I’ve managed to grab a copy of the MCH Repository page through googles cache system which means I can leave the details and description to The Master himself.

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MultiChan Hax Filter

You will need to install this filter into Photoshops plugins directory before you can use the files below.

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SL_legpatternwerapfull01_c2

Designed for creating patterned stockings. The ratio is 1:2, so watch out for that. (This is the filter used in the two-part MCH video)

SL_mucho23chans

One day I got into the mood to do a bunch of mapping channels. So I did a bunch of channels. Some head shots, legs, torso stuff, and things. Can’t say for sure what all of channels are what because I didn’t take any notes on them. However, I do remember a few. The very first channel is all head, upper, and torso with each tucked away in a corner. Channels 21, 22, and 23 are the individual head, upper, and torso chunks.

SL_legsx2

Contains two different MCH files for legs. One of the MCH files in this rar was used in Map Chan Hax Leg Seams. The other one is more like the default mapping and may be more intuitive.

SL_shouldersx2

Contains two different MCH files for working with the shoulder areas. One has 2 channels and the other has 3.

SL_head02

This is the MCH file that is almost identical to the one used in the Multi Chan Hax Head tutorial.

SL_jacketwaist01

A quick little ditty for matching upper and lower for the jacket layer. Designed for documents with a ratio of 2:1, so start with 1024×512 or so. The upper will be on the left and the lower will be on the right. After that, chop it out and go. There are two different seam channels that are very similar. One has the front in the middle and the other has the back in the middle for full wrap-around goodness. Didn’t cover the entire jacket layer, but I did get the bulk of the seam between upper and lower. I used the default female mesh and that had some effect on the operations. Should be okay to use for male design, but I haven’t tested it specifically for male distortion

SLarm_female_c6a

Description: Several mapping channels for working with the female arm.

SLarm_male_c6a

Several mapping channels for working with the male arm.

SL_skirt01_c3

Really quick cylindrical mapping channel for the SL skirt. Quick as they are, they work uber dandy for SL skirt seams.

SL_maletorsoplanar01

Real quick planar mapping on the male torso. No arms, no legs, or head. Just quick planar on the front and back of the male torso. The first channel has the default mappings, and the second channel has the planars. The second channel is mostly like the first, but the back is extremely lower. I could have laid second over the first, but that would lead to confusion. With the back extremely lower, easy to see which channel you are looking at with a glance. Should be pretty decent for placing logos and similar on the front and back. Remember that the mapping is planar and thing will distort as the 3d mesh curves around.

“Just keep at it, you’ll get there eventually.”
“Wear the templates to understand where things go.”
“It’s trial and error.”
“Seams are difficult to match up.”

This can be discouraging but it shouldn’t be. The truth is they’re not hiding any secrets from you. There really isn’t a magical answer, and yes, you should run around in a template suit even when you’re experienced! That advice is fantastic advice…

But Multi Chan Hax is all kinds of awesome!!!

Why is Multi Chan Hax all kinds of awesome? Because it gives Second Life clothing and skin creators a whole range of different template layouts to choose from! With Multi Chan Hax you are no longer limited to texturing the standard head/upper/lower UV layouts.

“A mapping channel is basically UV data. It’s how a 2d texture gets translated onto the geometry of a 3d model. What MultiCH does is give Photoshop the ability to translate a texture to and from any single combination of the channels.”

This type of feature is usually limited to 3d software but Multi Chan Hax manages to blur that line and make the same features available in a 2d image editing programs. How cool is that?! For anyone who has ever complained about wanting a different layout to texture, this is basically the answer to your prayers! All you need is the MCH filter and the MCH files and you can make something respectable in less than half the time it would take to manually match it up pixel by pixel.

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Before you get too excited there are a few things I should mention. Multi Chan Hax is a 32bit Photoshop filter so it won’t be available from the filters menu if you choose to run a 64bit executable of Photoshop. Multi Chan Hax is also limited to Windows, so Mac and Linux users are out of the loop.

The Multi Chan Hax filter works with any program capable of loading the 8bf filter format so that means a handful of programs other than Photoshop should be able to make good use of it. PaintShop Pro is one of them and GIMP can too, with the help of a PSPI which is a GIMP plug-in that runs 3rd-party Photoshop filters, such as this one.

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If you want to follow along you will need to grab a few things:

Chip’s Templates or Robin’s Templates

Multi Chan Hax- Filter

Multi Chan Hax- Files

Flaming Pear’s- Solidify filter

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Now that we’ve covered the basics please enjoy the following two part video tutorial!

Please note that both these videos are available in HD format on Youtube.

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Multi Chan Hax Part I- Introduction

Multi Chan Hax Part II- Using the Filter

This is not meant to be a “tutorial” with step-by-step instructions on how to go about replicating the design. It’s more like a showcase of just how much work and fiddling goes in to designs. I am a big fan of time lapse videos so I thought I’d capture one of my own creations taking shape. This outfit was made over the course of a day and took roughly eight hours to complete. More details after the snip…

Tools used:
Photoshop- for the painting
Camstudio- for the screen recording
FRAPS- for in-world recording
Sony Vegas- for post processing
Soundtrack- Fiona Apple: Slow Like Honey

A big thank you goes to Abu Nasu and his TechSlop wiki… hopefully this demonstrates just how much I rely on his Photoshop goodies to pull off this level of detail.

Click here to launch an SLurl and visit us In-World!

Clicking on the picture below will take you to the XStreet listing.

*~CH~* Pin-Up Girl- Valentine

Getting Photoshop filters to work requires two things.
The first is grabbing a GIMP plug-in that reads PS plug-ins.
The second is installing the PS plug-in with the GIMP plug-in.

Confused yet? Don’t worry. I’ll explain it more thoroughly, and include a heap of screenshots after the snip…

I’m assuming you’re running the latest version of The GIMP which is 2.6.7, and that you’re in a windows environment. This is the version I’ve tested this on, so I can’t really comment about earlier builds.

