LoD’s.
Page 5 – Dissolve – Tools for reducing poly count.
Page 5 – Using Images – How to use pictures and images to guide your modeling.
Page 5 – How to Model – Some of the Second Life requirements.
Page 6 – How to Model – The outline.
Page 6 – Summary
I hate slow paced, rambling video tutorials. I’ve found some that are pretty good. I’ll include those where appropriate. After them I’ll add explanations. Sometimes they leave out the most basic but necessary steps. Even after a couple years of using Blender I’m going: how did they do that?
