T-Shirt Template

Hi! It looks about as sharp as it's possible to be, to me. If you zoom in that closely on other people's clothing, you'll find that it's almost never really razor sharp.

SL does a good job of avoiding jaggies, in most cases, but that comes at a price. Sometimes things get a little over-antialiased, instead.

I think that what you're doing is uploading a 1024 texture, and expecting it to look in-world the way it looks while it's still on your machine.

The problem is that once it's uploaded, it's made into a .jpg2000, not a .tga; and I have my suspicions that the resolution is dropped to 512 as well, although that's just a guess. Chosen might know for sure.

But I've found, from experiments that I did when I was first in-world, that clothing textures that are uploaded at 1024 never look any better, and frequently look worse, than those that are uploaded at 512. They take longer to load, but they don't look any better.

It's almost as if the server is reducing them and then displaying them, like a web browser does if you have the images at the wrong resolution.

I have no proof that's what's happening, but I do know that's the effect I've seen. I was very disappointed, I can tell you. But since most people don't zoom that far in, it turns out that it's not something most people are even really aware of. Not to mention the kind of visual closure that SL players wind up with, where all kinds of things become "invisible" after a while in game.

But, at any rate, it might look better if you upload at 512, and it will certainly display more quickly.

If that doesn't help, my advice is not to get upset about it. This is SL, not an actual 3D program. You're not going to get rendering that's the quality of LightWave or Maya here.

Sorry that I can't just tell you how to fix it.

It's no problem, Robin, thanks for the advice. =)

I know that things don't always look sharp in SL, but this time it seemed worse than I've ever seen before. Other peoples T shirt prints all looked better. That's why I thought I might be doing something wrong. I'm still pretty new at this =)

Tuli, Other than pros like Robin, I don't think ANY of us think our stuff looks as good as what other people make. That is human nature.

I will make something and people will tell me how nice or pretty it is. All I see are the flaws and imperfections. Both, real and imagined.

Jen

ROFL! Jennifer, Pros aren't any different than anyone else! We're just people, just like anyone, you know. The only difference is that we compare ourselves to other pros. Just like anyone compares their work to that of others on their own level.

Most of us see the glaring imperfections in our own work, too.

Many years ago, I was wandering around a Science Fiction convention, when I saw another artist whose work I greatly admire, also wandering around wearing what we describe as the "I can't draw face."

I was shocked, and asked him if everyone else's stuff looked better than his to him. He said, mournfully, that it did. I said that I felt the same way; everyone else was doing better work than I was! His stuff was waaayyy better than mine!

He looked shocked, and said that I did such amazing faces. I laughed, and said faces were a snap! It was pure design that was hard, and his was wonderful. He said "Design! That's easy! It's faces that are difficult!"

So we decided, if we both worked really hard, in twenty years or so our stuff would be indistinguishable.

Well, it's been almost 20 years, and it's not; but his faces are much better than they were, and my design has also improved, I think. (I hope. It's hard to tell, looking at my own stuff. )

So, you see, we all have our strengths and weaknesses. And we all compare what we have done to the images that were in our minds, and mostly see the places where it doesn't measure up.

Since we never saw what was in someone else's mind, just what they manage to drag out into the Consensual Universe, it does, indeed, always look better than our own work.

(By the way, in case you're interested, the Gesture that goes with the "I can't draw face" is pretending to chew your own hands off at the wrists. That was invented by another artist, who was nominated for the Fan Hugo several times. And who frequently feels the very same way.)

works even with PhotoImpact 7... great

Very wonderful post, Robin (and others who talked about this).

I hate that terrible sinking feeling that seems to accompany the creative effort, the feeling that the vision in my head will always remain elusive and beyond my reach (even if by only a small amount.. but usually it feels like the Grand Canyon).

I'm sort of tickled to hear that it's not just me being neurotic -- or, at least, only a little neurotic.

It's that sort of experience that makes me think that the act of creation is really an act of faith -- for to create, you necessarily step out in the belief that you have something worth contributing to the human experience even when all your feelings might be telling you otherwise... and you just keep going, no matter what happens or how you feel.



Did I tell you that I'm typing this with stumps? (laugh)

I can't get the t-shirt to load when unzipped. I keep getting an error message. Anyone else had this problem? Thank you!

Heathur IMd me in game; turns out that she was trying to open it in PSP, not PS.

I thought that you could open these files in PSP, too. I don't have it, because I'm on a Mac, but does anyone know how to do that?

Thanks!

bump

Can open them now Robin but all I have is Limited Edition Photoshop and it won't support the layers so nothing works darn it! It still won't open up in PSP, not sure why as I thought it was supposed to do that as well. Help!

I used your template and instructions - they worked a treat!

Couldn't believe how easy it was.

Is it as easy to make other items of clothing? Are there templates for pants, shirts, skirts etc?

Sorry if this is a dumb question.

Best regards,

Amber Tran

I just joined last night and have been trying to learn my way around.

Thank you so much for the template! Once I'm more aware of what I'm doing, I will be using it.

I've done a lot of retexturing for the Sims 2 custom content and this seems a lot different to me. Perhaps it's just because I'm a noob but I'm looking forward to really digging in and learning how to create custom content for SL.

Thanks again!

Thanks, everyone!

Heathur, I'm sorry that I didn't notice that you had posted a question last March. I hope by now you've long ago solved that problem.

