Seperate avatar and clothing designer

I would really like away to design avatars and clothing outside of the game without having to upload textures and skins. I don't want to spend L$50 perfecting them when I don't plan on selling them.

Leonn,

I don't think we will see an offline editor, I think a better solution is to allow us to upload temporary textures at no cost, that perhaps only we can see client side until we release it, then get charged for it. The servers are clogged with unneeded textures right now - it makes sense just from a server space standpoint to add this feature.

Cristiano

I support Chris' product and or service

I second that.

I assume it would be as easy as adding the fuctionality of the avatar/clothing creation code and providing access to it through a button on the connect screen... but then again it depends on how modular you make your programming code.

The temporary, local texture thing would work just as well for functionality, however, you could have full resolution and effects with great frame rates in a seperate or modular solution because the processor/graphics card won't have to process any world data, just avatar, clothing and texture.

Well, I hope the Lindens consider this. I don't know if they read these or not.

I just started SL, still in trial, and WILL be a member when it runs out.

What I NEED emensly is a out of world previewer to design my clothing.

I have been in There for over a year, and have designed over a hundred outfits that sell quite well there. I am a RL clothing designer (freelance),

BUT

I am a nit picker for detail and perfection. I need to be able to tweek my designs before I pay 10$ L to upload. If I have to pay each time I tweak one little thing, it will cost me hundreds of linden $ for each design.

In There, there is a previewer you load the template into, to view. Then we designers "replace files" for a local viewing of our design inworld, as movement of the avatar creates unsitely stretching of the design.

I am THRILLED that the templates here are 512 x 512 (There has 256 x 12 and the detail here is GREAT.

Is there a way to do what I need??? Please someone help me. I NEED to design my clothing without relying only on the sliders. I NEED to use the templates without spending tons of Linden dollars to test them.

thank you so much.

Alexis

I support Cris's idea/suggestion!

I'm not sure how easy or difficult it is to implement features like temporary textures... but another idea would be to get refunded for deleting a texture or snapshot. This would help for those of us who design and upload repeatedly to correct things. It would also work well for people like me who manage to hit the snapshot button when switching between SL window and other programs. I could make a rather large album of pictures of my back from all my misclicks <g>

If I had a L$ for every time this was brought up I'd be rich.

But then we would have one less money sink.. and another part of the what little of an economy we have ,would then dissappear.

Sure I have been here uploading like crazy. But what else would I spend money on.

Alexis, I'll do anything I can to help. There isn't a way to preview clothing textures before you upload them as yet (if ever). I uploaded all of SL's avatar template textures as textures so I can wear them on my avatar to see where and how things will line up. This helps to some degree, although it's not great for judging proportions. I'll be happy to give you copies of these (and anyone else that wants them, give me a yell). In fact I'll put them up in my Nathoma store (look for the big silver and blue Dalek around the center of the sim). I'll set up a free box of them when I get home from work today, probably around six p.m. CST.

I'm a former There designer as well...I am (is? was? were?) Swen_Wu_Kong in that world.

Hope to hear from you!

Lumiere

I guess... but i was just seeing it from how i do things. If I upload a texture for clothing i'm making, i keep that texture, i just delete the 10 other uploads before i got to my final one... which i don't see as being any different to having a temporary texture and then only paying for the final one. It's still only $10 in each case. The same as photo's... if i take 50 photo's and then delete them and get my money back... or if i have to check yes to each pic as to whether i want them or not... (which i wouldn't)... at the end of the day, i've still payed out nothing. I just assumed it would be an easier thing, to get money back for deleting.

Although having said that, there are probably those who would not keep even the finished texture or picture once they'd had their use for it. And i'm not sure how it would work if you gave someone a copy of that testure...

gah, my idea sucks...

Do we get money back for deleting textures? I deleted a few temporary textures for an avatar I was making but didn't notice that I had gotten the money back, but I'm not sure how carefully I was watching.

If this is the way it is,...no we don't need previewers!

Lum

Hehe, no, we don't currently get refunded for deleting textures... that was my idea for aiding those of us who design and upload many textures before we get to our final one.

What would be *really* awesome is if we could actually edit the textures while we're wearing them =)

But that wouldn't exactly be an easy thing to code =P

What would also be nice is being able to overlay one texture over another. And not necessarily clothing. It would help cut down prims if we were able to overlay say a border trim over a wall texture.

And I agree Kex being able to edit clothing while wearing it would be great.. The ultimate would be tho seeing it applied outside the game before uploading.

I've seen and used a few "paint on model" applications. Perhaps years of working 2-D has twisted my thinking, or perhaps the applications simply weren't well-rounded, but working on a model was never as worthwhile or precise. How to apply many of the tools in Photoshop onto a three-dimensional surface is an exercise left to the programmers.

Like many here, I'd love to see some sort of preview window with a default avatar model, let alone a model that could be modified as much as we can IW. And how about transferring the shapes?

Sadly enough this is something fairly easy for anyone user with enough time to do, last I check Gmax(a chopped down version of 3d studio)has the ability to view texture in the viewport windows...all someone has to do is recreate the av mesh(UV and all) and make it distrubtable through gmax, I had started this earlier(flat av chest completed)but I've since stopped going on the project not enough time I guess eheh*goes back to lurking*