Another tattoo question ...

[Katherine Heartsong]

Went to Garden of Ku and found a lovely tat and purchased both the male and female versions. Good pricing. Found another (monmon-"inspired", ahem) design at Bolson I like as well ...

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Bolson-Tattoo-Cronopios-Collection-Daigo/15497533

But here's the thing ... I assumed that you could apply individual elements of these tats to yourself, not the whole thing in one. Even Bolson only has options for head, neck, all, lower, upper. I don't want to cover my entire self, I just want one lower arm sleeved, or a few on my arm (like I have IRL). I want subtle ink, not my whole body painted. In Bolson's case I want the monmon cat on the shoulder ... and nothing else.

So ... who sells tats like this individually, or with a HUD that lets you turn the elements off you don't want showing so you are left with a single, clean tat or two. The other ones I've seen (Dappa, Vegas, THIS IS WRONG) all work the "wrong" way for me. Any recommendations? Thanks!

PS. Woohoo ... 99 posts! And I actually had an appointment planned with the famous Horitomo at State of Grace that got cancelled this past summer (trivia fact > one of mine on my left arm was done tebori style by an artist based in Japan).

Edited December 6, 2020 by Katherine Heartsong
clarifications, spelling

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

Went to Garden of Ku and found a lovely tat and purchased both the male and female versions. Good pricing. Found another (monmon-"inspired", ahem) design at Bolson I like as well ...

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Bolson-Tattoo-Cronopios-Collection-Daigo/15497533

But here's the thing ... I assumed that you could apply individual elements of these tats to yourself, not the whole thing in one. Even Bolson only has options for head, neck, all, lower, upper. I don't want to cover my entire self, I just want one lower arm sleeved, or a few on my arm (like I have IRL). I want subtle ink, not my whole body painted. In Bolson's case I want the monmon cat on the shoulder ... and nothing else.

So ... who sells tats like this individually, or with a HUD that lets you turn the elements off you don't want showing so you are left with a single, clean tat or two. The other ones I've seen (Dappa, Vegas, THIS IS WRONG) all work the "wrong" way for me. Any recommendations? Thanks!

PS. Woohoo ... 99 posts! And I actually had an appointment planned with the famous Horitomo at State of Grace that got cancelled this past summer (trivia fact > one of mine on my left arm was done tebori style by an artist based in Japan).

Does the one you posted the link to have applier AND tattoo layers?   That's what it seems like from the ad but just need to clarify.

I don't know any stores that have that much individual control over each part of a tattoo.  It's normally upper or lower but I've not seen specific elements as in left arm or right arm hide.

 

Edited December 6, 2020 by RowanMinx

[Orwar]

   Most tattoo makers don't. You buy the tattoo as a set - whilst you could create tattoos with separate elements, this would require a whole lot of texture uploads and end up with the customer receiving a huge folder that most people would be terrified of.

   Personally I consider it a large part of why I don't like to buy commercially premade tattoos. I don't wear them that often (still damaged by the whole choosing between body hair or tattoos, I guess), but I occasionally make my own for personal use - and I know plenty of people who make tattoos, who I could turn to if I wanted something more intricate.

[Katherine Heartsong]

Thank you Rowan and Orwar. Yeah, as a designer for the past 30 years I've been using Photoshop since it was version 1,  so can easily make my way around texture maps and PNG files etc if I wanted to. Guess that's what I will have to do if I only want a simple sleeve design or something. Now need to get the basic files I need to do that with my Lara, and my Slink male body.

Edited December 6, 2020 by Katherine Heartsong

[Fenimore Hapmouche]

Oh I have always been wondering about the same question. Everything I see show essentially the whole body covered. I was afraid the answers given here would be what it comes down to.

I will spend some time seeing how they are made, perhaps I can just make one or two for myself. Probably beyond me though, we'll see.

[Nalates Urriah]

When searching on how to make tats you can refer to the pre-2013 tutorials. These are being remade these days named as BOM tutorials. All the BOM stuff these days is literally old style System Layers stuff. The old-timers understand. Its the new people that came in when appliers were the thing that are confused by BOM.

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Orwar said:

   Most tattoo makers don't. You buy the tattoo as a set - whilst you could create tattoos with separate elements, this would require a whole lot of texture uploads and end up with the customer receiving a huge folder that most people would be terrified of.

   Personally I consider it a large part of why I don't like to buy commercially premade tattoos. I don't wear them that often (still damaged by the whole choosing between body hair or tattoos, I guess), but I occasionally make my own for personal use - and I know plenty of people who make tattoos, who I could turn to if I wanted something more intricate.

I hated having to choose between which layer to use, also.  One of the benefits.with BOM is we no longer need to choose. 

[Katherine Heartsong]

Okay just watched a 10 minute tutorial. That was easy. I see why now people create for entire body since it seems a shame to waste that amount of useable space, but good enough for me. I'll bang a few out for myself tonight as a test.

