Straight lines on shirt go crazy on upload.

[Eduardo Thorr]

Hey everyone, I'm needing help with this.

I use Photoshop CS5, and I make straight lines on my shirt, but when I upload it, it goes crazy.

I have read several guides, and searched the forums and couldn't find the anwser.

 

[Shelby Silverspar]

a photo here of what you are talking about may help us help you!

[Monti Messmer]

Welcome to the wicked world of creating clothes for SL :smileywink:

If you look at the template files, i guess you downloaded, you will see that the vertical lines not go straight from top-down.

It its very tricky to follow this lines but the only way i know to have straight lines. And still, for girls clothes, under the boobs there are some "folded" areas where it is nearly! impossible to have straight lines.

Thats when you put 2D textures on rounded 3D objects. Not much help sorry.

[Rolig Loon]

Interesting coincidence.  We just had a discussion of this issue in another recent thread in this forum.  You might want to read through it.  The bottom line, unfortunately, is that it is very hard to draw vertical lines on the avatar body.  It's partly a matter of the way the body is mapped and partly a result of movement.  The center of the torso gets distorted whenever your avatar breathes, shifts weight, or twists, so vertical lines flow like putty.  Some parts of the body (female breasts and male shoulders, in particular) become stretched and blurry no matter what you do. Horizontal lines, by comparison, are fairly simple except right around the mid-torso, where they too get smeared by body movements.

Unless you are using Photoshop CS5's 3D capability, so that you can draw directly on the av, the best I can suggest is that you try drawing lines on an av template, upload it as a texture for a new outfit, and see where the lines go.  Then go back to your graphics program and adjust the lines, upload again, see what they look like, and do it again, and again, and again..... until you get it right or get sick of the whole thing.

[Eduardo Thorr]

Thanks everyone for replying.

I'm using Chip Midnights upper jacket template, and from what I'm understanding, I have to follow those black lines on the template to get them straight on upload?

And, Rolig, could please tell me how to start up CS5's 3D and what will I need?

Thank you.

[Rolig Loon]

No, those black lines are helpful visual guides but they are a very coarse guide. Areas on the avatar body have varying numbers of pixels, so a stripe doesn't necessarily show you the exact position of a line through them. That's part of the reason for the difficulty that was being discussed in the thread I referred you to yesterday.

For the best tutorial on using CS5's 3D tools for clothing design in SL that I am aware of, visit Robin Wood's web site.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

You can do what I did a couple years ago (maybe 3 years ago I guess).  I do not have those files anymore since I deleted them when I upgraded to Win 7 about 9 or 10 months ago..........I'm sorry because I think it may help you understand how the 2D templates relate to how your designs lay (or drape) the avatar in world.  I would have happily given you the textures if I had them..........however, I don't want to spend another 3 or 4 days making them.

 

Here's what I did (beware, it's time comsuming and tedious....but it helped me immensly with my clothing making).  I also us GIMP but what I did and suggest you might consider doing yourself isn't graphics program specific at all.  Open your templates and you see the the UV mesh lines.  The darker (or major) lines is what I used so I'll discribe what I did.  Both the upper and lower templates have a center dark line........those lines are the only point that meet precisely on both the upper and lower templates when uploaded and applied to the avatar.  All the other lines are distorted to some degree between the upper and lower templates (that's what Rolig was referring to in the difficulty of matching across templates..............a jacket uses both upper and lower templates).  I created a layer that was 100% transparent and drew (traced) each darker line on the templates using a very narrow line (I think I made the line 2 pixels in width.......I could be wrong and maybe it was 4 pixels).  Once I traced each darker line I filled every other area defined by those lines with black (I used bucket fill)  Then in the remaining areas I filled with white.  I did this on both the upper and lower templates and saved to TGA at 512 x 512 to upload.  I then did the same thing on both the upper and lower templates but this time I did alternating horizontal lines and saved to TGA at 512 to upload.

 

Once I had all four templates done I uploaded them and created clothing to wear...........one "outfit" with vertical alternating stripes and one "outfit" with horizontal stripes.  It wasn't over fashionistic but it taught me where the mesh from the upper template meets the lower mesh.........it gave me a visual I could see in my mind when trying to match across templates.  On the "outfit" with horizontal stripes it showed me how the front to back templates meet and match.  It also showed where the major distortions occur around the breasts, back, buttocks, crotch, knees and on the sides under the armpits........all problem areas for most clothing creators.

 

Taking the time to make your stripes outfits won't make you an expert (it certainly didn't me) but I believe it will help you a great deal when designing your clothing.  Like I said I wish I hadn't neglected to keep those files but I had fun making them for myself.............maybe you'll have fun too.

 

Good luck.