Making clothes - A tank top, part 1

Hi everyone!

I mentioned in one of the Second Life Forums (Fora?)  that I would try to give a simple example of how to create clothes in Second Life.  And, in particular, show how to make smooth 'cuts' using Paths (Bezier Curves) and how to avoid the Dreaded Jaggies using the Gaussian Blur.

I've decided that the way to do it is to step back first and talk about Paths, aka bezier curves and how one works with them, and thinks about them with GIMP.  So what I will do here is create a simple Path in GIMP and show you what is possible.  If you want to do some reading on the math behind this you can google Bezier Curves.  If you'd like to get a 'hands on' feeling of what we'll be doing go here:

http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/gfx/bezier.html

Give it a little time to load into your browser and then use the handles and move the end-points to play with the Bezier Curve it provides.

If you're jumping into this without the preceding posts in this blog, I'd suggest you take a look at the Tools, Credits and Caveats post found here:

http://robin-makingstuff.blogspot.com/2011/02/tools-credits-and-caveats.html.

It will tell you how to get the various tools you'll need, starting with GIMP (free!).

Ok.... now let's talk about clothes.....

There are two big problems with clothes.  The first is creating nice smooth 'cuts' in your clothing item.  And the second is avoiding the Dreaded Jaggies.  That's where a diagonal line looks more like a staircase than a nice smooth line.

In this post, we're going to deal with the first problem, how to create smooth 'cuts' in your 'fabric' as you make clothes.  The solution to this problem in GIMP is to use Paths, which are in fact, bezier curves.

Working with Paths is another of those things common in computers with graphical user interfaces that is easier to do than it is to explain.  I'd suggest reading through this post once.  Then reading through it a second time and try to do the examples yourself.  You'll wonder pretty quickly what all the fuss is about.  :)

Lets get started!

Step 1:  Open GIMP, create a new Image of 256x256 pixels.  Then find the Path Tool on the Tools window and create a coarse, first pass, unrefined Path.  Take a look at the path I've created below:

There are two things we're going to work on here:

1. Connecting a curve to a straight line.
2. Connecting a curve to a curve.

We'll start with the line segment in the lower left and leave it completely unchanged so it can be our straight line segment.  The second line segment then will be the one that connects to both a straight line (the first line segment) and a curved line (the third line segment).

So.... the thing we need to do is to grab the second segment in the middle and drag it.  Use your mouse, place the pointer over the middle of the second segment, press the left mouse button and hold it down as you drag the mouse as shown in the image below.

As you drag the segment you'll notice that two handles appear, one on each end.  Use the mouse to grab the lower handle and move it around.  What we want is a smooth connection between this second and the first line segment.  If you make the line that is attached to the handle look like it is a straight line extension of the first line segment, you'l have the smooth connection we want.

Looking at it from the second line segment's point of view, that line is tangent to the curve at the point it connects to the first line segment.  If the word 'tangent' makes you think that someone might be mispronouncing the name of a small orange-like fruit, dont worry.  There will NOT be a test.

Now take the second handle and drag it in the direction shown in the picture below.

The exact angle you drag the second handle to in the picture above is not particularly important. BUT!  The next step will be!!

Use the mouse to drag the third line segment from the middle as you did with the second to expose the handles.  And then take the left-most handle and make the line it connects to be straight when compared with the line on the second handle on the second segment.

Whew!  That's a lot of words to describe something pretty simple.  Look at the picture below.

Now let's pause and look at what we've done.....

We've connected the second line segment smoothly to a straight line on one end and connected it smoothly to a curved line on the other end.  Success!  We've achieved our goal!

Now we can repeat the process, working our way from line segment to line segment smoothly connecting and creating curves.  Be sure to leave the last line segment straight as we did with the first.  When you're done it will look like something like this.

Yay!  It looks pretty good doesn't it?

Go ahead now and play with it.  Move the points around.  Stretch the handles out so they're really long.  Experiment!  Play!

