In April I posted an article on retopologizing (like that is a word – redoing the topology of) mesh objects in Blender. See: #SL Blender Clothes Retopology. In Blender 2.62 I kept having problems getting the method to work. I think it was more me than Blender that was the problem. Whatever… today a decided to figure it out.
#1 Getting Surface Snap to Work - Click to Enlarge
I plan to do more tutorials. One of the things I want to do is work with weight painting to see if I can make skirts that work better than what we have. The current mesh mini-skirts show it all when one sits down. I don’t think it has to be that way. Now I need a well made skirt to work with. So, I’m studying 3D modeling. One of the things modelers deal with is redoing the topology of high polygon into low polygon models. Using the tools built into blender can make changing the topology much easier.
Several things are coming together and I think we are at the beginning of user driven change to Avatar 2.0. I just updated my tutorial for getting started making mesh clothes: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial. So, we need to be considering what it is that makes our avatar look nice, which inspired this article.
Penny Patton's Proportioned Shapes
Crusade
Some time ago I saw an article by Penny Patton on adjusting camera position for a better Second Life®. See the SL Forum and her article: A Matter of Perspective. It makes an amazing difference in how one sees Second Life. That inspired my article: Second Life Camera Position Tips.
There are tradeoffs between how one sets the camera for walking and sitting. The Second Life default camera position is a compromise between good settings for walking and sitting. Neither is ideal. It would be great if the camera would just change location when we sit or stand.
All that camera position stuff is nice, but what we have to look at is more of a problem than how we look at it. Penny’s current two articles are about making a better looking Second Life. Check out the article: Beautiful Second Life. This article focuses on what is and what can be. It is an excellent comparison.
Update: 11/2013 – Fitted Mesh, previously the Alternate method or Liquid Mesh, is now the approved method for making mesh clothes that conform to the avatar’s shape. See: Fitted Mesh.
UPDATE: 6-25-2012 – Things may drastically change. See:Alternative to the Deformer. 4/2013 – Several designers are using the alternative methods now. Linden Lab is recommending avoiding use of those non-supported features. The Lab may make changes that break the feature some day.
UPDATE:Rewritten 5/24/2012 for the Bone Weights problem.
My previous article on setting up Blender for making mesh clothes (Second Life Mesh Clothing Tutorial) was written in September 2011, eight months ago. I’ve updated it several times, but it is still out of date and awkward in some places. Blender is now at 2.63+ and has BMesh. Photoshop is up to CS6. The Mesh Deformer is close to being completed. We have a self correcting Bone Weight Copy add-on and more. So, lots of stuff has changed as of May 20, 2012. So, it’s time for a new version of the tutorial.
#1 The Default Avatar Shapes (Kinda funny)
A few days after I wrote this tutorial I found a problem with the file. The Paint and Weight Paint Brushes were messed up. How we create the files has to change. So, I’ve rewritten this tutorial again. This is the revised version. It replaces the previous one.
In this tutorial I’ll assume you are new to making mesh clothes. I’ll also assume you have some knowledge of Blender and Photoshop. I’ll be using only Blender 2.63a in this tutorial. I will also omit the import to Second Life as this Tutorial is already over 9,000 words. Plus, there are lots of tutorials on the Second Life mesh import.
If you are working with mesh you probably understand some of the problems the Second Life® avatar has. If you make clothes for Second Life Avatars you are also likely aware of the short comings of the Second Life Avatar. For all the time Second Life has existed users have wanted better avatars. When SL Avatar 2.0 is released that will change… we’ll want better avatars. Oh, wait! That’s not a change.
Another gotcha at the max breast size setting
We always want something better and as technology improves we get it. It takes better computers to run SL than it did when SL was created. In 9 years (going by SL birthdays) technology performance has doubled about 6 times, or 2^6th = 64 times… don’t see it in your frame rates? Neither do I.
For some time when I see a Linden asked about when we might see an Avatar 2.0, I hear them give evasive answers. Not maliciously, they either don’t know or are NDA’d. The best non-committal answer we get is that it is not a near term project. I think the Lindens would love to give us a new avatar. The problem is the literal RL millions of dollars of content such a change would break.
In my reading I came across an excellent video on how to simplify models. Masami Kuramoto posted the information in the SL Forum. Video Tutorial on Retopology in Blender. 14 minutes of excellent information.
[youtube icqPZnD_3lA]
If you are making Second Life clothes, you need to see this tutorial.
The first tip ralusek provides stumped me. He is not using a key/click display and he went fast enough I missed it even after rewinding three times. I couldn’t get it to work. It is just too handy not to figure out.
I’m taking another look at the viewer’s My Outfits panel in this article. People have used it enough to have formed opinions. Also, some may have figured out efficient ways to use Outfits. But, I have yet to find anyone that is really happy with Outfits as they exist. I also expect to see Outfits change at some future date. The question is can we influence the change?
#SL Outfits - Good, Bad, or Ugly?
I have ambiguous feelings about the ‘My Outfits’ panel or more technically correct the Appearance Panel. Since I am usually in the My Outfits tab I tend to think of and call it the Outfits Panel.
I like it and have issues with it. When it first arrived there were so many other new ways to do things in Viewer 2 I put off dealing with it. When I did start looking at it, it was so awkward to use I put it off some more. Now a discussion at SLUniverse got me thinking about it again. (Reference) The result follows.
