Please share

I'm fairly new to SL and have been looking for things that I could do to keep myself amused. I looked at building and scripting (not my thing) and then explored textiles and thought it would be nice to make clothing. I have been reading and understand the basic concept and feel with a little practice I could be making clothing. I am well versed in Photoshop so its not that much of a stretch to create clothing for SL. Here is my questions.

1) Would anybody be willing to send me via email a layered photoshop file of a shirt that they made. Preferably one that has contour and fabric shadows in it. I need some visual references. I will only look at it. I will not copy or transfer any part of it. When I'm done looking at it I will throw it out. If interested please contact me at spamaholic at earthlink dot net. Thanks

2) Can anybody suggest and SL group or web forum that focuses specifically on clothing design in which a beginner would be welcome.

Input is welcome,
El Quasimodo

Hi, a good place to start is

http://secondlife.com/downloads/templates.php

Hi El. Welcome to SL.

The first thing I have to say is no offense, but I would never ever send an E-mail to an address called "spamaholic". I'd love to assume the best, but to me that sounds a bit too much like something one might use to collect return addresses for nafarious purposes. If it's all legit, then I'll say it's a funny and amusing name, but for the sake of putting people at ease, you might want to think about using a different address.

In any case, there's no need to use E-mail. PSD's can be attached right on this board.

As for your second question, regarding a "web forum that focuses specifically on clothing design in which a beginner would be welcome," you're looking at it. Several of us volunteer time here every day helping people learn to master Photoshop and the art of making clothing for SL. You'll find all levels here from complete novices to experts, and all are welcome.

To get started with making clothes, I'd recommend you first do what Joy said, which is to go to the downloads page. Grab the Template Collection and read the instructions that come with it, a PDF entitled "Fashion Design: Using Templates." Since you're already Photoshop savvy, you should ahve no trouble following it, but if there's anything you're unclear on, by all means come right back here and ask.

You'll find that the templates come with several sample garments so you can see how various articals of clothing must be shaped to fit and what their associated alphas look like.

Thank you for the recommendation and advice about my email address. No offense taken Spamaholic is my junk email. Many people have one of these to protect their primary email from spam. But you are right, so I have created an email for my AV. It is elquasimodo at earthlink dot net.

I have read through Robin Sojourner tuts (thank you Robin!) and downloaded several different UV maps from different sources. All of the information seems quite strait forward. How to create clothing for AVs is not where I'm having difficulties but rather technique. This is why I'm hoping someone will send me an actual shirt that they have made that included contour and fabric shadowing so that I may get a sense of how clothing is fabricated.

All of my Photoshop experience has to do with retouching, montage and editing of already existing photographs (I'm a photographer) so making photoshop illustration is new to me.

Anybody who is willing to share can send their PSD to me can send it to my AV email address at elquasimodo at earthlink dot net.

Thank you,
El Quasimodo

Chip Midnight's templates are incredibly useful if you haven't got them yet:
/109/72/40762/1.html

El Quasimodo, there are examples in the templates from the download page if that helps you any. I'm just getting started doing clothes myself, so I don't really have anything to share yet

I did a bit of research online and found a few tutorials that explain the basics of making clothing in Photoshop. This is similar to the type of information I'm looking for although I would still love to see another SLrs process I hope these links will be useful to others.

Drazenka Kimpel's techniques for creating realistic fabric:
http://www.earthcurves.com/tutorials/shirt_tute_0.htm

Will Kramer's techniques for creating realistic fabric:
http://www.earthcurves.com/tutorials/shirt_tute_0.htm

Fur, Hair and Clothing tutorials:
http://www.fignations.com/jelisa/tutorials/fur_and_hair.html

El Quasimodo

I read through this, and while Im still very inexperienced myself I wanted to pose a thought to you..

Fashion is, without a doubt, a huge part of SL. The ammount of designers, modeling companies, and people looking to find the perfect outfit to suit thier AV are mind boggeling.

One big part of the picture that Ive seen overlooked though, are the people behind the camera, so to speak. You mentioned earlier in the post that most of your PSP experience is in retouching and editing pallets and pictures, have you concidered being an SL photographer?

I spoke with one the other day, and looked at thier price sheet, and it looked to me as if theres a lot of money in it, and more options then one would think. Not only would modeling and advertising companies come to you looking for pictures to attract customers to thier stores, and make thier models look the very best in thier new wears, but those looking to break into the modeling buisness would come to you looking for good photos to put together a portfolio to sell themselves better.

From what I understand this process is a deal easier than creating a new design from scratch, especially if touching up and modifying existing images is something your already experienced in.

Just a passing thought, not trying to sell you off on anything. And it sounds like you had found a lot of the info you were looking for here, and Im sure I'll use the resources you posted as I become more experienced myself.

slap me if I sound stupid

No offence but its a lot easier to put ur address in like this

[email]name@mailname.com[/email]

although those are good sites for clothes they wont really work that well in sl if you can see what i meen

Ummm, Silent, but if you do that, it can be harvested. The way that El wrote it out, people can read it, but spider bots can't.

And you are very welcome, El!

I'm working on a series of tuts that will explain how I do clothing, but I keep getting distracted by actually doing it. Besides, I keep learning new tricks while I work. Hopefully it won't be too much longer before I start to post them, though.

Although I have not yet made clothing successfully, I think that these examples show the drawing skills that are needed for clothing. I've noticed that most of the decent clothing in SL has shadowing and highlights for both body contour and fabric. This is why I thought these tuts were interesting. They showed the basic process of how to make clothing with "depth" instead of just a scanned piece of fabric placed in the right place on a uv map. Of course once you have the clothing created you still have to deal with the mask/Alpha Channel

El

I'm glad to here that. Thank you for posting your tuts online and in SL.

El