This maybe a crazy question lol

I was wondering how hard it is to make textures? I have friends who are always lookin for new textures for clothes and for building....So I was wondering how hard it would be to make some.

Shelley

The answer to that really, really, really depends. Basically, it is as hard as you want to make the texture complex. For example, making your own plaster texture is easy: start with a neutral color or white, add some noise, possibly pixilize, blur, etc. There is a couple of ways to get a nice result and there are brushes available that can make it easier. Making wood is a little tougher. Making brick from scratch, tougher yet. Making a your own Pompeii fresco from scratch.. Oh god!

that totally depends shelly. It helps to be reasonably adept at an image editing program (GIMP, photoshop, paint shop pro).

and there is lots of useful information scattered throughout the archives of this forum on how to make better clothes or textures, alpha channels, seamless textures etc.

but a lot will be very confusing unless you've got a basic understanding of how your image editing program works. Of course the best way to learn is to try. You might find it very easy, or very hard...

start by setting simple tasks and ramp up.

Make a T shirt and check out how it looks on the avatar.
Find a brick wall photo on the web, and try to make a seamless brick texture for a prim.
Try making an alpha channel window in your brick wall, etc

even though i've gotten better at testing in photoshop (I switched from PSP and am happier), I still find myself quite often loading multiple versions of a texture until I am happy with how it looks in-world.

Textures that do not involve the alpha channel are easy to make on all kinds of programs, and is no more difficult than making a piece of abstract artwork.

With the alpha channel (such as for a fence or something more detailed than primwork alone could handle), one can still do well provided one uses the right programs.

AAAARRRGGGGHHH!!!!

No offense, Bertha , but you just hit on my biggest Texture Forum petpeave. There's no such thing as an alpha layer. It's an alpha CHANNEL. This forum is the only place on the face of the earth where people feel compelled to use the words "layer" and "channel" interchangeably, even though both words have very strict and very seperate definitions. I don't know how it started or why it perpetuated here, but I do know it confuses the hell out of newbs. I've been actively combatting it for close to two years now, and every time I think I'm winning, a fresh new wave of it starts up again. Time to load up my clipboard with ready-to-paste layers vs. channels rhetoric again, I guess. I can feel another wave coming.



Anyway, Shelly, welcome to the world of texturing.

I'd love to answer your question, but it' just a wee bit open ended. How hard or easy you find texturing to be really depends on you. Some people take to it right away, and some really struggle with it. The only way for you to know is simply to get started.

If you're already artistic, of course you'll find it easier than if you're not. If you already know Photoshop, or a comparable program, even better. If it's none of the above, then it's likely you're in for a bit of a challenge at first, but eventually you'll get it. It's not exactly rocket science.

As with all skills, the key to developing your texturing ability is practice and knowledge, with heavy emphasis on practice. Getting good at anything, especially an artform, takes a lot of repetition, and a good education.

Here's what I usually recommend to people looking to get started. First, get comfortable with your ability to produce visual art. Artistry is commonly referred to as a talent, but really it's a skill that we're all born with. Some of us choose to develop it, and some of us don't, but we ALL have it. It's part of being human.

If you're already artistically adept, great, but if you're not, a great place to start is with a book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. It really is excellent. The author is one of the best instructors I've ever seen or heard of. She's arguably the world's expert at teaching people how to get in touch with their latent ability to draw, and she's taught millions to do it. I can atest personally that my own mother learned to draw by reading that book, and at the time she hadn't put pencil to paper for that purpose since she was a toddler.

Second, get comfortable with Photoshop (or equivilant). Learning the tools and the lingo of digital art is a bit like learning a new language. It can be challenging and even frustrating at first when you feel like there's this mountain of knowledge, of which you're currently at the bottom, but there does come a point for everyone when it just starts to "click" and then everything falls into place.

Third, start to play around with applying textures to 3D objects, and think critically about what's happening as you do. Pay attention to how various parts of the flat picture move, grow, and shrink as the texture wraps around the object. Make a lot of textures and apply them to various objects. Eventually you'll develop an instinct for how to think in 3D while you paint in 2D.

Above all, have fun with it. Good luck, and keep the questions flowing. Many of us volunteer time here every day to help people learn this stuff, so don't be shy. We're here to help.

The type of textures I was talking about would mainly be for clothes. I have several friends who make clothes n they seem to feel theres a lacking in textures for clothes esp mens clothes so I was asking to get some feed back to see what I could do to help out. So any other answers would be appreciated!!

Shelley

How hard? Well, that's been answered pretty thoroughly by those above. Main reason I design clothing is that I've been working with photoshop for years!

