Making wearables for Decentraland
In this article, we will explain the basic process of creating a wearable, rigging it and uploading it into the Decentraland builder
Premise
With the recent changes in Decentraland taking place, now is possible for everyone to make their own wearables!
The mission
This opens new opportunities to create your own styles or promote your ideas. In this article, we will explain the basic process of creating a wearable, rigging it and uploading it into the Decentraland builder.
Resources
- Blender 2.8 or superior
- Decentraland Builder
- Resources for wereables
Main parts of the wearables
A wearable is an item of clothing, accessory or body feature used to customized your avatar inside the world of Decentraland. Although there are some wearables that you can use once you create your account, you can now create your own custom wearables.
Before you proceed to create your own clothes, you need to know several things. First things first, each wearable is organized into different categories such as:
- Upper and Lower Body
- Hands
- Feet
- Hat
- Helmet
- Facial Hair
- Head
- Suit (lower, upper body and feet together)
- Body Shape (The whole avatar)
This wearables can also include accessories, like:
- Mask
- Eye wear
- Earring
- Tiara
- Top-head
- Items (held in the avatar hands)
This categorization divides the wearables into different categories that determine which body part of the avatar will be applied to. Some wearables may have to replace others completely to work. The categories that appear in the builder are as follows:
- Suit: replaces the avatar’s upper body, lower body, and feet.
- Hat: replaces the avatar’s hair. For hats that leave some hair exposed, it must be attached to the hair in the mesh to prevent the avatar from going bald whenever they put on their hat.
- Helmet: overrides the avatar’s entire head, replacing both hair and facial hair.
- Hair: replaces an avatar’s hat.
- Facial_hair: facial hair won’t replace or override any other wearables.
- Head: contains mouth, eyes and eyebrows.
- Upper_body
- Lower_body
- Feet
- Mask: replaces helmet, tiara, eye_wear and it will override facial_hair.
- Eye_wear: replaces helmet and mask.
- Earring: replaces helmet.
- Tiara: replaces mask and helmet.
- Top_head: this is rendered on the top of an avatar’s head. For example, an angel’s halo.
- Item: these are rendered within the avatar’s hand.
And last but not least, we have to talk about the limitations for the 3D models and those are:
- No more that 1k triangles per wearable, except for accesories that have to be 500 triangles.
- Two textures per wearable, with a resolution of 512x512.
Now that we know all of this, we can start creating our own wearables.
Starting to build
Once you have a clear understanding of the division between the parts of the wearables, you can start modeling. In this guide, I'm going to cover the basic wearables, such as feet, lower body and upper body, so you can use it as a reference. However, you can follow the same progress to create all wearables while adhering the limitations I mentioned before.
Before starting, I recommend downloading the basic avatar male and female from the link below. This will provide you with a reference of where to start. Inside, you will also find a Blender file with the armature, which we will use later on to rig the models, as well as some references for other wearables.
Inside the Drive folder and where to find the basic resources
In my case, I'm going to download the FBX model of the male and female avatar to load them into my Maya scene to start modeling, but you can use your prefered 3D software.
Modeling & texturing
In this section on the article, I'm going to discuss three approaches I take to create the wearables.
The first one involves taking one part of the model, duplicating it, and modifying the vertices and faces to create the new model. Make sure it connects correctly with the other parts. In this case, since I'm making the feet, this model can be used both male and female avatars,, so I only need to create this wearable once.
Making the feet from the base feet of the model.
The second approach involves creating the model from scratch using a basic shape and modeling the vertices to form it. In this case, for the skirt, I use the female legs as the base, and the skirt is created from a cylinder. I increase the triangles as I progress in modeling. Additionally, in this case, I create a variant for the male avatar, which is pants, following the first method.
The third approach involves modeling the wearable without initially considering the number of triangles, and once we have the final shape, we perform a new retopology that adheres to the criteria. In my case, I use Zbrush to create the shape of the model and then create the low-poly version in Maya. The model for the upper body is the same, but it changes the body shape. So, I duplicate the model and sightly modify the shape to create the variation.
Before discussing the texture, let’s talk a little bit about the materials. There are two basic materials specified in the image.
The wearable material is useful if you want to use flat colors while painting your model, but you can change that material for a custom one.
In my case, I called it "Mat_clothes", which I assign to every model that is going to have a custom texture. While I use the "AvatarSkin_Mat" for the skin texture. This way, when I load the model, the skin loads the one from Decentraland.
For the textures, since it’s such a small resolution, I recommend making UVs symmetrical so that the UVs can be a lot larger. I don't touch any part of the "AvatarSkin" material UVs because it can break the texture when loading in Decentraland.
For my models, I paint them in Substance Painter, and since I can only put two textures in the model, I only paint on the Base color channel. Don't forget to change it also in the viewport in Substance Painter to see the final result. Also, when you create a new project, remember to set the resolution to 512 px.
Rigging & exporting
Once we have all the models, materials and textures done, it’s time to rig them and export them in GLB. For that purpose, you need to have Blender 2.8 or superior. You can rig the models in other software; however, when exported, the models tend not to work correctly.
First, we have to import our model into the scene from the armature.blend in the Drive folder. If you have modeled it using the original models as a reference, you will not have problems with the placement of the model. Nevertheless, I recommend applying the transformations on the move and scale.
Once the transformations are applied, I rig it by selecting the armature and the model, pressing “P” with automatic weights, checking the weights, and if necessary, correcting them.
Finally, it's time to export it. I select the models just in case, click “File → Export → GLB”. Check apply modifiers, and skinning in the extra options in the exporter.
Then repeat these steps with the rest of the models.
Decentraland Builder
Finally, when we have all the models, it's time to enter the Builder. So, log in to your MetaMask account and then into Decentraland. First, we will need to create a new collection that encompasses all of our wearables.
Go to “Collection > + > New collection”.
From there, you are ready to add your items. Press “add items” and drag or select the models. In the new panel that appears, you can select the basic options for your wearables. You can choose the body shape and select the male or female options and then add the counterpart. Change the name, the rarity, which determines the number of wearables that will be created, and the category that configures which part will replaced.
If you press “edit”, you will enter a menu where you can view the wearable on the avatar and complete the rest of the options.
You can change the name, add a description and modify the category or rarity.
On the three dots, you can add another representation if you didn't do it before, remove from the collection or delete.
If you click the pencil, you can reload the 3D model of the wearable in case you made some changes or corrections.
On the overrides section, you can add more options to replace or hide. For example, on the hat, you have to put hair, helmet. That way, when the player loads the hat, it will replace the models that have that category.
Finally, you can add tags in order to search for your wearables when you mint them.
Once we have all the wearables, we can return to the main menu in the collection. Click on “set a price”, where we can set a price or make it free, put our address and finally submit it to the curation commitee.
Conclusion
Here is a general guide that can help you create your own wearables. In the Decentraland guides, you can find more information about the curation process and the textures of the skin and the standard texture if you need them.
I believe the Builder is a great tool to check these wearables and test them pretty fast. With these models, I think it is time to say: have fun and can't wait to see what you make.
See you!
