I've been thinking of making a video tutorial once I have a better understand of the process, but I'm also at a loss with a few areas.
[For LNK_Shuffle]
First, you have to copy 'devenum.dll' from the latest version of LNK_Shuffle to your DOA directory, it should be located in a folder titled similarly to 'doa++-(version number)'.
Launch LNK_Shuffle and select the DOA exe.
Choose the character your wanting to load the costume for on the left side, and select an empty slot under 'Costumes' and 'Slot list'.
Make sure that 'active' is checked, and right click on 'mdl:', choose 'Import', and 'Pick' under 'TMC'.
It should fill out all of the other parts, unless one or more are already loaded, if so you'll have to exit and locate the conflicting part and select 'Revert', one way of doing that is through the Asset Browser's search function.
Hair and Faces work the same way, but you can also load an existing model through 'Assign Hair', 'Assign Face' or 'Set'.
I'm not too familiar with how the Details section works, but it's pretty similar.
Also, I haven't used the Auto Link program yet, so I can't help with that.
[For editing in Blender]
Before starting in Blender, make sure that you have both the TMC importer as well as the TMCMESH importer/exporter plugins.
There isn't a TMC exporter that I'm aware of as of now, so you can only export segments of the model at a time as TMCMESH, without the actual bones.
Another plugin I recommend for Blender is the
Mesh Transfer plugin, use this to transfer the weights from the source model or models to the one you created.
I haven't worked enough with the TMC Polygone Tool or TMC Bone Tool to explain how they work yet, but you can use LR Studio to export or import TMCMESH from an existing costume.
First, pick a reference costume that is similar to what your wanting to make, different outfits have different weights, so a stiff dress might turn out excessively wavy if the source is bad, or it might not work at all if the source lacks the bones for a dress.
Again, I'm pretty sure this can be fixed with the TMC Bone Tool, but I haven't used it enough to be absolutely certain (if someone else more knowledgeable would like to clarify this process, please do).
Once you've located a source outfit to use, go to it in the LNK_ReShuffle tool, and export all the parts.
Load the TMC file for the source outfit into Blender, and hide or delete all of the parts you have no use for at this time, you can always re-import the TMC later, if it's necessary.
As for textures, materials and UVs, I recommend working in Cycles mode, it's pretty easy to setup, but there are a lot of Blender tutorials that can explain the process better than I could at this time.
Create the part you want, and transfer the weights from a similar part from the source TMC model.
How to:
On the right side of Blender, you should have a section called 'Data Object data', with a little upside down triangle.
Go to Data Object data on the model you just created, and find the MeshTransfer plugin you installed earlier (it should be at the bottom, if it's not there then it didn't install correctly).
Click on 'Source object', and select the source mesh you wish to transfer the weights from.
You might want to adjust 'Average units' to 1, 2 or 3, depending on how far away your model is to the source object.
Click 'Create vertex mapping', give it a second, and then click 'Transfer weights', give it time, it could crash if you interrupt the process.
Note: weights can be a bit complicated, you may have to manually edit some weights or delete unnecessary ones, some might even get in the way by pulling the mesh's vertices in the wrong direction.
Once the weights and UV's are applied to the new section of mesh, you can export it.
Tip: Before you export the TMCMESH, make sure to do something on Blender, like hiding a random mesh, anything will do, as long as you can undo the process, the reason is because when you go to export the mesh your working on as a TMCMESH, the exporter will convert it to Triangles, which can complicate any farther edits you may have planed, while hitting undo will convert them back to Quads.
For importing the TMCMESH, I'm more familiar with LR Studio, but the other tools have features you may need.
Start LR Studio, and drag your source TMC into the program, click on the part your planing to replace, a little window called 'Data viewer' should popup, right click on the mesh your wanting to replace, and choose 'Swap for tmcmesh'.
Locate the TMCMESH and save the TMC file, note that it will automatically add ' - out' to the end of your source TMC file.
You can also delete an unwanted mesh by right clicking on it, and selecting 'Delete and save'.
Note: Sometimes you will get a 'data swap error' when importing a TMCMESH into LR Studio, I'm not sure why this happens, but the only way I know of to get around it is to select a different mesh to replace, or to add a new mesh as a 'Sub object' using the TMC Object Tool, another method is to find a different TMC costume to use as your source that doesn't produce the same error. I'm still not sure how to work around it for things like Glasses or alternate parts, like Mai's Fans or Nyotengu's Wings.
For replacing the textures, I suggest using the Texture Tool instead of LR Studio's texture importer.
Also note that some textures might be shared by different meshes, so you might want to import them as a separate texture and reassign the default textures in the TMC Object Tool, it's pretty easy to figure out once your in the editor.
Sorry if that was a bit confusing, I'm still new to the process myself, so I'm sure someone else could give a better explication. ^_^;