Cool, easy .. but in edit mode everything looks good .. minute I go out of edit mode top skin goes grey.

Will post in BOM thread at this point.

Edited December 7, 2020 by Katherine Heartsong

[Nalates Urriah]

...uummm... yes adding a tat in BOM will cause the skin to go gray. What has happened is the new list of layers is sent to the BOM bake engine. Depending on how busy the engine is it takes 2 or 3 to 30 or 60 seconds to get a texture back to you.

When taking longer than a minute you can try changing something, like take the tat off, and then put it back to force the BOM engine to update and start baking what it sees as the new combination of textures.

However, since Thanksgiving we have had bake fail issues. See: https://status.secondlifegrid.net/incidents/3mnd3071dh9p

[Jenn Rowley]

So I use firestorm when doing these and my Bake button is Greyed out like its not even an option.  If that makes any sense

[Fenimore Hapmouche]

On 12/6/2020 at 4:50 PM, Fenimore Hapmouche said:

Oh I have always been wondering about the same question. Everything I see show essentially the whole body covered. I was afraid the answers given here would be what it comes down to.

I will spend some time seeing how they are made, perhaps I can just make one or two for myself. Probably beyond me though, we'll see.

Woohoo, I made one and it worked and it was not hard! I am a maker now, heureka! After all these years I finally progressed past plywood boxes. 🤣

Now, I just have to become an artist next. this will be harder.

[Orwar]

39 minutes ago, Fenimore Hapmouche said:

Now, I just have to become an artist next. this will be harder.

   Or you could just do what 97% of the tattoo 'artists' in SL do and nick images off of Google. Much easier!

[Kytteh Wytchwood]

17 hours ago, Fenimore Hapmouche said:

Woohoo, I made one and it worked and it was not hard! I am a maker now, heureka! After all these years I finally progressed past plywood boxes. 🤣

Now, I just have to become an artist next. this will be harder.

 

On 12/6/2020 at 6:58 PM, Katherine Heartsong said:

Okay just watched a 10 minute tutorial. That was easy. I see why now people create for entire body since it seems a shame to waste that amount of useable space, but good enough for me. I'll bang a few out for myself tonight as a test.

Cool, easy .. but in edit mode everything looks good .. minute I go out of edit mode top skin goes grey.

Will post in BOM thread at this point.

Hi, would you mind telling me what resolution size to start with in Photoshop CC and the ppi number also? I have tried 4096x4096 at 300 and 600 ppi then scale down to 2048x2048 to upload but it comes out very blurred and SL adds a flat grey line to the edges of my tattoo on the body. I also do 2048x2048 at 300 ppi and don't scale down, with the same issue in-world.

I am guessing everyone who makes tattoos is a graphic artist irl? Or they just know how to do it?

I'd really appreciate it your answers.

I love to draw and would be awesome to make and sell my creations for SL.

I've already tried searching the forum but no threads come up, telling people how to create tattoos in resolution size and why those lines appear on the mesh body.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Kytteh Wytchwood
more info

[Wulfie Reanimator]

15 minutes ago, Kytteh Wytchwood said:

Hi, would you mind telling me what resolution size to start with in Photoshop CC and the ppi number also? I have tried 4096x4096 at 300 and 600 ppi then scale down to 2048x2048 to upload but it comes out very blurred and SL adds a flat grey line to the edges of my tattoo on the body. I also do 2048x2048 at 300 ppi and don't scale down, with the same issue in-world.

The maximum resolution in Second Life is 1024x1024. If you're uploading something bigger than that, it will be automatically scaled down.

The texture resolution in is also restricted to "powers of two." 2x2, 16x64, 512x512, 1024x32, etc. If your texture is 1000x400, it will be scaled down to 512x256.

Also, PPI/DPI doesn't matter for digital art, does it?

Edited December 8, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Katherine Heartsong]

I have the template opened at 1024x1024 and 144dpi. 

[Katherine Heartsong]

18 hours ago, Orwar said:

   Or you could just do what 97% of the tattoo 'artists' in SL do and nick images off of Google. Much easier!

True. As a tat fan, and someone who is an artist, I've sure seen a lot of familiar looking tattoos available in SL. Not the majority, but enough to make me wonder what the rules are about selling copyrighted artwork as your own. It's more of a grey area if you are just using it, rather than selling it. I've seen one embedded in a full body tat in a well-known ink shop in SL that if it isn't a direct rip off of one of Horitomo's monmon cat designs, it's too close to tell. 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Katherine Heartsong

[Orwar]

1 minute ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

Not the majority, but enough to make me wonder what the rules are about using copyrighted artwork as your own.

   The rules are very simple - don't nick other people's stuff unless you want to get DMCA'd. Alternatively nick whatever you like but avoid getting caught.