You also ned to download PSPI which is available here: http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/pspi.html . Scroll to the bottom of the page and select the appropriate download. Get it here: http://rsc.anu.edu.au/opensource/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_details&gid=94&Itemid=32 .   When that’s completed and you’ve extracted the file it’s time to move on to installing it.

PART ONE… Installing PSPI:

Fire up The GIMP and go to Edit >>> Preferences…

Open up The GIMP and go to Edit... Preferences.

In the left-hand navigation pane, scroll down and expand the “Folders” directory. In the expanded sub-folder select “Plug-Ins”…

A new window will open...

Make a “New” directory so any current setting don’t get overwritten…

Preferences... Folders >>> Plug-Ins... Select "New"...

You want it to point to the folder that contains the pspi.exe. When you’ve found it, click “OK”…

Browse to where you saved the PSPI.exe... Click "OK" to confirm.

You’ll be taken back to the Preferences window, make sure your path appears and then click “OK” once more…

Plug-In Folder... Click "OK" to confirm New folder/path...

The GIMP will tell you to restart for the changes to take effect, so off you go.

You will have to restart GIMP for the changes to take effect. "OK"

PART TWO… Installing a Photoshop Filter:

Open up The GIMP and go to Filters… Photoshop Plug-In Settings.

Filter >>> Photoshop Plug-in Settings...

A new window will open.  Make a “New” directory to point to, open the File Selector and browse to where you’ve stashed your Photoshop filters…

Photoshop Plug-In Settings... New... Browse...

For the tutorial I’m using Abu’s nifty Multi Chan Hax. This time you want it to point to the folder that contains the .8bf for the filter/plug-in you want to load. When you’ve found it, click “ok”.

This time GIMP *won’t* tell you to restart, but you will need to before you can see the PS-Filter goodness in your Filter Menu.

Time to restart, again.

Now for the fun part! Open up The Gimp and go to Filters…*gasp*!!!!! There should be a new entry in your Filter menu detailing what you installed. I have successfully tested it on Abu Nasu’s TechSlop filters, the Flaming Pear freebies and an old version of Virtual Photographer.

From here on, you’re on your own depending on what filter you want to work with. The good news is the pop-ups work exactly the same as they do under Photoshop, so you shouldn’t have to do much tutorial translating when working with PS filters in The GIMP. My best advice is to install NEW filters ONE AT A TIME, so you don’t bork the GIMP too badly.

As proof that Photoshop filters work in GIMP, I’m gonna post a few basic shots of Multi Chan Hax in action… if you want to know more about it, check out this site: TechSlop

Filters >>> TechSlop >>> Multi Chan Hax

TechSlop Filter Popup- MultiChanHax Settings

Example: Multi Chan Hax Scribble Test

Example: Multi Chan Hax Scribble Test Result!

Hopefully this helps out some GIMP junkies. That’s a wrap! <3

In February of 2010 the official Second Life Forums flicked a switch and moved over to a new fomat. I have edited the links to point to the archives, hopefully you can still follow along.

Somewhere deep down in the official forum archives you can find this absolute GEM of a filter for Photoshop. BUT- to save you the effort of finding that post (it’s not the easiest thing to find), I’m just going to post the jist of it here. The original thread for this dates back to December of 2006 O.o … WHY this wasn’t stickied I have no idea!

So… what the heck is “RGB Theta”, and what can you do with it? Short answer is- you can FAKE the BAKING process which you would normally need a 3D application for. It allows you to render a lighting effect based around the 3 dimensional avatar figure (or any normal map) WITHIN Photoshop.

All you need is Abu Nasu’s nifty lil plugin, and Chip’s Normal Maps and you are ready to start “baking”.

Sexy advert for where you can find the before and after bodysuits (male and female) if you want to run around looking like a spaceman. Image links to SLurl.

Read on after the cut for more information, as well as links to where you can find these goodies.

This is the thread where it all began… READ THIS. Basically Chip Midnight put up a stack of topography guides of both male and female for us to use. Fantastic by itself, but it starts to get VERY interest by post number 13, and just snowballs from there . (This is now an archived thread. The information is still available, but without the attachments it may be a bit difficult to follow.)

What evolved from the original post is this super nifty PS plug-in. Credits go to Abu for making the plug-in available for us to use, as well as Chip for his Normal Maps of both the male and female avatars.

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You will need:

RGB Theta Filter for PS:  As far as I know it’s for PC only. Sorry to Mac and Linux users.

Chip’s Normal Maps: Sadly, these didn’t survive the migration to the archives so “Claire’s Normal Maps” from the link below. Single post from the SL forums. Male and female normal maps as a single image (you’ll have to chop them up once you’re done “baking”). Having them as a single image means the “baking” is exactly the same on all pieces of the template- YAY!!!

Claire’s Normal Maps: This link will take you to mediafire where you can download a PSD with both male and female normal maps. The resolution is 1024×3072 and will still need to be split when you’re done. 3D modeling and rendering isn’t one of my greatest strengths but it gets the job done. These were added on April 7th 2010 because the original forum attachments didn’t survive the migration to the archive.

Install the plug-in (duh!), then open one of Chips Normal Maps in Photoshop. For the bulk of my screen-shots I’m using the female map… cuz she has boobs *giggles*. The boobies are GREAT for showing off how cool this plug-in works. Well… that’s my excuse and I am sticking to it!

Go to Filters >>> TechSlop >>> RGB Theta… and mess around with the settings!

Something to note: The filter only has a single light source, so… you might want to make a front, and a back. These are the settings I have saved so I can load them again and again.

Duplicate the layer to a new document, undo the changes, and then “bake” the normal map again for the opposite light direction.

Duplicate this “bake” into the document we created previously.

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You should have a new working document containing both the layers you just made. Next step is making a “master” template you can use of your creations.

