Alias Sketchbook

Just out of curiosity, has any one used Alias Sketchbook to make clothing? I'm aware it's not quite as powerful as Photoshop but I find it's interface more user friendly when I'm working on my Tablet PC. I've done 2D figure drawing and character design for as long as I can remember (I won't say how long because that might give away my age *giggles*) and I've used Sketchbook extensively to digitaly paint my pencile drawings. I guess it's just what I'm comfortable with.

Any suggestions or advice will be most appreciated!

Kisses,
Jasmine

Okay, I'll take that as a no. Oh well, Photoshop really isn't tablet friendly...

I agree with you that Sketchbook's simple interface is very intuitive and easy to understand, and that enables you to create good drawings very quickly with it. The name pretty much says it all. It's a sketch book. No bells, no whistles, no collecting $200 when you pass go, just a sketchbook.

Unfortunately, it's not really suited for SL clothing as a stand-alone solution. While it can work for drawing and painting the clothes, it has no TGA support whatsoever, and it can't handle transparency, which means it can't save in a format SL can use.

That having been said, as an artist, I can certainly understand Sketchbook's appeal since, as I said, it can produce great looking drawings in record time. So, if you want to use it, just understand that it can't be used alone. It will have to be used in conjunction with a more powerful graphics program like Photoshop. Also realize that while the sketchbook portion of your workflow will give you certain drawing advantages, it will severly limits you in other ways, and that setup is going to a pain each and every time. In my opinion, the tradeoff isn't worth it, but if you want to give it a whirl, here's what I'd suggest:

First, use Photoshop to save copies of the SL templates as TIFF's so that they can be opened in Sketchbook. Unfortunately, Sketchbook won't be able to open them with layers preserved (at least, I've never found a way to get it to do it) so if you want to use any of the overlays, the UV map, etc., you'll have to manually cut & paste them from Photoshop into Sketchbook and then adjust them inside Sketchbook for proper transparency and placement.

Sketchbook has a nasty habit of ignoring canvas size, source opacity, and source placement when it pastes. It tries to center everything, which means your pasted layers are going to be offset. You can combat this by first drawing a frame in Photoshop around each layer layer you want to paste so that Sketchbook will understand where the edges are. You'll still have to adjust for opacity inside Sketchbook though. There's no way around that that I've found.

Once you've got the layers in place, do your artwork in Sketchbook, and then save out as a PSD. Open the PSD in Photoshop, create the alpha channel for transparency, and save out as 32 bit TGA.

If all that is too much work, and my opinion is that it is, you might want to try Deep Paint as an alternative to Sketchbook. It's free from Right Hemisphere, and it serves either as a stand-alone app or as a plugin for Photoshop. It can give you the same natural drawing feel that Sketchbook does. Its interface is nowhere near as streamlined as Sketchbook's, but frankly you won't find an interface in any powerful program that is. With all due respect to Alias and their top notch GUI designers, the biggest reason Sketchbook's interface is so simple and easy is because the program doesn't have a lot of options or features. Any program that can do more inherently has to have a more complicated interface.

Your comment here appeared while I was writing my reply. I have two responses to this. First, please wait more than 3 hours before you decide nobody's answering you. Give it at least a day or two. Lots of us here volunteer time here every day ansering questions. We can't get to them all at once.

Second, Photoshop isn't tablet friendly? Are you kidding? It's got more built-in tablet support than probably any program on the market. Ever brush, every setting, practically every attribute for every tool can be mapped to pen pressure, tilt, angle, etc. Photoshop + tablet = powerful artist. Photoshop + tablet PC or Cintique = hallowed conqueror of the rasterized universe.

Yes, more power always equals more complexity. I perhaps wouldn't have such an issue with Paintshop if I was rich and could afford a 14" tablet... oh well, I suppose I can pull out the digitizer again and attach it to my desktop. I just REALLY like drawing on my tablet. *sighs and pouts*

First, I'm sorry if I seemed impatient. I'm very new and I had no idea how often the boards are monitored. I'm a self taught artist and self taught digital artist so my skill at Photoshop is no where near that of a professional or even some one who's taken a course in it. So, that being said, I have found that when I'm workin on my tablet PC that, if I open all the menus that I need active, I have no screen area to work on.

Eitherway it's all moot. I understand just how powerful Photoshop is, I have it and a friend of mine has used it professonaly ( he worked on part of Scooby Doo and Godzila ) but I really don't have the necessary skills to use it effectively. Again, that being said, I can create subtle shading and tones with a .05 mechanical pencile that impress and amaze professional artists.

So it's all in what we know and I don't know Photoshop. Time to learn I guess.

Hi Jesamine, and welcome to the forums!

Umm, they aren't really monitored at all. In other words, there's not a staff of people hired by the Lindens to answer questions here. All you're getting is answers from regular people, who try to help in their free time.

Some of us take almost three hours to compose, test, and re-compose answers to complex questions! So yeah, don't be surprised if you wind up waiting a day or two for some answers. Or even longer.

All of which being said... I'm self-taught too, but umm... about your comment that you don't have enough screen real estate to open all the menus you need active in Photoshop.

You don't need to have any menus active to work in Photoshop. You can switch between tools from the keyboard, and clicking the right mouse button (or the equivalent switch on your pen,) will open contextual menus that let you do the most common tasks for each tool.

For instance, you get the Brush by tapping b. You can make it smaller on the fly by tapping the [ key, and larger by tapping ]. You increase or decrease softness by adding the Shift key. (Shift+[, or Shift+]). You step through brushes in the palette by using the comma and period keys, and so on. It's all there, in Photoshop Help.

If you do want the menus, tap the Tab key, and you can have them. Tap it again, and they all go away. You don't ever need to have them out unless you are actually using them!

Hope this helps.