Clothing on Hangers

Ive seen in many clothing stores, they will put up the clothes at it is, a perfect front view... possibly on a hanger or just the wall. For example, stores like Auharo, Intrigious (sp?).

I'm just wondering how that is done? Because the upper template for the body has the arms on the bottom, so the sleeves won't connect if I use that image.

They don't use the template as you suggest. Instead they put the clothing item together using the regular method of uploading the pieces and making the clothing item in the edit appearance option.

The easiest (and probably the way most use) is to simply wear the clothing item and take a snapshot to disk while standing on a pose stand (most likely anyway). The with their graphics editing program remove everything except what it is that is desired for the item to be displayed. Upload back into SL and place on a prim to "hang" in their store.

Here are three easy ways to do it:

1. What Peggy said. Simply wear the clothing item on your avatar, take a screenshot, and edit out what you don't want.

-OR-

2. Apply the clothing texture to the avatar model in a 3D application like Maya, Max, or Blender, and then simply do an orthographic rendering. That will give you a perfect front view (or side or back or whatever other view you might want), with no perspective camera distortion.

-OR-

3. Bring the avatar model into Photoshop CS4 Extended or CS3 Extended, and then it will inherently become a part of whatever image you're working on, be it a poster or a hanger cutout or what have you.


Or if you want to make it more complicated:

Remap the avatar UV's so that when you bake out a texture from the model, it puts the arms in the right places relative to the torso. If you know what you're doing in your 3D modeling program of choice, it's not that hard. Granted, it would be a little silly since the aforementioned options are much easier, but it would certainly work.

Oh okay.. I didn't know there was a way to do it without the template. Which way is better?

and Thanks, I thought it was the picture option way, but wasn't sure.

The easiest way would be to simply take a picture to your disk and remove all the parts you want to not show in your image. The other ways require a 3d graphics program which, in turn, require a substantial bit of knowledge most casual creaters don't have. Not to mention a substantial investment in real money..........though Blender is free (light on the documentation though).

What's "best" depends on your definition of the word.

If you don't have the software for options 2 or 3, then "best" becomes synonymous with "only choice". Do option 1.

If "best" means easiest, then there are several possibilities. If you have a good 3D modeling program like the ones I mentioned, or even something less full featured but still up to the task, such as Poser or Daz Studio, and you know how to use it, option 2 would be the easiest thing to do. It's almost a one-click solution.

But if you don't have that sort of software, then I'd say options 1 and 2 are about equal in terms of ease. Option 1 is arguably easier to set up, but option 3 requires no post production (because the production itself IS the post), so they about even out.

Option 3 assumes you've got an extended version of Photoshop, though, of course. If you don't have that, then that brings you back to option 1 as the only way to go.

If "best" means what's going to look most like the clothing will actually look in SL, option 1 is it.

If "best" means what's going to afford you the most flexibility in terms of lighting, exact model positioning, etc., I'd go with option 2.

If "best" means what's going to require the least amount of post production work, options 2 and 3 are equal.


In other words, there's no right or wrong answer here. It's up to the individual artist's preferences, and the desired goal, always.