First- change the layer mode! I found that by switching the upper layer to something like “screen” you get to see both the front and back effects in all their glory. You can use lighten, screen, colour dodge, linear dodge and lighter colour- they all produce similar effects. When you’ve found a layer mode you like- simply merge it down to a single layer.

(I’m not sure why my “full screen capture” isn’t capturing the full screen… Sorry if the shots are missing any important info!).

I have two “master” images saved somewhere safe in my “SL work” folder. I have one for male, and one for female. They have been saved *as is* for backup reasons (I tend to work destructively… and yes, I get lectured on my methods constantly lol). ANYWHO- save what you have done as a master file, and duplicate the merged layer once again in to a new document. We’re going to slice it up now so we can make use of it all.

From the original layer, go to: Image >>> Canvas Size >>> 512 x 512 (for the newer normal maps, the canvas size should be 1024×1024) and change the anchor point. This will crop your canvas to head, then torso, then legs. You will have to undo your changes to get the “master file” back, but it’s better than doing it by hand (crop tool and cursor).

Yayyyyy!!!! Now you just need to put these layers in to your OWN master files (Chips. Robins LL standard- whatever your weapon of choice).

To use them:

Change the blend mode to something like “multiply” or “overlay”, drop the opacity to suit your style and BAM. FULL BODY HIGHLIGHTS AND SHADING!!! Play with a layer blend mode to suit your particular design.

Ok, ok, ok… I do need to point out one “bummer”… but it has NOTHING to do with Chip’s jpegs or Abu’s filter… it’s got to do with the PAIN-IN-THE-ARSE template we use for SL.

We only have access to ONE arm, and ONE foot. *grumbles about stupid av mesh some more under her breath*… To be exact (after i looked again at the template lol) we have a right arm, and a left foot- WTF is up with that??!

So… you will have to tweak your outcomes for it to be SEAMLESS. The right hand side of the shoulder (where the arm joins on to the torso) will have to be duplicated/copied over to the left hand side and blended in.

If you’re making socks or stockings or even skins, you will need to duplicate or copy the lower half of the left leg over to the right leg, if you want it to be seamless at the ankle.

STUPID STUPID AV MESH! ROFLOL! They certainly don’t make it easy for us!

Okie dokie- that’s my very general guide on how to use the TechSlop “RGB Theta” filter with Chips Normal Maps. No more talking from now- but I am jamming a bunch images up for NON Photoshop users to play with. I’m posting the original 512×1536 unedited master files first. Then the head, torso and legs for both male and female- all cut up, with the shoulder and foot seams already fixed. ENJOY!!!

** CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO GET THE FULL SIZE!!! **

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Female 512′s

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Male 512′s

Repeated from above for those of you who might have missed it.

Claire’s Normal Maps: This link will take you to mediafire where you can download a PSD with both male and female normal maps. The resolution is 1024×3072 and will still need to be split when you’re done. 3D modeling and rendering isn’t one of my greatest strengths but it gets the job done. These were added on April 7th 2010 because the original forum attachments didn’t survive the migration to the archive.

Woot! That’s me finished for the day! CIAO FOR NOW!!!

What follows from here is a list of utterly cool crap I’ve found over the last few weeks. Some you might find interesting, some might go over your head. Read on if you want to, or skip over this part. As I said in the title- this is a random ramble!

• MULTI CHAN HAX by ABU NASU

The first thing I discovered was by chance when reading the official SL forums. The poster was Abu Nasu (someone who I have already referred to as God somewhere here) explaining “multi chan hax“. In the first post he mentioned “I can now switch between a bunch of mapping channels in the same file.”… which was enough to lift my interest and keep checking back.

I have MINIMAL 3D experience, but the words “mapping channel” had me hooked. From what I knew of them… and how he was phrasing his responses… he had managed to make a plugin that allowed the same sort of theory to be applied in Photoshop. OMGWTF!!! However, I had to wait a few days to confirm that assumption… then BAM! Here is the Tech Slop link so you know what I am on about. Multi Chan Hax Head . HOW COOL IS THAT SH*T!!???!?!?! And it isn’t just for the head! There is also .mch files for the SL legs, and another one for part of the legs with the torso!!!! Seams could be a thing of the past with this super-nifty little plugin!

Yes.. I may have gushed in my response to this on the SL forums… and gone so far as to offer my first born… but but but but!!!!! For ANYONE who has ever whinged about wanting a DIFFERENT mesh to texture in PS, this is basically the answer to your prayers! I’ve run it through its paces on this crappy desktop, and I am pleased to say it offers exactly what is promised. I can’t wait to get my laptop back so I can REALLY get cracking with this cool lil plugin. I AM UBER IMPRESSED!!! I definitely owe Abu Nasu a beer or a good bottle of red.

• SiteGrinder

I was rummaging through a Photoshop tutorials site, and I clicked on a link to something that claimed you could “Create a Website in Photoshop”. Anyone who knows me in RL, knows I HATE coding. Yes, I can read basic html, NO, I don’t see the point in wasting my time with it (hence the reason I have a BLOG not a WEBSITE- lmao!). HTML, CSS, Javascript… BAH!!!! That’s no fun at all! I get frustrated at why I can’t get it to work the way *I* want it to work, and usually end up getting my boy to either walk me through it (he’s such a calming influence), or I get HIM to do it FOR me. *Giggles*. However…!

Let me show you the SiteGrinder website. *Grin*… “SiteGrinder 2 turns Adobe Photoshop into an easy-to-use and powerful website design and production tool”. THIS is HIGH on my Christmas wish list! So far, I have downloaded and fiddled with the demo offered on the site. It is fully functioning, but watermarks anything you output- which is fine by me because I want to TEST it before I BUY it! I’ve found it easy to understand, and haven’t had any “hair pull” moments . That surprised me, because I still pull my hair out with Dreamweaver and Flash. I can use them, but not as well as I’d like to be able to.

