Fireworks 4

I see everyone seems to be using PS or PSP for texture and clothing design. Is anyone using Fireworks 4? I've got that but I can't see any way to save to Targa format. Any suggestions or help would be welcome.

I LOOOOOOOOOVE Fireworks!

And tho' I can't yet figger a good way to make clothing wrinkles with out toooo many effects, I still think it's way better than Photoshop. Right now I end up doing the wrinkle as a shape in grey, putting an emboss on it and feathering the edges and making it one of the transparent modes...

No TGA tho' so I had to make a droplet to make Photoshop covert it to TGA. Sucky huh?

Well, all my clothes are completely 'hand' drawn in FW so if you wand to see what can be done visit my store! ^_^

I'd love to share FW works hints with folks also!

I will definitly check out your store. I'm only 2 days old here, so I'm still overwhelmed with what's possible I've never thought of designing clothing, but I've done enough web effects that I figured it's the best place for me to start...of course that being said, my first thought at looking at things is where to I begin! LOL.

I won't set my heart of FW then unless I can find a way to convert. I think I've got an old PSP around somewhere, so maybe I could use that to import png and export tga...either that or just upgrade my PSP.

I think I'll try to make at least one thing first. LOL

Den, first of all welcome to SL

Okay, now for your question. Fireworks cannot do TGA. It is a web graphics program, more equivilent to Image Ready than to Photoshop. It is not intended for texturing for 3D. I'd highly recommend Photoshop if you can afford it. Otherwise the PSP you have will work, and GIMP is free.

That having been said, you can use Fireworks to create limited clothing if you really want. SL is capable of importing jpegs as you probably know. You could certainly make some clothing using jpeg. You'll run into two main obstacles, which will keep you from reaching full potential, but you can do a little. The first obstacle is quality. Jpeg is lossy to begin with & the conversion into SL's native jpeg2000 format will be even lossier due to having to compress the file twice instead of once. The second obstacle is transparency. As you probably know, jpeg does not support transparency, so any clothing you make in Fireworks will not be able to have any lace, straps, fancy cuts, hose, etc.

Again, I'd recommend Photoshop over anything else, but PSP and GIMP are fine too. Unfortuately, less feature rich tools like Fireworks, Image Ready, Photoshop Elements, etc. just aren't up for this sort of thing.

>_< GRRRRR - Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Fireworks, when properly used, is a combinations of the best parts of Photoshop, Illustrator and Image Ready, with a layered effects system that keeps each element live.

It is *more* than suitable for 3D texturing, and pretty much is the best thing around for web design. FW only gets boggy with really large images, and since SL textures are really tiny it's perfect!

The *ONLY* reason that's sucky for SL is that FW doesn't export TGA. I'm sure there's free ways to convert from PNG to TGA, but it sure would be better if SL imported PNG. *I* didn't need to find another tool because I just booted up Photoshop.

The only tool I'd rather use than FW for making my SL textures is a 3D paint program that would let me paint the texture while on the mesh... hopefully someday SL itself will let me!

Careful who you growl at. It just so happens that I might know what I'm talking about here. TGA IS THE STANDARD IMAGE FORMAT FOR 3D. I never use any other format in my work, and I don't know a single other 3D artist who does either. LL didn't pick TGA for SL by accident. They went with the standard.

While it's nice that Fireworks can do vectors as well as rasters (something Phtoshop would sooo benefit from), the fact that it cannot do TGA is pretty strong indicator of what it is and is not meant for. It is a web graphics program, plain & simple. Yes it can do some of the things Photoshop can do, and yes it can also do some of the things Illustrator can do, but it doesn't do any one thing as well as Photoshop or Illustrator does. I think of it kind of like the Swiss Army Knife of 2D graphics. It's got a lot of tools in a small package, which makes it convenient, but none of those tools are as good as the real thing.

If you happen to like Fireworks, good for you. You're entitled to your opinion. It's obvious you feel strongly about it. I agree with you completely that if you're a web designer, then Fireworks is great to have. Just don't make the mistake of assuming it's as good for things that it's not meant for as programs that are.

If you don't believe me, take a look at job listings for 3D artists. You'll never ever see one that asks for Fireworks experience, but almost every single one of them will REQUIRE Photoshop experience with Illustrator as a plus if not a requirement. Web design job lisitngs on the other hand will quite often ask for Fireworks experience. There's a reason for that.

Oh, and by the way, since you brought it up, I'm not a big fan of most 3D paint programs either. They're a great time saver for getting things started, but I have yet to see one that doesn't force me to go back to Photoshop in order to finish. Not everyone agrees on that assessment, but that's what my experience has been anyway.

Chosen, have you ever tried MAXON's BodyPaint? I've been playing with the demo, and it looks pretty impressive.

Not meaning to hijack this thread (I've never tried Fireworks) but I'm curious.

Robin, you're right; Body Paint does look quite impressive, and it's half the price of Deep Paint. I just downloaded the demo now. I'll post my thoughts on it in a seperate thread when I get around to it. Maybe we can compare notes & figure out if it's really worthwhile.

Great! I did a little work for MAXON and they are paying me with a copy; so I'll have the full version soon. I'd love to compare notes on it.

Denrael I use Fireworks and Freehand (Freehand exports tga files). If you have Macromedia Studio MX then Freehand is already included in the package.

I can do things a lot quicker in Fireworks than I can in Photoshop or Illustrator. However, I do use both PhotoShop CS and Illustrator CS from time to time.

If you don't have the MX Studio or Freehand suggest you pick up a copy of Adobe Illustrator CS.

/me bites Chosen!

Tastes bad... >_<!

Sure, no hard feelings. Sorry if I gave the impression I was belittling Fireworks. I didn't mean to, but as you said, I do see how my words could have been interpreted that way.

I agree with you that people obviously are most comfortable using whatever they're already used to, and if someone's used to Fireworks, of course they'll naturally gravitate towards that. I'd still recommend using Photoshop though for this sort of thing, but the question of which one is "better" is obviously impossible to settle.

On a side note, it's gonna be very interesting to see what becomes of all these programs now that Adobe has bought Macromedia. Photoshop & Illustrator become more & more similar with each new release, so I've long suspected it's only a matter of time before they merge into one program, which would of course then be the equivilent of Fireworks on steroids. Now that Adobe is also going to own Fireworks, Freehand, Flash, etc., I'm really curious to see how they'll work them all together, what gets assimilated into what, what gets eliminated, etc.

Oh, and by the way, I don't taste bad at all. At least that's what I've heard.

Oh, I expect the worst! ^_-



*@.@*;;

I'm personally a pretty big Fireworks fan myself. The thing I like the most is that Fireworks allows you to treat parts of the textures and layers as very indivudual objects that can be easily manipulated and have their own properties. I find this amazingly helpful when making clothing. I still do use photoshop though to finish touching up images and export them to targa with the appropiate alpha textures for transparencies.