Creator Education Center

Furniture Introduction A BIG THANK YOU goes out to TrakahanTiTeutonia for translating this tutorial into Italian. Molto grazie! (We're leaving this part of the tutorial in place as the links are important and this first paragraph has not been translated yet.) If you are just beginning to contemplate creating 3D products for IMVU, then Furniture Products is a great place to start. Without the complex rigging of the avatar, or the tons of nodes you have to deal with in Room products, Furniture is about as basic as it gets. You will still need to understand the fundamentals of building a mesh in 3D, and you will need to learn the steps necessary to tech your 3D model, export it from your 3D application, and import it into the IMVU Previewer. Se state iniziando a valutare di iniziare a creare prodotti 3D per IMVU, allora il mobilio (Furniture Products) sono in ottimo modo per cominciare! Senza la complessa ossatura degli Avatar, o le tonnellate di nodi con cui combattere per creare una Stanza (Room product), le Forniture sono la base da cui partire. Dovete intanto comprendere i fondamentali necessari per costruire un modello (mesh) in 3D, dovete imparare i passaggi necessari per realizzare i vostri modelli 3D, esportandoli dall’applicazione 3D con cui li avete realizzati ed importandoli nell’IMVU Previewer. La definizione di “Forniture Product” è la seguente: “In IMVU una “Forniture” è qualsiasi prodotto che può essere piazzato in una scena 3D, e che solitamente è reperibile nella sezione “Furnitures” del catalogo di IMVU. Una Forniture può essere qualsiasi cosa voi, i developer, possiate immaginare. Che sia un semplice cubo o una ruota da mulino con un’animazione di un avatar che corre, potere realizzarlo e venderlo su IMVU. La limitazione maggiore alla creazione di Furniture su IMVU è la vostra immaginazione. E’ importante notare ce una Forniture è differente dalla Room 3D dove viene eventualmente posizionato. Nonostante possano condividere molti degli aspetti tecnici, la Forniture è ufficialmente un prodotto che può essere aggiunto e posizionato in una scena 3D.” Per costruire una Forniture dovete conoscere alcune aree specifiche: 1. Costruire uno Scheletro, un Modello 3Ded aggiungere un Materiale (texture) alla tua Furniture Esportare tutti questi elementi nel giusto formato in un file Cal3D Assemblare tutti gli elementi nell IMVU Previewer 4. Inviarela tua Furniture nel catalogo di IMVU Catalog Dopo aver sperimentato tutti i tutorial necessari per realizzare un prodotto finito, avrai imparato molti dei passi fondamentali necessari per importare i tuoi lavori in 3D su IMVU, questo significa che sei sulla strada giusta per creare Stanze, Accessori ed eventualmente nuovi Avatar! Files necessari per iniziare: Abbiamo preparato acuni files esemplificativi da farti vedere, così che tu possa prendere familiarità con la creazione di una Furniture. Per le spiegazioni di questi tutorial prenderemo come riferimento 3D Studio Max 7 come programma di editing 3D. Product12906_Furniture_window01.zip Product12907_Furniture_couch01.zip Product12908_Furniture_chair01.zip Product12909_Furniture_bar01.zip Esempi di Furniture: Esempio di sedia Esempio di divano Esempio di bar Esempio di finestra Ogni file ZIP contiene le texture e lo scheletro del prodotto, ed il file CFL. Hai bisogno di tutti questi elementi per creare la tua prima Furniture nel Previewer. Ogni file MAX di esempio contiene vari oggetti necessari a trasformare le tue idee in realtà su IMVU. Troverai inclusi uno o più Modelli (mesh), un Materiale Compositoed un nodo Root. Una Furniture su cui un avatar può sedersi contiene unnodo di seat, una coppia di Catcher e Pitcher, un nodo di handle ed un avatar di posizionamento. NOTA: Salva questo file con un nuovo nome, se dovessi aver bisogno di unire parti del file originale con il tuo modello per correggere un errore. NOTA: Noi all’ IMVU inc non mettiamo limiti alla dimensione di ogni Forniture. In ogni caso abbiamo limitato la dimensione del file CFL finale a 2 Megabyte (GIGANTESCO!). Il download ed il runtime sono due cose che dovreste sempre tenere in mente quando realizzate prodotti per IMVU. Se le dimensioni dei file del tuo prodotto sono troppo grandi sarà poco piacevole da acquistare e scaricare per i tuoi potenziali clienti. E’ una buona abitudine cercare di mantenere al minimo la dimensione delle tue texture, il numero di poligoni e vertici del modello e la lunghezza delle animazioni. Non c’è ragione di usare una texture di 256x256 texture su una porzione microscopica delle vostre scene: semplicemente non si vedrà bene. Infatti abbiamo scoperto che più piccole sono le texture, MIGLIORE sarà la resa su IMVU.

