Questions concerning clothing and templates

Everything I've read seems to assume that the person reading it knows what templates are, how they work, and how to build on them. I've never seen a template before. To me it's just a confusing collection of lines. Can someone please explain to me in very simple terms how to create clothing with them. I use PSP8, but I only have a very basic idea of how the program works. I've never created anything with it, only modified pictures for others and myself. And once I do understand how to draw the clothing, how do I make sure that the pictures don't end up flat?

Thanks for the help.

Karli

In very simple terms, the templates correspond to the real life patterns that clothesmakers use. These patterns are flat, right? They are used as guides for the cutting of cloth. Once cut, the different pieces of cloth are sewn together to make a wearable garment.

So it is with the SL templates. They are the flat patterns of your digital, 3D garments. Their contours is where the stitching will occur. Inside these contours is where the fabric goes (gets painted). This is done in a program like Photoshop or PSP.

Then the analogy breaks. Once the painting (of a shirt, for example) is done, you have to upload it in SL. Then you have to go into Appearance mode, create a new shirt, apply the uploaded texture onto it, and voila - you got yourself a new shirt.

Try these steps just to get a very basic idea.....

I'm assuming you've downloaded the templates. The lines you see on them are to help you line up seams and straps, etc. because when you bring the texture you make into SL you're taking a one dimensional image and placing it around a 3 dimensional frame. There are going to be some mismatches in seams and things and as you practice you'll find its necessary to redo things often.

Open the upper body template
You are going to create a simple tube top
Open a texture you like, say a nice floral print like this one ..
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~dacey/images/red%20fabric.jpg
Look under tools, find edit and copy the floral print
Switch back to the upper body template and paste the copied image on to it
Move it into position over the frontside of the body image, lining it up to cover the chest area
Paste it again onto the template and line it up over the backside of the body image.

(doesn't need to be even for this initial exercise but it's a good time to go ahead and practice using the lines to line up the two squares. You'll find the square you paint on the backside of the body image will sit slightly higher than the square you paint on the frontside of the body image.)

Now, go to the side of your screen and you'll see a box labeled "layers". It will show all of the layers of the template you are using. Right now most of them should be closed except for the two floral images and the upper body image. Click on the little eye to close the upper body image and anything else that might be opened, until the only two layers still open are the two floral squares.
Go to your tool bar at the top and find "layers" there. Scroll down to "merge layers". The two floral layers will merge into one.
Now go to your side tool bar and choose "magic wand". Use the magic wand to click on the window showing your two floral squares. This will cause them to be outlined in little black lines.
Go up to selections, scroll down and choose "invert selection". This will cause the little black lines to move around only your floral squares and nowhere else.
Go back to edit, scroll down and copy the squares surrounded by the little black lines.
Go to File and scroll down to New. A window will open offering you options... choose select a new rastar image.
When the rastar image opens you'll see another window that looks like a checkerboard similar to what you've been working on.
Select paste and watch the two floral squares appear now on the new window.
Use your "move" tool from your side tool bar above where you found the magic wand, to move the floral squares exactly into the same position so that they match the ones in your original template window.
Almost done....

Go to layers in your top tool bar, scroll down to "make a new mask layer"... choose "from image"
Use layers in your top tool bar again and scroll down to "Load/save Mask Layer" and choose "save mask to alpha"
Now go to File, select "save as"
Name your image (ex: tube top)
Save it as a targa.tga image

Close psp
Go into SL
upload image



Good luck... I know it all sounds very very complex but do it a couple of times and you'll be a professional designer in no time.

Thanks so much. That was much easier to understand than anything else I've been told. I'll try it out the first opportunity I get... like tonight.

Now for my second question... How do I sell things?

There are lots of ways to sell things. They all involve a space where you can rez a prim.

Probably the simplest is to put your outfit into a prim 'box' decorate the box appropriately and then edit the box. Choose the 'general' tab, and look at the bits near the bottom. You can set it to sell a copy of the box or the contents (or the original, but not good for clothes), and set the price. You can also use the general tab to name the box suitably.

There are shops that use this approach throughout, but it's pretty texture heavy and very prim heavy. That requires you've got some land for your shop, although a first land will give you 117 such boxes if you put nothing else out, which will help for a while!

The other approach starts broadly the same, you box your goodies up. You take a picture for advertising it. You then get a vendor (or SLB and SLEx magic boxes, or both) and set the vendor up, or register and use the websites for SLB and SLEx as appropriate. There's loads of vendor systems out there, some free (but very useable) some very expensive (with various extra features). With such a system you can look for places that will let you rent or pay commission on your sales to get your vendors out in more places. The more places you have that you're selling the more some of the networked vendors become attractive. You can also put vendors up on your own land, if you do that you've got to bear all the costs for advertising. Find, Classifieds and advertising in the New Products forum are the commonest three I guess.

Hope that helps!

Why did the shirt I made come out being sheer?

Nevermind. I figured it out. I was using the wrong type of Mask Layer