Just the basics about making clothes

Ok...First, I've never made clothes except in the appearance setting, and the only thing I know about making clothes for SL characters is that I need photoshop, and that's about it. Can anyone give simple and straight-forward advice on how this whole thing works. I know there's a lot of information to take in, but to be honest, I don't even know where to start. If you were to describe how to make clothing in a 1, 2, 3 step approach, please explain. Thank you.

Hello Dray !

The 1, 2, 3 step approach :
1. Read the stickies.
2. Download the templates (Linden Lab's, Robin Sojourner's, Chip Midnight's).
3. Also download Robin's tee-shirt tutorial, read it, and do it. (links in the stickies)

I hope this helps.

Where do I find the stickies?

The stickies are the orange colored threads at the top of this forum that each say "sticky" in front of the thread titles.

1. You don't NEED Photoshop, you NEED a graphics program, one of which is Photoshop, which is rather pricy. There is a program called Gimp, that I believe is free. There are others, but I do not recall what they are. The graphics program has to be able to create layers and alpha channels.

2. You need to learn how to use the graphics program. Either by online tutorials, books, online classes, sl classes, etc.

3. Download the templates, read the stickies and let your creative juices take over.

The main requirement for the graphics program is that it has to be able to create and save documents that have an alpha channel, and has to be able to save in Targa (.tga) format. Photoshop and Gimp can both do that. I'd highly recommend the ability to save layered documents, as well, like Photoshop can. As you read the tutorials that are referenced at the start of this forum, you'll learn about a number of good uses for layers in clothing design work.

Whatever graphics program you choose, take the time to learn it well. There is no magic shortcut there. Great clothing design is 80% how well you can use your graphics application, and the rest is having the artistic talent and a creative mind for making new ideas.

Beyond that, and what's in the tutorials that we've all pointed you to, I highly advise getting a simple graphics tablet, like at least a low-end Wacom Graphire, with a pen that is pressure sensitive. It is FAR easier to do shading and other work with a pressure sensitive pen than with a mouse! It is certainly possible to do clothes with just a mouse, but it's much harder, and there are some things you'll just never accomplish without a tablet.

Access to a scanner or a digital camera can help as well, so you can sample various real-world textures, and add them to your work. Not vital, but it helps.

For some reason when I download the templates and I open the files, I just get a bunch of text and not the actual template. Any suggestions?

What program are you using to open the file? I don't remember if they are zip files, you might have to unzip them first.

It says it's a psd file. Never heard of that.

That's a photoshop file. You'll need photoshop, I believe gimp will also open it.

Hey there Mia,

It worked. Gimp opened it up like a charm. Now the actual clothes making part, sheesh, lol. Do you use gimp? Any suggestions on how to start once gimp is running and template is up?

No, sorry. I have photoshop.

Thanks any Mia,

I appreciate all the feedback. Perhaps I should save up and get photoshop too. It seams like it may be much easier than gimp. I actually learned how to lay down a pattern on the template using gimp, but it was a pattern that was already in gimps system. Still have to figure out how to put my own.

Hello Drey,
I'm going to start making clothes and skins for SL using GIMP.
It should work fine for you.
Be sure to save your files as .xcf
they are the native files for gimp.
If you need to share them with others who have photoshop then make copies and save those files as .psd.
I've had corrupted .psd in GIMP when I used many layers on images.

The alpha channels are a little tricky in GIMP only because the instructions for using alpha's on this forum are for photoshop. I'm going to play around with it. I use GIMP for my web design work, so I haven't used alphas at all.
When I get a handle on it I'll post something.
Also, there are loads of tutorials on the web for using GIMP and other GIMP forums.
Google it!

A~M~

Awesome! Thank you very much Alicia!