According to those “In-The-Know” with website creation, apparently the output/behind the scenes coding of the sites I’ve made is “messy”. But honestly… It looks pretty, and it works. That is all that matters to ME!

• The GIMP 2.6 officially released

“GIMP 2.6 is an important release from a development point of view. It features changes to the user interface addressing some often received complaints, and a tentative integration of GEGL, the graph based image processing library that will eventually bring high bit-depth and non-destructive editing to GIMP.”

GIMP 2.6 Release Notes, GIMP 2.6 Downloads

I know GIMP is no comparison to the powerhouse that is Photoshop, but you have to give them credit for their continuing improvements to something that is FREE for everyone!

I think the funnest thing they have added is “brush dynamics”. PS has had this for quite a while. It allows you to use the brush with scatter/size/opacity tweaks on every stroke. I haven’t has a chance to test out if it supports dynamic photoshop brushes yet (it does support PS brushes, but I don’t know if the dynamics are supported in the same manner)… This will be interesting. I know a tonne of GIMP skin-makers who would greatly benefit from being able to use the Nagel Series skin brushes within GIMP.

The other cool “catching up with PS” tool is the ability to wrap text within a bounding box. Just drag out the size you want your text box to be, and it will move the last word to the next line when you run out of room. WHY this wasn’t an update earlier, I don’t know. But its a time saver- so YAY for GIMP adding that feature!

Another little change is the “on-canvas” previews for some (?) filters. Usually filters have been given their own preview window, with the filter settings beside/under the preview. Now, you’re able to view the whole working canvas before you commit the change. Again, this is GIMP slowly catching up to Photoshop. I don’t think there was anything *wrong* with a separate preview, but it’s nice to know you can view the whole image before you apply the filters.

*takes a deep breath* Ok folks, I do believe my rant is over.

Thanks for stopping by!

Claire Harford

More after the cut if you’re interested.

Both programs do pretty much the same thing, just in different ways. I think for users who have never fully learnt both programs, trying to understand the difference, or why it doesn’t work the “same” in the other program will definitely lead to frustration.

My explanations and tutorials were never meant for people new to either program… I have tried my best to thoroughly explain each and every step for the program I wrote it for, but I do assume you have a basic to intermediate knowledge of that particular program in order to follow along, and hopefully understand what the heck I am on about.

I started with The GIMP (as any hobbyist should before spending cash). It does have my heart and I will defend that program to the death against any Photoshop elitist who says its a waste of time. However, because The GIMP is open-source… and not “industry standard”, there came a time when I figured I should learn Photoshop as well. The silly thing is, the migration to Photoshop (when you still have GIMP as a backup) sounds a whole lot less painful than going the opposite way.

For all you Photoshop fans out there, I have some good news. The next tutorial or two will be covering the funky “fake bake” spotted in the previous entries, and how to do it yourself. YAY!!! I personally use PS CS3… so for anyone using older versions… if something is not quite right I apologize, but that is all I have to go by.

Photoshoppers, Gimpers, Love you both the same! Mwah!

Ciao for now!

As with before, the final outcome will be up for sale in Afton’s ONE dollarbie shop , with a link back to this blog.

Now… let’s get cracking!

For this tutorial, I’m using the templates by Chip Midnight again, at 512 resolution.

Create a new layer, and fill it with a colour of your choice. I chose a nice deep red for mine. Rename this layer “Sweater Colour Base”.

** Before you say anything, “yeah, yeah, I know, I know…”, The dark red, could possibly show as TOO dark for some people to see well, but! You can make your sweater any colour you want. I just wanted a dark red one! **

Create another new layer, and fill it with a mid grey colour (I chose 909090).

Go to Filters >> Noise >> RBG noise…

We’re going to add a LOT of noise. Make sure Independent RGB is unchecked, and set the values to 0.50.

Now go to Filters >> Blur >> Motion Blur…

Blur Type is Linear, and we set the length to 50, and the angle to 90.

Duplicate the layer you just made.

Then go to Layer >> Transform >> Rotate 90 counter-clockwise.

Change the layer blend mode to Overlay, and merge it down to the underlying grey layer.

You should have something like a weave-ish looking texture.

Add a small amount of noise again, somewhere between 0.05-0.10 is enough.

Change the layer blend mode to overlay again, and merge down once more. So, while we made two new layers to create the texture, you should have them all merged down to the original “Sweater Colour Base” we firstly created.

You should have something that looks like this.

** Before we do anything to this layer, I am going to save a copy as a TGA. Just the texture, as it is, because I am going to use it to make a band on the lower templates, in order to make a longer sweater. I’ll get to that when I’ve finished the top though, lol. **

Now we’re going to figure out our neckline placement. To make this easier, you can bring one of Chips layers to the top. I’ve brought up the Shaded Grid layer, changed its blend mode to Overlay, and dropped the opacity down to 50%.

Create a new layer above this, and rename it “Neckline Shape”.

Using the template as a guide, grab your paintbrush tool and draw in a wide white line for your neckline. I say wide because I am attempting to make a knitted band for the edge.

Now we’re going to bump map this information to our base.

Select the “Sweater Colour Base” layer, and go to Filters >> Map >> Bump map…

From the drop down menu, select the layer you just made “Neckline Shape”.

These are the setting I used, but as always, feel free to play around with them.

You can choose to delete or hide the layer if you want to, but because I painted it in white, I’ve chosen to use it for some extra highlights. I’ve changed the blending mode to Soft light, and dropped the opacity to 10%.

Create a new layer and rename it “neckline ribbing”, this time we are adding a “ribbed” effect to the v-neck shape we just made.

Grab your paintbrush tool again, this time I’ve chosen Circle Fuzzy (07). Paint in some lines for where you want the rib to go.

Go back to the “Sweater Colour Base” layer, and we’re going to bump map the ribbing in.

