We Need New Templates

Smitty, A simple suggestion to you and all clothing designers. Make a Template from the ones the Lindens gave you upload it as a solid .tga and apply it to your avatars skin save the model and wala you have a template designed specifically to your avatar. Use this template for Line up and model adjustments. Also good for taking study pics of how the mesch lines up.

Recent research has shown you can match all day long to the size of your avatar however that "minimum" bleedover area is there for a reason the Avatar size from one to another is different and it doesnt matter what you do to line up if your avatar is large and a customers is small the stretch and flow of the fabric will adjust to the avatar wearing it.

In addition to that lately I have discarded all old "Line-up" templates as they no longer apply when working with intricate designs that match front to back top to bottom. each one is unique and it has taken me away from the COOKIE cutter templates and design.

Hope this helps some and smitty, thats the best suggestion I can give for you to understand the shirt line up better.

Sincerely, Shadow

As to placement of anatomical items (nipples, bellybutton) ... what i've done to help with that is pull out those alpha .tga files from the secondlife/character folder, and paste them as layers in my template .psd file. They aren't detailed, but they show that placement you are wanting.

my head hurts But I agree, full models of av's would make life so much simpler. I guess I just suck at photoshop.

yes, in a way i also think the templates should stay as they are. this makes clothing creating something that has to be worked at... if it was made really easy.. a lot of good designers would loose out as everyone would be making clothes without any problems.

paying the 10L$ to upload doesnt annoy me... it's the time that some things take to upload really bugs me lol (im inpatient) plus an out of game poser thing should be available. even if another alreay existing program could b used :?

we dont relly need charter modles all we need is models of the cloths like they wore being worn by an aive and thats all in the preview

Sorry to dredge this back up, but did anyone actually come up with a previewer?

There IS a way to get a full size preview of your textures just by using the software tools already provided by the Lindens. It is not perfect, and only provides texture previews as a skin tight representation, but it works for any texture in a single layer mode on any body part. This is not a beginners tutorial, and a lot of explanations are omitted so I can get directly to the point. You should know the following things before you read any further:

1 How to create, save, and run action sets in Photoshop
2 Have a working familiarity with the Second life installation folders (for PC users) and Packets (for Mac users)
3 Have a working knowledge of the 3 avatar body templates (the ones supplied by Linden Labs in their "download' section)
4 Know your file formats, especially TGA 24 and 32 bit

How can you preview a skin, clothing item, tattoo, or any other texture on a full size Avatar, in-world, without having to upload (not the tiny window located in the file preview window in the upload dialog)?

Here's how

1) Open the texture you want to test in Photoshop (this will preferably be a clothing item or other texture that maps to one of the 3 Linden supplied templates for the various body sections)

2) Create a PS action set to save the texture to it's corresponding color layer in the SL install (for PC and Mac users this is one of 3 files, either head_color.tga, upperbody_color.tga, or lowerbody_color.tga). The action should include New File, Copy Merged, Resize, and the appropriate directory path if you are running the action on a layered master file. MAKE BACKUPS OF THE ORIGINAL SL CHARACTER FILES BEFORE YOU OVERWRITE THEM!!

3) Create duplicate actions for the other 2 color layers (you can run these actions on any texture you like as long as they end up as 512x512 textures on the color layers)

4) After you have tested all 3 actions in the set for each color layer, open SL in a split screen mode with PS, so you can switch between applications on the fly. Run your Action(s) on the appropriate color layers.

5) Enter Appearance mode to preview your texture on your full size Avatar.

6) Exit Appearance mode (WITHOUT SAVING) to return to normal.

7) Repeat steps 5 and 6 (after texture updates) as many times as needed.

With this method you can edit and preview skins, clothing items, tattoos, or any other textures on a full size Avatar, in-world, without having to upload, within a matter of seconds!!

I hope some of you find this method usefull. It has saved me countless hours of frustration, not to mention a lot of L$!!!

It's not offline totally..but sir you get yourself a cookie for that nifty trick.

True, it would simply be nice to have a way to identify the line-up points based on the existing proportions in the upper body template. For me it is always a swag, and I end up having to re-do a lot of uploads because my texture doesn't line up properly. *sigh*

OK, maybe this is a dead thread but.. I have to totally and absolutely disagree with you Alan, I think it's crazy to believe that making tools hard to use inspires creativity at all or is somehow a good thing.

Wouldn't it be better if you spent less time having to worry about fiddly technical things and more time trying out new design ideas? Why would it be so awful if everyone was making clothes with no problems? SL should be as accessible as possible and at the moment it is a long, long way from being that way. Besides, if the good designers are really good and not just the ones with the time and patience to fiddle on with an awkward process then surely their stuff will still be more creative and desireable than the rest?

The reason the templates for the upper body are different sizes front to back is that the avatar mesh is the same.
This creates a more realistic avatar, having a smaller back than front.

I have made clothing for a long time in SL and shiver when I think of the nightmare Tip mentioned that last time they changed the templates. We had people who had bought items months before demanding that we fix the crotches. Most designers did for those that sent them a personal request and the clothing item back for a given time. We were happy to do it as a courtesy for those that requested. But I know I would not want to do it again.

