Branding?

Alright I am having some serious troubles.. I keep trying various logos and designs because I would like to start branding some of my products, but no matter what, it always looks blurred, smeared or distorted by the time I get it to the right size and in it's proper place...

What could I be doing wrong? Any suggestions?

Open a new file in Photoshop (using sizes like 256*256 or 512*512 works well, but really as long as it's divisible by 2...you're good). Or you can do what I do...make it larger while you work on it...then size it down to 512 or 256 standards.

Create your artwork--then size it no larger than 512 at its longest dimension.

Upload it as a targa (32 bit for transparencies, 24 for normal) or jpg. It should work fine.

*shrugs*

also, just wait a couple minutes if you havent been... maybe the texture is still finishing being computed or whatever, or is lagging a bit. I know alot of my own textures look blurry for a small time, then pop into the sharp definition I wanted.

Often if you try to incorporate a logo directly into the texturing of an object, you don't have enough pixels to work with for the logo to be legible. A better solution is to have the logo be its own texture, placed it on its own prim. That way, it will always be nice and clear. Texture the object itself with no branding, and then invest an extra prim to slap the logo on at the end.

The same thing happens for lots of RL products, btw. Often the brand logo is either a sticker or some other glued-on object attached to the product as a final step. Looking around the room I'm in right now, I see a perfect example, my Hitachi VCR. The word Hitachi is a black and gold piece of plastic, glued on to the upper left corner of the face plate.


It's not just that 256 and 512 happen to "work well", and being divisible by two has nothing to do with it. OpenGL requires that textures be measured in powers of two. For SL specifically, there are eight usable measurements per dimension. They are 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, and 1024. That gives you a total of 64 usable texture sizes (complete list is at /109/e6/150360/1.html). That's it.

Obviously there are hundreds of other numbers between 0 and 1024 that are divisible by two, but if you try to use any of those, SL will just resize them on you at the time of upload. If you try to use something like 400x500, for example, it will get downsized to 256x256, the nearest power of two down for both measurements. The same thing would happen with 401x501. It doesn't make any difference that the first two numbers happened to have been divisible by two and the second two were not. The same downsizing to a power of two will happen to both.

The algorithm that SL uses for the downsizing is not all that good, so the results are not always pretty. What you want to do is presize all your textures to powers of two before attempting to upload. Let Photoshop do any necessary resizing in advance, so that SL never has to bother with it.

umm thanks for the "tips" but not at all in reference to what I am having a problem with, I know how to make textures, thank you.

Branding objects is easy but I am trying to brand clothing, like for example on a pocket or a tag on clothing, something of that nature

Hi there,
i wonder if using a vector shape created or imported from illustrator, or making the logo layer a smart object would help keep it crisp though the resizing of something so tiny when uploading to SL? Just a thought....

hmm I will try a smart object but I thought that was only good for when you resize you can bring it back to its normal state w/o distortion or losing pixels...
I thought about a vector shape which is probably my best bet, but I don't have Illustrator and no clue how or if it is possible in PS... guess I have some research to do hehe thanks for the tips

I found a good tutorial that I am going to try and thought I would share it in case anyone else wants to give it a shot
http://www.myjanee.com/tuts/shapes6/shapes6.htm

Thanks Sensual! I've been working on the same issue (for clothing) and I've noticed the blurring as well.

My only success was to use a separate file/tga, then add it as a layer before saving and after shrinking the clothing item to 512. Wasn't very successful...but it was better then my previous efforts.

~Ari

Well ok so I followed the the tutorial and successfully made vector shapes and it does exactly what I want I need it to do but to get different colors, layers and effects into effect I am at a total loss...
*bangs head on desk*
I give up!
Anyone wanna make me a new brandable logo? LOL

I wouldn't count on vectors to save the day here. While having a vectorized version of your logo does have lots of advantages for all sorts of things, it's not really gonna help you with your clothing. When you output the texture to TGA, everything's gonna get rasterized, and if there aren't enough pixels available in the area you want your logo to be, the logo will end up blurry. It won't matter whether it happened to have started out as vectors or if it had been a raster the whole time; the end result will be the same either way.