There's a handy trick you will want to know about.  If you place your mouse in the middle of a line segment and press 'ctrl' on the keyboard you'll see a very small + appear.  That + indicates that a new point will be added when you click the left mouse button.  Then you can move that point around as you've done with the others and play with it as well.

Oh, one more thing!  Go to the Layers window and click on Paths tab. (look at the image above)  You'll see a thing under that tab that looks a lot like a layer, but in fact it is the Path we have just created.   And yes, there are a lot of fun things we can do with these, almost as much fun as the things we can do with layers!  But we'll save that for a future post.  *winks*

On the next post we will use Paths to create a top.   I'm thinking of creating a nice tank top.  What do you think....?  Red?

robin

Making a seamless tile - part two

Hi again!

We're going to make another pink flower tile this time, but much fancier. First, I'm sure you've noticed that flower petals are not really just one color, but instead they are delicate shades, merging from one color to another.  And flowers have that thing in the center, what is it called?  (Pistil and Stamen I think). Whatever it is, its often yellow and we'll make a yellow one for this flower.

We're going to go through the same steps as before with some additions.  I'm not going to repeat the detail from the previous post though.  Instead I'll try to focus on the new GIMP tricks in this post - hopefully you'll be able to put it together yourself.

Sooo.... First let's open GIMP, create a 64x64 canvas to work on like we did in the last post.  Here's what mine looks like... just 2 layers:

That's simple enough.

Now let's make the petals of the flower more interesting.   We're going to shrink the selection by 3 pixels and add a layer for the new size and fill it with a lighter shade of the pink we have above.  Then!  We'll do it again!  Shrink the selection by another 3 pixels, create a new transparent layer and put paint the lighter shade in that layer.  To shrink the selection use Select->Shrink and tell it you want it 3 pixels smaller.

Now if you look at that closely it looks a little ragged around the edges.  So we need to smooth it out.  We'll use something called Gaussian Blur on each layer to do that.  You'll find it in Filters->Blur->Gaussian.  I chose to blur by 2 pixels on the lower (biggest petals) layer and 3 pixels on the other two.  Choose what looks good to you though, your flower is likely different.  Here's my result:

That's much nicer!

Now we need the yellow center, the pistil/stamen.  This is pretty easy - just do what you did before to create the flower petals, but create a round area in the middle that you will paint yellow.  It doesn't have to be centered perfectly.  Heck it doesn't even have to be perfectly round.  Look at mine!

I went ahead did the blurring thing we did above.  Nice!  Isn't it?!

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention.  I also tinted the background layer pink and made it a little less bright.  You may want to do the same.

What we've been done so far is to create a fancier version of the rather cartoon-ish flower we had before.  Now I want to add some 'pop' to this.  Some 3-D effects.  We'll use something called Bump Map in a few minutes, but first we need to do a little preparation.   I'll detail the steps here so its easier to follow.

1. Click the eye icon on the background layer so that it is no longer visible.
2. Now make a copy of the large petal layer and click the eye icon to make it invisible.
3. And make a coy of the large pistil/stamen layer and click the eye icon to make it in visible
4. At this point you have the original layers visible, minus the background.....Now go to Image->Merge Visible Layers and all of the petal and pistil/stamen layers will be merged into one layer.  (If this makes you nervous, save the file before you do it).

Ok, now it should look something like this:

Note especially the Layers window.... four layers, one visible, our merged layer.  Now we're going to use the large petals layer and large pistil/stamen layer to create masks for the Bump Map.

First the petals layer.  Click on where the eye should be, making it visible.  Then select that layer, making it active and....

1. Make the layer black and white with: Colors->Desaturate
2. Then blur the layer rather severely.  Use Filters->Blur->Gaussian ..... I chose 8 pixels and that's probably a good number for you too.
3. Finally you will want to brighten this - its very grey at the moment.  So choose Colors->Brightness-Contrast and adjust the two controls you see to the right.  I think for mine I moved both up to somewhere between 50 and 60.
4. Click on the eye and make the layer invisible again.

Next make the pistil/stamen layer visible and active and repeat the above.

