Frustrated new designer

Hello everyone. I am relatively new to SL and am highly interested in clothing design. I only have moderate Photoshop skills, so I wanted to begin with something easy.

I am trying to design a miniskirt that is half one color, half another, split vertically down the centerline of the skirt. It didnt take me long to realize that there is distortion that occurs when drawing vertical lines.

I downloaded the templates and saved the grid pattern as a TGA. I then uploaded the file to see where the lines went. I must be silly or stupid, because I am getting nowhere fast. I continue to get a crooked line. If one side bleeds slightly over, I make a one pixel correction and then the other side bleeds over.

I have been painting literally pixel by pixel, but am completely unable to get a nice straight line. I have read some of the tutorials on the forums, but haven't found anything to help. I searched the forums for "straight line" and "skirt" but found nothing.

Can anyone please help? It seems like such a simple thing. What am I missing or doing wrong?

Hi

I suggest looking either...

/109/1c/26836/1.html

or

/109/ec/22502/1.html

these are great templates that help alot with aligning the textures

Thanks so much! Another question tho. Can I assume that the lower body template is good for skirts as well as pants? It doesn't appear to be intended for skirts, but as I mentioned, I am a newbie and not that good yet.

There is a seperate skirt template download

No, there is a different template for skirts. Lower body is for pants, panties, shorts, lower part of jackets, etc.

Thanks to all for the responses. Yes, I am aware that there is a separate skirt template. I mentioned having very little success with using it (the official LL version) in my first post. Aurelie kindly pointed me in the direction of Chip Midnight's hi-res templates, but there is no skirt template there that I can see, only the lower and upper body ones. Which puts me back at square one.

The skirt template is the most straight forward of them all so I've been lazy about making a hi rez one. I just attached one that's a simple mod of the LL template. On both sides of the skirt you'll notice a row of polygons down the center. All of the stretching happens there, so you want to try to avoid putting much detail in those center rows below about mid-thigh.

Thanks, Chip. I guess I will just keep experimenting. As I mentioned in my first post, I can see where the stretching occurs. I just don't know what to do about it. For the design I am attempting, staying away from that area is simply not an option.

For the record, here is a picture of the design I am attempting. It is the dress on the left. Maybe I should just give up and try the one on the right.

Hehe, I have nothing to offer to this thread other than to say "far out" and "right on!" Let's get Reuben and Danny and go on a road trip in a psychadelic bus! I digress...

So, when you have some men's early 70's retro outfits for sale, IM me 'cuz I'll buy 'em all!

Welcome, Laurie and best of luck.

To do the dress on the left you have a couple of options... instead of a hard division between colors, try a gradient the width of the center row. If you really want the hard edge, then you can make it appear as if the skirt is slightly twisted so that the seam between white and green is off the center row as far up the leg as you can do it without it looking too obviously off vertical.

other solution but far from the best would be to sue a prim for your skirt part but it can lead to other problems :/

I will try this, Chip. Thank you!

And thanks to all for the comments and kind words!