Making a Jacket

Can someone direct me to good instructions on this. I am confusted because you can make one just using the shirt template, or adding a skirt, which I don't know how to match up the lines. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Making clothes is not the easiest thing in the world. For starters, you need good skill with graphics tools such as Photoshop or the GIMP (or others).

Once you jump that hurdle, search these forums for the links to the clothing templates, and download them. Then, google for the clothing tutorials. There are two or three good ones on web sites, created by users who were beginners just like you are today.

Basically, you use a graphics program (outside of SL) to place photographs or drawings of clothing on the templates. Yes, getting them to line up is tricky. Once you have that, you upload it and it becomes a shirt, or a jacket, or whatever.

Good luck.

I am using Paint Shop Pro 9. My question is that if I upload a texture for a Jacket, and do nothing to the jacket, the jacket looks fine. If, I modify the Upper Template, other than putting a texture on it, it turns out weird, like the top right front being on the back lower part of Jacket.

I am assuming, that a skirt must be made for the lower part of the jacket, to modify the Jacket such as adding text, other textures, etc etc.

If this is the case, I am wondering how to align the skirt, with the upper template. Hope I made myself more clear. Sorry.

Brooke, if you just use the Linden supplied templates then matching details across the waist seam between and upper and lower body texture, or an upper body and skirt texture, is a difficult thing indeed. The LL templates give you no points of reference for matching those details. If you check the sticky template thread at the top of this forum you'll find links to templates by myself and Robin Sojourner than make this task a bit easier. The alternate templates have grids and other visual aids that give you match points to use located every few pixels along the seams. For example let's say you are trying to place a fold that crosses the waist seam from upper to lower body. If the left side of the fold hits the waist seam of the upper body at the third grid point from the left inside the 2nd major grid square from the right then you'll also want the left side of the fold to hit the third grid point from the left inside the 2nd major grid square from the right on the lower body waist seam.

I will try that, hugs.

Hi Brooke!

It looks to me like you aren't using the correct "template" for the body part in question.

There are 3 templates for clothing; the Upper Body, the Lower Body and the Skirt.

Basically, everything that's above the waist uses the Upper Body template, below the waist uses the Lower Body, and the skirt uses the Skirt.

You see, they aren't templates a bit. They are actually visual representations of the UV Maps, which tell the program where to place color values, based on the points of the mesh (where the lines cross on the "template".)

If you use the Upper Body template and apply it to the Skirt, you'll get what you describe. You need to use the Skirt template on the skirt.

Notice that there is no Jacket template; this is because the Linden jacket uses the Upper Body "template" for the top, and the Lower Body "template" for the bottom. It's up to you to match details across these two templates, which is what Chip was talking about.

You also need to understand that the only thing that really matters on the "templates" is the grid lines. You can't, for example, draw a line straight across the two parts of the Upper Body map and expect them to match on the Avatar. They probably won't.

You need to look at the edges of the map, where the lines cross, and match the points using the lines on both sides. (Which is where subdivided maps, like Chip's and mine, come in handy.) The easiest way to do that is to actually make the edge hit a line on both sides of the body.

Which line? The easiest way to tell that is to wear the "templates", with just the lines, and see where they are on the Avatar. Then use that to plan your clothing.

Hope this helps!

I may be confused about your question, but if your trying to put a skirt with a jacket it won't work the normal way (or at least I don't think it will). The skirt covers up the jacket lower portion. You must paint the lower jacket onto the skirt pattern with whatever you want the skirt to look like. Best to make the jacket in a separate layer, so that if you want to have the option of going jacketless with the skirt, you just save another tga file, this time with the jacket layer turned off.

Minh