Making a basic shirt in the Gimp

Natalia Zelmanov has covered this so well that for now I'm not going to write my own entry, but just link to hers :) Oh, and to this. And this too, for good measure.

Tiling textures to make larger pieces of "cloth"

I'm finding that when I search for existing textures online to work with, often their image size will be too tiny to work with, and the texture itself will look too large. However, only a little fiddling allows you to manipulate your source into "cloth" of the right size.

• Get a sample of the texture you want to work with.
• Select Filters->Map->Make seamless.
• Select Filters->Map->Tile...... This will bring up a dialog enabling you to make a new file with the texture tiled inside it. Choosing the size of the tiled image determines how many repeats of the original texture you will get, and therefore the final look of the tiled texture. You may need to repeat this step several times to get the right size of texture.
• If necessary, reduce the image size to create the right size of "cloth" to work with over your templates; most important in you are working across templates to achieve your final look.
  

Making a button - Tateru's way

How to make a button for a piece of clothing; it didn't quite work out the way I had anticipated, but was acceptable nonetheless. I want to work on this process. These instructions are for the Gimp specifically.

• Make a new canvas, about 60x60 pixels.
  

• Use the "Select elliptical regions" tool. Hold down shift as you create the shape to make a perfect circle.
• Fill the area with the color of your button. Don't banish the selection yet.
• Shrink the selection by 5 pixels or so.
  
• Create a new layer and select it.
  
• Fill this area with white.
  
• Run a Gaussian blur, RLE.
  
• Turn down the opacity on this layer. You have now created the flash of light on the button.

This is an example of a black button. It looks much better inworld :)



This website has information on how to create 3D web buttons; I think I'll try that next and see what I can come up with to create more convincing buttons.

Really flat prisms

• Rez a sphere, and set the dimple B=0.950.
• Change the shape to a cube.
• Set Z=0.010.

You now have an extremely flat prim with a square end to work with.

Especially good for creating plants, fur, and other irregular 3D shapes:

• Rez a flat prim.
• Shift-drag to copy; when you do this, the copy is left in place, while the original is moved away.
  
• Ctrl-z to move the original back into the same space as the copy.
  
• Select either prim and rotate about any axis.
• Do this a couple of times and you will see the illusion of a 3D object start to appear.
  

Micro-blogging

This is a place for tiny posts about how to do technical things in Second Life: clothing creation, building, scripting. Mostly for my on reference, but hopefully others will make use of it too.