Introduction to Avatar Accessories In IMVU, you can create Avatar Accessories. Accessories are products that can attach themselves to a bone in an avatar's skeleton. This means that you have the power to make watches, halos, wings, PETS. Anything! The power is in your hands. Just like Furniture products can be added to Room products, Accessories can be added to Avatars. Building an Accessory from scratch is not easy. However, it can be much easier than building avatar clothing from scratch. This is because you need to know how to model and map in 3D as well as weight meshes. Should that deter you? No! Of course not. Thousands of people have built their own accessory products and so can you. Before diving into building an accessory, please read the Introduction to Mesh Building Tutorial. In addition, some things to note up front: There is a run time Accessory limit per bone in IMVU. You may wear multiple Accessories at one time but may only wear three Accessories per attachment node at one time. This means that you could be wearing your sunglasses, halo and antennae on your head AND be wearing your shoulder pads, wings and sheathed sword on Spine4 at the same time. Pretty cool. Also, while it is true that Accessories can move with the one bone in the avatar skeleton to which they are attached, Accessories can not be made to move with more than one bone in the avatar body. So, although you can make incredible Accessories like Pets and morphy wobbly things, it is safe to assume that most Accessories will be rigid in IMVU. Accessory Basics An Accessory product is just like any other base 3D product in IMVU in that it contains its own skeleton, its own geometry, its own materials and its own textures. Since Accessories contain their own skeleton, they can also contain their own animations. This comes in very handy when turning an accessory into....a pet! Get the weighting files The avatar weighting MAX filess that IMVU, inc. has created contain an example Accessory set up exactly the way it needs to be in order to be exported. So, the first thing you need to do is download the weighting MAX files. Female Weighting File Male Weighting File For Position Only You will NOT actually use or export any piece of the original base avatar mesh or embedded avatar skeleton. You are building a separate Accessory product which means you are building a product that contains its own skeletons, meshes and materials. The reason you need the avatar mesh and embedded avatar skeleton is only for the placement/alignment of your Accessory product. The Embedded Accessory Skeleton An Accessory skeleton can be very simple. The most simple Accessory skeleton must contain two bones/nodes. These bones/nodes can be called anything you like. One will be your master bone (or, the top of the hierarchy) and one will be the bone you actually weight the mesh to. IMVU has called the master bone AttachmentRoot and called the second bone AttachmentNode. You will note that AttachmentRoot and AttachmentNode are both in the exact same location. You will also note that the AttachmentNode bone is parented to the AttachmentRoot bone. This is how these two bones should be set up regardless of how many other bones you may add in more complex products. Skeleton Placement All you need do is align the AttachmentRoot bone to the avatar bone with which you want your attachment to move. For example, if you want to build a bracelet, you would not align your AttachmentRoot bone/node to the avatar's Head bone because then you would have a bracelet that moved when the head moved. Instead, you would align the AttachmentRoot to one of the wrist bones. In the image example to the right, the glasses accessory mesh found in the avatar weighting file has been scaled larger for legibility. The glasses mesh is weighted to the AccessoryNode bone. So, if the AccessoryRoot bone (the parent of AccessoryNode) is moved to the location of the rtWrist bone (using the align tool), the glasses move with it. The orientation of all of the bones in the avatar skeleton is not the same. This means that a pair of glasses moved to, say, the ltCalf bone will not point forward the way they do on the Head or rtWrist bones. This is why it is important to align your skeleton to the intended bone location *before* building your mesh. That way, you will guarantee that the mesh will actually show up in IMVU the way you see it in your 3D program. Can I Make My Own Skeleton? Of course you can. However, remember that you may always use the embedded AttachmentRoot/Node for your Accessory skeleton. Building a skeleton for an Accessory product works just the same as building a skeleton for any other IMVU product. You need a root bone (AttachmentRoot) and a secondary bone (AttachmentNode) as your basis. So, with those two bones created, link the AttachmentNode bone to the AttachmentRoot bone using the link tool. Now align AttachmentRoot to the avatar bone you wish your accessory to attach to. THEN, either align AttachmentNode to the same bone in the avatar skeleton OR align it to AttachmentRoot. Either way, AttachmentNode will end up in the same spot. Now you can weight the mesh to your heart's content. Or....if you have the need of more bones, you can add more bones as you see fit. To learn more about skeletons, please go to the Introduction to Skeletons Tutorial. Pets Since an Accessory can be attached to any bone in the avatar skeleton, that means it can be attached to the avatar root node. This bone is called Female03MasterRoot. The benefit of attaching your Accessory to the avatar's master root is that the Accessory will not move with the avatar's idle animations. This has the wonderful side effect of allowing the Accessory to behave independantly of the avatar. In other words: you can make a Pet. Making a Pet is harder to do than, say, a pair of glasses as the overall set up requires more planning and the execution time is longer. The skeleton and the weighting are just more complex on a pet than your