Detail on Black Fabric

Hi all, I have just started designing clothing and am wondering what you clothing designers do to put detail on black shirts. For example, I am working on a black polo shirt, but not sure how to make it look as if there were a collar on it. Any help is greatly appreciated!

if you have some black clothes handy irl get them out and look at them under some lights. forget that they're black for a sec and you'll see they aren't really all black. there are grey areas, black shadows, maybe even some white hilites depending on the fabric. the trick is when you put it all together it kinda averages and your mind thinks "black".

try starting with a medium or dark grey base and adding shadows under the collar and hilites on the collar itself. if you have something to look at irl as a guide that will help even if it's a pic in a magazine.

My best suggestion for this is to not use "true" black as your base. This way, you can use the burn and/or dodge tools most effectively for shading/highlighting.

I know that's a very short answer - but I'm not quite sure how to explain it better than that. Unfortunately, I'm great at SHOWING how something works, but piss-poor at explaining it. :| Hope it helps at least a little.

The trick of "almost black" works for some pre-made, modifyable stuff in SL too. On many clothing items the "fabric" texture is in black and white. Putting a 100% black "tint" under it obliterates the detailing, but if you're only 80%-90% it still looks black -- and detailed

Also, I recommend experimenting with shades of grey. Just bumping up the value from "true black" makes a very cool (color temp wise) texture. Sometimes that's what you want, but often it's more convincing if you start with a very dark brown.

i would also add that many painters stay away from using pure black paint because so often if you look really closely, you are staring at a really dark color, rather than the complete absence of color & light.

Thanks for all the replies! I have started expirmenting with different colors, and it does look better. Appriciate all the help!

For 'black' items, I'll usualy use something like 22,22,33 as the base color.

'black' tends to generaly be a really dark blue/purple as far as I can tell when I look at it.

Your mileage may vary.

Racer P.