Tattoos showing through clothes

hi peeps

I have recently started making my own tattoos, I use PS CS3. and the body mesh as a guide for placing the tatts in the right places, and then simply use tattoo brushes on a new layer and transform, for final positioning. then remove the body mesh before i save and upload it .

When i upload them, they show through the clothes...grrrrrrrr ive played with opacity, and transparency, and they still do it. From my research i feel its something to do with greyscale, or alpha settings, but dont know enough to fully understand the jargon lol.

Can anyone please give me an easy answer to this. its baffling me.

thanks in advance

and hugs x

Hi Sox, welcome to the forums!

A tattoo artist will hopefully be along soon to give you an intelligent answer, but meanwhile let me make one stupid observation wrt tattoos: they DO obey layering rules. So, if I'm wearing a tattoo on my back that is on the jacket layer, the opaque parts of it will often show through an undershirt or shirt that I'm wearing.
.

Which layer are you putting them on?

Your avatar is put together with a bunch of layers, which in sequence go like this:

Prim attachments
Skirt
Jacket
Shirt
Pants
Shoes
Gloves
Undershirt
Underpants
Socks
Tattoos/painted skin
Default 'Ruth' skin

Each layer (except the 'Ruth' skin) may have transparent or semi-transparent parts, which allow the layer below it to show through. Any opaque parts on a higher layer will show, and will hide the layers beneath.

IMPORTANT: these are the NAMES of the layers. You can paint a tattoo on a jacket layer, and it will show over the top of shirts or undershirts or skin or whatever. You can paint a jacket on the tattoo layer, too. Of course, that jacket would be hidden by everything above it!

So if you're putting your tattoo on a layer that's higher than the clothes you're wearing, that's the reason the tattoo is showing.

Ah thanks.......makes sense sorta so if i make the same tattoos for each clothing layer, say an undershirt/shirt then Jacket, and i wear it as an undershirt, then i can wear a normal open jacket on top and the tatts will not show through the fabric tex?? sorry to seem a thicko on this but its doin my head in lol.

thanks for the warm welcome, this is not my first time in sl.....im a come backer after being away for a few months my other avi no longer exists, how to lose 20k + items.....delete your account lol. thats life huh * grins

Thanks for the reply

Yep. What happens is that in order to save on the number of textures that need to be sent to each person whose draw distance you enter, the SL client takes all the textures you're wearing on your av and composites them into a single texture which then gets uploaded to the asset server and on to anyone who can see you. The composite is based on which layer each texture is on and the alpha channels of those layers. Tattoos used to go in the tattoo slots in the skin tab in appearance, but unless you're wearing a default skin those slots will already be used by the skin textures. Tatts are now used most often on the underwear layer, but your best bet is to package them with underwear and outerwear versions in case people want to use them in combination with other tatts already using the underwear layer.

thanks for the reply Chip..........its good to know that its nothing I'm doing wrong, i will persevere, and try to get the best balance i can.

oh btw.......i love babies i just cant manage a full one