average Accessory. That said, the basic set up is the same. A Pet Accessory needs a skeleton, a mesh, materials with textures and, if you like, animations. However, your Pet Accessory product can be quite complex and utilize most of the behavioral animations IMVU has embedded in the avatars. For example, you can build Idle animations for stance.Standing and stance.Sitting or any other stance you would like to employ. You can also build triggered animations for any trigger that effects the avatar. LoL, cry, flip - your pet can do them all when your avatar does. This obviously makes the Pet a more important piece to any avatar's outfit. To learn more about building a Pet, please go to the Pets Tutorial Build the mesh: Accessory skeleton location The first thing to realize about building an Accessory mesh is that the location of the Accessory skeleton master root matters *A LOT*. If you want your glasses to show up on the avatar's head in IMVU, you need to have your Accessory skeleton master root bone aligned to the avatar's head bone before you weight your glasses. So, to recap: 1. Align your Accessory master root bone to the bone in the avatar skeleton that you want to influence the Accessory. 2. THEN weight your mesh to the Accessory skeleton. Build the Mesh:Accessories for Avatar heads If you are building an Accessory for an avatar head (glasses, earrings, unicorn horns, etc.), there are a few things to keep in mind. The current IMVU head products are all built around the same basic head shape for Male or Female products. The only difference in all of the heads built by IMVU is only found in the shape of the face. Head size is dictated at run time in the IMVU messenger. (To learn more about head sizing, please go to the Previewer - Mesh Scale Tutorial. Specifically, the cranium, the bridge of the nose and the position of the ears do not move position from head design to head design (built by IMVU). This allows each human head product IMVU has made to use all of the pre-existing Accessories without any glaring aesthetic bugs. However, this means that things like facial jewelry, beards, mustaches, fangs, etc. will not look right from head to head (because Accessory products do not animate when avatar facial animations are playing.) Build the Mesh:Z-fighting The mesh for your Accessory can end up being very close to the mesh for the avatar asin the case of earrings, glasses and watches. However, if they are too close you may get Z fighting (or shimmering) in IMVU. It is worth testing in the previewer. If you see Z fighting in the previewer, you will see it in IMVU. To correct that shimmering effect, you ought to pull your Accessory goemetry away from the avatar mesh. I typically do this in edit geometry: vertex mode so that I only need to adjust the vertices that are actually causing the problem. Build the Mesh:Weight the Mesh To learn more about how to weight any mesh, please go to the Mesh Weighting Tutorial. There are some tips specific to Accessories that could help you. The first is that if you are building something that is meant to move with one bone only (Glasses, Earrings, etc.), weight all of your vertices to that bone in the ACCESSORY SKELETON. Remember, if you are weighting all of your verts to one bone, then you can use the Skin weighting modifier (which is much easier to use than the Physique weighting modifier.) The second tip is that your Accessory mesh should never be weighted to any bones in the avatar skeleton. Your Accessory has its own skeleton (which you just created). If you weight your accessory to anything but the accessory skeleton, it will not work. Map the mesh To learn more about how to apply mapping coordinates to your mesh, please go to the Mapping Materials Tutorial. Although an Accessory can use as many Materials as necessary, remember to keep your textures as small as possible. Accessory Animations Since Accessories contain their own skeletons, they can have animations. Even more, since they also contain meshes, they can also contain morph animations. To learn more about how to animate any skeletal animation, please go to the Animating in 3D MAX Tutorial. Also, to learn more about how to make morph animations, please go to the Morph Targets Tutorial. It should be noted, though, that "under the hood" an Accessory product is really an "Avatar Attachment". This means that the Accessory is linked to Avatar in a few ways. The first is the most obvious: as your avatar moves around a 3D scene, any accessories worn will also move with that avatar. The second link has to do with animations. An accessory can utilize the same system that calls animations triggered by the IMVU avatar. Avatar Animation System? An Accessory can "utilize the system that calls animations triggered by the IMVU avatar"?!! How does that work? Well, the IMVU avatar can play three classes of Actions: 1. Idle Actions 2. Stance Actions 3. Triggered Actions The first two are very close in definition but #1 has the addition of having a hard coded instruction for blinking. A stance animation is dictated by a room or furniture seat node. For example, if a seat node is named seat01.FloatinInWater, then the IMVU code wants to play an animation called stance.FloatingInWater. If an Action with the same name exists in either the avatar product or within the Room or Furniture product, that animation will be applied to the avatar. The three main Idle/Stance Actions names are stance.Idle, stance.Standing and stance.Sitting. So, if your pet contains Actions with those names, the system will play those Actions whenever the avatar joins a Standing or Sitting seat. Even better, if the system can't find, say, stance.FloatingInWater in your Accessory, it will try to default to stance.Idle or stance.Standing. In this way, your Accessory could always be playing an Idle animation. Cool. A triggered action is an action that plays once (or loops infinitely until removed) and then goes away. When you type LOL in IMVU, you 'trigger' the LOL