Now select the layer that is our merged flower.  Just check - it should be the only visible layer.  If it is not correct this now.  The Bump Map we're going to do next will actually make changes to the layer, so let's make a copy of this layer and work on the copy.   The new layer will now be selected and visible - that's good.

Now for the Bump Map.  We're going to do it twice, once for the petals and once for the pistil/stamen.

1. Choose Filters->Map->Bump Map.  You will get a dialog window with many choices... The only one we need to look at is the first one that chooses the Bump Map to use.
2. Click the pull down and select the large flower petal layer we had been working on above.
3. Notice in the preview window that some subtle shading has appeared - this is exactly what we want.  Press OK.

Take a moment and notice what the Bump Map filter did.  It created a rather nice 3D look on your petals.  So now repeat the process again, except in step 2 choose the pistil/stamen layer we had been working on before.

In the end, you should see something like this:

Pretty nifty!  Isn't it?

Now, you could at this point do the same thing we did before....  Duplicate this layer, divide the duplicate in half vertically and horizontally....  Combine the two with the background layer and create your test tiling.  And there is really nothing wrong with that but we'll do something just a little fancier.  This creates a result where the upper of the split image and the lower part of the split image, both overlay the original.  Since we've added a kind of 3D-ness here though, I'd like to carry that into the end result and make it so there is a kind of interleaving.

To do this we'll create the duplicate, divided layer as before, but then we'l add a layer mask.  (New GIMP trick!) and use it to hide one half of the duplicate divided layer.  Then we'll duplicate that and reverse the layer mask and with some simple positioning of the layers we'll achieve our result.

Ok let's list the steps:

1. Duplicate the layer and split is as we did in the previous post.
2. Now right click that new layer and choose Add Layer Mask.  Make it a white layer when you are asked to choose.
3. Now right click again and check 'Show Layer Mask"  (note that Edit Layer Mask is already checked). The image will become white, showing the layer mask you just created.
4. In the tools menu choose the Rectangle Select Tool.   Drag your mouse across the lower half of the layer mask.  Your first will not be perfectly accurate, but you will want this to be positioned at 32 on the vertical axis.  (recall that the image is 64x64).  You can use the 'position' on the lower part of the Tools window to see where your selection is.  Move it up or down as needed to make the second position value 32.
5. Make the foreground color in the Tools window black.  
6. Select the pain Bucket Fill Tool (the paint can) and click within the selection on the Image window.
7. Right click the Layer and uncheck 'Show Layer".

Now you will see that the portion of the layer with the white layer mask is visible.  And the part with the black layer mask is not.  Here's a snapshot of the result:

Now one more thing to do:

1. Duplicate the layer we've been working on.
2. The duplicated layer will be selected.... Choose Color->Invert.

You should see the layer mask reverse on the selected layer.  Black becomes white, white becomes black.    Now move the layer with the white/black layer mask above our original merged layer and look closely at the result.

Look at the upper corners first and how they interact with the middle.  The corner flowers are overlaying the middle flowers.  Now look at the middle flower and how it interacts with the lower corners.  The middle flower is overlaying the lower corner flowers.   Cool!!

Before we do anything else, let's save the file.  There's a lot of work here and it would be awful to loose it though a simple mistake.

Now, we need to make one layer for our tiling test.  So Image->Merge Visible Layers.  (notice that all three flower layers and the background layer are visible).  Then Filters->Map->Tile  and choose 640x640.   Here's the result:

Click on the image to get a close look at the tile testing window.  It looks pretty good to me!

robin

Making a seamless tile

Hi again!  I'm back!

I thought I'd show you how to make a seamless tile using GIMP.  It's not really terribly difficult but it will give you a chance to learn a few tricks in GIMP that should be fun.  We'll make a simple tile in this lesson and then perhaps make some variations on it in future posts.

Here's a rough outline of what we'll do:

• Open GIMP and create a new 64x64 image as our canvas.
• Create a very rough and perhaps a little cartoon-like flower shape and color it in.
• Create a copy of that cartoon-like flower and split it down the middle both vertically and horizontally
• Compress the layers we have created into one and then map it as a tile.

