Help with making a bathing suit.

I have been having some trouble with creating a bathing suit. I have the templates downloaded and I cannot figure out how to create one lol. I also have the texture I just can't figure it out, I've read tons of tutorials too. Also, something about filling in the remaining space with black and making it a channel...? What if the bathing suit is black? won't it all be swallowed up? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks a bunch!

Maeve


Very sorry for the mispost.

Maeve,

What program are you using? I can offer more specific tips if I know.

In general terms, the Alpha channel exists separately from the picture, it's a black and white "cutout" of your outfit. Anyplace where the alpha channel is white, your texture will show. Anywhere the alpha channel is black, you will see nothing once the pic is uploaded.

There are plenty of tutorials on here that specifically explain alpha channels.

But lemme know what prog you are using and I will try to help.

I am using Adobe Photoshop Elements, which is basically photoshop. I sort of understand the channel, it's like making clothes for sims with the white part being the shape of the clothes and the black being the extra space but I don't understand if my bathing suit is black wont the whole thing be black and I won't be able to see where the bathing suit is and where the channel is?

I'm not sure that PS Elements supports alpha channels. I might be wrong about that though. You might want to download GIMP and use that to create your alpha channel as a final step. Maybe someone else who uses Elements can chime in. I recommend searching PS Element's help file for "alpha channel" and see what it says.

Ok thanks, what is GIMP? I'm not sure, is it a graphics program or a channel program or?

First, to answer the PSE question, no, PSE does not support Alpha Channels. Saying "PSE is basically Photoshop" is like saying Wordpad is basically MS Word, which it certainly isn't. It's not that PSE is bad or anything; it's just that it's meant for certain things, and texturing for 3D is not one of them. What it is intended to be is an affordable solution for amateur digital photographers who want to do simple things like fix red-eye, add text to a photo, clean up ugly photos, etc. That's it. It's really not powerful enough for SL purposes.

Second, to address the "what if my bathing suit is black" question, it seems you're not yet understanding what channels actually do. Let me explain. If you open an image and look at your Channels Pallet in PSE, you'll see 3 channels, one each for Red, Green, and Blue. Try this: turn off two of the channels so that all you're looking at is one of them (the little eye icon to the left of channel's name is the on/off switch). Notice you're now looking at a grayscale image. You'll find that this is true regardless of what channel you look at. Individually they are made of nothing but black, white, and shades of gray. Now turn all three channels back on, and you'll see the image return to full color.

So, how come the Red channel doesn't look red, the Green channel doesn't look green, and the Blue channel doesn't look blue? Why are they all colorless, black & white images? And how come when you put 3 black & white images together does it somehow become colorized?

Well, the answer is that channels are not really images. They are maps. Think of it kind of a roadmap. On a roadmap, a highway might be represented by a thick black line, a local road by a thin black line, a regional border by a red line, a river by a blue line, etc. We all know that on the real landscape roads don't really look like black lines, that borders aren't really red, and that rivers aren't really blue. That's just the map's symbology. Well, the same is true on a channel. It uses symbology. Just as a ropadmap charts attributes of the landscape, a channel charts attributes of an image. Also, just as there are different types of maps like roadmaps, relief maps, weather maps, etc., there are different types of channels like color channels, transparency channels (called alpha channels), shinyness channels (usually called specular channels), and many more.

Since you're using PSE, all you can see right now happen to be color channels, but there are lots more types. They all operate on the same principle though. The standard is that white represents maximum, black represents minimum, and shades of gray represent anything inbetween. So, let's say for example you're looking at the Red Channel in your PSE image. Any pixel in the channel that is colored 100% white will tell the image that that particular pixel needs to have the maximum possible amount of red in it. Any pixel in the channel that is colored black will tell the image that that pixel should have no red in it all. When you put all 3 color channels together, the image has all the data for how much red, green, and blue to put in each pixel, and the result is a full-color picture.

So how does this relate to transparency? Simple. Just as color channels use values of black and white to represent amounts of color, alpha channels use values of black and white to represent amounts of opacity. Any pixel in the channel that is colred white tells the image that that particular pixe should have 100% opacity. Any pixel in the channel that is colored black tells the image that that particular pixel shoult have zero opacity, meaning it will be completely transparent. Any pixel that is gray in the channel tells the image that that pixel should be semi-transparent. The darker the gray, the more transperent.