animation to play on your avatar. This means that your Accessory could have an animation that is triggered by the word 'LOL'. This means that if you type LOL in a chat in IMVU, both the avatar animation and the Accessory animation will be triggered. Budgets Download and runtime file size is an issue that should be kept in mind whenever designing for IMVU. If your Accessory’s file size is too big, it is unlikely that your potential customer will purchase and download it and, if they do, there is a very high chance that they will review your product poorly and your sales will go down. Therefore, it is good practice to try to keep the texture size, vertex/face count of your meshes and animation length down to the bare minimum. There really is no reason to have a 256x256 texture for a button on a shirt: it just won’t be seen in the IMVU messenger. In fact, we have found that the smaller the texture, the BETTER it looks in IMVU. Go figure. Also, please know that IMVU automatically resizes assets that are too large or teched incorrectly. To learn more, please go to the Mapping Materials Tutorial. Export Time Now you must export all of the assets in the Accessory. 1. Export the skeleton .XSF file. To learn more, please go to the Export the Skeleton - .xsf Tutorial. 2. Then, export the mesh .xmf file. To learn more, check out the Export the Mesh - .xmf Tutorial.) Then, when prompted for the skeleton, browse to the .xsf skeleton file you just exported in step 1. 3. Once you have the skeleton .xsf exported, you can export any animation .xaf files you may need. To learn more, please go to the Export Animations - .xaf Tutorial. 4. You may export your material .xrf files any time you like. To learn more, please go to the Export Materials Tutorial. On to the Previewer With your Accessory assets built and exported, its time to put them all together in the Previewer. To learn more, please go to the Previewer Tutorial. There are some special parts of the Previewer, though, that are specific to Accessory products. Read on, oh Accessory maker... Previewer: Avatar Compatibility At the top of the Special Tab in the Previewer, you will see a field titled "Compatible Body Pattern Product ID". Add the avatar product number that you wish your Accessory to work with and then apply changes. The IMVU Body Pattern Products are named as follows: Female: product80 Male: product191 It is recommended that you include both avatars for Accessories that do not involve the avatar head. To do so, you would type "80, 191". Previewer: Attachment Node The second thing you will notice is the AttachmentNode box. Change this name to whatever avatar skeleton bone name you wish your accessory to attach to. For example, in the case of Glasses, type in "Head" or, in the case of a pet, type in "Female04MasterRoot". Remember to type in the EXACT name of the avatar skeleton bone you wish your Accessory to attach to. For the entire list of bones in the IMVU avatar skeleton, please go to the Avatar Skeleton Hierarchy Tutorial. Avoid attaching to the Avatar's Pelvis node. In the Previewer, you will tell your accessory skeleton which bone on the avatar it should attach to. Although you are allowed to attach your Accessory skeleton to any bone on the avatar, it is recommended that you do not attach it to the Pelvis node. You may be unhappy with the result.

Avatar Hair Introduction Ah, hair. Long, lustrous hair. Short, curly hair. Bouyant hair. Striking hair. Attitude. Style. Chickens. OK....not so much with the chickens. Hair is one of the most defining characteristics of an avatar. Arguably more so than any other characteristic (of human avatars, anyway). In IMVU, you have the power to create your own hairstyles - anything you can think of. Mohawks. Bobs. Crew cuts. Ponytails. Your only limitation is your imagination. Building beautiful hair is truly an art form. On top of that, there is some technical skill required. For example, you need to know how to build in 3D, build textures, map those textures and weight the mesh. Therefore, building hair should not be considered 'easy'. That said, once you do it a few times, you will see that it can be one of the easiest body parts to create. While many of the basics of hair construction are shared with other body part creation tutorials, there are enough specifics to warrant its own tutorial. This tutorial will walk you through the essentials of building Hair and Hats. For the purposes of this tutorial, we assume you have read the Avatar Body Parts Introduction, the Weighting in Phsyique Tutorial, the Export the Mesh - .xmf Tutorial, the Export Materials - .xrf Tutorial and the Previewer Introduction. Get the example files We assume you have already read the Avatar Body Parts Introduction and therefore know where to get the default weighting avatars. If for some CRAZY reason you didn't get them then, you can get the Female Weighting File here and the Male Weighting File here. With one of these files open, zoom into the avatar head and select the hair mesh. Remember: you can build your own mesh at any time during this tutorial. Build to the Head With the hair mesh selected, you can see how it conforms to the shape of the avatar head underneath. The default avatar heads in IMVU are of an enlarged, anime style. All of the accessories and hairstyles in the catalog have been built to fit these default heads. If you want your hair product to work across most of the IMVU avatar heads in the catalog, then your hair mesh should be built to fit the default avatar head embedded in the master weighting files. Basically, in MAX, your hair will look enormous in order for it to fit the original head. This is OK, though, as the size of the head varies across products due to the mesh scale feature. To learn more, please check out the Mesh Scale Tutorial. Ears & Neck If you are making a long hairstyle, that is meant to cover the ears & neck, then you can move on to the next section. If you need to wrap around the ears & neck for any reason, then