But you say there is a lacking of textures for men's clothes. I'm not really sure what this means. Some people look for cloth textures to use on their clothes. Some, like me, simply create textures within photoshop to mimic certain types of cloth. So, if they are looking for cloth types, then I don't know what to tell you. And I wouldn't imagine it being that hard to find textures that would work for women's clothes versus men's clothes. Of course, the fabric used for men's clothes is pretty limited compared to what is used for women's clothes, but that's RL.

Now, if you are saying there aren't many men's clothes available in SL, then I agree. There's several of us designing mens' clothes out there, but we're a small bunch compared to the massive women's market.

So jump in, the waters nice!

Shelley, as I hinted at earlier, really only you can answer the question of how "easy" it is. The first three questions you should ask yourself in order to help determine this are:

1. Are you already artistically skilled?

2. Are you already good with Photoshop (or equivilient)?

3. Are you already adept creating 2D images designed to wrap around 3D models?

I'm assuming the answer to number 3 at this time is no or you wouldn't be asking. The good news is that number 3 is the fastest of the three for which to turn a no into a yes. The potentially not so good news is that you can't attempt to do that until you can answer yes to the first two.

For most people, if 1 and 2 are already yes, then 3 comes relatively easily, although the amount of practice and experience needed before it "clicks" varies widely from person to person. Some people take to it instantly; some take a very long time before they get it. Everyone who's a yes for 1 & 2 becomes a yes for 3 eventually though. How long that will take for you, no one can say.

If 1 and 2 are both no for you right now, then you've got your work cut out for you. Number 1 is where you have to start. You need to develop at least at least a rudimentary ability to draw or paint with confidence before you can do anything else. As I mentioned earlier, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is one of the best resources to get started with. You already have the ability, as do all human beings, and that book is amazing at teaching people how to tap into that ability.

Number 2 is a little more challenging. While we are all born with the ability to create artwork, we were meant to do it with berry paste on cave walls. Computers are considerably less instinctive. None of us were born with genetic knowledge of Photoshop. However, when I say "challenging", I don't mean difficult. Assuming you've already gotten yourself to a yes on number 1, then turning number 2 into a yes isn't exactly hard. It's just time consuming. Like anything else, learning Photoshop consists of 2 things, instruction and practice.

The instruction part is easy to aquire. The program comes with getting started tutorials, and the web is teeming with literally thousands upon thousands more. Also, there's not a local community college or traning center on the planet that doesn't offer courses in it. If you're not big on self-teaching for software, and you don't have time for a full fledged college course, the Adobe website has a worldwide list of training centers, almost all of which offer 1-2 day seminars. In addition, enough books have been written on how to use Photoshop to fill a medium sized library. In other words, there are so many sources of instruction on Photoshop on this planet, that access requires little more than literacy. So, take your pick; websites, books, classes, online help, whatever you prefer, and this forum is always here when and if you have questions.

As for the practice part, well, that's obviously up to you. All the instruction I mentioned is great, but ultimately, the way you learn Photoshop is by using it. When I took my first class in it, I was in my late 20's, returning to university after a 10-year hiatus, and surrounded by kids. This was a good school, and the students were all intelligent and talented, but of the 30 or so people in the class, I was the only one who learned right away. Literally within a couple of days, I was comfortable with the program and using it to make decent artwork. I still had a lot to learn, sure, but I was getting by just fine. No one else in the class, however, appeared to get much beyond basic common computing functions like opening and saving files, drawing marquees, cutting & pasting, etc. until about half way through the semester.

I'm not saying this to brag or to say the class was full of idiots or anything like that. I share the story only to point out how important it is just to get in there and use the thing. You see, the biggest difference between the rest of that class and me (besides age) was simply that I was there 100% by active choice while most of them were there just because college was "the thing to do after high school". In other words, they didn't have much reason to care about what was taught in that class any more than they had reason to care about what was, from there point of view, imposed on them by all of their other classes, while I on the other hand had specicific real world goals I wanted to accomplish. Learning Photoshop was the most important step in accomplishing those goals, so I had real motivation to use it every day as much as possible. It was that constant use that allowed me to learn so quickly, nothing else. We all had the same teacher, the same materials, these kids were no dummies, and it wasn't anything special about me as a person that made the difference. It was pure brute force, plain and simple.

Apply that same brute force approach to your situation, and I'm sure you'll learn quickly, just as I did. Can you define that as easy? I don't know. I certainly wouldn't call it hard though. It takes some dedication and discipline, but it's not hard work. Coal mining is hard work. Texturing is just a little time consuming.