Clothing and accessories that deform and fit around any characters and existing clothing items require additional configuration in a 3D modeling software such as Blender or Maya.
To achieve the layering effect, your clothing must meet the following requirements:
- Asset must be weighted and bound to an R15 skeleton (Maya) or armature (Blender).
- Asset must contain an inner mesh cage and an outer mesh cage.
- Asset must continue to follow any applicable custom mesh requirements, such as best practices on watertightness, textures, and polycount budgets.
See Creating Layered Models for a basic guide on applying these requirements on a reference asset in Blender. Once the .fbx file is exported, see Accessory Fitting Tool for instructions on creating an accessory from your model.
If you are part of the UGC program, you can sell your layered accessories on the Avatar Marketplace. See Selling 3D Accessories for an overview of the uploading and selling process.
Reference Files
The following .fbx, .blend, and .ma files project files are available to use as templates or as reference:
| Filename | Description |
|---|---|
| Tshirt-model.fbx | Uncaged example clothing from Creating Layered Clothing ready for caging in a 3D modeling software. |
| Additional-FBX-assets.zip | Caged 3D accessory models ready for import into Studio or in a modeling tool. |
Rigging and Skinning
Rigging and skinning a layered accessory allows the accessory to move naturally with a character body. You can perform this manually through a modeling tool, or use automatic skinning transfer to generate an accessory's skinning data at run time.
If using modeling software to skin your accessories, keep in mind that Joint Influences (Maya) or Bone Assignments (Blender) per vertex should be limited to 4.
For more information basic skinning in third-party modeling software, such as Blender's Automatic Weights, see Skinning a Simple Mesh for instructions on rigging, applying weights, and skinning a basic mesh.
Cage Meshes
Cage meshes, or cages, are invisible meshes that define the inner and outer surfaces of your asset. Similar to collision boxes, these surfaces prevent other accessories or bodies from clipping or breaking and allow other accessory items with cages to layer on top of the previous object.
Inner Cage
The inner cage is the inner surface of your model and defines how the layered asset fits over another layered model. As a best practice, the shape of the inner and outer cage should match each other before editing the outer cage to completely cover your asset.
The inner cage mesh object must have the same name as the accessory model appended with _InnerCage.
Outer Cage
The outer cage defines the external surface that another item's inner cage would layer on top of. Avatar character models must have an outer cage included with its model in order to be compatible with layered clothing. All Avatar models available on the Avatar Marketplace include a properly configured outer cage and are compatible with layered assets.
The outer cage of a layered clothing asset is a mesh that precisely covers the clothing item. The outer cage included in the template files is identical to the inner cage by default and must be the only cage adjusted to fit over an accessory.
The outer cage mesh object must have the same name as the accessory model appended with _OuterCage.
The vertexes and UVs of the inner and outer cage meshes shouldn't be altered, as they are used to match coordinates between other cages. You can complete the UV texturing of the actual accessory mesh layer (not the _InnerCage or _OuterCage objects) at your discretion.