Photoshop to clothes

Ok....for the experts and those who have managed to get this to work flawlessly bear with me...

I finally managed to hamfistedly figure out how to use the textures in Photoshop 7 to make a couple of interesting things for my Avi to wear. Part of the credit goes to the wonderful tutorial posted on here this week.

My stumbling block, when I go to upload my creations they come in as textures. Now maybe I am missing a point but it would seem to me that they should come in as clothing, shouldn't they? Textures and images are all fine and dandy but that means that they have to be applied like tats.

I know I can create new clothing in game using the appearance system and applying textures to it but like I said....isn't the whole idea of making clothes in PS to have the new stuff come in as ...shirts, pants...

When you make a shirt in SL, for instance... it has a box for a texture. If you apply the texture you made, then it will create your shirt...

I understand that.....heck have done a couple of things with that since my newbie days

What is was trying to determine was wether or not you can creat a shirt, pants...whatever...offline in PS. Are we limited to doin that in game?

When I go to upload anything the choices are limited to upper/lower body and such....no choice for particular clothing article. As I said I am really new to doin it and this may be exactly how things are supposed to work.

thanks to all that comment on my klutzy thing here...lol

That's the only way sorry...

As Sio said, that is the only way. Multiple items of clothing use the same templates.

Upper body template
------------------------
Skin (upper body and arms)
Undershirt
Shirt
Jacket (upper part of jacket)
Upper body tattoos

Lower body template
-------------------------
Skin (legs and feet)
Underpants
Pants
Jacket (lower part of jacket)
lower body tattoos

Skirt template
----------------
Skirt

Head template
------------------
Skin (head)
Makeup and head tattoos

Hair Tempate
----------------
Hair

Aight Rick, I think I see what your getting at.

First, do you have the templates? I believe Chip Midnight even redid them and filled in more of the mesh pattern.
Second, I believe th Second Life starter guide has a section about makine clothes.

Hopefully I can shed a little clarity for you here real quick.

A 3D model (avitar in SL) needs to be "textured". One way to do this is with what is called "UV mapping". Basically a model is "unwrapped" in it's 3D package to give you a 2D map. Think of the polar bear rug in the lodge Now you can "draw" on it with a 2D package such as Photoshop. What you have now is a "texture", yes it's a 2D drawing of your shirt. Alone it does nothing but now you can apply it to the corresponding UV map and it will wrap itself to the mesh (point from 2D matching with it's 3D counterpart on the mesh).

So think of textures in two different types, 1st, which I believe you have the grasp of, would be flat and usually tileable like a wood texture or bricks that go on a nonorganic model (these are usually applied planar, cylindrical, spherical.. the like. 2nd, textures you make for organic models, like humans, that need to be uwrapped and UV mapped for you to proberly apply the texture to it. The unwrapping in 3D is something you don't need to worry about, already set up in SL.

When you upload an image, your "shirt texture" you can choose how you want to preview before you upload. Drop down and pick male upper body, something like this, and view your texture on the model, this helps you to adjust your image before spending $10 L.

Try a shirt texture on a "head" preview and you'll see what happens when the wrong template is used for the wrong UV map.

I hope this helps you out a little. There are excellent cloths designers and textures in SL, ask and someone should be able to help.

Good luck man, look forward to seeing you in some funky threads!!!!

thanks to all who responded..after carefully mulling it over and taking a chance( at least that's what it felt like in my book) I have managed to riddle out how this wonderful system works.

My fear was that if you took the texture that you uploaded and tried to apply it to, for expample a new shirt, that it would go completely bananas since it had the thing all laid out as the template. Being the daring sort...I said "Heck what's the worse that could happen if I did that?" and voila the last hurdle was jumped!

Danger Danger Will Robinson...Pandora's box is open....he he.