For anyone else who happens to be reading, PSE does support layers. (I just checked on a copy that resides on a PC in the house, and it opens the file just fine, reads every bit of it, and everything.)

What it doesn't support in as useful a way is Channels. You can make them; you just can't see them. So you can't directly manipulate your Alpha channel, and you have to make sure there's only one by checking in the Delete Selection dialog. (If there's more than one in the drop down menu, then you have more than one and need to delete the extras.)

Amber, basically, that's all that's needed to make any kind of clothing in SL. But I don't have ready made templates for anything else.

T-shirts were a special case, since so many people who have no interest in clothing design none the less wanted to whip up a quick t-shirt for their concert, or their cause, or their personal expression. After some discussion on these boards, I came to the conclusion that it should be possible for them to do that without needing to learn all the basics that you would need to know to actually design clothing.

Anjolie, I have never used the Sims, but this is exactly the same way that texturing is done for nearly all "real" 3D applications. Except, of course, that we have nothing but the Color and Transparency. ("Real" applications also give you bump, reflection, refraction, specular, ambient, and a whole slew of others. "Real" applications meant for games usually include Normals. Normals would blow our socks off in SL. Sigh.)

I am new to sl so this will be a starting point for me thanks.

Oh, this is just what I needed! Thanks to you for your excellent instructions.

First I have to say thanks so much for making this available! It has made me explore a lot as far as texture creation and such things goes.

The problem I'm having though, is that I would like to also offer my shirts on the jacket layer for those people who like to wear lowrise pants. You mentioned to me that the lower part is done on the lower body template but how might one go about lining that up and such. Honestly, your t-shirt template/tutorial is the only clothing set that even halfway makes sense to me (yeah...I'm a graphics n00b).

Hi Clifton!

You are most welcome, and thanks for posting this in the forums. (Instead of IMing me with it. )

Ummmm.. you line things up carefully, using the UV Maps. (Lindens, Chip's, or mine.)

Basically, assuming you don't have PS CS3, you just look at where the wrinkles and so on fall on the Upper Body Material, using the grids in the UV Map (often called "templates" because that's what the Lindens call them,) and continue them on the Lower Body Material.

If you have PS CS3, it's a little easier, since you can see what you're doing, (after a save,) but it's mostly the same thing.

I find that the hardest part is trying to get the feathering for the wrinkles and folds to match across the seams.

So I draw the whole thing, including the part that extends below the seam, on a transparent layer on the Upper Body material, and just mask the part that extends below the seam.

Then I drag that layer to the Bottom material, and line it up on the UV grind. The Upper and Lower materials aren't exactly the same size, of course, so you have to Transform the layer to match the material you're working on. (For example, if you draw a fold on the Upper back, you need to shrink it to about 83% of its former size to match on the Lower back.)

If you have PS CS2 or better, and can select and move multiple layers, this becomes much easier, because you can use another transparent layer to mark where the seam is, and drag them both onto the other Material.

In earlier versions, where you have to drag layers separately, hold down the Shift key as you drag so they will have the same relationship to each other.

Although it's not necessary, the additional layer makes it easier tell exactly where the seam is supposed to be. (It's fairly easy to get lost, otherwise.)

Hummm.. reading back through this, it might be easier to understand if you can see it. So..



This is just one way to do it, but it works fairly well. (The screenshot is from PS CS3.)

Oh, and if you're using my T-shirt, you'll have to remove the wrinkles that are already on the bottom, probably, since those are made for shirts that are tucked in.

Thanks for taking the time to explain this Robin. Unfortunately it's going over my head though. I guess what I need is a step-by-step tutorial with lots of screenshots...though I've not been able to find any. Looks like jacket layers are out of the question for me.

thanks for tutorial, template exc...
i'm using your template (plus a layer from the standard one)

i'm begging made some t shirt and jacket... one problem for me and that i want to use GIMP, i prefer open source, and on of i'm not easy to do is Wrinkles
i't really hard for me to made a realistic Wrinkles... i found brushes of Wrinkles for photoshop, but they didn't work on gimp...
can you help me?

There is a version of Gimp called "Gimpshop". This is very much set up like photoshop and I belive that the addons and brushes for photshop also work in this version.

http://gimpshopdotnet.blogspot.com/

Hope this helps.

Bodger

p.s. can I also say thanks Robin, your a gem.

thanks for advise,
but i prefer to use gimp... i'm gonna be used to this program, and i don't know if gimpshop will accept photoshop property file!

i'm gonna try to do something for gimp... maybe a layer with some Wrinkles then i can activate when i want...

the problem is that drowing Wrinkles for me is really hard

GimpShop isnt necessary and really dont do much per say to change the actual interface of Gimp so its kind pointless in a sense .

OK so Gabriele I simply typed convert photoshop brushes for use in gimp into google and came up with a link for you that leads to a tutorial so this may help you out immensely .

http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/topic.php?t=4349&start=1

thanks you so much... this definitely helped me

Thanks Robin!! I am new at clothes making so this will be very,very helpful!

hiya, i've searched everywhere for help with my problem but got nowhere yet! Basically i have a load of images I want to put on the chest (and back) of t-shirts. However, when I test them on a previewer or use them in SL the image is terribly distorted by the Av's body shape. Strangely it looks worse on men than women. I've tried distrorting and stretching the images in photoshop so they fit the UV map better but the improvement is only minimal. I'm sure there's something fundamental I'm missing but I'm lost as to what it is.

Robin, or anyone, come to my rescue, pleeeaaaasssseee.....