   The issue with copyright infringement is complex when it comes to SL. Firstly, only the owner of an IP can dole out a DMCA (i.e. if you see a Mickey Mouse T-shirt on the MP, you can report it to give LL a heads up, or you can prod the Disney legal department and they may decide to file a complaint). Furthermore, in that scenario, Disney don't file a complaint against the 'creator' who nicked the IP, but against LL - in 99,999 out of 100,000 cases, LL will choose to immediately remove whatever they received a complaint about, and whack the responsible individual on the fingers (or occasionally just plant a fist behind their nostrils).

   Even if a case is uncertain, you must remove the content during the court proceedings (which is why, for example, Genus was out of commission for a while whilst working out a DMCA complaint made against them). 

   As far as I'm aware, LL tries to be proactive and will remove stuff that's in clear violation against copyright law before a DMCA happens (especially with big brands, like Marvel, DC, Nintendo, etc.), but they can't check everything that people upload to the grid - and some people make a business out of scavenging game assets from various video games to upload them into SL (I once bumped into a warehouse on the mainland that had just about every asset you can find in Skyrim, including static character models labelled as 'statues'). 

   Then we have the whole 'fair use' thing, which whilst a good thing, does make it more complicated still. Then there's the whole thing about how US laws apply, but then SL has people from outside the US using their services, which whilst not too complicated (LL being registered in California abiding by California laws) means that part of the userbase may simply be unaware of what laws apply, and when to look at global copyright agreements and when to look at US law. There's also the whole thing about how at least in Europe we tend to giggle at US legal proceedings for being plain silly ('in the US anyone can file a lawsuit for just about anything, how bizarre!' - as I grew up I figured some of the stories must have just been urban legends, but as it turns out that yes, someone did file a lawsuit for getting burnt on McDonald's coffee, and someone did file a lawsuit against Nike because they tripped over their untied shoelaces - here you would be laughed out of court if you demanded a fantasy sum because you didn't realize that coffee is served hot). 

   ... TL:DR: play nice, or don't get caught playing naughty.

[Katherine Heartsong]

As an aside, there are numerous stock illustration places that with a free membership, you simply have to attribute any art you use back to the creator, so I suppose that reading my agreements carefully, that could mean that I add a note to my design with the proper attributions (assuming I can use it as an asset in a game, of course). With paid subscriptions like I have (three of, in fact), I don't need to attribute anything I have paid for and as long as the license I have covers me for game assets, media, etc (all places are different), then I'd be fine. I'd probably still attribute in a notecard, just to be the nice person I (usually) am. For example, I am getting the hang of tattoos now ... this is a quick 4th or 5th test ...

Just out of view is my usual companion cat, Julia, who is frequently attached to me on most outfits.

Edited December 9, 2020 by Katherine Heartsong

[Nalates Urriah]

 

On 12/8/2020 at 12:53 PM, Kytteh Wytchwood said:

 

Hi, would you mind telling me what resolution size to start with in Photoshop CC and the ppi number also? I have tried 4096x4096 at 300 and 600 ppi then scale down to 2048x2048 to upload but it comes out very blurred and SL adds a flat grey line to the edges of my tattoo on the body. I also do 2048x2048 at 300 ppi and don't scale down, with the same issue in-world.

I am guessing everyone who makes tattoos is a graphic artist irl? Or they just know how to do it?

I'd really appreciate it your answers.

I love to draw and would be awesome to make and sell my creations for SL.

I've already tried searching the forum but no threads come up, telling people how to create tattoos in resolution size and why those lines appear on the mesh body.

As pointed out, PPI only applies images going to paper. In some image editors it may change how big the image appears on screen at 100%. Photoshop maps the 100% setting so each image pixel goes to a screen pixel regardless of PPI.

SL Images are stored in JPG2000 format. The format holds no PPI information. If you upload a JPG image and SL converts it to JPG2000 the image you edited will have gone through TWO lossy process. Think blurry. Avoid this problem by uploading TGA or PNG lossless images to SL. Then just one lossy process.

Anything other than a power of 2 sized image will be resized by the uploader. That resizer is weak and will degrade your image. More blur. Size your images in your editor before uploading.

Some designers work with 3 or 4k wide images in their editor and then down size to get their 1024 pixel image for upload.

The new BOM bake engine renders 1024 images. If you give it anything other than a 1024 image it will have to resize it. I haven't tested the new engine. But, everything I have tested that involves SL resizing has degraded the images. So I suspect that is true with the new engine too. So, while I would normally do tats at a smaller size, now I'll do them at 1024.

I doubt most of the tat artists in SL a RL artists... but some are definitely talented. Others... just ripoff what they can.

SL forums are hard to search. The Lab uses whatever search software the forum has or is made for it. You'll find the tutorials scattered across the Internet. Use Google, Bing, Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo to find them.