read on. Although you are free to use your own shapes, the shape of the hair around the ears & neck typically fits snugly to the head mesh. This is really handy as this means you can avoid 'Z fighting' along those edges. Z Fighting? When two polygons live very close together in 3D space, rendering engines have a tough time deciding which to draw first. The result is an annoying, shimmering effect. This looks especially bad on products that interface with an avatar head as that is what most people are looking at when chatting. To avoid Z fighting, you can snap your hair verts to the same exact location as the head verts. Two Materials As you know from reading the Avatar Body Parts Introduction, one Body Part can contain multiple materials. For example, the avatar head contains both the head skin, eyes, eyebrows and eyelashes. Hair meshes can contain two materials: one for Hair and one for Hat. Obviously, you can use these two materials however you like on the body part that is meant to override the hair slot. Said another way, you could use the 'Hat' material for a hairclip...or antennae....or a helmet...or a chicken antennae hairclip helmet...thing. To see the materials in MAX, open the material editor and use the eyedropper to select the avatar's multi-sub material. The material ID for Hair is ID 5 [4] and the material ID for Hat is ID 11 [10]. To learn why I wrote the [brackets] above, please check out the Avatar Materials Tutorial Budgets Please remember to keep the polygon count of your hair down to as low as possible (while still looking like what you intended to build). One of the biggest complaints IMVU recieves is about the time it takes to load a scene that contains avatars with big hair (no Jersey jokes). IMVU will no doubt have to take action against such products in the future. Don't let your products get procedurally reduced! Please keep your hair products small. Hats Amore! Although a hair body part is made up of one body part ID, it can contain a hat as well. Think of it as one product that contains both hair and hat. This is handy for things like helmets as you can force the avatar to not wear the spikey mohawk when wearing the helmet. Mapping Once you have built your mesh, it is time to map it. To learn more, please go to the Avatar Materials and Texture Mapping Tutorial. There are some Hair-specific mapping points you should know as well. The most important is that it is a very, very good idea to spend time getting the mapping on your hair to be as highly customizable as possible. This means that the mapping on your hair is detailed and refined. You could apply a plaid texture to it and see each vertical and horizontal line evenly applied to the whole mesh. Giving your future derivers the ability to expand on the details in this way ensures a highly derived product and, therefore, more sales. Another important material-related thing you ought to know concerns opacity maps. To learn more, please go to the Opacity Maps Tutorial. To sum it all up, though, you must understand that if you use an opacity map on your Hair body part, then you run the risk of having that hair disappear in some circumstances due to an IMVU opacity bug. Weighting - Use 'Skin' for solid masses Once you hair mesh is built the way you like it and mapped to allow other creators to easily create textures for it, it is time to 'weight' it. For hairstyles that are meant to move entirely with the head, we recommend that you use the 'Skin' weighting modifier in MAX. To learn more, please go to the Weight a Mesh Tutorial. Weighting - Use 'Physique' for the Rest If your hair is meant to move partially with the head and partially with other parts of the body, you will need to use the 'Physique' weighting modifier in MAX. To learn more, please go to the Weighting in Phsyique Tutorial. Export .xmf Once you have a mapped and weighted mesh, you can export it. Choose the export option in the File menu, browse to the 'Cal3D Mesh File (*.CMF, *.XMF)' option and name your mesh. Remember: you must manually add the '.xmf' at the end of your asset name or you will end up exporting a useless .cmf file. In the Previewer - Body Part Override Open the Previewer and choose to derive from product 10866 for Female hair and product 344 for Male hair. As you no doubt remember from the Avatar Body Parts Introduction., the 'Special' tab in the Previewer contains the Clothing Override Body Part IDs panel. The body part to override in the Previewer is '1'. NOTE: You will not actually need to make any changes to this panel if you are deriving from an existing hair product. Previewer - Add Mesh In the 'Geometry' tab, browse for your newly exported .xmf file. and hit the Apply Changes button. Your new mesh should appear with the existing material applied to it. If this is the case, move on to the next step. If this is not the case, then something went wrong in the export process. If so, you will need to check: 1. the weighting in MAX (is the skin/physique modifier turned on? Are the vertices weighted?) 2. the skeleton .xsf file (did you use the 'Female04_Anime01_SkeletonMASTER.xsf' file supplied in the ZIP files?) 3. the exported asset's file type (it should be '.xmf' - not .cmf or anything else) Previewer - Add Textures In the 'Materials' tab, you can browse to add a new material .xrf file if you exported one. 99.99% of the time, you do not have to export your own material file as the one included in the default avatar should suffice. You really only want new textures to show up anyway so just click on the diffuse (color) texture to change it to your new texture. Remember: If you want to change the opacity map, you must click on the Opacity link in the 'Material Maps - Click to preview' panel. To learn more about opacity maps please go to the Opacity Maps Tutorial. Previewer - Save & Submit Save this product and submit it. Voila! You have created a skin tight composite mesh that can be derived from by thousands of painter Developers from around the world.

