Second Life mesh clothing design courses

SL Designers is a school for people who want to design mesh clothing for Second Life and sell it. The lessons are videos you watch on this site, at your own pace, as often as you like - on a plain page, or sitting in the classroom of a 3D island with other students.

The courses

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  Beginner Course

  Start from zero: set up Blender, Marvelous Designer, ZBrush and Substance Painter, get creator kits, and make your first garment from pattern to wearing it in Second Life.

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  Next Level Course

  After Beginner: metal parts, ropes, buttons and zippers in ZBrush, a high-poly model, organised UVs, in-depth weight painting and Substance Painter texturing.

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  Full Access Course

  Every clothing course in one: Beginner, Next Level, the Bra & Croptop, Lingerie, Sweatshirt and Pants packs, the Refit Course and Tips & Tricks.

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  Dynamic Clothing Course

  A stand-alone video course on making dynamic clothing for Second Life.

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  Squish Mesh Course

  A stand-alone course on squish mesh for Second Life: the squish technique for the upper body, the lower body and the legs.

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  Fur Course

  Fur for Second Life clothing: displacement maps, the classic fur technique, textured fur, multi-object alpha masking, inner and outer layers. Includes the Fur Blender Addon.

The workflow you learn

The lessons follow one garment at a time through the same professional pipeline, from the first pattern to wearing it in Second Life:

1. Marvelous Designer - the garment is sewn from patterns and draped on the body, then retopologised.
2. ZBrush - folds and details, metal parts, ropes, buttons and zippers, and the high-poly model.
3. Blender - UV maps, rigging and weight painting on the mesh body's creator kit, and export.
4. Second Life - trying the piece on and correcting it.
5. Substance Painter - materials and textures.

The Beginner Course starts before all that: what you need, setting up a drawing tablet, getting creator kits, and finding your way round each program.

What making clothing for Second Life involves

Clothing in Second Life is rigged mesh: a 3D garment made outside the world and uploaded into it. A finished piece has gone through all of these:

• The garment itself - its cut, folds and thickness, with tidy topology.
• Fit - shaped to a mesh body such as Maitreya, Legacy, Reborn or Kupra, one version per body.
• UVs and textures - unwrapped, baked and painted; today also with PBR materials.
• Rigging - bound to the avatar skeleton with fitted-mesh weights, so it follows the wearer's body sliders and movement.
• Upload - levels of detail and a sensible land impact, uploaded through the Second Life viewer.
• Selling - packed with the right permissions and sold in-world or on the Second Life Marketplace.

How buying and watching works

1. Buy in Second Life. Every course is sold as a box at the SL Designers store.
2. Open the box. Wear it and touch it once. The course is now registered to your avatar.
3. Link your avatar, once. Wear the SL Designers HUD from the box, choose "Link website" and log in with Discord.
4. Watch. Open www.sldesigners.com and choose the courses. Each course also has resources: patterns, files and links.

Questions before buying are welcome in our Discord server.

More than courses

Students also get to use what we build around the lessons: Blender addons and a material HUD, and a marketplace on this site where course and GALA owners sell premade full-perm mesh to other creators.