Still, in their defense, all good things take work to understand, and one of the realities of modeling in 3D is that you have to learn the obscure language used by the software engineers responsible for creating these applications. The only conclusion I can come to is that whoever decided to design a button with no label on it (to do something as important as importing a texture) must secretly hate me. Although I know that the designers of these programs are doing their best to create these deep applications, I have to wonder if they actually use them on a daily basis.Īs an example, to import a Bitmap image into 3D Max to use as a texture to apply to a mesh, I have to click a button that has no label or icon on it. If you have experience using Photoshop you know what it is like to have used the program for years and be introduced to a new trick that would have probably saved you weeks of your life if you had just known it years ago.

These applications can do amazing things and even veteran users of these programs find themselves discovering new depths and shortcuts to getting their work done.

These are complex tools that have been built on simpler, earlier incarnations and their evolution has added depth to appeal to a wide range of power users, from the gaming to the entertainment industries. It is my opinion that although 3D applications, like 3D Max and Maya are powerful tools, they have made no real attempt to make their applications intuitive or easy to use. Okay, before we start I would like to get out into the open a dirty little secret about 3D modeling. These IDs are used in the active IMVU avatar so please try to follow them when building your mesh.For those of you “meshers” out there that are already experienced 3D model builders, you will find this stuff pretty basic, but we would love your input if you see any areas I should elaborate on, or have missed entirely.Īn Introduction to 3D Modeling – Don’t Panic! Each Material has a unique ID as per the naming convention listed above. The IMVU avatar comes with a preset number of Materials. Otherwise, you will end up with a product that will eventually not load. If you have four sub-materials, those materials must be numbered,. You cannot have four sub-materials number,. Click the Unwrap UVWs button.Īnother thing to consider when naming your sub-materials is that they need to be consecutively numbered. When you have arrived at the base Mapping modifications that you are happy with, it is time to dig into the details. This should allow you to more easily see how the skin on your new meshes is mapped and, more importantly, whether or not it matches what is on the master meshes. When this texture is applied to the avatar body in MAX, the horizontal and vertical lines are drawn as near straight as possible. To the left is the 256×512 plaid texture we use to make sure that our mapping is near perfect. So, please err on the side of delighting your customers and use the texture mapping IMVU has already lovingly built for you. When their skin texture products do not work perfectly, they get upset, leave bad reviews and spread the word that your products are unreliable. If you are building a body part that is meant to work seamlessly with the rest of products in the IMVU catalog, please remember to use the texture mapping already embedded in the meshes supplied in the master weighting files.Īs mentioned above, IMVU users expect their skin texture products to work perfectly across all clothing meshes. That is handled with some sort of ‘Mapping’ tool. However, the Material does not dictate how that texture is applied to a mesh. Rather, you have to specifically choose things like ‘two-sided’ in the Material properties in the Previewer.Īs mentioned above, each Material contains a texture. What is the name of the material? What texture is contained? Are there multiple textures (in the case of an opacity map)? What material ID is that texture supposed to be applied to? Is any ambient lighting applied to the material? Is the material two sided (ie – can it be seen when viewing both sides of a polygon)? Several of the bits of Material data that are useful in 3DS MAX do not translate directly into the Previewer. The particular data contained in a Material all revolve around a texture. In 3D, a ‘Material’ is essentially just a collection of data. This tutorial *also* assume that you have read the Introduction to Avatar Body Parts and the Mapping Materials Tutorial. This tutorial also assumes that you have already selected the male head mesh, applied the Physique modifier and Initialized it. It also assumes that you are using the files found in either the Male03 _Anime01 _WeightingPoseMASTER.max that is found in Female Weighting File or the Male03 _Anime01 _WeightingPoseMASTER.max that is found in Male Weighting File This tutorial assumes that you are using 3D Studio MAX.

Mega male imvu mesh by ishtar