Experimental Tank Top

Well, I've started trying my hand at making some real basic clothing textures, I figure since I do a lot of 2D stuff anyway I could have some fun. I decided to post this experimental tank top here so I could kill my server^H^H^H^H^ so I could get some input and at the same time provide others with a kind of as-it-happens guide to fixing whatever I'm doing wrong (surely I can't have it right the first time) and to have a final product that they can use as a template. Speaking of templates, big hand to Mr Chip Midnight for providing the one I and countless others have worked from.

All right, down to business: First, here's a preview of how it goes together on the template just to get a reference for whether once uploaded it'll look like crap and not match up or not:


Couple of caveats are in order before I link the actual file: First of all, I'm a Corel user, or rather fanatic, and I use Photo-Paint and Draw X3 and Painter X for everything. Photo-Paint in particular is so blatantly superior to Adobe's bloated flagship that I feel a need to encourage everyone I can come in contact with in such situations to go and grab it before you get sucked into the Photoshop way of doing things, because once you've become familiar it's hard to switch. That out of the way, I'm going to post the takeapartable original file first as an X3-versioned .CPT, just in case there are any others out there (I can proivide backwards-compatible CPTs too, just ask). I do realize that Phtoshop's saturation is incredible, though, and so I'll hear groans until I post a PSD because the CPT supports a lot more merge modes and other things and there's no CPT importer/converter for PS.
So I'll post the PSD, too, but I'd really appreciate it if someone with just ridiculous bandwidth could mirror it somewhere; I won't be able to keep it hosted for more than a few days, maybe a week.
Here's the CPT. Don't download it if you don't have Photo-Paint, there's nothing you can do with it, believe me. There used to be a plugin for 11view or Irfanview that would view them, but I don't see anything like that anymore. It's 13MB, and the PSD is going to be even bigger as PSD compression sucks. For the next few days you'll find that PSD at the same location, same filename except it ends with PSD.

If someone can feel comfortable mirroring that please go ahead and do so, don't contact me first! I don't care!

Finally, here here is a prepared .TGA, uploaded here before I even try it in SL. I'm pretty sure I won't like the results in-world but since I'm not trying to make money here maybe someone can crop it up with sliders if it doesn't work and use it under a jacket or something.
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EDIT: Ha ha I just realized after I got done uploading everything that I'd forgotten to cut out the collar area/neckhole in the front and thus make it a proper tanktop. I guess I didn't think this through very well, maybe I can make that dip with the sliders, more likely I'll have to re-do everything. I'm such a ditz. But I can't do it all right now; so take them as they are and forgive my gross oversight.
What did I do wrong other than that, how can I fix it?

Excuse me? You've just started? How did you make those realistic holes! I'm sure I could make them with hours of fiddling but I'm pretty sure you'll have a clever technique!?

Anyway, as a beginner myself I think you are gonna go far! Your Photoshop skills are obviously quite advanced so don't expect any advice from me. I'm just jealous! I will be trying it on later when I get home (my college is a bit backward and doesn't have Second Life on the computers yet... Tut!) , and maybe picking up a few tips myself

Cat x

Beautiful job on the alpha on that!

Well, I imported it and quickly learned what I'd done wrong. The back side, since I sourced it from a photo, retains a much more realistic continuity of gauzy threadbare transparency than the front, which I cobbled together using a few different copies of a vector trace of the shape of the back, to each of which I applied different techniques to simulate the aforementioned threadbare gauziness. After I flattened everything out I can see where I forgot to even out the differences in these overlapping objects and how dense it appears compared to the back.

The sleevelessness turned out not to be a huge problem, as I could mangle it sufficiently with sliders. The fact that I forgot to cut the neck on the front side was a problem, because that can't be faked with sliders. I never intended to do edges as I wanted to doctor the length in-world, but another thing I learned with this experiment is that you should really make at least a bottom edge for the front - that straight-across look is awful when the rest of the design is more contoured to fit.

Now suppose I wanted to make the sleeves work without having to fake it with sliders - what do I need to do, how to go about lining them up?

You can use the pen tool to get an even curve for the dip in the neck line, that works fine and is a great help for aligning back to front since you can place the line exact on the same square spot in the mesh. You will discover though that the straps will bleed round the neck specially if you have a big avi.
The tank you have is great, but i suggest make the folds more apparent as it will look flat otherwise in world.

Great work!

Chance

try searching for custom brushes on the net I am sure there must be some that make holes

not sure if this is how they did it, but it is an option

Good idea. Obsidian Dawnhas some mesh-like brushes in her Micro Brushes section that could make the base texture, then just take out the areas where you want the holes or shredded areas manually if you can't find any brushes that can do this.

Great shirt BTW. The texture is very interesting and well done.

~Ari

Well, making micro-meshes for fabrics and the like is really fairly simple, it's the discovering ways of doing everything smoothly that's more challenging. I find it much easier to take a couple copies of a fully-opaque version of the object to be dealt with, in this case the from-vector-trace object in the file, and use a meshing/screen transparency plugin like the excellent Cybia's free Screenworks to run them through with holes at relatively low levels, maybe 40-50% at most, and then repeat the process on another identical copy using a different screen and power. Then you can go in with a very soft sort of eraser with some rubout effects and wipe away at the objects interchangeably around areas of stretch around the breats and shoulders or where you have the fabric rubbed down. Then you can just tweak the transparency of those objects ("layers" to you Adobe folks) and get a live preview of how they're going to mesh. When I was making my experiment file I should have remembered to kill off the template backgrounds (which are largely black or run through with shading dimension lines) so I could see that blockiness where the twain have met, but hell, if I forgot to cut a neck I wasn't in any shape to be remembering the basics :>

I'm pleasantly surprised you folks like it, I'm going to tweak it, add the neckline, and go about affixing various other logos to it and do up a tintable version, it looks great on my av from the back (the sides and front not so much) as I get more time to relax and work with it, fix the bottom edgeness too, and draw in some seams.

When I go to put in these seams, where on the shoulder bit should I put them? I remember hearing horror stories about that part of the av's mapping and people having a hell of a time getting those tanktop seams to work right. I'm also having the damnedest time figuring out a repeatable methid for manufacturing the ribbed/piped/ringer-style fabrics used so universally on garments' openings - collars, sleeve ends, and the like. Thus far I've been making them as vectors and then roughing them in individually, but I sense that when _I_ can't find decent photos to work from to steal that particular texture others have encountered the same. I guess I could just scan one of my own, now that I think about it, but scale is going to be an issue. Any advice on those finish bits?