How Clothes Are Made in Second Life:Part II – TEXTURES

TEXTURES

A very easy way to make your SL APPEARANCE clothing look more unique is to create and upload your own textures. Before you begin using this method you should understand how textures work in SL. Textures work differently in the APPEARANCE MENU then with the TEXTURE TAB in the BUILD tool that is used to create PRIMS. I created a video to explain the difference for you – here is a link to the About Textures in Sl video.

Once you understand how textures work differently in APPEARANCE and with the TEXTURE TAB in the BUILD tool you can make adjustments when you create and upload your own textures. In a nutshell – the textures that are on a prim [like a flexi-skirt panel] can be tiled and flipped and set into different scaled repeats – this is not possible in the APPEARANCE. I personally think this is a BIG DRAWBACK for flexibility and creative expression using the APPEARANCE menu with custom textures in Second Life but we have to work with what we have.

I have lots of student-created free fiber design seamless textures on the Buffalo State island and I made a video that will demonstrate how you can insert them into garments you create using the APPEARANCE menu in SL. There is a color set and a grayscale set that you can add your own tints to. Here is the link to the video: Fiber Textures in Second Life. The SURL pasted below in this post will take you to the location in Second Life [pictured above] where there are plentiful textures for you to experiment with and the permissions are all opened for you.

Here are a short series of video tutorials that will get you started with creating your own custom textures in Photoshop that you can use on garments you create in the APPEARANCE menu. [NOTE: in these videos I make the textures 256px by 256px - you can make them more detailed by creating them 512 X 512 px or even 256px by 512px , or 1024 or 1024 px but keep in mind larger texture files will need more processing time to come in clear. To get fine detail into your textures you can create them at a very high resolution and creating them in Illustrator will give you even more control. Once you have completed them you can resample [rescale] them down in Image Size before you upload them. I would not go over 512px unless there is very fine detail that is very important to keep in. Here is a link to a site where you can download free high resolution textures to get your creativity going with custom texture development. You will get a really good look if you create a seamless texture of an area you apply filters to and then place it into a half-drop and make it seamless again.

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• Making a Seamless Texture for Second Life
• Making a Stripe Texture for Second Life
• Recolor Stripe and Create a Plaid Texture for Second Life
• Multi Print Texture for Second Life – this is a really neat way to make your APPEARANCE garment look more complicated then it actually is – just by adding multiple pattern repeats to your SINGLE texture file.
• How to make a Half-Drop Single Repeat and In-Repeat Seamless Swatch for SL
• Add a Translucent Background to your Half-Drop Pattern Texture.

SL TEXTURES/PATTERN DEVELOPMENT FOR INDUSTRY

The pattern repeat techniques for developing seamless TEXTURES for Second Life correlate somewhat with the pattern repeat development skills that CAD Textile Print Designers for industry need. The primary difference is that when you are developing print repeat designs for industry you need to know how to create and work in reduced colors as well as tonals, there are size constraints that need to match print methods and skill is required to recolor the pattern to match current color trends. If you are working in tonal images [photographic or true color scans of maybe watercolors] you need to know how to create layer masks to recolor your tonals. Here is a link to what is covered in the upcoming online Adobe Pattern Development for Industry class I will be offering this fall 2008 semester. If you are are interested in more expansive and controlled TEXTURE development for Second Life as well as learning how to prepare designs to be commercially printed. you are welcome to register as a non-matriculated student either for college credit or you can register to audit this upcoming online class. You can easily convert any of the images you create in this class to upload to Second Life.

PRACTICING APPLYING TEXTURES & TINTS TO CLOTHING

I have created a series of videos that will demonstrate to you step by step how to change colors and textures on UV clothing and flexi-skirts. All of these items in the video are available for you with the permissions open so you can modify, and or transfer them and  customize them to make them your own. Here is a SURL that will take you to the location on the Buffalo State island [pictured above] where these garments are available so you can follow along with the videos. All permissions on the garments and textures for the video tutorials are open.

• 6 Make a Garment in Second Life
• 7 Make a Garment in Second Life
• 8 Make a Garment in Second Life
• 9 Make a Garment in Second Life

Next Post in this Series: How Clothes Are Made in Second Life:Part III – UV MAPS

Previous Post in this Series: How Clothes Are Made in Second Life:Part I- THE BASICS

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