Another Question About Texturing Clothes

Question 1:

I have the Macromedia Suite (Fireworks, Freehand, etc.) and I'm using Fireworks to build the textures I want to make for clothing. Problem is...Fireworks doesn't export to TGA. I can save it out and open in Freehand and the save to TGA. Is TGA the only format that can be used for clothing textures. Is there another format that you can use?


Question 2:

I'm pretty new to texturing as it is. But I understand the concepts of layers. My question is... using the templates that I've downloaded from the forums, when saving the final product (shirt, pants, whatever), do I save all the layers in the file: UV, Alpha, Overlay, Background? Are some layers removed before saving the final.

The reason I ask this...I downloaded the SLCP previewer program (and may I say thank you to whoever provided this). When I uploaded my first texture into it to preview it, I could still see some of the "skeletons" from the various template layers, such as the background and overlay.

Thanks.

Hmmm. To answer your first question, yes. PNG is also supported. The reason TGA is used heavily is it is lossless and supports Alpha channel.
I personally never used Fireworks but I assumed that Suite was for web design. My suggestion is grab a graphic design program if you are serious. I don't know how well Freehand does, but I do know that it is old and if you are serious, a copy of Photoshop wouldn't hurt.

as to 2: No you can save anyway you choose. However, the best suggestion is a background that matches the color of the clothes to kill off haloing and alpha channel. It sounds like the layers are visible and that can be solved by either making them invisible or deleting them. (keep a master backup).

Anyone who uses Freehand have any suggestions?
Welcome and good luck.

I started out making clothes using the macromedia suite and used gimp to convert to tga however I was under the impression that now you can import using PNG format. I have not tried this because I ended up getting jealous of everyone using photosphop and bought myself a copy just after christmas. I'm pretty sure though that you can import png's now and if so you can texture that way. If not use gimp to convert the png format to tga that's what I did for many many months

If you use png the transparent issue will be supported i would think using a png and so tga's would be redundant. AGain I have not tried but if you have fireworks before you go out and spend money stick to that I used it a long while. I just wanted to play with all the brushes etc offered with photoshop and wanted to make skins and other such nonsense which would be quite hard in fireworks.

when you get good at it you may end up swtiching to photoshop like I did and I will tell you that photoshop was a whole lot faster for many things and what was taking me weeks only days etc so its a much faster application to use as far as getting stuff the right effect etc., but at the start you really dont need all those features when learning to make clothes so save your money until you find your at a place where you can't make fireworks do what you want it to do effects wise and then change

PNG is most definitely supported, I use it for textures with transparancies and it works fine. However, for textures that don't require transparent parts I still use 24 bit tga files, as using PNG's I've found that they have the same alpha against alpha problem as 32 bit tga files. More experimentation is needed in order to be certain but png absolutely works for clothing with transparencies. It's much easier than tga files in fact, as there is no need to create an alpha channel, and you can have your clothing on several layers and they will all work, no need to flatten them before creating the alpha channel

Get the GIMP (www.gimp.org) for texturing. It reads the PSD files.

I make a fresh copy of the templates for each article of clothing, do my design, and hide the layers (triangles, seamguides, etc.) that I don't want before saving a version as TGA. My design can ovccupy several layers, for main clothing, buttons, pockets ... anything I might want to move is on its own transparent layer. When

You don't have to stay in the lines: you want a bit of clothing color slopping over the seam lines to hide them.

Save the oriiginal design as the XCF file, so you can make changes.

Don't get the Gimp. Gimp has a non standard interface that requires a plug to look even remotely Photoshop like. Go the Paint shop Pro, Photoshop, or painter route.

Alot of people was willing to put up with the poor coding and quirkiness of Gimp because it is free. Trust me it isn't worth it.
Remember, in RL what is a gimp? It is a crippled person; a person with limited mobility. Think about it.

G.........GNU
I..........image
M.........manipulation
P..........program

Think about what you are bashing.