2D Applications Discussion Whether you are making a texture for a 3D model, a Sticker, or just customizing your Homepage, you will be using some sort of 2D application to create and manipulate your digital images. Although Photoshop is the acknowledged industry standard, it isn't necessarily your only choice. Photoshop is what we use here at IMVU, and is by far the most powerful image manipulation software out there, but if you have limited funds you might need to look for alternatives. Here we talk about some of those alternatives with the benefits and downfalls.   Adobe Photoshop There isn't a day that goes by that I don't have Photoshop open to work on some aspect of what we do here at IMVU. Whether I am building a 3D product textures, or just creating Ad images to sell that product, I use Photoshop to do the lion's share of the work for me. With its origins as photo manipulation software, Photoshop has grown into a standard tool for all digital artists, with many of them forgoing traditional mediums, like paint to create their work entirely in the computer. With each new update Photoshop gets bigger and more complex and at least monthly I uncover some new trick that would have saved me loads of time if I had only learned it earlier. Still, as an artist I can't imagine getting my work done without it. Photoshop's many advantages' are topped by the availability of Filters and Layers. Filters allow you to change the quality of all or a portion of an image. You can add texture to it, create shadows, glow, blur, or even liquefy a surface. Layers allow you to build your images one part at a time, each stacking on top of the other. This allows you infinite ways of manipulating even small portions of your image without altering the rest inadvertently. If you are serious about working on art in the computer then you will eventually own your own copy of Photoshop. Until then there are other options out there to try. http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshop/   Photoshop Elements Photoshop Elements used to be a cheaper alternative to the Professional version of Photoshop, so it consisted of many of the tools you would most often use when creating images for IMVU. Recently Adobe has drastically redesigned Photoshop Elements to focus more specifically on the amateur photo manipulation market and the two products are now unrecognizable as having come from the same origins. Many of the same tools are there, but using the new version of Elements may involve having to completely re-learn how to use Photoshop. We have not tried this version ourselves, but knowing Adobe, Elements will be powerful enough to get you started, and for under a $100. it beats the price tag of its older sibling. http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/   GIMP In the wild west world of Open Source applications, GIMP is the recognized free competitor to Adobe's Photoshop. With many of the same features, GIMP is a solid alternative to Photoshop, and who knows, you might actually like GIMP better? GIMP includes Layers, as does Photoshop, as well as a limited number of Filter options. http://www.gimp.org/   Although there are many more options out there, these three could easily get the job done. Like anything, the more you work with an application the better you are able to understand its possibilities. We recommend you dive right in, and be sure to search the Web for the many tutorials that are available out there to help you along.  

3D Applications Discussion At its core, IMVU is a 3D environment filled with 3D people and places. To create the 3D products that fill IMVU's Catalog, Developers have used a variety of applications and tools to take their designs from purely conceptual to purchasable. Best of all, these virtual products never run out of stock. In addition, with the ability to Derive from products, your seed of an idea might just inspire other Developers to build countless new products from yours, all of which you get a small cut from each sale. Currently IMVU only supports 3D Studio Max 7 as the “official” 3D application for building products. We are the first to acknowledge that this is nuts, and we are working to remedy that now. Still, this hasn't stopped industrious Developers from creating alternatives to building 3D content for IMVU. As IMVU grows so will the tools it supports, but for now these are the options available: 3D Studio Max Probably one of the most expensive options available, 3D Max is still an industry leader and the tool we use internally to build all of our products. Although there is a steep learning curve to mastering 3D Max, all the skills learned are applicable to the real world of 3D asset creation, for both the game and movie industries. Although we officially support 3D Max 7, many of our Developers have had luck with both Max 8 and 9 in Exporting most of their assets. Autodesk 3D Max here: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=5659302&siteID=123112 Blender Another popular option is Blender. As an Open Source application Blender is free to use and has an ever growing community of dedicated users and contributors. Neo5842 has created a wonderful introduction to Blender with tutorials on how to use it for IMVU specific projects, and offers Blender specific Exporters for helping you get your designs into the Previewer. Get Blender here: http://www.blender.org/ Neo5842's Blender Exporter & Tutorials here: http://neo5842.starlithost.info/home%20page.html Google SketchUp As part of an earlier Beta test, we offer a SketchUp to IMVU Exporter that will allow you to create simple 3D Furniture products for the IMVU Catalog. This option is not free of bugs, but it has allowed Developers new to creating 3D products a chance to get their feet wet, while learning on a free and easy to grasp tool. Google SketchUp (free): http://sketchup.google.com/thankyou_win.html SketchUp to IMVU Exporter Tutorial & Files: http://www.imvu.com/catalog/web_images/how_to/sketchup_index.htm

