Welcome
to the world of IMVU Content Creating, and what is a very overwhelming
place to be a beginner in.
This guide is to
help you get a basic understanding of what Content Creating
is and set you onto your path to becoming an IMVU Content Creator.
I’ve found that the IMVU provided tutorials while strong
in the How-To department not no so great in the Who, What and
When departments. It’s my goal in this guide to give you
a greater understating of the broader base concepts of Content
Creating so you have a better understanding of what it’s
all about as you begin you creative journey.
As with all things
this guide is based on my personal experiences and opinions
on Content Creation. You don’t have to agree with me or
my philosophies on all things, the intent here is to share with
you what I have personally seen and experienced over my years
on IMVU and to provide you with the answers the questions that
get asked regularly in a guide form.
What
is a Content Creator?
A Content Creator
is an IMVU user who summits the products we all use in the client.
The only Content Creator that is not a user is IMVU.inc, everything
else you see by others in the catalog was made or modified by
a user like yourself.
There are several
different levels of focus Content Creators have on IMVU. IMVU
has everything from the casual user who just wants to make a
simple tee shirt they can wear, hobbyist designers who create
their items for recreational fun, professional level designers
who’s skills can earn them an income here, all the way
up to professional companies who outsource or have staff members
who create their content for them. So, no matter how big or
small you aspirations, skills and resources are you are in good
company.
That said don’t
be overwhelmed when you are just starting out and can’t
seem to make stuff as good as what you seen others do. You may
truly be looking at products that have been made by artisans
or industry professionals that are trained and have been at
this for years. So take your time, go at your own pace and only
judge yourself against your own efforts. The best you can do
today will always be leaps and bounds from where you were yesterday,
and no matter how good you are you will always have room to
learn and grow tomorrow.
What are the types of Content Creators?
There are several
schools of content creators on IMVU, highlighted here are the
major ones. Some users chose to specialize in one area others
like to work in several areas. Each area requires unique skills
that take time to learn and a loooooooong time to master.
Sticker
makers: These are the folks that create the images
we use to decorate our homepages with. If you interested in
graphic design, pixel art, avatar art or photography this is
a great place to specialize in. A sticker maker creates an image
in an image making program, uploads it to the IMVU servers as
a sticker and it can then be used on our homepages.
Texture
Artists: These are the folks that make the amazing
skins, hair colors and outfits we wear. The majority of Content
Creators on IMVU are Texture Artists. A Texture Artist takes
an existing base product and creates new graphical work for
it to make it into their own vision of it. If you have aspirations
of being the next great fashion label or interior designer on
IMVU a Texture Artist is what you want to be. Some Meshers are
also Texture Artists combining both skills to make unique content.
Avatar
Animators: These are the folks that create the fun
poses and animations that our avatars can do. This is a specialty
skill and mastery of it is indeed an art. Pose and Animation
making requires specialty programs to create them. Some Meshers
are also Animators as furniture and accessory meshes with custom
avatar animations are fun stuff indeed! If you have a strong
knowledge of anatomy and movement and have a good feel for working
in 3D space avatar animation may be an area you’ll love
to work in and have an aptitude for.
Meshers:
These are the folks who create new content for IMVU.
They make the base product shapes all other products are build
on. Every room, piece of furniture, clothing item, hairdo, accessory
item and critter starts with a 3D mesh. Mesh making is a skill
that takes specialty (and sometimes very expensive) software,
months to get the basics of and years to master. If you want
to create true new content for IMVU, and don’t mind puling
all your hair out and repeatedly tossing your monitor out the
window through the months it takes to learn, a mesh maker is
what you want to be.
Personal
Shoppers: There is also a lesser known yet just as
valid type of content creator and that is the Personal Shopper.
These are folks who pull rooms and outfits that are made by
others together into new and creative sets that can be then
bought as a collection via bundle creation and outfit bundle
creation. While this person does not necessarily have to create
any of the content they are reselling they serve as a marking
agent for those who do create the content and thus get paid
for that service. If you own a product and it is available for
bundled sales you can resell it in a bundled set and earn a
commission. If you like to put outfits together, are a Daily
Outfit Contest regular, or love to decorate rooms, becoming
a Personal Shopper may be something you’ll want to look
into.
What
do I need to be a Content Creator?
Creative
Talent! You don’t have to be a true artist to
be a content maker but having some artistic and creative juices
flowing in you veins is a must! Those who come to the plate
with an already trained artistic eye, established sense of aesthetics,
and an innate knowledge of 3D design and space are at a huge
advantage to those without those skills. While many of these
artistic skills can be leaned over time for some these are inborn
gifts that make them more naturals at what others will have
to work very VERY hard for and yet may never achieve mastery
of.
