Preview

Can someone tell me how i can preview my clothes (TGA-files) aside from Second Life uploader. It's impossible to view the upperneck area with the SL viewer. If it's with the Poser program, does anyone have a guide for it? Thanks.

For the official way to do it, go to the dowloads section of this site, and grab the avatar mannequin files. If you're using Poser, follow the included instructions to install the mannequin models as Poser figures. The process is similar if you're using Daz Studio, the free alternative to Poser.

You'll find that in additon to the Poser formatted files, the mannequin package also includes the models in OBJ format, which can be read by just about any 3D modeling package on the market today (Maya, 3DS Max, Lightwave, Blender, etc). The OBJ's are just surface models (no skeletons), so you can't use them for animations, but if all you want to do is preview textures, they work fine for that.

One thing to keep in mind is that these models will never be perfect matches for YOUR avatar. They are just default avs with no slider settings applied. As you customize the shape of your av with the sliders, the UV's move around, so what looks right on one av won't necessarily look perfect on another. As you gain experience, you'll learn what's safely universal and what's not.

For an unoffical method, if you want to preview textures on your av specifically, there is a little hack you can do that will work. It's not very efficient, but it does the job as long as you're carful. Look in your SecondLife\characters\ folder, and you'll see a bunch of TGA files. The ones you want to be concerned with are head_color.tga, lowerbody_color.tga, and upperbody_color.tga. Rename those files so you don't accidentally write over them, and then give their old names to the textures you're testing (and save those textures in the SecondLife\characters\ folder). Enter appearance mode in SL, and you'll see your new textures magically become the base skin on your avatar. The change is temporary as long as you don't hit save on the appearance editor, so you be careful not to do that and you won't screw anything up. When you're done, just change the old files back to their correct names, exit appearance mode, and upload your new textures to SL.

To answer your question. The upperneck area is part of the head texture. If you're intending to make a high collared blouse or the asian qipao, its not going to be possible to go up that far.

Create a plain white shirt inworld with no texture and push the collar settings to the maximum and you'll see this.

If you're doing something to the head texture, its in the SL viewer.

I meant arm, sorry.
I do manage to get the SL models in poser. But how do I import the tga files so that I can preview them. The guide talks about the "SL_avatar_OBJ.obj" to preview textures. But it doesn't say where to put it. :|

What version of Poser are you using, hon?

There is a "Read Me" file in the Avatar_Mannequin folder that explains where to put it. I suggest that you go ahead and read it; but the whole folder goes into your Poser > Runtime > libraries > character folder.

Once you've put it there, restart Poser and you'll find them in the Figures tab, like any other Poser figures.

To preview the clothing, you can follow the instructions in this thread.

Hope this helps!