Animating Nodes   Creating an animated Furniture or Room product is actually pretty straightforward. When you wish some element of your product to animate you are really animating a Node and weighting a Mesh to that animating Node. In this video example, you will see four elements: A Root Node, an Animation Node, a Mesh for the base of the candle mobile, and the animating central core or propeller of the candle mobile. The Root is no different than a typical Furniture Node, or Room Skeleton Node and it remains static. The non-moving candle base is Weighted to the Root Node, while the animating central core is weighted to the Animation Node. The Animation Node is Linked to the Root Node, so you should end up with a hierarchy for your model that looks something like this: After you have exported your Skeleton (.xsf), Meshes (.xmf), and Materials (.xrf), you can now safely export your Animation file. To do so, make sure to select the Root Node and export as an animation file (.xaf). You only need to export those nodes that actually animate. When exporting make sure that only those nodes that are animating are checked, all others should remain unchecked. More information on how to export animations in the Export Animations tutorial. NOTE: In regards to skeletal animation, the longer your animation, the larger your exported animation file will be and therefore the overall size of your Furniture will be higher. The same holds true for morph animation with the additional concern of the more morph targets you have in your exported file, the larger your file will be. Although you should not feel too contrained, it is always good to keep an eye on the final size of your model file, as a large file will effect the experience for those members that use your product. Further Note Although the example used in this tutorial shows the animating node aligned with the Root node, neither the avatar master root nor the seat node *need* to be aligned with the Root node of your Room or Furniture product. They *can* be but do not *need* to be. You can have hundreds of seats spread throughout your Room or Furniture product.

Animation Introduction Let's face it, nothing adds life to a product better than if it moves or triggers movement in the avatars that interact with it. Adding Animation to a product can consist of a simple texture animation, all the way up to full Avatar dance moves and cooperative interactions. Animation is one of the more complex aspects of IMVU product creation, but the rewards are worth the effort of learning the various techniques. Below are some examples of the various types of Animations possible in IMVU, and in subsequent Tutorials there will be steps for how to implement the creation, exporting, and submitting of products that include movement.   Texture Animations Probably the simplest form of animation in an IMVU product is through the moving of a texture along a 3D surface, or the cycling of a texture on a fixed point on your Mesh. Don't underestimate just how dynamic a product can become with just the simple addition of a few animating textures. Scrolling your texture will allow you to create the illusion of moving water, like a waterfall, or a road racing underneath the wheels of your car. Cycling animations can give you the flicker of a candle flame or the blink of flashing lights.   Mesh Animations Mesh Animation is when the 3D model actually moves through virtual space. This can be as simple as a magically floating pillow, or as complex as a giant walking robot that your Avatar rides on. Animating a 3D Mesh actually means you will be Weighting your Mesh to Nodes that you will be animating. A product can have as many animating parts as you like, although it is important to remember that the more complex your animation the longer it will take for that product to load from your Inventory. In the following Tutorials you will learn how to create an Animation Node, Weight a Mesh to that Node, and Export it to the IMVU Previewer.   Morph Animations A Morph Animation actually distorts the surface of your Mesh, like the squash-and-stretch in classic cartoons. A Morph Animation is the most complex of animation types, but creates the most dramatic effects. Morphs are usually applied to things like the Avatar's head and body, but can be used to created complex movement in both Furniture, Room, and Pet products as well. In the Tutorials to come you will learn about Morph Targets, how to Weight a Physique, and the steps necessary to import and finesse your animations in the IMVU Previewer.   Avatar Actions Probably the most popular products in the IMVU Catalog are in the Avatar Actions category. These include Avatar dance and fight moves, romantic embraces, and other cooperative interactions between avatars. Avatar Actions can exist as stand alone products or be triggered by a keyword or Seat Node built into Furniture or Room products. Avatar Actions are created through the manipulation of a pose-able Avatar Mesh, then exported as an Animation file to the IMVU Previewer. The following Tutorials will have information to help you understand how to make your own Avatar Actions and sell them in the IMVU Catalog.  

