first clothing item for SL...opinions?

So, I guess you could call me a noob. I've only been on SL for around a week, but was immediately interested in the idea of creating clothes. I read a gazillion tutorials that all said to create something simple the first time, such as a t-shirt. However, I wanted to create a military style vest, so here it is! This is my first time even attempting to create a piece of clothing for SL! I'm pretty impressed with it myself, but any comments or critique would definitely help me out
thanks
chelsey lorefield

well as you've obviously learned straight lines can be difficult to get just right, considering some of the stretch and gather points in the mesh, you might be able to tweak them a bit by comparing the actual body mesh (on the av) to the flat mesh for the clothes template to see where things will end up (make sure you play with the body settings so you know which segments stretch)...

needs definition shading at the edges, and possibly body shading (you can find shadow and hilights in the av files in your SL directory) or if you have the software, many people bake body shadows into the clothes using Maya and the like along with their clothes design and the sl avatar...

not a bad go, especially only a week in.

thanks for the tips
and for the shadows...can i just use the burn tool in photoshop?

Yes it does need some straightening up, but I think it's really good for a week in, I couldn't do it and I've been here a few months, but well done.

If you learn how to make hats let me know, I need one

well i haven't been making clothes for a week
i've just been on SL for a week
i just started making clothes today! XDD
but i'll experiment and see if I can come up with a hat for ya

For a first attempt, it's pretty darn good

One thing I would suggest, though...
When you create something new and have everything right, save your basic design for use as a future template. They come in very handy.

oh wow!
that is a really good idea
thanks

Yes, you could, Chesley. Remember, though, that burn and dodge are destructive tools. Once you have used them, you can't go back easily. Shadows, folds, wrinkles, and similar touches that make your clothing look realistic instead of like paper doll cutouts can be complex. They often take a bit of trial and error, so you need to think carefully about how to drop a trail of virtual breadcrumbs behind yourself, just in case you decide that you don't like the way things are going.

The best advice is to make flagrant use of layers, with a new experiment on each one. For shadows, folds, and whatever, create a new layer somewhere above your fabric layer and fill it with 50% gray. Set the mode to Overlay. Your new layer will seem to disappear, but it's still there. Be sure that it is the active layer, then use your dodge and burn tools on it to create any shading.

You can make as many of these shading layers as you like -- to keep your sanity, remember to use Layer Properties to name each of them -- and leave only the successful ones visible. I often create separate layers for folds on the front and the back of a blouse, bust line shading, incidental wrinkles, shadows under lapels and around buttons, etc.

When you use burn or dodge, you usually want to use a very soft brush unless you are working on a shiny fabric, and you want to set the flow parameter quite low so that you have gentle control. I often start with a rather small diameter brush at the center of a highlight or shadow and then make several overlapping brush strokes with successively larger brushes, so that the affected area feathers out gradually into the background. All of this is MUCH easier with a pen and tablet than with a mouse, BTW.

The only time that the burn and dodge tools are a bit limiting is when your fabric is either mostly white or mostly black. It's tough to burn a shadow on something that is already as black as it's going to get, or a highlight on something that is white. The easy solution is to avoid those extremes, so that your blouses and T-shirts are actually gray.

You will find links to several very good tutorials on shading in the stickies at the top of this forum, and you can discover many more with a bit of Googling.

Have fun!

that was so helpful
-huggles-
thanks

Oh, this is such a cheap, silly trick, but put a drop shadow in on the vest outline layer (possibly above a transparent layer). Play a bit with the settings to make said shading subtle, but it does make it stand out better from the underlying shirt.

oh wow...that is a lot simpler XDD