[Archived - YeetGodfrey] How to export textures properly with blender for IMVU General Audience Products.

Posted by “Drosselmeyer” on April 30, 2022.

I think i understand where the confusion is now. You actually do not want to use any of the reserved avatar material IDs:

Head [2]

Eyes [3]

Hair [4]

Eyelashes [5]

Skin [7]

Eyebrows [8]

because these will conflict with the base avatar and cause problems when skins and other products are worn.

I changed your material ID for the "skin" portion of your mesh to be 10 and then set it to skin composite in Studio and this allows for material ID 7 (avatar skin) to automatically show "underneath" the material when a mask is applied. See the screenshot below.

I hope this clears things up.

Posted by “Drosselmeyer” on April 12, 2022.

Hmm. This is weird. I am wondering why the mesh is not showing the submesh materials. Maybe because of disabling the avatar skin material? You will need the submesh material for the skin, but I would have expected it to come in with a default or empty material. Can you send your FBX to studio@imvu.com and I can have a look?

Posted by “YeetGodfrey” on April 09, 2022.

So I added a new material in IMVU studio, then assigned a opacity and diffuse texture [I just used the IMVU female guidelines and changed the colors, to suit the opacity and texture, in gimp]. Then I chose skin composite and blending mode is still alpha test. After applying it all, nothing has happened.

I also noticed when I am in the mesh component, There are no dropdowns under material.

When Importing the mesh, I disabled the avatar skin material, so I do not have a material with a material ID 7. Have I perhaps named something incorrectly? [The top mesh is transparent as I enabled a opacity to hide it. When importing from blender I merged my top with my avatar upper body so it has the name of 'Clothing_Female_UpperBody']

Posted by “Drosselmeyer” on April 09, 2022.

Ah. Yes. You could do that also. You will need a material to assign to the skin area.

• Using the MCG skin texture as a guide make two textures that are 256x512: One that is the diffuse texture for the bra and the other that is the opacity texture for the bra.
• In Studio: Add a new material and assign the diffuse and opacity maps and set the material to 'Skin Composite'.
  • If you already have a skin material assigned to the mesh with the material ID 7 and a texture 'Female01_Anime01_Tops_naked_020degrees.tga' you don't want to edit this. If you do it will override the skin for the product. You need to use a material that is not assigned material ID 7. This ID is reserved for the avatar skin.
• In Studio: Assign the material to the skin portion of the mesh by switching to the Mesh Component panel and selecting the material you just created from the dropdown for the 'Submesh' Material for the skin.

Here are a couple of screenshots (Ignore the fact that I used a 1x1 solid purple color for the diffuse map. This was a quick and dirty example :P )

Add new material

Assign the material

Posted by “YeetGodfrey” on April 08, 2022.

Thank you very much! Changing the opacity seems to suit best what I'm looking to do. Although I noticed that is "deletes" that area, when using a opacity map. What if I wanted to create a bra where it would be possible to see the colors and not just see through that area of the skin? For example with a mesh I found in the IMVU catalog, they have their skin texture but they have a separate texture which uses a 'skin compositing' blending mode? this allows for their to not be an empty space where the guidelines are, instead its like a bra.

Posted by “Drosselmeyer” on April 08, 2022.

Ah, Got it. So your best option is to delete all of the skin mesh which is underneath the clothing. The other option is to add an opacity map to the skin material that hides the MCG areas of the skin (which effectively does the same thing as deleting the skin mesh under the clothing) The former solution is efficient because you are not adding a a texture map and transparency to a material. In either case you will need to modify your top to insure it covers the MCG red areas.

Posted by “YeetGodfrey” on April 08, 2022.

^^^Forgot to mention, that if I were to create a skin tight mesh underneath my current top, then it could still glitch through as transparent through walls.

Posted by “YeetGodfrey” on April 08, 2022.

Hi there @Drosselmeyer​ , I have no problem with my skin working. But I'm unsure on how to create a skin composite layer to cover the minimum coverage guidelines for my product to pass GA peer review. [the red part]From what I know I cant create a 'skin tight' mesh underneath my shirt as it could still glitch through walls, etc. This is a photo using a top from the shop. The minimum coverage areas have been covered by the white. How can I create this skin composite in my own mesh? So that if walls were to make the mesh transparent[] my minimum coverage areas would still be covered?

Posted by “Drosselmeyer” on April 07, 2022.

Hi @YeetGodfrey​ , Just so I am clear, you have a 'top' product mesh you have made in Blender which has some skin bits, a shirt and a corset (and laces)? From looking at your image, I cannot tell where the shirt ends and the skin begins. In order to have your skin work with skin products the texture you use must be named exactly Female01_Anime01_Tops_naked_020degrees.tga Rename it to this, even if your texture map is a jpg or a png. This is really weird, but it will work.