Welcome!

Please mind this is a WIP ♥
I re-wrote this guide to make it up-to-date. This still doesn't mean it's the right or only way to do things - please always remember that modding is it's own little world and everyone does things differently.
I mostly wrote it as notes for myself but I saw increasingly people follow this guide and struggle, that's why I decided to re-write it with my newly gained knowledge and practise about modding. I learned a lot in the time between the first guide and this guide.
I hope you enjoy it and get to create awesome mods!
Feel free to ask questions by joining my discord or sending me a message on Discord directly @arianemae or on Instagram. If you find any spelling mistakes or have ideas or suggestions please let me know ♥

• Marvellous Designer
• Blender
• Textools
• Substance Painter
• Tattoos
• Sources
• Info
• Other helpful Stuff

Marvellous Designer

Contents:

Import your Avatar

• Click here to download Bibo+ Medium Perky Chest and Medium Legs

The Avatar is already scaled and ready to go. You can either drag + drop it into the 3D window in Marvellous Designer or open it by clicking file and import and fbx - then choose the Avatar and click open If you don't want to use Bibo+ you can of course import your own avatar - head over to Textools to find out how to.

Export your Mesh

I export my mesh after UV Editing and Remeshing with these settings:

UV Editing

To edit the UV I change the 2D Pattern Window by clicking on 2D Pattern Window above your 2D Workspace and selecting UV Editor.I select the biggest patterns and align them by right clicking > Align (to your preferred position). Then I right click the pattern again > Fit All UV to 0-1 and resize if needed to fit the other pieces into the space. I do that with the "main" patterns, the "biggest" that are the most important for the textures at the end - the bigger the pattern is in the UV editor the better the texture will look at the end. Everything else like Hardware, Trims, Small Patterns can be stuffed into the square however they fit. Try to stay within 0-1 everything out of that square will be lost.

Remeshing

To Remesh the mesh I select all pattern pieces with Shift + A scroll down in the Property Editor and check the Remesh box at the very bottom (you might have to expand Miscellaneous. When Miscellaneous is expanded change the Mesh Style to Triangle and simulate by pressing Space

Helpful Hotkeys - Tips and Tricks

Recommended Videos

A list of videos that helped me a lot with my first creations and questions about Marvellous Designer in general.

Blender

Contents:

Import

I start by deleting the scene collection that is already there by default. Select it, right click and click delete hierarchy.
Then I start importing a vanilla item that looks as similar as possible to my mod, my own mod and the body I want to apply it to. Don't move ANYTHING leave it how it was imported!

Weighting your mod

Weighting your mod can be frustrating please be patient. There are multiple ways to weight a mod. I usually do it without topology which is most likely a huge disadvantage but it works.To weight my mod I select every part of the vanilla item that I imported as explained here and join them together by using Ctrl + J. Then I select my mod with Ctrl from the content list on the right and change the 3D view to Weight Paint. I want to transfer weights from the vanilla item to my mod - I do that by clicking on Weights then I click on Transfer Weights. To get it right I have to change 2 settings in the little window that popped up on the bottom left side. I change Vertex Mapping to Nearest Face Interpolated and Source Layers Selection to By Name. I change nothing else than that.
After the weights are transferred I change back to the 3D view and delete the vanilla item (nothing else!!) with DEL. Once the vanilla item is deleted I change the name of my mod by adding Part 1.0 to it.
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If I checked my mod in game and it's messed up and I have to fix my weights I export the mod from Textools before working on it again - Textools is doing a lot of changes to it by grouping and renaming everything.

Armature

To add an Armature I select my mod and open the Modifier Properties click on Add Modifier and then Armature and rename the armature to the n_root that imported with the vanilla item (most of the time n_root.001) not the one that comes with the imported body. Don't apply it, just leave it there.

UV Editing in Blender

To edit the UV I select my mod by clicking on it in the 3D view or the content list on the right side. Once selected I change the 3D viewer to UV Editing. If you fixed your UV in Marvellous Designer before exporting your UV should be fine and in the square. Is it for some reason outside of the square, I click Select Box or use Shift + Space + B and select the UV - then I change to Move or use Shift + Space + G and move the UV into the square with the little arrows.

Export from Blender

After weighting, adding Armature and checking my UV I'm ready to export my mod by clicking File, Export and FBX. I name my file and scroll down on the right side to remove the check from Add Leaf Bones in the Armature menu.

