Newb Wants To Make Clothes!

Greetings! I am among the HUGE list of people in SL who wish to learn how to make clothes. I have PSP 7 and pretty good at it. I have read alot in the forums. I have gone to the texture tut in SL. I have even tried making it to the PSP classes inworld. But I cant seem to get to all of them.

Im blonde in RW and for me to grasp this creative process..I need alittle help Please tell me if there are any tutorials ON THE NET..that gives step by step TUTORIALS for DUMMIES to make something simple on PSP. Ive tried it on the APPEARANCE side in SL. I want to learn on the PSP graphics proggy side. But when I pull up the templates I freeze! And YES Ive read the notes from the templates. Still hasnt sunk in.

So if any of you lovlies know of PSP tutorials on the net..PLEASE let me know. The work thats comming out is fantastic!!

Thanks so much!
Carmilla

Start with Chip Midnight's templates.

http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/SL-Tuts/SLPages/AVUVTemplates.html

I recommend resizing them to 512x512, 1024x1024 is too big to actually use for a texture.

Then make a skin using the templates, put it on, and see which bits of the template correspond to which bits of the avatar.

Go to PSP, and put the colour you want on the appropriate bit of the template. Leave the rest transparent. Upload. Make clothes with the texture. Done.


The trick is not so much the shape, which the UV templates make easy, but the painting... cloth is a hard thing to paint. Shading and highlighting can be difficult, depending on how fussy you are. Matching seams is hard, but Chip's template makes it a lot easier with the colour coding.

And make sure you spell colour right.

I recommend keeping the templates at 1024x1024 and working at that resolution. Resize as a last step before you upload your creation to SL. The reason for working larger than the size of the final texture is that it gives you a bigger margin for effor when you're trying to match details across the seams. Scaling down the finished texture will hide small flaws that would still be visible otherwise.

Carmilla, think of the templates like pieces of wrapping paper that will get cut into several pieces and then wrapped and pasted onto your avatar. The different sections of the template reprsent both the pieces it will be cut into and also exactly how it will wrap around the avatar body. It shows you exactly what part of the texture will end up on what part of the avatar to the exact pixel.

The upper body template for example gets cut into 4 pieces (SL does the cutting and pasting onto the av for you): the front of the torso, the back of the torso, the top of the arm, and the bottom of the arm. Each is represented by a seperate piece of the template represented by an outline. The black areas around these four pieces get discarded and aren't visible once your texture is applied to the avatar.

Inside each of those template pieces is a grid. The black lines represent the actual polygons that make up the avatar model in SL. The finer gray gridlines inside those are there to make it easier for you to match a detail that crosses over from one piece to another, like a fold that starts on the front of the torso and goes around the side to the back of the torso. The seams are color coded so you can tell what connects to what. The two edges that correspond to each side of the seam (for example the side seam of the torso) are represented by one of the outside lines of the two torso template pieces. They have the exact same number of grid lines so when those edges meet on your avatar it appears to be a contiguous grid.

What that allows you to do is know which exact pixels connect together. If your fold hits the side seam at the middle grid line in the 3rd polygon from the bottom, you can find that exact samle spot on the connecting seam. It would also be the middle grid line in the 3rd polygon from the bottom.

Once you understand how the template pieces connect together and how they fit onto the avatar it's just a matter of painting your texture accordingly.

I recommend uploading the templates as textures into SL and using them to make a skin. After uploading them you'd do the following:

Right click on a folder in your inventory and select "new/body part/skin." That will create a new skin in that folder called "new skin." Rename it "template skin" and then double click it to wear it on your avatar. Then right click on your avatar and go into appearance mode. Open the skin tab. To the left of the rows of thumbnail images are three texture boxes labeled head, upper body, and lower body. Drag and drop your uploaded template textures into the appropriate texture boxes. Then hit "save" at the bottom of the appearance window. Now any time you need to see how the template fits onto the avatar you can just put that skin on.
It's also handly to wear under clothing you're working on so if your seams are off you can see exactly what you need to adjust on your texture and how much.

Remove all of your clothing and attachments. Then carefully study how the template is wrapped around your avatar. Compare it to the flat templates. It helps to take screenshots that you can refer to while you're painting. Doing that will help you understand exactly what part of each texture ends up on what part of the avatar.

Hope that helps

Thanks for the info!

Thank you..thank you..you got the BLONDE part down..LOL! I will do this. Thanks sooo much for your input!

...very clear, but is there a guide on how to paint textures using this templates??

There are links that are stickied at the top of this forum, I believe, that have links and things to clothing tutorials and texture tutorials. I recommend looking there if you haven't already. I know I've found a lot of helpful information there.

/109/b5/83674/1.html

Basically, you just add layers to the photoshop file, (I put them below the guides so I can see the guides while creating clothes) and start drawing on the new layers.

If you look through the stickies, there's guides on shading and alpha channels that you'll need knowledge on when creating clothing. Otherwise, the actually painting process is completely up to you and your concepts of what you want to create.

I personally use the Pen Tool in Photoshop to create my outlines. Those lines are much easier to manuiplate than just outlines drawn with the brush tool. I play around with filters to create my "material." I have downloaded material samples from fabric stores, but only for inspiration. I don't use the actual materials in my clothing. Add shading, and create my Alpha channel (which is easy to make from pen tool outlines). Upload and create clothes in world.

Good Luck!

Or use my clothes previewer (stickied in this forum.) Instead of screenshots, you can apply the templates to the figure in slcp and keep that open while you work.

Hi
Okay i have photoshop 7 and i got myself Chips clothing templates, and i am all ready to go. Thing is i have no idea what to do next. Is there a tutorial that takes a simple minded person like me through the process on a step by step basis. I play around trying to figure out how to use the templates, with no joy, which may well be because i am technologically challenged. I simply do not have the first idea how to proceed. If anyone can help with a pointer to a tutorial, or some practical advice i would be very grateful.

Step 1 is to read all of the stickies at the top of this forum. Pay particulkar attention to the stickies on Alpha/Transparency and on File Sizes/Formats, and then start working through the tutorials listed in the Tutorials sticky. You might try Robin Wood's T-shirt tutorial, for example, or any of the great, easy tutorials on Natalia Zelmanov's blog.

Step 2 is to get yourself a good Photoshop book at the local mall and study it carefully.

Step 3 is to seriously consider ungrading from Photoshop 7.0, which has a flaw in the way it handles transparency and will give you headaches sooner or later. At the very least, get the Adobe plug-in that repairs the flaw.

Step 4 is to look for a class in world on making clothing. There are often several a week, listed in the SL Search engine (Search >> Events >> educational).

Step 5 is to just start doing it. Trial and error really works. When you have questions or get stuck, bring them back to this forum.

Have fun! Oh, and when you have a question .... try starting a new thread instead of appending it to a really old one.

Talk about really old... I think this is the absolute winner so far in necrotic threads. 2005!!!

also don't underestimate prefab Photoshop templates, there are tonnes on http://www.xstreetsl.com/index.php

I mean they are limited, and may take a lot of digging to find what you want, but I have used a few here and there. They usually host the PSD files on a restricted server and you just get a password emailed to you, or delivered in whatever boxed item you buy.