It Looks Dead . . . . . (Clothing Question)

Hello Everyone,

So exluding a handfull of T-shirts I've made I just completed my second "real" garment" in Second Life. But I am not happy with few things. I figured rather then beat my head against the wall (anymore), I would turn to you guys for some insight.

I am self taught in PS, so their maybe some basic things that I am over looking or not aware of. I dont expect anyone to give up hard earned "trade" secrects, but a point in the right direction would mean a lot.

Here is the garment: http://mspminc.com/pusha.html

My complaint is that it looks dead - and lacks real "pop" or realism. In another words I dont look at it and go "wow". I look at it and say, "hmmmm that button placket and collar look like they where drawn on with a marker".

So, here are things I thought of trying.

1. placket and collar lines are too thick and detract from the image, trim them down.

2. redo my fabric pattern in layers, and add highlights to add definition and pop to the basic texture

3. redo fabric pattern to remove stock "texture" filter I ran and mistakenly saved back when I started making it

4. give up making clothes in SL entirely, it is just to difficult and I am not good enough


Footnote: using PS CS2

Thank you for your input!!


edited for a boat load of typos !

I think it's a great start. I think it needs more shading & highlighting for things like crease/wrinkle lines. Clothing on a person isn't flat and wrinkle free. The fabric is a bit busy, so the button will probably go un-noticed really unless you made them a funky color like yellow (which I'm not recommending BTW). People and objects don't have outlines (think coloring books), so trying to color/texture without actually using lines, just shading & highlighting (Dodge & Burn tools in Photoshop).

I would suggest going to stores in world (or the slboutique website http://www.slboutique.com which would be faster) and look at other clothing that has been made and see what they did different that what you've done. Or even to store website and look at photos of actual clothings.

The thick black lines are the main problem. Get rid of those entirely. But don't be discouraged! You are off to a very good start!

What I do when painting a garment is I divide it into layers, so for example the side of the shirt with the buttons would be on one layer, the side with the button holes on another, the buttons themselves on a third, and the collar on a fourth layer. What this does for you is to make it easy to use the dodge and burn tools to shade the edges of your fabric to get the effect you want at the edges.

But don't stop there! If you apply the dodge and burn directly to the fabric texture, you can't go back and change it later! So select each area of fabric that you isolated, and make another layer, filling just where the fabric is for that layer with a 25% grey fill. Set that layer to Multiply, and place it above the layer that it goes with. Do your dodge and burn on that layer, and you'll see the fabric below darken or get highlights as you work.

Look at a real shirt, and see how the light falls on it, especially at the edges. Shade the edges of your shirt sections to match this, remembering to add some darkening for 'shadows' to the layers below, where appropriate.

To add wrinkles and folds, a lot can be done just using another multiplied layer for more dodge and burn. When you get to that stage, you may want to slightly distort the fabric pattern in the area of the wrinkles, to make it more realistic.

Not the best pic, but here's some clothes I did using that method of painting. In particular, look at the knot on the waistline, and at the edges where cloth overlaps.

That's a great start Pusha, man, you should have seen some of the early stuff I made... (shivers).

I'm like you, self tought. I've read more toturials than I care to count, and I'm now working on my first CS2 book (CS2 Bible will be next), and when a pro designer friend of mine and I discuss various designing techniques, and he starts gobbling off about different things, my face usualy go blank and I just sit there looking at him with a stupid look on my face wondering what he's babbling about ;p I probably know how to do what he's saying, but I don't know the professional terms for them. Such is the way for us self tought ppl I guess ;p (no offenses ment). The whole point of that little speach was that I'm NOT a pro, so if I say something that the pro's find stupid or false, pls, don't lynch me, just correct me so I too can learn
Anyway, you're off to a pretty good begining, don't give up!

As Mia and Ceera has already mentioned, use the Dodge and Burn tools to add in shading details, it takes a little practice to get it right the first few times, but you should be able to pick it up quickly

Robin has a couple of awesome tutorials on that here:

/109/b7/80285/1.html
/109/a3/97769/1.html

And here is the link to some other awesome must-have's (you've probaly already seen this one):
/109/b5/83674/1.html


And again, as Mia and Cerra has already mentioned, study pics of clothing. I spent a lot of time in other designer's stores studying how the added shadings and details, trying to learn how to make my own look more "alive", and I'm still learning.

As for the shadow falloff on your shirt, try playing around with the layer effects a bit (doubleclicking on the layer with the effect on it brings up the layer effect panel), I love those things, and have found them very useful for a lot of the things I design. You could for instance maybe increase the falloff distance and decrease it's intensity a bit. That's just an example though, don't cut my head off if it didn't work lol.

Anyways, enough babblign from me ;p Don't give up, a little practice and you're there!

If you check the stickies Robin wrote a great tutorial about non-destructive dodge and burn btw, which I've just started using for something.

Make an overlay layer (alt+click new layers, choose overlay) and 50% neutral grey check box. Dodge and burn on there. Your underlying layers (all of them) will show through, can be dodged and burnt as desired AND left unaffected if you get it wrong. I'm coming to a "more is more" for creases feeling. I was thinking just a few, but it needs more than I first thought I'm finding.

I also found, quite quickly, it helps to put a dodge and burn next to each other, it makes it look more creased... and if you look at your clothes they work that way too: the bright areas are close to the darker ones.

Thank you for the replies everyone !

I just wanted to make sure before I went into deconstruction mode that I was headed in the right direction.

For the most part I was already thinking along the lines of what guys have suggested and at least now my suspeciions are confirmed. Awsome!

I will be sure and post back as soon as I have a revision I am comfortable with.

Pusha