WHy is it so difficult to make shorts?

Sweetness! Those are images one should save for future reference!

Chip, you are my hero!

Thanks so very much.

~Ari

Chip, you have done far more than that. I honestly don't know if you realize it or not, but you have. I haven't finished with my Normal Bump thing and you need to stop tickling me like this.

In that custom normal shader, you noticed that I used RGB Multiply. Now, what happens if you use Gradients Ramps instead of Falloff? Basically, project a greyscale gradient to each RGB channel. What happens? You encode the 3d data into the texture. Once you get these into Photoshop, you can use them to do volume selects much like you can in 3DS Max.

Imagine in Photosop: Selecting the nose and using the 3d distance in the mesh to set the fall-off, so only areas near the nose in the mesh get selected.

But it doesn't stop there. There is so much more that can be done with some creative thinking. Imagine, in a weird kind of way, having the mesh in Photoshop. Parametrics in 2d using 3d data.

Try Filter > Stylize > Trace Contour on the attachment and see what happens.

Just because it's funny.

Using RGB Theta, you are doing faux lighting across the entire model. Using the gradient space trick, you can limit the faux lighting. Basic ChOps.

Attached is a simple example of this. I use RGB Theta to light the model from a certain direction. This faux lighting is, of course, across the entire model. Then I used the space gradient trick to limit the faux lighting to above the eye (volume select). The net effect is having a lighting system right in Photoshop that is nearly identical to a true 3d lighting system. I just faked having an omni light right in Photoshop.

Hahaha.
Too funny.

Ah, what were we talking about? Shorts? Sorry about the tangent, but Chip is at it again.

*laughs* I'm going to have to just keep doing odd things to the templates and uploading them to see what tangential genius pops out of your head in response.

Chip, how did you know I was working on stripes, and going crazy because of it???
Are you on a special mission to protect my sanity?
Thanks hugely for these templates!

That was extremely generous of you.

Ralph

I just tried to get the female stripes templates from Chip wich must be utterly great by looking at the male ones. But I get somehow a scattered up picture. I only cannot see the female ones, the male ones are looking quite normal, anybody else has that too or is it just me???

*AE*

The only images that rendered correctly are the male and femeale uppers. The rest corrupted and can't be seen.

forum code strikes again... and I swear it hates chip, becuse I see ancient images from other people that are uploaded but not corrupt....

WARNING CONSPIRACY THEORY AHEAD (sorta)
it's almost as if the forum automaticly scrambles images after so many views/dowloads to decrease the load (more likely it's just doing something odd to store/retrieve, and occaisonally flips out and saves it back scrambled, which would explain why frequently accessed images tend to get futzed)

Yup, I'm only seeing a mess when I download the female lower image too. The upper image, though, is VERY helpful. I have been struggling recently -- mostly by trial and error -- to find a simple way to draw a wide collar that extends across the line between the upper torso and the arm UV maps. I couldn't find an easy way to visualize how a horizontal line continues from one to the other. NOW, I see. Thank you SO much, Chip!

Was this about shorts?

Try shift-reload or whatever it takes in your browser to bypass the cache. It may take a few attempts, but eventually they should come through intact.

hehe, the scrambled nature of the horizontal stripe guides was brought to my attention yesterday. I no longer have the originals so I'll make new ones when I get a chance. Unfortunately that may be a week or so. My SL and 3D texturing workstation decided to commit suicide this morning (what's that burning smell?!). I'm busily rescuing files from its drives and pricing out a replacement so it may be a week or so before I'm productive again. As Viktoria said, forum attachments generally will load properly eventually if you keep trying and clear the corrupted ones from your browser cache.

I am maybe asking a complete and utterly stupid question but reading this sounds to me like reading a Chinese manual so how do I bypass my cache?

And Chip I don't want to give you more work, I am almost ashamed I posted it

still trying to have fun,
*AE*

Holding down the Shift key while pressing the F5/Refresh key on my keyboard did finally bring up the correct textures. (It took several tries.)

ohhhh even I got it fixed!!!!!!!! these are magnificent Chip!!!!!!!!

Having fun again,
*AE*

Hi Chip

Is it possible for you to send me the template too, or do you have it else where where i could download it

|Thanks

Nothing I do will clear any of the images...they are all garbled here...shift+f5 doesn't seem to work

Ouch, Chip. Sorry to hear that.

I guess it's been a few weeks since you posted that, but if you still have any smoked drives that you need to pull files from, let me know. I know someone who's a real miracle worker with data recovery. He's saved my life a couple of times now, and his rates are very reasonable.

Thanks, Chosen Fortunately the drives are fine. It was either the power supply or motherboard that burned out. It was a four year old computer that I'd gotten used so it was due for retirement anyway. Some of the files still aren't accessable just because I have no open drive bays in other computers to stick them in at the moment.

Chip, thanks so much for these! I had been trying to do very short shorts, and had the same problem as the original poster, so I can see this being incredibly helpful.

But the Female Lower Template and the Male Upper Template still come up scrambled for me (they make cool modern art pictures, though...), no matter how much I refresh my cache. Is there another way of getting these files?

Thank you so much again for doing them!

Maybe someone who has them can upload them again. I don't have a copy of them anywhere at the moment. Sorry.

I'll upload a copy to my website and post a link when it's there. Should be up by tomorrow.

~Ari

Thanks, Ari When you do I'll add the link to the template thread if that's okay with you.

No problem, glad I could help. Adding the link would be great.
~Ari