Blender- Bring Avatar in and dress her?

Is there a way to import in the SL avatar and 'dress' her? I'm trying to build a collar for my avatar's outfit but it's difficult to get all the angles correct. . .

Okay I will partly answer my own question. I went to here and download the the avatar meshes:
http://secondlife.com/community/avatar.php

Then from Blender I went to import and imported the obj file, and viola, I've got my model in there. But it would be even better if I could dress her in the base outfit that I am trying to fit the collar to . . . perhaps I can some how apply the shirt's tga texture file to her to get the shirt on her?

Try http://www.atomcrafts.com/Tutorials/Baking/Baking.htm, Amariah. It explains how to prepare the mesh in Blender and how to load textures onto it.

Also, checkout Gaia's tutorial on textures here: /8/75/257428/1.html

They are using Blender so it should be just the thing. THey do a really complex texture for a hardhat, which you may not need. But, the info you want is in there.

I'm working on this. The latest information and blend file are at http://dominodesigns.info

Thanks guys, yes I've been through Gaia's tutorial, they lose me when they bring the texture back into Blender from Photoshop, I think I need to go back through that tut again. Loving Gaia's tutorials!

Ran, thanks for the link, the more tutorials the better! I've started going through the blender wiki tutorials too, learning as I go . . . This tutorial link you sent is exactly what I am after!! Thanks so much!

Domino, love that you are working on this. Will be a great help to clothing designers!

Thanks!

Nice to hear that
Where exactly do we loose you in the process of texturizing ? Maybe we have to make something more understandable there ? Or is it just not well visible on the screen ?

Please tell me your concerns. That also helps to make the videos better!

Tip: You always can download the .wmv version of the tutorials. these versions have much better video resolution. I love to watch them on our production machine, which has a really big display

Hi Gaia,

I think that a beginner tutorial would fill in the gap. I downloaded Blender, launched it and got scared away by the user interface. So I went online and searched for tutorials, found your site, and your sculpty hat was the 1st project I did to familiarize myself with Blender, but I was still frustrated because I didn't even know the basics of the interface. I've gone through some of the general tutorials on the Blender wiki site, so now that I'm more familiar with it I think I need to go back through that tutorial. Allot of Blender's features aren't necessarily useful when building specifically sculpties for Second Life. So a beginner tutorial that goes over the generalities of Blender would be very useful for newbies. A step between the installation tutorial and the hat tutorial-- assuming the person has just installed it and knows nothing.

Ama

oh, sure. I always forget, how long it took myself to get along with this 3D stuff in general and with blender in particular. A beginners blender tutorial may really make the tutorial series more or less complete... Although i also remember, that there are plenty of excellent tutorials about blender out on the web... Still it makes some sense to me, making another one in our own style (just for completeness...) Thank you very much for this hint!!!

Blender is complex and the user interface anything but intuitive. I've used it on and off for several years. I still watch/read through tutotials when I find them. I am always learning something new. I'm sure any Gaia tutorial will teach me new things. Looking forward to her new tutorials.

My experience is that most tutorials only cover small parts of Blender and specific tasks or are directed at selected goals. Blender is too big and overall tutorials too long. So, most are small and named to allow those in search to find what they are looking for. (Need to warp a surface - search on blender warp) It’s not knowing if a command is bend or warp or something else that makes the process so difficult.

So, finding the tuts is no easy task. There is no centrally organized listing of tutorials, at least that I have found.

Gaia, you might consider adding a list of links to tutorials you like along with your tutorial.

Oh! There is actually a printed Blender Manual. See http://www.blendernation.com/2007/06/02/new-blender-manual-the-essential-blender-goes-to-print/

Also: http://www.blendernation.com/books/



Aside: Please file a trouble ticket on this blog and its BBC (Bulletin Board Code) not working. I've PM'd a moderator and was told Linden deliberately turned it off. I suspect they had their reasons. Getting it back on/fixed would sure be nice. Links are such a pain.

We tried to create our tutorial series in a way, that you can watch them consecutively. And with each tutorial learn a little bit more about blender. And of course we focus on sculpty making. Therefore we are currently working on "the blender primer" (published within the next 14 days), the missing tutorial between "blender installation" and "creating sculpted prims". Oh... and i learned so many new things when preparing this primer tutorial, concerning the BASIC blender usage, and now i know, blender is as intuitive as a program can be, you just need to think a bit less complex and then "the flower opens and shines in all rainbow colors"

Other (external) tutorials as you mentioned above, are focussing on different exciting aspects of blender and they mostly have been created by much more experienced people, than we are here at machinimatrix. But exactly, because they focus on blender itself, there is always this main problem, how to "translate" the content to the working domain of sculpty making...

For instance, when we talk about how to work with NURBS, that makes sense in our context, only if we also can show, how to make sculpties out of NURBS... And because we know, how to do that, there is a tutorial about that

When we are talking about arbitrary objects, we must also show, how these objects can be converted to sculpties... Because we do NOT know, how to do that in general, there is still no tutorial about that available, and consequently many external tutorials can not be added to our list, because we do not know, how to apply their content to our processes ...

so each "foreign" tutorial needs an accompanion tutorial for applying the presented knowledge to our goals... But for sure, when we find tutorials, that match our goals (can be applied directly to sculpty making) we certainly will add them to our blog (the blender trail).

Having said that, we definitely appreciate any HINT!!!! so please go to my tutorial thread
at /8/75/257428/1.html and drop your proposed URLS there. That would help a lot.

I understand your viewpoint and I agree with your thinking.

While many of the tutorials are specific or so general that one must mentally translate them to how they may apply to Sculpties, many of them are basic modeling. Basic modeling always applies. How does one use WARP or spin?

Also, many tutorials apply to SL but not to sculpties.

Here is an excellent animation tutroial: http://tentacolor.com/sl-animation-for-blender-newbs/

I paraticipate with a group know as the D'ni Refugees. Outside of SL they have numerious web sites and forums about Myst games and newbies are haveing a difficult time finding the latest infmoration. I see the same problem in SL. While the forum is a help, posts age sinking down the list and information is buried in long threads. Having an easy to read single source is a handy tool.

I'm suggesting you consider keeping a broad idea of what may be applicable to sculpties. After all some of do use unrelated tutorial info to make our sculpties.

With help from your tutorials, Domino's scripts, and modeling I've learned in ther places, I was able to build and texture a water bed in a few hours. My first hat took weeks. I appreciate your work. It helps. Thanks.