# SL Designers

> SL Designers (the GalvanisT Designer Ecosystem, www.sldesigners.com) is a school and toolmaker for people who design 3D clothing for virtual worlds. It offers clothing design video courses recorded for Second Life, the GALA and Fur addons for Blender, the SL Designers Material HUD (a texture changer with PBR and Blinn-Phong support), a marketplace for premade full-perm mesh, a Discord community, and a 3D studio you can walk through in the browser.

Key facts:
- Courses: Beginner, Next Level, Full Access, Dynamic Clothing, Squish Mesh, Fur. An opened course belongs to the buyer's Second Life avatar for good.
- Software taught: Marvelous Designer (patterns, draping), ZBrush (detail, high poly), Blender (UV maps, rigging, weight painting, export), Substance Painter (textures).
- Everything is sold in Second Life with L$, at the SL Designers store: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Lorena%20Pink/136/86/438 . There is no web checkout.
- After buying, the avatar is linked to the website once with a HUD, and the owner logs in with Discord to watch.
- GALA is a Blender addon (Blender 5.2 or newer) for fitting, rigging and exporting Second Life clothing, licensed by time on one computer.
- The lessons are recorded for Second Life. The guides explain how the same skills (modelling, UV mapping, texturing, rigging, weight painting) apply to FiveM (GTA V), The Sims 4, inZOI, Roblox and VRChat; the courses do not teach those worlds' export steps.
- Community: https://discord.gg/5THw5CX7Bj

## Pages

- [SL Designers](https://www.sldesigners.com/): The front page: courses, GALA, the Material HUD, the marketplace, the store, Discord and the 3D studio.
- [Learn 3D clothing design for virtual worlds](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn): What SL Designers is and offers, with the way to every guide.
- [Second Life clothing design courses](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/second-life-clothing-design-courses): Video courses that take you from a first mesh to rigged, fitted clothing you can sell in Second Life.
- [Blender addons and tools for Second Life creators](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/blender-addons-for-second-life): GALA, the Fur addon and the Material HUD: the tools we build for clothing creators.
- [FiveM clothing in Blender](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/fivem-clothing-blender): How GTA V / FiveM clothing is made, step by step, and what carries over from Second Life.
- [Sims 4 CC clothing in Blender](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/sims-4-cc-clothing-blender): From cloning an item in Sims 4 Studio to a finished .package file.
- [inZOI clothing mods in Blender](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/inzoi-clothing-mods-blender): Making clothes for inZOI with the official ModKit.
- [Roblox layered clothing in Blender](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/roblox-layered-clothing-blender): 3D clothing for Roblox avatars: mesh, rig and the two cages.
- [VRChat avatar clothing in Blender](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/vrchat-avatar-clothing-blender): Clothing made for an avatar base, from Blender to Unity.
- [How-to guides](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to): Rigging, weight painting, UV unwrapping, baking, PBR, LODs, export, upload and selling - step by step.
- [3D clothing design glossary](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/3d-clothing-design-glossary): Rigging, UV maps, baking, PBR, weight painting, fitted mesh: the technical words, explained plainly.
- [How to start making mesh clothing for Second Life](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/start-making-mesh-clothing-for-second-life): The 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 Blender](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/rig-clothing-for-second-life-in-blender): Step-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 Blender](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/weight-paint-clothing-in-blender): How 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 Blender](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/transfer-weights-from-body-to-clothing-in-blender): Copy 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 Life](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/make-fitted-mesh-clothing-for-second-life): What 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 Blender](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/uv-unwrap-clothing-in-blender): Mark 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 Blender](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/bake-a-normal-map-in-blender): Bake 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 Blender](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/bake-ambient-occlusion-in-blender): Bake 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 Blender](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/retopologize-clothing-in-blender): Turn 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 Blender](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/import-marvelous-designer-clothing-into-blender): Export 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 Life](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/texture-clothing-in-substance-painter-for-second-life): Take 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 Life](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/make-pbr-materials-for-second-life): How 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 Blender](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/assign-material-faces-for-second-life-in-blender): Split 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 Life](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/export-collada-dae-from-blender-for-second-life): Export 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 Life](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/upload-mesh-clothing-to-second-life): Walk 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 mesh](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/make-lods-for-second-life-mesh): Make 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 Life](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/reduce-land-impact-in-second-life): What 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 clothing](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/fix-clipping-in-second-life-mesh-clothing): Why 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 Blender](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/refit-clothing-to-another-mesh-body-in-blender): Adapt 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 Life](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/get-a-mesh-body-developer-kit-for-second-life): What 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 Life](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/make-a-texture-changer-hud-for-second-life): How 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 products](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/set-permissions-on-second-life-products): Copy, 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 Life](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/sell-clothing-in-second-life): From finished garment to income: boxing, vendors, an in-world store, the Second Life Marketplace, product pictures, demos and events.
- [How to install a Blender addon](https://www.sldesigners.com/learn/how-to/install-a-blender-addon): Install a Blender addon from a zip file, enable it, find its panel and update it - with the steps for current Blender versions.
- [SL Designers Studio](https://www.sldesigners.com/island): A 3D island you can walk through in the browser, with a classroom where students watch together.