Think of a mesh like a chassis of a car, it holds the rest up and the shape, texture and colour are built on it. Only with clothing its more of a 2D flat shape and must stick to the perimeters of the mesh, you cannot create your own mesh at the moment either. Whilst sticking to the perimeters what I mean is only the texture on the mesh itself will show. But its best to overlap the edges so in the example of clothes the seams are covered up, failure means a gap.
The forum stickies (top part of the forum threads) contain links to meshes. Best to collect these in a series of folders, named so they are easy to find. I use a folder called Meshes, then sub folders for male and female, then maybe separate sub folders for wings, tattoos, hair (not done that yet) etc. It may be easy to bung things anywhere and find them for now but it certainly isn`t a few weeks down the line. Doing this doesn`t half make life a lot easier later.
You need to stick to sizes like 512x512 for meshes, some early ones were 500x500 so best to resize. This then allows those on medium texture settings to see the clothes as designed, as well as those on high settings. It also reduces lag, setting at 1024x1024 to work on them is fine as long as they are reduced to 512x512 to upload. Though some things like jewelery may be left at that higher size, again I haven`t produced any of that.
When using UVD you need to stick to traditional naming conventions for your textures, these are all listed in the UVD site. One thing is for certain at the moment however, whatever file name you upload to test, the next test has to have the name changed slightly or the texture may not show. The final upload needs the name changing again, here is an example of a female Tee Shirt naming structure;
UFUT_SamsWear_123456.png
OK, UFUT is used to describe the Female torso as declared on the UVD site (see there for more examples and reasons). No spaces are allowed so underscores are used instead, my Clothing Designer Label follows and I personally use a system for spaces where the Capital Letter forms a word that would have started after a space (you don`t have to do this, I just do it myself) so Sams (invisible space) Wear is depicted by SamsWear then the file name itself. Now you can use any name and I said to change it each time. But what I do the final time is use a random number generator freely available on the internet and create a number using a seed of 32000, this then becomes the filename and I keep a copy in the folder with that release date in the folder name. So I know what that file name is. In this way Shirt1, shirt2 cannot easilly be discovered. UVD changes the file name but if you give any out yourself you`d be using Shirt1.png, Shirt2.png etc and cannot change them after upload. So 123456.png and 4823762.png are better file names to use. If you use shirt.png to test with, then make the next test of the same shirt shirt1.png and then shirt2.png and this takes care of the filename changes.
You can initially on upload run them as a test by ticking a box, that gives you one hour to test them inworld. Change the filename slightly and upload again after the test, marking the box to get another hour. This is useful if for example you have multiple textures to test and run out of time. As I said final upload should change name again and this is the only point at which I`d advise use of a number generator.
Enough for now but whatever you want to produce I`d say pick something easy to start with like a tee shirt. It will give you confidence in creating a texture, using the system, testing, renaming and mesh practice. All necessary components in the learning process. Above all else remember to take breaks, keep it fun and be prepared for mistakes and failures. It wouldn`t be fun if it was easy.
Now start here;
UV Deviant siteand just read, read, read..... forget about doing anything but getting the structure of your folders sorted for now, other than collecting meshes, reading tutorials. You need to be fully conversant with some kind of art package too so take time to learn a popular one or learn a new one as I did at the start and still am doing.
Sam
*** Forget the Festive Cheer in UV. December 2012 I dressed as a Christmas Tree as UV hadn't supplied any festive decoration in the RLC Street. I was cheered for doing it from the members. WO on the other hand gave me an ultimatum, continue doing it and face a permanent site ban. Others wind people up for weeks and months on end, cause trouble and fight yet get little or nothing done by UV. Me getting festive after 4 years here, instant permo ban warning ***