So, to finally answer your question about making a black bathing suit, the fact that it appears black in color has nothing to do with whether or not it would appear black in the alpha channel. Again, go back to the map concept. If something in the image is colored black, it is only because the data in the color channels instructs the image to make it black. The color channels, and only the color channels, are responsible for determining the color of the image. The Alpha Channel, however, is not responsible for color data in the image, so it couldn't care less whwther the bathing suit is colored black, white, pink or purple. All the Alpha Channel cares about is transparency. If you want the bathing suit to be opaque, it has to be pure white in the alpha channel, regardless of what it might look like in any of the color channels. If you want the area around the bathing suit to be transparent, that area has to be black in the Alpha Channel, regardless of what it might look like in the other channels. To put it simply, color and transparency have nothing to do with eachother, and neither do the channels that control them. Coloring something white in the Alpha Channel won't make it white in the image; it will just make it visible in the image, no matter what color it is. If the actual color of it is black, it will be black.

The attached picture is the alpha channel for the sims 2. I guess I'm used to that and got confused. That's the shape of the bathing suit and the color is a whole different picture. I thought that for SL the texture goes where the white space in that picture is, and thought that if the bathing suit were black the whole thing would be black lol. I guess I'm still not sure on how to actually make a bathing suit, can someone help me? Do I fill in that space with my texture? Or do SL alpha channels look totally different than my picture?

Picture: http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a171/fouresim/bodystdMatBaseTextureName_alpha.jpg

That's what an alpha channel should look like, but of course that particular one won't fit the SL templates. The concept is the same though. Let me walk you through the steps for creating an alpha channel in Photoshop (all versions other than 7.0). I've pasted the following tutorial into quite a few threads now since this question is soooooo common. Conicidentally, the example I used when I wrote it just so happens to have been a bikini top. Right up your alley.

The tutorial is pretty fool-proof (my girlfriend was able to follow it, and she'd never previously used Photoshop in her life) but if you do have any questions, don't be shy. Ask away.


How to Create an Alpha Channel in Photoshop
Let's stick with the example of a bikini top.

1. On the Layers Palette turn off all layers except for the layer that has your bikini on it. (To turn a layer off, click the eyeball symbol to the left of its name.)

2. If the bikini layer has any white space around the bikini itself, use the eraser to get rid of the white space. It's very important at this stage that the bikini be on its own layer with nothing else on it.

3. On the Layers Palette, ctrl-click the thumbnail for the layer with the bikini on it. (The thumbnail is the little picture of the layer directly to the left of the layer's name.) This will select everything on the layer. You should see the "marching ants" outlining your bikini now.

4. On the Layers Palette, click the tab that says Channels to switch it to the Channels Palette. What you should see listed here are the three primary channels for your image, labled, "Red", "Green", & "Blue", and a master channel for the three, labelled "RGB". If you see any other channels besides those four, delete them now.

5. In the lower right corner of the Palette Window, locate the button that looks like a square sticker being peeled from its backing. It's the second one from the right. It's immediately to the left of the one that looks like a trash can. It says "New Channel" when you hover your mouse over it. Click it.

6. You should now see a new layer called "Alpha 1", which is currently all black. Make sure all channels except for Alpha 1 are turned off and that Alpha 1 is turned on. This should have happened automatically when you created Alpha 1, but if it didn't, do it now.

7. Your canvas should now appear to be solid black with the exception that you should still be able to see the "marching ants" outline of your bikini. Paint everything inside the outline white and leave everything outside of it black.

8. Click "Select" on the menu bar at the top of the screen to pull down the Select Menu. Click "Deselect" and you should see the marching ants disappear.

9. On the Channels Palette, trun the red, green, & blue channels back on, and turn Alpha 1 off. Now click the tab that says layers to switch back to the Layers Palette. Create a new layer by pressing the same button you previously used to create the new channel. (Just as it created a new channel while you were on the Channels Palette, it will create a new layer while you're on the Layers Palette.) Click on the name of this new layer and drag it underneath the layer with the bikini on it. Paint the new layer 50% gray or darker; black is fine. (The gray/black layer will prevent the white halo sometimes caused when Alphas are created the way we just did it. If you don't know what I mean by that, don't worry about. Just make sure to always put a gray/black layer underneath your work and you'll never have to see that white halo.)

10. Save your file as a 32-bit TGA and upload it to SL.

Enjoy.


EDIT: I just remembered you're using Photoshop Elements, not Photoshop. As I said earlier, PSE does not support alpha channels. You're going to need to use a fully functional raster editor like the real Photoshop, Panitshop Pro, or GIMP if you want this to work (of course, the steps would be different for PSP or GIMP). I'd highly recommend upgrading to Photoshop if you can afford it. It's worth every penny. If you don't have the money though, GIMP is completely free at www.gimp.org. and it's almost as good, especially if you get the GIMPshop plugin that makes it look and feel like Photoshop.

Chosen Few, I've seen many posts instructing on how to make Alpha channels before, but none of them were as clear, concise, and complete as yours. Thank you, it now finally makes sense.

Maeve,

The GIMP is a freeware program that works almost exactly like Photoshop. You can find it at http://www.gimp.org , if my memory serves me corectly. Others here might be able to help you with using it, since I don't currently use it.