Motivation
and Drive a LOT of Patience. You need to be ready and
willing do the work it’s going to take to learn, do a
bit if trial and error and make many spectacular failures along
the way. Content Creation is not an intuitive thing, you will
have to do a lot of reading and experimenting on your own in
order to get a real feel for it. The quality of what you will
ultimately be able to make will be a direct reflection your
raw talent as well as the amount of time you put into your education.
Talent without skill with your tools is useless.
Credits.
Submitting products to IMVU costs money. This is to offset the
‘cost’ of your product’s burden on the system.
Every product on IMVU takes up server space to store and bandwidth
to download each time it is used or seen by another. Stickers
have the lowest cost to submit, all other products start at
a base cost of 775cr to upload and can easily go up into the
thousands depending on what you are submitting. So before you
get serious about developing as a hobby make sure you are willing
to spend a little money to support it. While some developers
are eventually able to get to the point they can turn a profit
on their products and make their developing hobby self supporting,
this is not the norm so you must be ready and willing to subsidize
your own creative hobby. Its not all that crazy expensive though,
for the cost of a night the movies you can upload a lot of stuff
and get a lot more than just one evenings entrainment from it!
The IMVU
Previewer The Previewer is the downloadable tool provided
by IMVU for Content Creators to submit products in the CFL format
the IMVU client uses. (Stickers do not require the Previewer
to upload them.)
The Previewer is
merely a CFL file editing and viewing tool it does not actually
create anything, rather you use it to assemble together what
you have created in other programs with an already existing
IMVU product to create something new.
The Previewer will
NOT make a texture, make a mesh, edit a mesh, or make coffee.
Additional program(s) are needed for all product making in IMVU
in addition to having the Previewer.
Software.
All Content Creators need to have some sort of image making/editing
software and this is not provided by IMVU. There are free programs
available as well as professional grade programs. (complete
with professional grade price tags)
Gimp (a free open
source program), Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop Elements, Photoshop
are all programs that will work for the image making needs of
Content Creation (MS Paint which comes free on most PCs is not
recommended due to its tool limitations.).
Each image making
program has its own fan base so what is ‘best’ is
entirely subjective. I personally use and can highly recommend
PhotoshopCS. What program you can a) afford b) find the most
intuitive c) has ample available educational resources such
as books, online tutorials, and friends who also use it should
be the best choice for you. All these programs will let you
try them on a limited license so don’t be afraid to try
them out and see which one fits you the best.
Animators
and Mesh Makers will also need additional 3D Software.
The 3D software that
can be used with the Previewer is limited to what has compatible
Cal 3D exporters and that unfortunately leaves out many of the
most popular 3D meshing programs so sadly the greats such as
Maya, Brice, CAD, and *cries* Zbrush are all not compatible.
While you can always still create in them and then import your
work to a compatible program, you will still need to have one
of the few compatible programs and know how to use it to make
your creation functional for IMVU.
3D Studio
Max 7 ($$$$) 3D Studio 7 is the only fully supported
and documented 3D program by IMVU. 3D Studio 7, 8 (and 9 with
a user made exporter) are currently the only programs that can
make all 3D content on IMVU. (rooms, furniture, animations,
avatars, heads, clothing, hair, accessories, pets, and pretty
much anything else you can imagine can be made in 3d Studio
7, 8 and 9) More recent versions of 3D Studio do not currently
have the compatible Cal3d exporters available that IMVU needs
so if you have a newer version you will have to downgrade.
Google Sketchup
($) has limited IMVU support but is well user supported. Though
it has limited product making use on IMVU several users have
made some amazing room and furniture meshes with it. Head to
the Sketchup
Group on IMVU for support for specialized help with this
program.
Blender
(Free) Blender is a community supported open source program
and as such you will get out of it what you put into it. It
has the potential to make everything on IMVU, and several users
are working at figuring out the workarounds to get there but
its not quite there in an easy to digest resource yet. There
is a Blender
community group on IMVU that is working on pulling together
the knowledge to make Blender reality for anyone with meshing
goals and not the means to purchase Max. If you already know
Blender you’ll be leaps ahead than most so please join
in and help make Blender a tool for the masses.
Deliverance’s
Pose Maker (Free) Deliverance has made an ingenious
tool for those interested in making poses and simple avatar
animations. He has created a free tool that uses Flash to create
the pose files needed for IMVU. It’s a must try for anyone
waiting to make poses and can’t afford 3D Studio.
What
are the rules I need to be aware of as a Content Creator?
IMVU’s TOS
and VGP
IMVU is a privately run company and as such they get to deiced
what content is allowed and what content isn’t. Once you
sign on as a Content Creator you agree to abide by these rules.
You can suffer severe credit fines and or account disablement
if you choose not to.