Go to Filters >> Map >> Bump Map... from the drop down menu, select the layer you just made “neckline ribbing”.

The only setting I changed from the last time, is I have checked “Invert”… it just looked better, lol.

As before, you can hide, delete keep this layer for extra shading/highlights this layer. I’ve inverted the colour (switched it to black by going to Colors >> Invert), changed the blend mode to Burn, and dropped to opacity to 10%.

Thats the neckline finished!

Next, we move on to the cuff, its pretty much the same as the neckline, so create a new layer and name it Cuff Shape.

We paint a big white block for how wide we want it.

Select the “Sweater Base Colour” layer. Then go to Filters >> Map >> Bump Map… from the drop down menu, select the layer you just made “Cuff Shape”.

Keep the settings the same as before, so no screen shot, just deselect Invert for the solid white.

You can delete or keep it, I keep them for highlights or shading.

Next make a new layer for the ribbing of the cuffs, name it that. Grab your paintbrush tool and paint in some lines for ribbing.

Select the “Sweater Base Colour” layer. Then go to Filters >> Map >> Bump Map... from the drop down menu, select the layer you just made “Cuff Ribbing”.

Keep the settings the same as before, but check Invert.

Delete or keep the layer. I inverted the colour and used it as shading.

* GRIN * Starting to look like a sweater yet?

Now to add some wrinkles! We’re still using the same principles as before. I /love/ how friendly bump mapping is in GIMP. Once you get used to it, its one of those steps you really can’t live without.

Create a new layer, and name it “Wrinkles”. Grab a fuzzy brush, and paint in some wrinkles on the front, back, and some on the arms as well. I smudged out the ends, so they tapered off a bit, and I applied a Gaussian Blur of 10.0.

Select the “Sweater Base Colour” layer. Then go to Filters >> Map >> Bump Map… from the drop down menu, select the layer you just made “Wrinkles”.

These are my settings, but feel free to change them to your own if you wish.

With your base layer still selected, we’re also going to use the displace filter for the wrinkles.

Go to Filters >> Displace… Select your “Wrinkles” layer from the drop down menu for both X & Y, and we are going to negatively displace by -5.0 on both coordinates. This is a screen shot of what my filter looks like.

I’ve kept my wrinkles layer again, inverted the colour, swapped the blend mode to Burn, and dropped to opacity to 20%.

ALMOST finished! By now, you have a sweater that is definitely starting to look like it should. The texture has texture, something I find fairly lacking in SL. All the shading in the world will never be a replacement for good texturing, however, you do need shading to complete the look of things.

To do this, I’m using one of my “Fake Bake” back-up files. I’ll put up the greyscale image for you to save for your own use.

I place it on a new layer, changed the bend mode to multiply and dropped the opacity down to 50%.

All we have left to do for the top part, is mask out what we don’t want on our “Sweater Base Colour” layer. Remember to save your work as an XCF, so you can go back and fiddle with it later if you want. Then save it as a TGA.

We have finished with the top BUT we’re not finished. At the beginning of the tutorial, I saved the basic texture for later use on the lower template, so now we’re going to make a band for the sweater.

I’m using Chip’s lower templates again, at 512 resolution.

Open up the solid layer TGA we saved earlier, select all, copy, and paste it in to a new layer on the templates file. Name it “Sweater Solid Colour” as we did for the upper template.

The theory on this, is that it doesn’t /really/ have to be seamless, because all we are making is the ribbed band for the bottom. We’re using the same method as we did for the neckline and cuffs.

On a new layer named “Band Shape”, create a wide band using your paintbrush tool in white.

Select the “Sweater Solid Colour” layer, and go to Filters >> Map >> Bump Map… from the drop down menu, select the layer you just made, “Band Shape”.

These are my settings, by now, you should be used to the filter enough to just play around, but just in case, I’ll keep putting up screenshots.

I kept the layer, changed the blend mode to overlay, and dropped opacity to 10%.

Create another new layer and name it “Band Ribbing”. You guessed it! Now we’re making the ribbed part. So grab your paintbrush again, and paint in some lines across the band.

Select the “Sweater Solid Colour” layer, and go to Filters >> Map >> Bump Map… from the drop down menu, select the layer you just made, “Band Ribbing”.

The only part I changed in the settings was to check “Invert”, so no screen shot this time.

I’ve kept the layer again, inverted the colour (by going to Color >> Invert), switched the blend mode to burn, and dropped the opacity to 20%.

ALMOST done again. I’ve used the “Lower Fake Bake” (which can be found on the previous tutorial for denim jeans). I’ve changed the layer blend mode to multiply, and dropped the opacity to 50% to match the settings I had for the upper.

All that we have left to do, is mask out what we don’t want, save the XCF, then save it as a TGA, and upload them both to SL.

Taaa daaaaa! Final Sweater, up for sale in Afton’s ONE shop, click the poster for an Slurl. In-world, you can buy the finished sweater for 1L, or click the poster for a link back to this site. ENJOY!

]]> https://mistressofdesign.wordpress.com/2008/08/16/sweater-tutorial-using-the-gimp/feed/ 12 claireharford https://mistressofdesign.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/denim-jeans-tutorial-using-the-gimp/ https://mistressofdesign.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/denim-jeans-tutorial-using-the-gimp/#comments Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:21:29 +0000 claireharford http://mistressofdesign.wordpress.com/?p=14 ]]> This is an adaptation of “Creating Denim in GIMP by *fence-post” from DeviantArt. I’ve changed it so it is relevant to texture creation in Second Life. But I encourage you to read or bookmark the original tutorial as well.

This is a pretty advanced tutorial… It’s not recommended for anyone new to The GIMP, or to clothing creation. However, if you understand the basics of GIMP and the templates, this could be *just* the thing you are searching for to really bring your creations to life. The principles can be applied to ALL you future creations and you will probably benefit greatly from learning some of this stuff.

