Second Life: Do I pop out of this dress?

I am disappointed when I find a dress I like and there is no demo available. My buying habits are simple. If a clothing item costs more than L$50 and has no demo, I won’t buy it. I probably won’t buy any dress or blouse that costs less than L$50. If I violate those limits I find I am disappointed about 9 out of 10 times.

So, what do I do with those demos? Here is a video showing my basic process. Dress makers should consider this process. I use it when I test demos and when I make clothes. I figure stuff I make has to pass these tests. So, stuff I buy should pass them too.

The first dress is tight fitting camisole ‘sheath’ and has a sizable leg slit. It is tight fitting and that makes poke through VERY likely.

The dress works well with the upper body (TM: 0:30). It is possible to peak in and see a nipple. But, one has to work to get a peak. That works for me. I don’t want to be flashing everyone when just standing. But, if he is all that interested… Continue reading

Second Life: Firestorm a Designer’s Problem?

We still have a debate ongoing in Second Life™ over on SLUniverse in the discussion started by Adeon Writer, Dear Mesh Content Creators: Please stop making your content on Firestorm, continues. I provided my thoughts in Second Life LoD Problems – Is Firestorm to Blame. In that article you’ll see I think designer and consumer ignorance are to blame. I also see plenty of fascist rule makers out proposing their solutions.

I prefer freedom and free market solutions over rules.

SlackGirl - Sue

SlackGirl – Sue by Rehana Seljan, on Flickr

One of the solutions proposed in:

BUG-6243Provide an informative warning when creating sculpts or mesh that may render improperly for others.

That places everything on the designer and provides no incentive for the designer to comply. I prefer something to provide information to everyone about what everything is doing to our render efficiency. That is why I filed:  Continue reading

Matching Skin Color – Second Life

This tutorial is intended for those people using RedPoly kits. But, anyone can learn some basic ideas on how to match skin color. Like starting with changing Windlight to eliminate extraneous color and shadows. (7:40 min)

I usually run my viewers on DEFAULT Windlight or local region settings. So, I haven’t needed to change my Windlight for some time. I had forgotten how few Windlight settings come with the new viewers: 36. The CalWL setting was not in my current viewer.

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Second Life Advanced Modeling Blender 2.6 Tutorial 2012

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.

Second Life Modeling

#1 – Modeling in 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 1First Decision – Which shape to use.
Page 1Deformer – What it does.
Page 2Modeling – Start the modeling tools.
Page 2C-Select – A better select tool.
Page 2Redoing Topology Trick – Snap with a good video.
Page 2Snap – Details on using snap.
Page 3Scaling – How to use Alt-S scaling.
Page 3Shrinkwrap – How to use shrinkwrap.
Page 4 Triangles vs Ngons – Getting into Ngons and Bsurface.
Page 4Bsurface – How to use Bsurface.
Page 4Grease Pencil – Needed for Bsurface.
Page 5Reducing Poly Count – Needed for LoD’s.
Page 5Dissolve – Tools for reducing poly count.
Page 5Using Images – How to use pictures and images to guide your modeling.
Page 5How to Model – Some of the Second Life requirements.
Page 6How to Model – The outline.
Page 6Summary

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?

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Blender Retopology – Clothing Update

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.

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#SL Crusade for Good Looks

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.

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Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial

Update: 1/2014 – See: Fitted Mesh Base Avatar Files for an update on available files for use in clothes making.

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: .

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.

Maya users see: Rigging Mesh in Maya

11/27/2012 Avastar Users: Check out AVASTAR: Using Freeze Mesh for Edits and Seams.

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.

Index

  • Page 1 – Blender Install, Base Mesh Selection
  • Page 2 – Details on Files and Base Avatar Meshes Available
  • Page 3 – Deconfuser, File to Use, Actual Mesh Differences, Easy File Fix
  • Page 4 –  Not So Easy Fix for Learning, Exporting Shapes from SL, What’s Needed
  • Page 5 – Getting Started, Customize Blender, GPU Kick-in, Load Mesh – Import OBJ, Setup Layers
  • Page 6 – Join Parts or Not, Remove Doubles, Parenting, Check Parenting, Start Weighting – Vertex Weight Painting
  • Page 7 – Weight Painting, Checking Weight Painting, Checking Weighting Source, Bone Weight Copying
  • Page 8 – Checking the Weighting, Exporting Collada for Second Life

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#SL Blender Clothes Retopology

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.

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.

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