The test of a seamless tile is the seams.  If you can see them, you've failed.  So we will look closely and see how we've done.  Ok... Let's go through it in detail now.

Open GIMP and create our canvas:


Find GIMP and start it up then:

• File->New .... and make the size, width = 64 and height = 64.
• In the Gimp Layers window press the  "Create a New Layer" icon and choose 'transparent'

You should now have two Layers in your Layers window.... looking like the picture at the right.  (click on it to make it bigger)

Create our cartoon-like flower:


This is the creative part of this technique.  Your flower will not look like mine, and it doesn't matter if it looks really rough.

• Make sure you have the "New Layer" layer selected in the layer window, then click on the thing that looks a bit like a lariat.  When you hover your mouse over it you will see it's called the "Free Select Tool".
• Go to the image window and use your mouse wheel to make the white square bigger and then click and hold the left button of the mouse and drag it on the white area to trace the outline of your flower.  As you do so, try to make your selection end up very close to where you started and release the mouse button.
• Now go to the color selector on the Toolbox window and click on it - then play with the colors to pick a color you like.  As you can see, I picked a nice pink.  :)
• Now select the Bucket Fill Tool (looks like a dripping paint bucket) and go to the Image window and click within the area you have selected.  

Here's a GIMP-trick you will find useful as you use the Free Select tool.  Let's say that about half-way through your flower is looking like a nondescript lump of something that may be rather... well... smelly.  :(  Here's how to start over.  Finish your Free Selection by taking your cursor up to when you started and clicking... that will complete your selection.  And now press Ctl-Shift-A (or Select->None).  That will clear the selection and let you start over again.  Don't feel bad if you have to do this several times.  It usually takes me 3 or 4 attempts to get something I like.

Another GIMP-trick that may work as well, and is often even better is Ctl-z (Edit->Undo History).  It simply steps you back one step for each time you press it.

The picture below will give you an idea of how mine looks at this stage.

Duplicate the layer and transform it:

• Now make sure you have your new flower layer selected, and on the Layers window find the "Create a duplicate layer..." icon and press it.  The new layer will be a copy of the first and will be selected.  
• Go to the Image Window and choose Layer->Transform->Offset then click the "Offset by x/2, y/2" button and then click the Offset button.

Your result should look something like the image we see below:

This is the only tricky part about this process.  So lets look carefully at what we have done here.

We have taken the cartoon flower we created and made a version of that layer that is literally turned inside-out.  If you draw an imaginary line through the middle both horizontally and vertically, then take the upper left quadrant you have created and mentally move it to the lower right.  Also then imagine that you're doing something similar with all the other quadrants and you have what the new layer we have created has done.  With this, we create a diagonal pattern to the fabric.  Since our original tile is square, the diagonal goes off at 45 degrees.   If we wanted some other angle for our diagonal, we could repeat this process with a non-square starting canvas.  You might try it with a 64x128 canvas and see how it works.

Compress the layers and map it as a tile:


Now for the final few steps!

• On the Image window choose Image->Merge Visible Layers.  Notice that the image window appearance has not changed, but the layers have combined into one.  This is our seamless tile. 
• Now we will test our tile....  On the Image window choose Filters->Map->Tile.   I have choosen to make the test 640x640.  

And you can see the results below.

Now we will take a look at it more closely and see if we can see any seams.

Nope!!  Not seam to be seen!

Sooooo..........  What do you do with this sort of thing?  Can you spell... F..A..B...R...I...C?    Yes!  How about a nice pink flowered dress?  We'll have to make a dress sometime in the future and we'll use this technique to make the fabric for it.  Well, and perhaps I'll add a few more interesting twists too.  *winks*

robin

Make a word cloud

You know... those things that have the words in some text you've given it with those more important bigger and those less important smaller.   Then they get arranged in random directions in a cloud-like shape.   Well... its pretty easy if you use Wordle.  You can find it here: http://www.wordle.net/ .

I ran it against the previous posts in this blog and got this:

The way you get the jpeg file to post is to use your 'snipping tool'  (windows 7).