First you should
thoroughly re-read the Terms
of Services and the Virtual
Goods Content Policy, these policies define what is allowed
on the site in general, what products are for all users, what
is restricted to Access Pass holders, and what is not allowed
anywhere on the site. If your product is found to be miss rated
or ‘Unfit for IMVU’ you will be held responsible
for the refunds of that product when it is taken from the users
who own it.
IMVU’s Product
Ratings Here is a very general overview of what they are and
what they mean. Please refer to the actual VGP for the complete
listing of dos and don’ts.
GA, General
Audience: Content appropriate for all users 13 and
up to see and use the products.
AP, APO,
Accesses Pass Only: Content appropriate only for
adults and only viewable and usable to those who have purchased
the Access Pass. (nudity, sensual clothing and activities,
tobacco and alcohol use, profanity, blood and gore.)
UFI, Unfit
for IMVU: Content that IMVU feels has no place on
IMVU (sexual activates, illegal drug use, hate speech, graphic
violence.)
Every product needs
to abide by these ratings as well as all the marketing on its
product page. If your product is GA but your product page infers
AP activities your product will be retreated to AP. If your
product is AP and its page infers UFI activities the product
will be pulled from the catalog. Repeat or extreme cases will
incur account disablement.
IMVU has intentionally
left some areas grey and open to interpretation, if you think
your product is in one of these gray areas you may strongly
want to re-think about submitting it at the lesser rating or
if its borderline UFI not submitting it at all.
Minimum Coverage
Guidelines (found within the VGP)
Know the Minimum Coverage Guidelines and live by them. The Minimum
coverage guide tells you what areas can not be shown if the
garment is going to be rated General Audience. As well as having
these areas covered the garment has to show a realistic means
of staying in place (ie the no pasties rule) so even if all
the red is covered if adhesives would be required to hold your
outfit on or a slight breeze would blow it off then it is really
an AP outfit. Use common sense, if it looks borderline and its
something a minor really wouldn’t need to see its best
to just make it AP.
Be mindful of the
minimum coverage guide when making your marketing shots, just
because an outfit is rated GA doesn’t necessarily mean
it is. So before you start taking pictures of your great new
hairdo or skin you may want to double check that the outfit
the avatar is wearing is truly GA. Many items are re-rated because
of AP marketing such too tiny bikinis, pasties or black ‘censor’
bars made give illusion that the avatar is nude behind them.
Red showing, pasties and implied nudity are all AP and therefore
marketing a product that way makes the product AP.
Once you
upload a product IMVU ‘owns’ it. When you
upload content to the IMVU severs and publish it you are granting
them full unlimited use of that item. You still maintain your
creative rights to the item but once that product is in the
inventories of others you do not have the right to later decide
to change that product. Minor repairs are allowed but anything
that changes the, look, color, or feel of a product is not.
The only notable exception here is if the product was advertised
and intended to be a product that will change such as an advertising
poster that updates, a present that becomes something else,
and similar such products.
Copyright and Trademark. While copyright and
trademark theft are rampant on IMVU please do not fall for the
‘well everyone else is doing it’ mentality. You
need to have full commercial rights to any image, song, logo,
sound effect, or other asset that is uploaded to IMVU. You will
be far more respected by your peers as an average dev of original
content then a ‘big’ dev of bootleg content.
Images
and Graphics: All Images found on the web are all
copyright protected. Only those images which specifically
have a statement that they can be used for commercial purposes
can be used on products.
Music:
IMVU now restricts all audio clips to 20 seconds so it’s
best to leave the music to the official Music Store. Owning
a CD or downloaded audio file of a band does not grant one
license to distribute their songs to others. If you love a
band and want to share them with your friends instead use
the Music Store so that the artists properly get compensated
for their work. If your faves are not in the Music Store contact
the band and see if they will get their catalog listed with
Tunecore.
Names and
Logos: Trademarked names and logos such as Nike,
Channel, Converse, DKNY, NASCAR should never be used on a
IMVU product unless those companies themselves are the Content
Creators. Instead think up your own brand name and logo and
make your own IMVU brand!
Basically don’t
use someone else’s work or ride on the name recognition
of an established brand’s name, (or and established
developer’s for that matter). Instead stick to making
content you have full legal rights to sell. The legal owners
of images and trademarks can issue takedown notices and have
your content removed if their property is used without their
permission. It’s best to just not risk it.
I
hope this guide helped you get a better understating of what Content
Creation on IMVU is about.
Please check out my
website for many more of my guides and tutorials on product
making, Previewer tips tricks and other Content Creator issues
such as currency, Peer Review and Tiers to help you better understand
IMVU as you follow you creative dreams.
If you have a suggestion
for tutorial or guide you’d like to see drop me an IM or
leave me a post in my ‘tutorials requests thread’
in my
IMVU group.
Happy Content Creating!
Keef
