Im New At Making.....Tanks & Other Details.

Hello,
I am new at making tank tops in Second Life, i am not new to making t-shirts and jeans that stuff comes pretty easy for me, but it took me along time to learn how to do them now i am having trouble cutting out a tank top... i am just kinda of starting at with this and not quite sure how to do like a girls easy tank top....
-also Fabric Textures? Where do you get them when your'e texturing something you dont own in your closet?

- if you have any tutuorials, videos or help that'd be great!

-thanks
alex

I initially skipped looking at this topic, because my thought was "miliraty heavy equipment", and not clothes.

The tricky part with either a tank top or a halter top is getting the straps right. The UV mapping in the shoulders of the avatar is a bit strange, and the shoulders themselves have a nasty tendancy to move and overlap widely-spaced straps.

I'll recommend going through Robin Sojourner's texturing tutorial, in the Livingtree sim, and pay special attention to the "UV Suit" clothing items that she has in her lessons. These give you a mapped surface on the avatar that you can use to determine where on the clothing templates your edges need to be.

Put on an average sized avatar, like one of the free defaults frm the Library, and then wear the UV Suit clothes items. You may even want to use the UV patern as a skin for a special-purlose avatar, so you can wear underwear-layer items over that grid. Then layer a clothing item that works on top of that skin, and see where that designer placed their edges, and how it changes the mapping as you move. Compare several possible tank tops, until you determine which areas of the clothing template give you the look you want, with the least distortion.

Good luck!

also practice using your pen tool, use it a lot, bezier curves ftw!

Instead of "getting" them, how about making them? As a budding texture artist, the ability to simulate all kinds of different materials is one of the most crucial skills you can develop.

Without going into too much detail, as I'm a little pressed for time right now, I'd suggest you spend some time getting to know the following functions (assuming you're using Photoshop). No particular order:

1. The Burn & Dodge tools are your friends for simulating wrinkles.

2. A little bit of noise goes a long way. You'll find that the Noise filter is the first step in creating almost all manner of fabrics (as well as tons and tons of other materials).

3. Experiment with all filters to learn what they do, and especially how they interact with each other. Just to name a few off the top of my head, you'll find that Texturizer, Crosshatch, Fibers, and Water Paper, all can be very useful for simulating very basic fabrics very quickly.

4. Layer bending effects work wonders. A little bit of beveling, inner shadow, and drop shadow, applied to a small copied section of a larger fabric layer, can create a convincing pocket or seam, in just a few clicks.

5. Don't forget about good old fashioned hand painting. Often there's no substitute for it. If you don't own a Wacom tablet, get one. It will make your work a thousand times easier.

That's it for now, since I have to run. If you've got a question on how to make a specific kind of fabric, ask away.

In the mean time, to get you thinking along the right lines, here's a really simple tutorial I posted a while back, for making denim: /109/d8/81099/1.html#post834414.

And here's another for making wool: /109/38/211510/1.html#post1683531

I thought I'd posted a few other fabric tutorials over the years, which might be more tank-top-appropriate, but I couldn't find them. Those two will hopefully get the gears turning in your head for what's possible with just a few clicks, though. Happy texturing.

Here is my trick for camisoles (also works for collared shirts), make the collars and bands as a separate layer. For the collar/straps, zoom in at 200% so you can see the edges of the mesh really well. I make the collars and straps grey, and the background layer (the main shirt) hot pink and then paint them over (or colorize them in the case of the collar/straps) near the end of the process.

An easy way to do collars/straps is make them contrast with your material. If you do nothing else, this can look lovely.

To make patterned fabric, you can use a plain background and paint on it with a piece of clip art in the form of a brush. This keeps the pattern away from the solid edges of the background and gives a crisp and seamless effect.

Alternately, you can make two pieces of background, one is seamless. It is the background all over the shirt. The other piece of background is high definition. Paste or brush it in at the center of the mesh on a separate layer. This gives you pattern all over the shirt (except the collar/straps) and high definition in the center.

As for making fabric effects, I use screen and multiply. I've also found making an embossed layer over the flat layer and setting the embossed layer to value makes lovely lumps and bumps and even pleats.

I've also embossed collar and strap layers to get piping, crinkles, and even a kind of scrunchy trim that looks something like lace.