The final creation will be up for sale for 1L in Afton’s “Dollarbie” shop at HSPL . Click the link to grab a pair now.

This is the poster to look out for.

Are you ready to get cracking? The tutorial starts immediately after the cut…

Clean Blue Jeans Tutorial

Using The Gimp version 2.4.6

All images are smaller previews for faster website load times. To see the full resolutions, with readable details, please click on any of the pictures and the full size will load.

Step One

Open up you basic templates. For this one I’ve chosen to work with the templates by Chip Midnight at 1024 resolution. Create a new layer on top of all the avatar mesh guides. Name it something simple like “Solid Blue”. With the colour picker open, find a blue colour you like, any blue is fine. For mine, I chose to use 393a6e. Fill the new “Solid Blue” layer with your foreground colour.

Step Two

Now we’re going to make some noise (makes a silly joke about the crowd going wild ). Go to Filters >> Noise >> RBG Noise…

The default values are 0.20 for red, blue and green with 0.00 for alpha, we leave them alone. Make sure “Independent RBG” is unchecked, that way its a uniform colour of noise, not a rainbow one- hehe.

Step Three

Add a new transparent layer above, and fill the new layer with a scan line pattern (click *here* to download from DA). The screen shot won’t show much, so I am not including one. The pattern is just a tiny repeating black diagonal line.

*** So far, all of this had been pretty basic… Now on to the more challenging stuff! ***

Step Four

We’re going to use the Bump Map tool within The GIMP. (Honest opinion, bump mapping is a lot easier/smarter in GIMP than in Photoshop- so there!! XD ). Moving right along…

Make sure you have your “Solid Blue” base layer selected (the one with noise added). Go to Filters >> Map >> Bump Map…

Select the Scan Line layer as your Bump map from the drop down menu. Then, using the next screen shot as a guide, use the following settings. Feel free to experiment, but this is just to make things easier the first time around.

Step Five

You can either hide or delete the scan line layer now, we’re finished with that part.

Step Six

You can go back to your “Solid Blue” layer and add more noise if you want. Its not a compulsary step. I only added 0.10 worth of RBG noise again, just to rough it up a bit more.

*** So far, you should have something resembling a square of denim. We’re now moving on to adding details like the seam highlights and shadowing. ***

Step Seven

Create a new layer and name it “Side Seams for Front”. Along the side seam, on the front of your pants template, draw a white “seam” all the way down, on both sides. I am using the paintbrush tool, with Circle (11) selected. Seems to be the perfect size for seams (seems/seams- lol).

*** For this step, if you bring Chips “Seam Matching Guide” to the layer above the Solid Blue, and below your new “Side Seams” layer, it makes things a lot easier to figure out where to put it. As a tip, only follow the inside of the guide, and keep it at the size 11 brush. That worked well for me. ***

When you’ve done your white line, put Chips Seam Matching Guide back below your Solid Blue base layer. Go back to your Solid Blue Base layer, and create another new layer. (Above the base, under the white lines you just drew) and fill it with black. Merge your white seams, down to the black layer, and again, rename it “front side seams”.

Step Eight

On this “Front Side Seam” layer, we want to make it a bit less harsh, so go to Filters >> Blur >> Gaussian Blur. The default of 5.0, 5.0 is fine for what we’re working with.

Step Nine

We’re going to use Bump mapping again, sort of like we did before with the scan line pattern, this time to get a raised and shadow effect for the side seams. Select your Solid Blue Base layer (the one we want to bump , are you getting it yet?)

Go to Filters >> Map >> Bump Map. From the drop down menu for Bump Map, select the black and white layer you just made for side seams. From the screen shot below use the following settings (again, feel free to fiddle with them, this is just a starting point to make it easier the first time). In the preview window you can see the result of my settings.

As before, you can now either delete or hide the layer we used to bump map. I personally hide them, because they might come in handy for highlights or shading.

Step Ten

Now we’re going to “liven up” the side seam a little. We have its location “bumped”, and its easy to see. So next, we’re going to add some wrinkle effect to the seam.

Create a new transparent layer above you Solid Blue base layer. Name it “Side Seam Wrinkles”. For this, I am using the paintbrush tool again in white, with a few tweaks… Brush is Circle Fuzzy (05), but I have checked “Fade out” and set the length to fade out to 20px. The reason I’ve done that is because if you make a stroke left to right, it will fade by the time it reaches the other side of the raised seam. Then you can stroke right to left with the same result.

SUPER closeup shot to explain…

Keep going until you’ve done both seams, the whole way up and down.. We’re going to use this “Side Seam Wrinkles” layer to bump map again.

Step Eleven

Select your “Solid Blue” base layer again, go to Filters >> Map >> Bump Map… From the Bump Map drop down, select the “Side Seams Wrinkles” layer you just made. I am tempted to not give a screen shot, and just let you figure it out, but I am too much of an information junkie to skip that- lol. If you want to use the following settings, please do, if you want to try it by yourself, go for it!!

Step Twelve

Now for something completely different! Instead of hiding, or deleting the side seam wrinkle layer, we’re going to use it to add some highlights. This is why I keep them!

Select your “Side Seam Wrinkles” layer, and change its blending mode through the layers tab. I switched the blending mode to “Soft Light” and left the opacity at 100%, but you can also use dodge, or overlay, or hard light and so on and so forth. You may need to change the layer opacity if you use another blending mode as well. Feel free to experiment.

*** While we’re on the topic of Maps… I’m going to introduce the “Displace” map option. Bump Mapping, I guess is similar to embossing your base texture with another layer, making height and depth, a fake Z coordinate. Displacement works by shifting/moving the base texture to a new X & Y coordinate. So Bump is depth (height), displace is location (side to side or up and down)… That is definitely NOT a technical explanation *giggles* but it should help you understand the difference. NEVER use a SOLID layer for displacement. You will throw off the whole template coordinates, so just be warned. To use the Displace option, ALWAYS use colour on alpha.***

Step Thirteen

Select your Solid Blue base layer. Go to Filters >> Map >> Displace…

On both X and Y drop down menus, select the “Side Seam Wrinkles” layer for displacement. Here is a screen shot for the settings I used.

