Aligning Text

i wonder if any of you have clever tips for deuglifying text on shirts? i'm sure you're all familiar with the distortion that occurs due to contours, and although i'm having limited success with the edit > transform tools, im spending far too long on the task (hours and hours).

thank you in advance. =)

edit: i forgot to mention: i'm using photoshop cs2.

Use one of the hi-res tempates (Robin's or Chip's), and upload your shirt texture with the UV's showing. When you wear the shirt, you'll be able to see exactly what's out of place, and by how much. Take a look at where the lines are that you want to match the text with, and counter-distort accordingly.

Keep in mind though that there's no really good solution. Even if you get it to look perfect on one av, it's gonna look messed up again on the next. Until the day comes that we get actual cloth simulations in SL, or at the very least polygonal clothing that has its own geometry, independent from the avatar body mesh, these problems are not gonna go away.

hi chosen =)

i've been a fan of robin's uv templates for a while, but even though i reduced opacity on the active (rastered text) layer and used sl's previewer to see where the distortion was occuring, my modifications - although partly successful - always produced distortion in some other area. after two hours trying to straighten just two of nine letters, i'm ready to chuck the computer through the window. (>_<

i think you're right: there's no really good solution. i'll just have to keep tweaking. it's a pity linden lab can't provide a decent male avatar mesh for john's brilliant clothing previewer because that would make my job so much easier.

you could "fake" the text by making a prim and putting your text texture with alpha channel and attacing the prim to the spine. Use a transparent texture for all other sides of the box (or whatever you use). You would then need to position the prim as best you could to the avatar shape. There would always be some degree of seperation though and of course any animations that transect your object and avatar parts would be problematic. So it's really a compromise in what you wish to accomplish.

Hi Walker! Thanks for the kind words.

I have a completely different suggestion, which helped me when I was going nuts trying to make things without distortion on the AVs. (I was working on flannel shirts, but the principal is exactly the same.)

1. Put on a skin tight t-shirt with lettering on it.

2. Look in a mirror.



All joking aside, you'll see that the distortions are, in fact, extremely realistic. It might actually be a better solution to paint in wrinkles and extra distortions, to give the effect of a shirt that is really stretched over the pecs, or that is looser than it appears.

Either one will give the mind a reason to expect distortions, and "visual closure" will take it from there.

It's like the story about the student who asked Michelangelo for help with a painting. He was putting a shield in the corner of the canvas, and simply couldn't get it to look like the prop he was using to paint from. He asked the Master for help, and Michelangelo agreed to fix it, but said the student must leave the room while he worked.

Once the fellow was gone, Michelangelo turned the shield around, so it could no longer be seen, sat down, and spent a half hour catching up on his correspondence.

When he called the student back into the room, the guy took one look at the canvas, and gasped at Michelangelo's masterful work on his painting. The shield was perfect! Just as he had wanted it.

There was, of course, nothing wrong with the shield, which the Master saw instantly. The problem was in the painter's mind, as he compared his work to the original, and saw nothing but the flaws.

Step back from your work, stop comparing it with the perfection that you see in your mind's eye, and you'll probably find that it's fine. Better, in fact, than one that was distorted until there were no visible imperfections on your AV.

After all, if you saw a painting where the letters on a shirt weren't distorted, it would look like they were "dropped in" later, right? And that's not what you want, right?

Hope this helps.