A problem with design.

Having an issue, I can't seem to fix it.

Using Photoshop, when I create a T-shirt for instance with a black background.


After making the shirt, uploading its all fine. I put it on.. The black color bleeds on the entire upper torso of my body.

I don't know how to fix this ... I made the shirt short-sleeved, but when I uploaded that item. It just showed the black shirt, with an all white body.

Anyone have an idea,i've looked at multiple youtube posts and guides but no one seems to mention this.

Sounds like maybe you didn't give the image any transparency. Did you create an alpha channel for it? And did you save it as 32-bit?

If you don't know what those terms mean, read the transparency guide, stickied at the top of this forum.

Palletizing again, maybe? Try typing Ctrl-Alt-F7 and then Ctrl-Alt-R. If that works, come back and search the recent archives of this forum for the word "palletized" to find out why.

Ya know, I've read this alpha channel stuff.


I mean... it really doesn't tell me much maybe I'm missing something. The basic idea is that an Alpha Channel determines the Opacity or Transparency yea?

So what Color do I need to make the alpha channel so that my skin is visible?

Black or Grey?

I see explanations of alpha channels but nothing really about clothing.

The alpha channel doesn't know anything about clothing either. All it knows is whether you have a high value (= white) loaded in each pixel of your image or a low value (= black). If a pixel in your alpha channel image is white, SL interprets it as opaque. If it's black, SL sees it as totally transparent. Anything in between (= gray) is ... well.... in between. You control the amount of opacity by controlling how light or dark a gray you make an area in the alpha channel image.

So, since you want to be sure that you see skin in places, those parts of the alpha channel image need to be black.

All of this is in the sticky, but if you want to try a different tutorial -- probably the clearest one I've seen -- take a look at Robin Wood's web site ...

http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/SL-Tuts/SLTutSet.html

Yes, and it works per pixel, meaning each pixel in the alpha channel controls the opacity/transparency of the same pixel in the image. So, if you want, say, the upper left corner of the image to be transparent, make sure the upper left corner of the alpha channel is black. If you want a spot in the middle of the image to be opaque, make sure that exact spot in the alpha channel is white. Etc.


The avatar's skin will be visible through any parts of the clothing that are transparent. So if you want to see the skin of the avatar's forearms, for example, make sure the forearm area of the shirt texture is black in the alpha channel.



Black means full transparency. Gray means partial transparency (translucency).




Did you read the tutorials in the second post? They all walk through an example of making a bikini top for an avatar.

Robin's tutorial that Rolig linked is excellent as well.

But in any case, I would encourage you to stop thinking of this stuff as somehow being either clothing-specific or not-clothing-specific. The principle of how alpha mapping works is what's important. The subject matter of the imagery in question is secondary.

As long as you keep looking exclusively for subject-specific answers, you'll continue to struggle. Learn the principle, and then you'll be able to apply it to any subject you want, whether it be clothing or anything else. Make sense?

And if this doesn't seem to be working for you, and you have an NVIDIA graphics card, you probably have the palletized textures bug. Look at Rolig Loon's post in this thread.