Step Fourteen

Now we’re going to make a “Stitching” layer. So create a new transparent layer, above the side seam wrinkles. Name it “Side Seam Stitching”.

Grab the Path Tool, and create a path along the outer edge of the left side seam, top to bottom. When you reach the bottom, hold down the SHIFT key, and click the inner edge of the left side seam, and create a path bottom to top. When you reach the top, hold down SHIFT again, and click the inner edge of the right seam, and go down, hold shift again at the bottom to create a new path on the outer edge.

*** By holding down the Shift key when moving to another path, you’ll create a multi-component point and each will be stroked individually. If you didn’t hold down shift when starting a new line, everything would be connected, and you would have to erase what you don’t want after.***

Step Fifteen

With your paths in place, we now want to select a colour for the stitching… something deep gold. I’ve used b28226 as my stitching colour. Next, go to Edit >> Stroke Path…

Pay attention to the Line width, the Line Style and the Dash preset.

Click on Stroke at the bottom of the dialog box.

Yay! Dashed lines that looks like stitches, without having to do it by hand!!

Step Sixteen

This is an optional step, but you should be used to “Mapping” by now, so I encourage you to give it a shot… We’re going to bump map, or displace the “Side Seam Stitching” layer this time, using the wrinkle layer as our bump map. Select your “Side Seam Stitching” layer. Go to Filters >> Map >> Bump Map, select your “Side Seam Wrinkles” layer from the drop down and mess around with the settings.

No screen shot this time, just play. Same with displace. Just mess around. You can always “Undo” if anything goes wrong.

Step Eighteen

This is a revision time.

Keep doing this for ALL the pieces you might want!!! You can continue doing all of what we’ve covered, on every other “bit” to get the rest of your details to “pop”. I’m not going to keep repeating the above steps for each new piece of the jeans, but I will revise what we’ve covered so far. From here, you can use the above methods, over and over, for the other details on your jeans.

• For new details, create a new layer, and paint the big basic shape in white.

• Apply a small amount of Gaussian Blur so the edges aren’t too harsh.

• Select your Base Layer (the Solid Blue base layer, the one you want to “bump”). Then go to Filters >> Map >> Bump Map.

• Use the layer you just made as the Bump Map from the drop down menu, play with the settings to get the amount you want.

• Bump mapping raises/lowers the texture, displacement shifts it on the X & Y coodinates.

• The same layer you have used for bump/displace (white on alpha) can also be used to add more highlights. Just change the blend mode and/or opacity.

• To add seam wrinkles, set your paintbrush to fade out. And use both bump and displace maps for effect.

• With your path tool, we can stroke the path to create a dashed line resembling stitches. If you hold down shift when finishing a new path, and moving on to the next, you create a multi-component path (separate strokes).

So far, after all that detailing, repeating the steps over and over, I have come up with this… All the bits are in the right place, and my texture has texture.

*** I’m putting up a greyscale JPEG you can save if you are struggling with “where” all the details go. That way you can trace over the top for placements, if you need to. It simply shows my personal locations for the fly, the front and back pockets, the waistband, and belt loops. As I said, its crude/simple/basic… because following the steps above, you can work your own magic. ***

Step Seventeen

Aha!! She exclaims with glee! By now you should be getting a good grasp of all the basics… but NOW we’re going to use the same methods, for WRINKLES and SHADOWS!

Create a new transparent layer. Name it “Big Shadows”. Paint some big, black, blurry shadows. Looks horrible, but this is a pretty nifty way to add shadows and wrinkles to your designs.

Bump map the base layer, using this layer. These are the settings I used.

I’ve kept the “Big Shadow” layer visible, changed the blend mode to burn, and set opacity at 20%.

Make another new layer, and this time we’re painting thin “tight fit” wrinkles in black.

Bump map the base layer, using the Thin Wrinkle layer. These are my settings.

As above, I’ve kept the layer visible and changed the blend mode and opacity.

Step Eighteen

Grins… the final step I guess is what make this “pop” a heck of a lot more. So far, we’ve covered adding texture, to the texture itself. We’ve added shading and highlights, created our wrinkles and stitching… but we still need some extra shading to complete it though. This is what my jeans look like, ALMOST finished…

It’s ok, but it does need some extra *oomph* with some simple shading. I’ve used a “Fake Bake” texture I originally made in PS. Its a greyscale layer, and it comes in SUPER handing for this exact reason.

I place it on a new layer, above everything else, and set the blend mode of this layer to Multiply, and dropped the opacity to 75%.

LOOKING GREAT NOW!!!! Yays!!!!

Step Nineteen

Within The GIMP, you have a few ways you can make it ready for upload to SL. One is by using an alpha channel, the other is by turning off/erasing/masking the layers… By now, you should know how to do any or all of the above. I prefer to mask out what I don’t need of the base with layer masks, as GIMP automatically transfers that info to the alpha channel. Save your work as an XCF or PSD… so if you need to edit anything later on, you have all your layers to work on.

Then you are ready to save it as a TGA, and upload it to SL- wooohoooooo!!! You’ve just made your own jeans!

These jeans will be available in Afton (Slurl) as a dollarbie. Along with a link back to this page. Now go forth and create!!! I am posting another pic of the Dollarbie vendor that will be up for grabs in Afton. Click on the poster for a SLurl to grab a copy of what I made.

As always, play nice kiddies! *Smooches*. I hope you enjoy!

Time for me to make my exit, ta ta for now!