Working with the Camera   When you are creating a Room for IMVU, you will need to include a 3D Camera before exporting. The Camera will determine the starting point view of your Room and its relationship to the avatars within it. It is important to include your first avatar seats within the view of the Camera to help create your “establishing shot" when avatars first enter the Room. Camera Naming Convention Each exported Room must have one camera. The default camera should be named camera.01.01.root. Every time you load a Room in IMVU from scratch you will start in this camera position so it is pretty important that you frame things correctly. IMVU has multiple camera paradigms. From the default camera, it is possible to zoom in and out and rotate around the camera's target by just dragging your mouse in the IMVU window. You can also pan left/right and up/down by right clicking on the window and moving your mouse, AND use the arrow keys to move around your Room. When you switch to another seat within the Room, the camera then tracks your avatar and will zoom into and swivel around to face your avatar's head. Camera Field of View What follows is from the IMVU Developer forums: “The field of view for the IMVU camera is currently set to 45 degrees. However, IMVU is currently faced with two options insofar as the basic camera is concerned: 45degrees horizontally or 45 degrees vertically. We have opted for vertically. This means that when you start building your own Rooms from scratch the camera focal length in your 3D program ought to be set to 45 degrees. (In MAX, you have three FOV options: horizontal, vertical and diagonal. For a one to one correlation between what you see in MAX and what you see in IMVU, choose the Vertical button. This is located right next to the FOV editor).” Camera Parenting The camera needs to be Linked/Parented to the skeleton.Room Node. Camera Targets When creating the camera in your 3D Room, you will notice the target of the camera is automatically generated with the proper name. The target (which is also automatically named) can be moved separate from the camera itself. Seeing What the Camera Sees To see what the Camera sees within 3D Max, you can switch one of your Viewport windows to disply camera.01.01.root. From here you can adjust the view with your Arrow Keys, or grab the camera with the Gizmo and move it via one of the other views. Auto Head Zoom The position of your camera's target node matters, as there are some behind the Rooms wizardry at work. Since IMVU has so many avatars of varying heights, we ran into the problem of the target node's position being the place you zoom into. We kept zooming into the chest of one avatar, the chin of another and the forehead of the third. SO, we built in auto head zooming. Imagine that the seat node in a room has a centrally placed, meter wide cylinder around it that goes up and down to infinity. By placing the target of your camera within this invisible cylinder of influence, you are effectively telling the IMVU code to zoom not to the target position but to the head node of the avatar that is sitting in the seat. Pretty neat.   CloseUp nodes CloseUp nodes act much like the Auto Head Zoom feature detailed above. In this case, however, you are prescribing exactly where you want a camera to zoom rather than having it dictated by proximity to the seat node. By tacking on the suffix .CloseUp to a new Dummy node that has been named after a camera (camera.01.01.root.CloseUp, for example), you are effectively overriding the target node of the camera as the zoom destination. When the camera is at the position identified in MAX, it is still looking at the target node. However, when you begin to zoom in, the .CloseUp node takes more and more control until, at full zoom, you have arrived at the .CloseUp node's location. For an example of this functionality, take a look at the Snowy Mountain backdrop room (product510.cfl). NOTE: There is no need to make a .CloseUp node for most 3D Rooms. It really is an error case solution. Animating the Camera The camera in IMVU Rooms can animate! Like any other Node in the Room, the IMVU camera can be animated using translation and rotation. Like any other camera, these animating cameras will be included in your skeleton file when you export. For examples of animating cameras, take a look at the Ferris Wheel Room or the Alpine Skating Rink Room.  

Catalog Snapshots Creating a decent catalog snapshot of your products is an art unto itself. Considering the size of the IMVU catalog, and the visual clutter created by so many developers competing for the attention of members, there are some things to think about when you are creating your own catalog image. All catalog screenshots must be exactly 80 pixels by 100 pixels in size. This is not a ton of real estate to work with, but it does give shoppers a chance to preview your creation before clicking to find out more. You can take a screenshot of your product in an environment, or just on a neutral background. What is most important is that your product read clearly, even in this postage stamp sized format. You will have a lot more room to show off your glorious product on the product description page, but for now you want to catch the eye of shoppers scanning the catalog. You also want to make sure they can clearly see what it is they are looking at. Here are some examples of catalog images that do a great job of showing off their products even within the small format. Another thing you may want to include in your product screenshot is your own logo or a visual element that ties all of your products together. Here are some nice examples of developers that use repeating elements to suggest that this is one of a much larger product line. There is also a lot of potential for your catalog snapshot to tie into the graphics you use to visually describe your product within the product description page itself. Be sure to visit the Create Your Own Ads tutorial for more tips for making your products look the best they can!

Catcher & Pitcher Nodes   Anytime you create an avatar “seat”, we recommend that you also include Catcher & Pitcher Nodes as well. The Catcher & Pitcher Nodes indicate the locations two avatars stand when performing a cooperative animation, like a hug or handshake. The distance between the two nodes is extremely important and should never change, or else you risk these animations not working, or feeling “broken”. The best way to insure that you do not accidentally change this distance between C&P Nodes, is to Merge the nodes, along with the Seat Node and placeholder avatar model, into your model from a preexisting IMVU provided Max file. You can easily merge these nodes from the Example 3D Room file here: Example3Droom.zip