From: Krayolas Cham
I’m trying to map my clothing designs and skin textures on to the SL avatar mesh. This way I can get a preview of the way these items will fix on an avatar before uploading them into the world.
OK, I just pulled this quote from your duplicate thread in Resident Answers. I'll respond to it here, since this is the appropriate forum.
Are you saying you've got pre-existing clothing and skin textures for other models that you'd like to remap to fit the SL avatar? If so, I'm wondering what program did you create them in in the first place, and for what purpose? The answer makes a difference.
If you're looking to remap textures you've acquired from the DAZ/Poser community, for example, not only would remapping them for SL be difficult to do, it would also in most cases be in violation of the license that goes with those assets. I don't mean to accuse you of anything, so don't take this the wrong way, but I must say please respect copyright. The people who created those textures have a right not to have them chopped up and used for purposes outside of what they were meant for. The same goes for textures extracted from video games.
If you're talking about clothing and skins you've made yourself, then it would be easier to remake them again yourself then to try to remap them from whatever arbitrary mesh they were meant for to the SL avatar. But if you really want to remap them, you of course could. You'd want to use a program that supports multiple UV channels, like Maya or Lightwave. I'd imagine stand-alone UV mapping tools such as Deep UV could probably also do it, but as I said, I'm not aware of one for Mac.
If you're looking to make brand new clothing and skin textures, specifically for SL, then you do not need a UV-mapping program at all. What you do need is simply a copy of the existing UV maps (the templates), and an image editing program like Photoshop. Optionally, you can also use a 3D modeling/rendering program to bake your textures. But at least 90% of clothing and skins in SL are made just using 2D software.
As for previewing, as I said, you can do that right inside Photoshop CS3 Extended, or you can use any 3D modeling program or 3D paint application you want. The SLCP program stickied at the top of this forum works well. Other popular choices that are Mac compatible are Poser, DAZ|Studio, Blender, and Maya.
If you haven't already done so, go to the downloads section of the SL website, and grab the templates and the mannequin models. Open the templates in Photoshop, or any other image editor that supports PSD files, and you'll see the existing UV maps. From there, simply paint your clothing and skins right on top.
You can import the Poser format versions of the mannequin models into Poser or DAZ|Studio, and you can import the OBJ versions into almost any 3D application.