New tutorial: adding depth to SL clothing textures
September 20, 2007 9:45 am
So, I was to silent for y’all? Hmm. *ends silence* This time not to rant about Second Life’s society, though. :p
I’ve gotten a lot of ‘what do you think of my clothing design’ questions recently. And quite often I had to answer: ‘I love the shading on the butt & breasts, but euhm… what about shading ‘in’ the texture?’ It’s neat to see people get the shading of the human/avatar correct, but only to often that leads to neglecting the textures itself:
Mistakes in light source / bad photo-sourcing. Not having any sense of depth/play of light withing the clothing item itself, etc. Now I know, wrinkles are fashionable at the moment, but believe me, a well shaded button or collar works too. So, I decided that besides only complaining, I should give people a clue about what I do want to see. And the ‘adding depth to SL clothing textures using photoshop’s layer styles’ tutorial was born.
I hope it will be of use to some avies, and decided to be a good neko girl for once and to not link to some so called ‘top notch’ Second Life designers that could really benefit from taking a look at this shading tutorial. *grins*
6 Responses to “New tutorial: adding depth to SL clothing textures”
Nice idea, I hadn’t actually given a thought to shading the texture itself like that. Good job, hon!
Hehe, snipey, I love it.
Thank you both. Kailie / Katharina, you’re right on the shadings and the alpha layer. I use that myself, but totally forgot to mention it in the tutorial. *blushes* I think the tutorial is in need of an ‘addendum’. Will try to do that later this evening. =)
Hey Vintje (is that right?). Please be gentle with me. How the f*** do I apply the layer style (emboss, shadow etc) to just the button and not the whole layer or pic. I’ve tried everything, selecting, masking.
Can you run an idiot like me through it step by simple step. I would be eternally in your debt
Wouldn’t you just add the button as a layer and then do your shading and emboss before merging the layers?
Yep, sounds like you’ve merged things.
In the event your layers are merged:
1. Hit U (shape tool), select the circle shape, make sure it’s set to path only.
2. Draw a circle around the button, use ctr+t (free transform) to drag and align the path over the button correctly.
3. Press alt+shift and use the transform grabbers to scale it down to the same size as your button, and hit enter.
4. Go to the paths pallette and ctrl+click the path to get the selection
5. Go back to the layers palette, and copy the button (ctrl+c)
6. Paste it, and align it, then do your layer styles.
*note: I did copy rather than cut here to avoid nasty transparent edges in the image that will turn into white lines in SL.
**note: as stated above, this is only applicable in the event you’ve merged the layers. This will seperate the button from the layer so you can effect it.
Care to comment?