How to bring real world design/clothes into Second Life?

Hi,

A friend of mine is a clothes designer and she's interested in bringing some of her clothes into Second Life. She made the clothes old fashion way: textile, scissors, needle and thread.

I am wondering if anyone has experience trying to bring real life clothes into Second Life? I am doing testings starting from taking pictures of the clothes and trying to mapping them to the templates.

Any tip/suggestion is appreciated.

Well im not sure, but she could take pictures of important parts of the shirt, pictures/label, etc , then a picture of the main fabric, then put them on to a shirt template, where they should, and the fabric image she got could be then painted on to the shirt

I recommend getting the best possible photographs of the clothes worn on a model so you get the most realistic highlights/shadows, and folding and draping of fabric. Take pictures from the front, side (with arms raised so you can see the side seams) and back. Light as evenly as possible. It works better to have your template at 1024x1024 or higher for creating the texuture but then resize to 512x512 for upload into second life.

There are certain areas on the template that get particularly distorted or smeared when applied to the avatar in SL. These include the side seams on the upper body and the seams where the arms meet the shoulders. SL clothing designers have learned where these challenging areas are and put their detail on other areas that handle detail best with the least distortion. Your friend will not have been aware of this when designing and contructing the clothes in real life, so her designs may need to be adapted accordingly.

Photoshop, Gimp and PSP are common paint programs used for making clothing textures and some tips or techniques will be dependant on what paint program you are using. It may be useful to post which you are using.

Thanks a lot for the advice. We are working on the photo at this point and will try this out. We use Photoshop as the paint program.

A few areas to be particularly aware of, as the SL clothing and avatar meshes are particularly poorly mapped in some areas, causing greater distortions in these areas...

The triangular area on the front and back of a skirt, from about mid pelvis to the hem at both ankles, is a place to avoid placing detailed textures. Use solids in this area if at all possible. When standing with feet close together, this part of the skirt is pretty much a straight narrow stripe running down the skirt, and is about half as wide as the palm of your hand. But with feet spread wide, these two areas on front and back provide virtually ALL the streach needed to change the skirt from a tight sheath dress into a wide A-line skirt, as the hem edge of this triangle gets streached to a meter or more in length! The distortions are horrible if the area has a detailed texture. (This is one reason short skirts are so popular with SL clothing designers, as we can crop off the bad area.)

The crotch and inner thigh area on pants/underpants is also very badly mapped. In some areas a single line of pixels in the clothing template defines what could become a very wide area on the avatar body. This results in bad looking seams on the inseam and smeared textures. Be very precise and careful in placing detail here.

Chest and shoulders: While not as bad as the other trouble spots, some areas are easier to fit details to than others. These areas also change a LOT with avatar shape changes, which makes it particularly challenging to make things like unisex shirts.

Good luck, and have fun in SL!