How-to guides for Second Life clothing creators
Short, practical answers to the technical questions every clothing creator runs into, from the first mesh to the first sale.
- How to start making mesh clothing for Second LifeThe whole road for a beginner: what software you need, the order of the work (model, UV, texture, rig, upload) and how to avoid the usual first mistakes.
- How to rig clothing for Second Life in BlenderStep-by-step: bind a garment to the Second Life avatar skeleton in Blender, copy weights from the mesh body, clean them up and export a rigged Collada file.
- How to weight paint clothing in BlenderHow weight painting works in Blender and how to use it on clothing: the brushes, auto normalize, smoothing, mirroring and fixing shoulders, elbows and knees.
- How to transfer weights from a body to clothing in BlenderCopy bone weights from a rigged avatar body onto a garment in Blender with Transfer Weights or the Data Transfer modifier, and clean up the result.
- How to make fitted mesh clothing for Second LifeWhat fitted mesh is, which bones it uses, and how to weight clothing so it follows Second Life body sliders such as breast, belly, butt and saddle bags.
- How to UV unwrap clothing in BlenderMark seams, unwrap and pack a garment's UV map in Blender: where to cut, how to check for stretching, and how to keep texel density even.
- How to bake a normal map in BlenderBake the folds and seams of a high-poly garment into a normal map for the low-poly version in Blender, with Cycles, selected-to-active and a cage.
- How to bake ambient occlusion in BlenderBake an ambient occlusion (AO) map for clothing in Blender and use it for soft shading in Second Life textures and PBR materials.
- How to retopologize clothing in BlenderTurn a dense sculpted or simulated garment into a clean low-poly mesh in Blender: snapping to the surface, edge flow at joints, and a sensible triangle budget.
- How to bring Marvelous Designer clothing into BlenderExport a garment from Marvelous Designer and import it into Blender ready for retopology, UVs and rigging for Second Life: settings, scale and cleanup.
- How to texture clothing in Substance Painter for Second LifeTake a garment from Blender into Substance Painter, bake, paint fabric materials and export textures for Second Life PBR and Blinn-Phong.
- How to make PBR materials for Second LifeHow Second Life's PBR (glTF) materials work: base colour, normal, occlusion-roughness-metallic and emissive maps, how to create and apply them, and Blinn-Phong fallbacks.
- How to assign material faces for Second Life in BlenderSplit a mesh into Second Life faces with Blender materials: the limit of eight per object, how faces map to textures and HUDs, and how to keep the order.
- How to export Collada (.dae) from Blender for Second LifeExport a mesh or rigged clothing from Blender as a Collada .dae file that Second Life accepts - including what to do now that new Blender versions have no built-in Collada exporter.
- How to upload mesh clothing to Second LifeWalk through the Second Life mesh uploader for rigged clothing: levels of detail, physics, skin weights, the upload fee, and testing on the beta grid.
- How to make LODs for Second Life meshMake the four levels of detail for a Second Life mesh by hand in Blender with the Decimate modifier, and choose settings so clothing never collapses at a distance.
- How to reduce land impact in Second LifeWhat decides the land impact of a Second Life mesh - download, physics and server weight - and practical ways to lower each one.
- How to fix clipping in Second Life mesh clothingWhy the body pokes through mesh clothing in Second Life and how to fix it: fit, weights, alpha cuts and testing in motion.
- How to refit clothing to another mesh body in BlenderAdapt a finished garment from one Second Life mesh body to another in Blender: reshaping, re-copying weights and what must be redone.
- How to get a mesh body developer kit for Second LifeWhat a mesh body developer kit is, how creators apply for the Maitreya, Legacy, Reborn, Kupra and other kits, and what you may do with them.
- How to make a texture changer HUD for Second LifeHow texture changer HUDs work in Second Life - faces, textures, scripts and communication - and how to give your clothing colour options with a ready system.
- How to set permissions on Second Life productsCopy, modify and transfer explained for Second Life creators: what to set on clothing, scripts, textures and boxes before selling.
- How to sell clothing in Second LifeFrom finished garment to income: boxing, vendors, an in-world store, the Second Life Marketplace, product pictures, demos and events.
- How to install a Blender addonInstall a Blender addon from a zip file, enable it, find its panel and update it - with the steps for current Blender versions.