I like it!

robin

Your new Skin - Step 5 - Shape Modifications

I expect that your first thought was that shapes and skins should be pretty independent of each other.  Ans, in truth, that is true for most things.  But there seem to be some where the two are intimately interrelated, one is the breasts and a second is the mouth/lips.

Look closely at the breasts in the skin we've been working on.  There is a shadow under each breast a sharp line indicating where the breast and chest meet. That is entirely appropriate for a woman with larger breasts, but not so much for a woman with smaller breasts.  Fortunately Eloh has thought about that and in the 'starlight_upper' file has provided a second breast choice that is more appropriate for small breasted people.

The second area is not quite so obvious in the picture here but in truth is much more variable with shape than the breasts... that is the lips and mouth.

In this post we'll make changes to the mouth (lips), legs, shoulders, face length, and hands.  In the end, I think in the end, you will like the results.

But First.... Camera Controls!!


But first, we need to be able to look at our selves in detail.....  front and back, up and down, in and out - we need to be able to view our body (avatar) from every angle and do so quickly with little muss or fuss.

Fortunately, Second Life provides a way to do this.  It will seem to be a little weird at first, but as you use it you'll find it more and more natural and easy to use.    What we will do is use the mouse together with the alt and control keys.  Try this:

1. hold the alt key down, position the mouse over your avatar's midsection and click the left button on the mouse and HOLD IT DOWN and you move the mouse.  Move the mouse horizontally (left and right) and vertically (up and down) and watch the effects.
2. hold down the ALT AND the CTRL keys down together, position the mouse over your avatar's midsection and click the left button and HOLD IT DOWN as before.  Move the mouse horizontally and vertically again and watch the effects.

In the first case (1) you saw the view of your view of your avatar circle your body as you moved left and right, and zoomed in and out as you moved up and down.  In the second case (2) you saw the same as in the first for the left and right movment, and you rotate around vertically when you move in and out.

With this you can position your camera view to look at your avatar in any way quite easily.  Use the mouse and the control and alt keys to look at your lips, face, hands, shoulders and legs.... zoom in and out and look from every angle.

Editing your avatar:


Right click on your avatar and choose "Edit Appearance".     We'll step through each of the items we've noted in the last couple posts and 'correct' them.  Remember that this is really subjective - your opinion is as valid as mine and if you dont like the result, it is fine - change it to something you do like.

• Face is too long:  Within your Appearance editor, choose Shape->Head->Head Stretch and set the value to 20.
• Legs are too long:  Within your Appearance editor, choose Shape->Legs->Leg Length and set the value to 36.
• Hands are too big:  Within your Appearance editor, choose Shape->Torso->Hand Size and set the value to 30.
• Shoulders are too broad:  Within your Appearance editor, choose Shape->Torso->Shoulder and set to 20.
• Lips are too narrow:  Within your Appearance editor, choose Shape->Mouth->Lip Fullness and set to 50.

Now let's take a look at our results......  Hey, that's a pretty cute avatar!   (Click on the picture for a closer look.... and if your cursor shows a plus sign in it as you hover over the image, click again for an even larger view.)

Now I have to confess, that I tend to twiddle and tweak my avatar endlessly and if left to my own devices I would do the same with this one.  But really, this is now a quite nice avatar with a quite nice skin.  One that you would be happy to wear anywhere in Second Life.

What's next?  Next is up to you.  Be sure you save this shape and skin somewhere and make a copy.  Play with the shape - editing things and see what happens.  Play with the skin - make the skin lighter or darker.  Try the various options that Eloh has provided for breasts, eyes and nose.   Add lip color, eye makeup and nail color.  Change the brightness of the highlighting and the darkness of the shadows.

Create YOUR UNIQUE LOOK within Second Life!

It will be fun - I promise!

See ya!
Robin

Your new Skin - Step 4 - Skin Modifications

So far we've just been taking the shortest path to producing a skin with Eloh Eliot's Open Source Skins.  Next we will explore some of the options Eloh has provided for us, and then dip our toe into making modifications of the skins she has provided.