Since we're talking clothing here, there are only two choices. The most obvious is to make the logo big enough on each garment that it's legible. That won't always be desirable though, since not every article of clothing will look good with a huge honkin' patch sewn onto it. The other option is to put the logo on an attached prim, which you could then make any size you want, and put it anywhere on the body. Neither solution is ideal in all situations, but those are the choices.

The latter is how I do my Star Trek uniforms. If the Starfleet insignia (or combadge, depending on which generation) is textured onto the shirt, it has to be very low detail and it gets distorted by the body shape. So I put it on an otherwise transparent prim attached to the chest, and then I get to make it at full detail without ever having to worry about distortion.

I do have to deal with IM's from confused newbies every so often who either can't figure out how to put the thing on or else somehow have managed to embed it inside their bodies and don't know how to get it back out, but I think that's just par for the course. We all get those confused IM's for one product or another, right? I'd rather deal with that than have stuff not look as good.

Thanks Chosen for ruining all my hopes LOL
But seriously to brand clothing on a separate prim, that just kinda defeats the purpose since more than likely most people will just decide not to even attach it =/

Sensual, you may also want to play with the positioning of the logo on the clothing item. Don't forget the way the UV mesh often distorts what is on it. I was making a Japanese Mon pattern to place on the left and right breasts of a kimono. Doing it with a transparent background to wear as a jacket layer over the kimono itself. I had to readjust the Mon positioning three times before I found a spot where I could do it in a size big enough to see, but not distort when worn by either a male or a female.

It does *still* look blurry, though. Which is strange, as I designed the texture at 2048 x 2048 and sized it down to 512 x 512 in Photoshop before importing to SL. It should have been nice, crisp, and well anti-aliased.

Ummm...it doesn't sound like you do. lol. Don't get snippy with me...sheesh...I was only trying to help. j/k

Try and keep fiddling with the placement of the logo on the upper-body clothing texture...you'll match it up to where you want it with a little trial and error.

Chosen is right. There's just not that much resolution on a 512 texture. Figure that a decent sized shirt pocket is only about 60x 60 pixel at most. To put that into perspective, the little forum avatars to the left are 50x50 px. So that's the size of your entire canvas. If you were to make something like a Polo logo for that pocket, it would be no more than a tiny smudge of color.

That's not to say you can't design a brand mark that will look good on the avatar, but you need to design it to read well within the limitations. Your brand name in cursive type probably wont work, but an initial or monogram might if the letterform is strong enough. Or a simple symbol. Think of the Nautica logo, which is just 2 swooshy triangles. That could be reduced quite tiny and still read well. I would recommend designing it at the actual finished size so you can see how it will look and adjust it pixel by pixel to ensure it reads well. If your concerned about blurring or jaggies, then keep your shapes at right angles to avoid anitialiasing. it only takes one pixel to draw a perfectly sharp square. Look at the Fendi logo. You could probably make that at 15 pixels without any blurring at all. or the Hilfiger logo which is just red and white squares with blue bands at top and bottom. You could probably make that in 10 square pixels total.

And Ceera and Michael are right about the placement. many of the polygons are very different on the avatar than they look on the flat template, and that can stretch and smear an otherwise perfect logo, so you need to experiment and find the sweet spots that dont distort much.

I appreciate your help if that is what you were doing, but the "shrugs" at the end of your "help" sorta belittled that.
Also I wanted the logo on the back pocket of pants which I guess is not going to work, thanks for your help.

Since when was shrugging a negative thing? It's a playful thing...a positive thing...a helpless thing...it's not belittling at all. *shrugs*

If you want the logo on your back pocket, you'll have to lay your pants texture down in the lower body template...and place your logo on the back pocket. With a little shifting, clever pixel usage, and trial and error...it should work fine.

Thank you Annyka, that is very helpful... I did want to try and avoid making a new logo but I may have to if I want to brand, or also just use SD (for Sensual Designs) since I can change the font sizes fairly easy without much blurryness.. ugh, I have never struggled with anything so much =/

It *should* be possible to put a logo on a back pocket, if you make it big enough. Take a look at the blue jeans that Robin Sojourner sells. Her jeans have a distincrive stiching pattern embroidered on the back pocket. Sort of a loopy "W", reminiscent of but not the same as the old Wrangler brand jeans for ladies. The design takes up most of the back pocket, but looks sharp.