Desperately seeking a tiling Satin fabric texture...

Hi, all -

So I've spent 3 days trying to create this on my own, and made some progress, but I'm still not getting close enough to what I want. In frustration and desperation, because I really really need to finish this dress, I'm going to go ahead and post this here.

I'm hoping someone can point me to a place to find a Satin cloth texture or texture set. I'm not looking for the wrinkled pile of satin or for satin folds...that I can create myself, once I have a master file. What I need is an undistorted block of Satin material, with sheen and some lighting effects, as if a piece of really rich satin has been laid flat on a table with some light sources nearby. The size should preferably be 512x512, though a little larger is fine as well, and it should be seamlessly tiling, at least from side to side. If possible, I'd like it in black, blue, and white.

If anyone knows where I can find such a texture set, or is interested in creating it and selling it to me full perm (either in .PSD or .TGA format), I'd be so incredibly grateful. As I said, I've gotten sort of close to it, but I'm just not a talented enough artist to manage it. Sadly, light and shadow often defeat me beyond a certain point.

Thanks in advance!

Did you try posting in Products Wanted or visiting some of the large texture stores in world? There are loads of satin textures out there. Postings in this forum are only likely to get you advice on how to make a better texture yourself. Sorry.

The reason you haven't found any flat tiling satin textures is because a flat piece of satin looks rather...well...flat. It's the folds that pick up the light and create the sheen. So really you have to make the sheen on your avatar for it to look realistic. What I do is add the lights and shadows to my avatar template, then use levels and curves to create that satin look. Sioxie Legend did a really good tutorial on how to use levels and curves to do this on her website.

http://secondwavefashion.blogspot.com/2008/01/satin-tutorial-from-sioxie-legend.html

Hi, Betty -- I do realize that it's the folds where most of the shadows and highlights come into play. But when I lay a piece of shiny fabric on a table, if there's a lighting source, I still get some reflection and it it still looks like satin.

I tend to work a bit more like a RL dressmaker than many, I think...I start with fabrics and "cut" them onto my models, and then I draw in the wrinkles and body-shading I want. Not completely realistic I realize, but it tends to be good enough for my purposes. So I'm still looking for a base satin texture to use. Lauren Fox has a moire satin that I saw, but it has a pattern and doesn't look like it tiles, unfortunately. So I will give the tutorial you sent a try; perhaps I can use it on the already-cut fabric to some effect.

I do apologize if I've offended people by posting a request asking if someone had a pointer to an existing texture. Advice on texture creation is always helpful to me; I've read the existing posts on this already, as I do a lot of hand-created work too...it's just that I've about exhausted my resources on this and I've run out of days to spend on it. I figured the most likely place to find someone who might have done a custom satin texture would be here, rather than a general "product wanted" request. I have indeed looked many places for satin but almost all of what I've seen is that swirled or crinkled or folded satin, which is not what I'm looking for.

I thought there was a tilable satin texture in the Linden Library.

No offense taken or intended. I was merely trying to help by pointing you to the sort of places where you're more likely to get a useful answer. This forum is about making textures, not about where to buy them.

Betty is right -- the sheen we associate with satin is largely due to the fact that highlights are more pronounced on folds and wrinkles than they are on, say, cotton. Without folds and wrinkles, there's much less sheen. You can still create some, though. Try this.....

(1) Make a layer above the fabric, filling it with 50% gray, setting its blending mode to Luminosity, and then applying the Render >> fibers filter.

(2) Select the whole canvas and use Edit >> Transform >> warp lightly to give the fiber texture a more gently curved look.

(3) Add some noise and then a fairly heavy Motion Blur at a slight angle to the texture that the Fabric filter created.

(4) Finally, apply a very strong Gaussian blur to soften everything.

The end effect should be a very softly folded fabric with a pleasing sheen.

I have been trying to attach a sample of a satin texture I just created this way, but SL is not cooperating, so you'll have to imagine it for now. If I can get it to upload later, I'll try a new post.

Thanks so much, Rolig -- and Betty as well. This looks to have some interesting possibilities, and much simpler than the track I was on. I'm playing with both now.

No offense taken at all. I apologize if my post came off a bit terse. You can, of course, get some sheen to a RL piece of satin by laying it flat and directing a light source at it, but I'm not sure how you would make it tilable without the repeat being really obvious. Using Rolig's suggestion sounds like a possibility.

I generally work much in the way you do by the sounds of it, but for satin I don't use a "fabric" layer and rely much more on the shadows and highlights to convey that it is satin. Since the actual satin weave is pretty tightly woven and smooth, I haven't found it adds anything to the final outcome to use a "fabric" layer with the projects I have done. I do sometimes use the same technique combined with other fabric textures to convey shiny but not satin.

Exactly, Betty. That's why I do all my "satiny" texture on a layer that's separate from the fabric itself. The stuff I was describing in my previous post really consists of creating a shadow/fold addition layer that you can edit separately from the layer that contains the color and print pattern that is your "fabric."

I wasn't paying attention to the question about tiling earlier, however, so the specific technique I suggested does not create a texture that's easy to tile. Offhand, I can't think of any easy way to meet that requirement. When fabric is being used on an avatar, however, you are correct that it's smarter to work on an addition layer that's in the stack with your avatar template, so that the texture blends well across seams. With that in mind, you could begin with a technique like the one I described, create a satiny texture, and then do judicious burning and dodging to smooth it as necessary at seams.