]]> https://mistressofdesign.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/denim-jeans-tutorial-using-the-gimp/feed/ 43 claireharford Jeans Tutorial Dollarbie https://mistressofdesign.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/better-photography-part-one-capturing/ https://mistressofdesign.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/better-photography-part-one-capturing/#comments Thu, 29 May 2008 15:52:35 +0000 claireharford http://mistressofdesign.wordpress.com/?p=4 ]]> This one may be just the place to start the tips and tricks, because it give you a quick look into “better” photography for SL. Whether you’re a newbie or a pro, being able to take and even tweak a snapshot is an abosulte “must know”.

Part One looks at capturing images, and getting the most out of your settings. I’ll look at both in world capture methods, and touch lightly on how to use external programs for screen captures. I’ll also go in to some advanced menu options, to really make the most of your pics.

Get ready for some tips and tricks below the cut…

So… I am going to guess you all know how to use the snapshot function in Second Life. Its probably the first thing you made yourself as a newcomer. It may have been a profile pic, a snapshot with friends, or a “tourist” snapshot of some awesome build. Whatever it was, it was easy… but are you getting the most out of it?

This is BASIC stuff, I don’t mean to treat anyone as “stupid”, not in the least. But there are some basics you might miss because it *is* so basic. If you already know it, skip ahead a few paragraphs. If you know it all, yay for you, but others might still benefit. Play nice, kiddies!

The first part I am going to cover is within the snapshot menu itself. “What size image do you need?”. Well, that all depends on what you’re going to be doing with it! You might want to square it off, you might want to capture the whole screen, you might want to show the User Interface (chat, location, mini map etc), you might need a higher resolution to edit for your vendors… your preferences from last time, might not be the ones you want to use *this* time. So each pic you take, has different inputs, controlled by you.

Below, is a full screen capture, based on my screen size of 1440×838. I’ve selected “Current Window” for the size I wanted. It makes a nice landscape image.

(All images in this post have been resized for web browsing, and are not the same size as what shows up in the pics. Click on the images if you want to view the full size).

Now… what if you wanted a squared image? SL uploads 1:1 or 1:2 ratio, meaning 512×512, 1024×1024 or 512×1024 (and so on and so forth). Sometimes you want your images captured at the same size they will be uploaded.

For this, we need to select “Custom” from the drop down menu for image size. SL will always constrain it to the nearest, lower resolution image size (please correct me here if I am wrong). For squared captures, I stick to my screen height as a guide. So I capture 838×838 pixels, and when uploading, it gets “squished” back down to 512×512. If I wanted a 1024pxl square, I’d capture it at that, but more on that a little further down.

This next image shows the options I have selected for squared captures using the in world snapshot menu.

Now… if you’re making snapshots for vendors (things for sale) you might want more detail to work on, and sometimes your given screen size is just too low resolution to do anything good with, especially on full body shots. In the snapshot menu, you can increase the resolution the same way we squared it off, bu choosing “Custom” for size and typing in a value higher than your screens output.

PLEASE: This is usually only useful if you plan on post-editing your images. Taking a 2048×2048 image, and importing it *as is*, will just take forever to load, and lag you to buggery. The main benefit come when you shrink it back down to 512′s in your chosen image editor because the edge pixels will usually be smoothed out to gradients in resizing.

Pic below shows Custom sizes for better “full body” shots needed in post editing.

Another important thing to “tweak” should be your graphics settings in preferences. Some machines may be too old, or the grahics card may not be supported, but I encourage you to check and see if you have “local lighting” enabled. It can make a world of difference in how bright and clear a snapshot comes out. If you’re an unlucky soul who can’t see a difference whether its checked or not, my guess would be your computer may not support it. The positive is, with the right local settings (noon is best for post Windlight) not all is lost.

(Don’t pick on my graphics settings! They are optimized for *faster* performance, as my connection speed is less than great. I only increase them when I NEED to, day to day socializing, shopping and picture taking does not fall in to the NEED catagory *smiles*.)

Now we’re going to take a look at the Main Menu options for snapshots. Personally, I work faster with keyboard shortcuts… you may or may not want to adopt this trick, its up to you.

Control + Shift + S = Take a Snapshot

Control + ‘ (apostrophe) = Snapshot to Disk

In the Advanced menu, you can also disable the shutter sound made when saving a snapshot to your hard drive. In a photo shoot, it can get a tad irritating. I tend to mute SL when “working”, so that one is up to you. If you haven’t done so already, Control + Alt + D will activate the advanced menu options.

Last little tip if for those of you experiencing issues with the snapshot option within SL. I know of a few people who crash when attempting to save an image to their hard drive, or who freeze when trying to capture a large image. My advice to any of you with this problem, is to grab a “screen capture” program. I have the free version of FRAPS and the free version of ScreenHunter. I tend to use ScreenHunter most, because I’ve had it the longest. FRAPS has video capture capabilities as well, so might be more geared towards budding film directors.

I’m not going to tell you how to use the software, but I am going to show you what you need to know in order to use it in conjunction with Second Life. Basically… screen captures, capture the whole screen- duh! *Giggles*… but what if you don’t want to capture the User Interface (UI)? The User Interface is the menus, the chat bar, your inventory, the mini map. Before you capture you want to turn it off. HUD items will still show up, think of ZHAO animation overriders, Huddles, radars etc. Those still need to be detached, but this next trick will hide everything else.

Make sure the advanced menu is activated (control+alt+d) and then hit the following…

Control + Alt + F1

Capture the screen with the assigned keyboard shortcut for the program you are using. (In ScreenHunter, I have it set to F6).

Do the same sequence again, Control + Alt + F1, to get your UI back.

Okie dokie boys and girls, I now have brain strain and I am going to leave it there for part one.

In the next part, I’m going to cover basic image editing outside of SL using a few different programs. Things like cropping, resizing, and the use of studios and how they might help. And we’re going to take a look at some more capture methods (color, depth, mattes).

Thank you to Verona, for posing for me. I’m not at all shy… she is, however, a babe!

Toodles!!!