Backwater Tutorials

A part of Backwater Creations

Start Simple

     Making your own clothing for IMVU is not easy at first but there are some great ways to ease yourself into this part of your creator journey. 1 of these (obviously) is to follow the Backwater Tutorials, the other is to use only simplistic designs to create your first clothing from.

     The first piece of clothing I made was a simple tee shirt derived (see Deriving From Products section below)from KittenKats EZ-Tee template CLICK HERE to view template page. It has simple step by step guides to create a tee shirt like example below

 

      From there you can go into more complex outfits by using OPACITY maps and DIFFUSE COLOR maps, that I mentioned earlier in the previewer tutorial

Deriving From Products

    When you have the Previewer program loaded onto your computer you will notice a few more panels appear on catalog pages, the one that we mainly deal with as Content Creators is the derive from product button shown in example below.

    Deriving from means simply you are basing your product from this source. In monetary terms it means that from sales of your product the original creator (in my examples, backwater of course) will get a percentage. Once you gain experience and the ability to form your own 3D meshes you can 'cut out' this middleman style of content creation to a certain extent, although IMVU will still get a percentage of all your sales

    For the purpose of this tutorial we shall use my Female Halfsuit Mesh
CLICK HERE for the product page

Opacity Maps

     As with most Content Creators who make their own 3D meshes and set them as derivable, I have provided the basic wireframe map used to create the outfit from

     Right clicking on the map (from the product page) allows you to save it to your computer for editing in your graphics program. It is from this map that we create our opacity map

     An Opacity Map is what gives the shape to your clothing and also its transparency (or opacity) so for the body of your outfit simply colour on the map, in white, what shape you wish it to take, remembering that the map is a flattened out 3D image of the avatars body (see example below)

 

      Once you have coloured your map white save it to your computer as e.g. bodysuitOpac.jpg ideally with a size of 256 pixels by 512 pixels.Once saved go back to the previewer control window, click on the material M07 then on opacity, change texture and upload your opacity map. To view the shape of your outfit in 3D click on apply changes and you will see the previewer window refresh to (hopefully) resemble the image below

      Once you have the basic shape of your outfit created it is a good idea to check that it meets the Minimum Coverage Guidelines set by IMVU to make an item available for General Audience sale. To do this click on the MCG Skin button on the Previewer control window

      This useful tool allows you to check your outfit meets the MCG before you submit it, by changing the skin of the avatar so it wears a bikini with red marks on it. If you can see any of these red markings then your outfit is not suitable for General Aundience sale, so must either be rated Access Pass only or adjusted to meet the MCG. Shown below is an example of how an outfit will fail Peer Review if marked as GA, as there is red showing on the rear

 

     Once you are happy with the shape of your outfit you can move onto texturing (or diffuse mapping)

Diffuse Maps

A small note before we get into texturing
The Opacity map and the Diffuse map MUST be the same size to work
 
      There are 2 methods that I use to texture my outfits, either a solid block of colour or a painted opacity map. As you will see from the previewer window, the halfsuit is coloured by a solid block of 'baby' blue, however both examples are shown below
     
      Using the solid block of colour is useful if you want your outfit the same colour all over, however if you want to add detail to your texture I recommend using the painted opacity map method, as it makes it much easier to place detailing in the correct place
 
 
     1 of the most difficult parts of creating a diffuse map is wanting the texture to be as realistic as possible, however real textures (photos etc) do not work so well with IMVU so we use highlights and shadows to make the texture look more realistic, and dependant on what type of 'fabric' your outift is made from dictates the amount of shading you need. My advice would be, avoid fabrics like leather, vinyl and pvc, which require a great deal of highlight and shading to look realistic, until you gain more experience.
     Once you have your completed outfit, click on save then submit in the same way as covered in the earlier tutorials

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