With practice and attention to detail you get a feel for the line up. I used the templates as a full body tattoo as Shad meantioned to study the linup and the way the texture stretches on the avatar.

A great tool provided by Chip Midnight in an earlier thread is available here.

/109/1c/26836/1.html

I dont know if I ever thanked you properly Chip, but hats off to you for sharing your hard work. It has helped me tremendously. I thought my "enhanced" templates I used were great till I decided to try yours one day. I now use yours all the time. Thank you !

P

I think it was Cristiano Midnight who posted enhanced templates somewhere... with lined up seams..

Marker,

It was Chip Midnight who posted the templates.

I provided the name and a link to the thread in the post before yours.

P

/109/1c/26836/1.html

Chip's templates have helped me, immensely. Thanks, Chip!

One thing to keep in mind. If you use drag and drop to add the JPG to a PSD for templating purposes, note that the image size and resolution may not be correct. Be sure the resolution is set to 150 and the image size is set to 512 x 512. I didn't do this at first, and it had some strange effects on my clothing textures.

Also, Namssor Daguerre - You rock! I wish I had come back to this thread, sooner! This will help immensely with my skinning projects. Thank you!

Thanks Pahoa. I'm glad to hear the hi rez ones are working out well for people! Thanks for the kind words. You too Paolo

And Namssor, that tip absolutely rocks! You are the undisputed master of the character folder files.

Edit: Almost forgot... Paolo, those templates are 1024x1024 in order to keep the template lines nice and sharp. I recommend using them at full size. When you're finished with the texture and ready to upload to SL, resize to 512x512. You don't need to worry about resolution settings (dpi). That only applies to printing an image. The raw pixel dimensions are all you need to pay attention to. Hope that helps.

Great, thanks for the clarification! It was strange, though. I was creating a tank top using the upper body template. At 512 x 512 / 72 res, the SL rendered edges were horribly disfigured (i.e., the tank top straps and arm holes looked frayed.) When I re-set the resolution to 150, that problem disappeared. No clue as to why! Anyway, thanks again.

This is a GOD SEND! Thanks so much for the info.

i'll think u find they made the templates a pain in the ass to make more money off you - sad but true - they dont work in these conditions so why should we? cos they want the money... peace

Nipples set too high up on avvie chest = teh funny!

Heya Namssor - After the login hell of the past few days, I finally got in-world last night to try this out. I followed your steps for head_color.tga. (In this case, I was working on a facial texture.) But, no matter what I did, the edited texture would not appear on my avatar when in Appearance mode. I did exit and re-enter appearance mode, as instructed. With that in mind, would you mind answering a couple more questions?

1. Your instructions mentioned following this process for all three color textures. Do I have to edit all three color files for this preview process to work -- even if only testing one of the color files? (In this case, one of the things I need to do is fine-tune the skin pigmentation.)

2. I got lazy after several tries, and started saving a copy-merged version of the file directly over the head_color.tga file. Maybe I missed a key point, but aren't you just temporarily overwriting the default color file (to later be restored from back-up)? It didn't seem to matter whether or not I used the automated action. In either case, I could open the tga file to display the merged image.

I really appreciate it! I'm sure there is just a minor point of protocol missing with my attempts. Just can't figure out where it's breaking.

Well, I'm not him but I'll try to help.

When you go into appearance mode you have to go to skin and change the textures to default by left clicking on them (the default option is there). When you are done, make sure you close and DO NOT SAVE the changes. To see any changes you make after that, you need to make sure you exit appearance mode and the re-enter it after you have saved it in your PS, PSP, GIMP, etc.

Also, make sure you save backups of the original files.

Hope this helps.

Doh! /me so goofy! I kept doing exactly that, but instead of leaving the appearance window open, I would immediately close it, expecting the modified texture to display afterwards.

So, now I get it. The modifications only appear while the appearance window is open.



Thank you!

Sorry for not checking back to this post in a while. Sounds like you solved the issue though

Here's a few other minor notes to answer the other questions you brought up:

Yes you can overwrite just one of the textures instead of all three and still preview. I simply meant that you should create actions for all 3 color layers since each action will save to a different file. The action is the real time saver here, and when you repeat the process 100-200 times the manual way you discover your brain starts to turn to mush. This opens the door for mistakes and you will eventually (and this WILL happen) miss a step in the process and overwrite a critical file you didn't intend to. I speak from experience on that

Best practice is to follow these steps

1. Edit the texture(s)
2. Run the action(s) associated with the texture(s) you wish to overwrite
3. Enter Appearance
4. View the texture(s)
5. Exit Appearance (DO NOT SAVE)
6. Repeat 1-5 as needed on one or more of the 3 body color textures

Also, something I've found myself doing on a few occasions, becuase I get too anxious, is skipping step 5 above. If this happens, it kills the update to the server, and you have to log back into SL to reset it. In other words, don't forget to exit Appearance for each texture update!

For further notes on some of the quirky things that happen when you start tweaking the character files while Live in SL, read the Troubleshooting section in my Skins Manual (available for all at Koss 98,5)

I also posted a nifty little uninstaller that resets all the *.tga files in the character folder back to thier LL default. This eliminates the need to back up all those files. This (PC only) executable contains them all!! You can find the file here:

/109/d6/27817/1.html