Any good tips to help me line up wrinkles and textures at seams?

I am trying to figure out how to make the wrinkles and textures line up perfectly where the different sections meet. Especially from the upper to lower body templates. Does anyone have any suggestions that will help me work this out?

It makes it harder when the lower template is opposite the upper with the front being on the right side rather than the left.

At this point my brain is banging on the inside of my skull yelling GET ME OUTTA HERE!!!

Welcome to the world of ridiculously bad UV mapping. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Whoever it was that LL originally contracted to create the avatar model should be shot. It's quite simply one of the worst UV jobs I've ever seen from a "professional". So don't bang your head too hard. Even the experts have difficulty with this.

Anyway, if you have a 3D paint program like Photoshop CS4 Extended, or Deep Paint 3D, it's a lot easier. If you don't, then at the very least, grab SLCP from the sticky at the top of this forum, and use that for quick 3D previewing.

One tip you'll find useful is apply your textures as translucent layers over the opaque templates. That way, when you put them on the model, you can get a much better sense of what needs to be moved where. From there, it mainly boils down to practice, practice, practice. As you get more experience, you develop an instinct for what works.

i am only using PS Elements 7. Yeah, it is a paint for this stuff and i know to do much better stuff i need to get a copy of CS4 or something like that...lol.

At least it has given me an appreciation for why clothing in sl costs so much (pain and suffering allowance...hahahaha)

I really wish Adobe would stop soiling the Photoshop name by slapping it on so many products that have nothing to do with it, Elements included (and don't even get me started on that abysmal photoshop.com). From the title, people get the impression that Photoshop Elements must be some sort of scaled down version of Photoshop. It's not. It's an entirely separate program that just happens to have a few similarities to Photoshop in its GUI layout. Functionally, the difference between the two is night and day.

The use of PS Elements is particularly difficult for the sort of work we're discussing here. The program lacks many of the tools most commonly used in texturing. It's meant for amateur photo editing, not for image creation.

If you can't afford the real Photoshop, I'd recommend Paintshop Pro ($100) or GIMP (free). Ditch PS Elements as soon as you can.

thanks for the info

Trishy -
Get the GIMP. Use layers! The upper and lower templates do NOT have exactly the same scaling at the waistline. If you are going to make it really, really line up with a vertical stripe, for example, you have to scale one of them a tiny amount. Same with the skirt.

And yes, now that I'm trying to make clothes, I hate the mesh "designer". It could have been made a lot easier to work with.

Here's a tip for Photoshop (not PS Elements) users. It's a technique I use to visually calculate resolution discrepancies across seams. "Stroke" is the key to this technique.

1. You need a FAST previewer (for second by second edits).

2. This technique works best on layers that are ALL within a single image. That means head, upper body, and lower body all reside in a single file, otherwise this technique is way too slow to be of use on waist and neck seams.

3. Work with original images that are larger than 512x512, preferably 2048x2048.

I'm matching hair across seams in the following example, but this could be adapted to wrinkles too. The "Stroke" layer effect in Photoshop is used to highlight the edges of layered pixels. This can be done with lines that are drawn on a separate layer, or with layer patches that cover a wider surface area (like the examples below). The neat thing about Stroke is that it responds by variation of highlight strength to opacity. That means one can visually calculate an approximate resolution ratio and blend across seams based on that. Adjustments can be made by erasing the edge of the layer until an evenly gradated highlight is achieved across the seam. The pictures below illustrate the results.

Area 1 (top of head)


Area 2 (forehead)


Preview


Note that the resolution ratio across the seam at this spot is roughly 1 to 2/3. The forehead section was erased with a 100 pixel brush, while the top of the head was erased with a 65 pixel brush. It's not an exact science because the resolution changes depending upon the location. Visual adustments must be made case by case, and eventually one gets a feel for what to expect in certain locations where there are seam problems.

Hide the stroke on the layer to see the end result. It needs a little more blurring on the forehead side to reduce the higher resolution, but the layer patch is virtually invisible.


Another thing this technique is very handy for is locating stray and unwanted pixels. Stroke will highlight each and every one of them.