Recommended Videos

Textools

Contents:

Exporting Custom Bodies

To export a body from Textools I search for Smallclothes in the Item List on the left side. I sort the item list by category. I start with Smallclothes Body by clicking on it and changing from Textures to Model and I change Midlander Male to Midlander Female. Then I add the model to FMV and let it load for a moment. I repeat this with Smallclothes Hands, Smallclothes Legs and Smallclothes Feet. Once everything is in the FMV (Full model viewer) I click on Export and name it.

Importing .FBX from Blender

Let's say I want to import a T-Shirt mod that I made -
when I did everything mentioned in the Blender section of this guide - I import my mod into Textools. I do that by searching for Smallclothes in the item list then I change from Textures to Model and change it to the gender I need - in my case that's Midlander Female. I click on Import - ... - choose my .fbx I exported from Blender - Open Editor. Now Textools will calculate everything and most likely give out some warnings about weights being adjusted or having major corrections made to them - that's good. Let it do it's thing until it opens the Model Editor. Here I have to make sure the material is applied correctly to each part. Group 0 is the body itself - for Bibo+ Smallclothes Body the material should be /mt_c0201e0001_bibo.mtrl. Group 1 is the mod in my case so I will select Custom and put /mt_c0201e0000_top_a.mtrl below it. All done - hit Import

Import Textures

To import textures for a mod I choose the item I imported my mod in and change from Model to Textures if needed. Most of the time I will be greeted with some fancy looking purple-ish picture - that's the normal material - it's responsible for height differences and colors. I replace this by clicking on Import and choosing my texture's normal material. Then I change the Map from Normal to Diffuse and import the my texture's base color/base material. If that's done I change back to Model and click Update Tex. Sometimes the texture will have a color on top of it - to remove that head over to Colorset Editor

Colorset Editor

Removing that golden shimmering color by clicking on Texture - Texture Map - Colorset. If I didn't do any specific editing to the normal material - my mod's colorset row is 16.
In row 16 I change Diffuse Color to #FFFFFFFF in the advanced tab and Specular Power to 1.
I change Specular Color to #FFFFFFFF and Gloss to 20.
I change Emissive Color to #FF000000 and Tile Material to 0.If I want to have dye-able mods I change the Dye Settings. I change Dye Template to 200 and check Apply to Diffuse, Apply to Specular, Apply to Gloss and Apply to Specular Power. Very Important to always hit Save at the top of the colorset editor! To check, I go back to Model and click Update Tex.

Substance Painter

Contents:

Import Mods for texturing (Clothing)

To get my mod some textures I import it by clicking File and New. When the new project window opens I set
Template to ASM-PBR Metallic Roughness (starter_assets)
select my mod's .fbx file
set Document Resolution to 4096 and uncheck Compute Tangent Space Per Fragment
and click OK

Applying Textures

Substance Painter offers great Smart Material for different fabrics - I often use these as a base for my Designs to have a realistic looking fabric texture. To do that I filter my assets to show me Smart Materials. I drag and drop my preferred material onto my mod and let it load. Then I Add White Mask to the material. To remove the Smart Material from the UV pieces it shouldn't be on I click on the White Mask then change to Polygon Fill and click on UV Chunk Fill. I change Color to 0 and then select the UV pieces that need a different material. I do that with each Layer so the different colors and materials don't overlap.

Export Textures for Mods (Clothing)

When I'm all done texturing my mod, it's time to export the textures. To do that I click File and Export Textures. I usually only export the textures for the mod - not the body so I uncheck mt_c0201b0001_bibo and mt_c0201b0001_bibopube.
The Output Template should be PBR Metallic Roughness and the Padding should be Dilation Infinite. Then I export and apply the texture as explained here.

Tattoos With Substance Painter

I made videos for this please check them out below. They're kinda old - I do plan on making new ones.

Sources

Other helpful Stuff

All credit goes to their respective owners I do not own any of these pages nor do I earn anything from them.

• Bibo+ Compendium
• Bodies Compendium
• Gen3 Compendium
• AsymFaces Compendium
• Substance Painter Community Assets
• VMOD 3D Library for Textures
• Sewing Patterns for Marvellous Designer
• Modding Wiki

Info

what is this and why?I initially started by "taking notes-but make it fancy" in my own kinda nerdy way. So i started this carrd as a notepad kinda thing..maybe it helps others-that would be amazing.
Please mind that all this is just like notes and it may be confusing for some-or not well explained-handed down info from other modders or things i accidentally learned while playing around with the tools.
Please don't be mad or frustrated that things aren't working on the first try-modding can be difficult. I'm not a teacher, I'm learning as you do-just sharing my notes. I still hope you have fun creating and this little page can help you in some way.Thank you for checking it out if you have any issues-see footer <3All rights to their respective owners.