But first!!  ....

We need to talk about an important, though quite technical, issue.  Its that of file size.  To paraphrase the famous quote from Albert Einstein, we need to make everything as small as possible, but no smaller.  This translates into doing two things BEFORE we upload our files into Second Life:

1. Scale the files from 1024x1024 to 512x512.  (smaller would be too small)
2. Make the file type JPEG (jpg) on the files that have no transparency (upper and lower) and PNG (png) on the file that does have transparency (face).   In this application I've seen the jpg files be 1/10th of the size of the same thing saved as a PNG file.  So reserve the PNG file for cases where you need it, for example the face file.

I hadn't mentioned this technical issue before to keep things simple.  But as we near the point where we will be moving from temporary files to permanent files, its important to keep the size of the files we're creating in mind.  Scaling the files is very easy in GIMP, here's what you do:

1. First save the file in its 1024x1024 size.  you dont want to loose it.  Do this with File->Save.
2. Use  Image->Scale Image.  Simply type 512 on the Width and press enter, the Height will change for you.  Then click OK and watch GIMP make the file smaller.  
3. Use File->Save As.  I change the file name to add '...512.jpg'  or '...512.png' to the end as a reminder that i have made the file smaller.  So an example name might be "starlight_face yymmdd 512.png" and "starlight_upper yymmdd 512.jpg".

Modifications:


Now on to the fun stuff - modifications.  This is where you start to personalize the files to something that YOU like.

As you were looking through the layers you might have noticed that there were layers that were not visible and they had names like breastB or lipsA.    We will make use of just one of these, changing from lipsB to lipsA and look at the difference it makes to the shape.  And we will be just a little more daring - and modify the basic skin color so something a shade or two darker.

Modifying the lips:


Ok, here's what to do:  Open up the "starlight_face 110228.xcf" file we created before and look through the layers and find those that start with lipsA.   Most will have a little eye next to them indicating that they're active.  Go through and click the eyes turning them all off.   Now if you look at the layers below, you will find a bunch named lipA.    You'll need to turn MOST of these layers on, but NOT ALL.  For now, turn on all EXCEPT:

• lipsA.base
• lipsA.base.lighter
• lipsA.color.*  (leave all of the lipsA.color layers off for now)

That should make 18 lipsB layers turned off and 18 lipsA layers turned on.

Now look at the image shown by GIMP.... to my eyes the shading at the corners of the mouth and below the lower lip look a bit dark.  So we will adjust them.  For the corners, find lipsA.corners.shade and drop the opacity from 100 to about 20.  For the shade under the lower lip, find lipsA.lower.shade 2 and turn it off (click the eye to turn it off).

Modify the skin color:


Now its time to be brave and modify the skin color.  :)

In the layers window, scroll all the way to the bottom.  You'll see a layer named 'base.color'.   Select it by clicking it (the line will have a blue back-light) and find the 'duplicate layer' button (circled in the image on the right) and click it. You will get a new layer above the selected 'base.color' named 'base.color copy'.  (Click on the picture for a closer look.... and if your cursor shows a plus sign in it as you hover over the image, click again for an even larger view)

Now select that layer and choose the "color picker tool" from the GIMP Toolbox Window.  (For reasons that are not clear to me, it looks something like an eyedropper.)  Now go to the image window and click on it with that 'color picker' and you should see the "foreground color" in the Toolbox window change to be that of the 'base.color copy' in the image window.

Next we will click on that "foreground color" in the Toolbox window and you will see a window open to help you change the color.  It should look rather like the image below this paragraph.

We will pause here for a minute and look at the Change Color window.  Note the series of six rows to the right labeled, H, S, V, R, G, B.    These are the color change controls and they are two groups, HSV and RGB.  HSV stands for Hue, Saturation and Value and RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue.  Both are complete - you can use just one set or the other.  For some purposes HSV is easier to use and for other purposes RGB is easier to use.  I'll let you google the two for more detailed information, for our purposes here we'll be using HSV.  In fact, for the present, we'll just make some small changes to the Saturation and Value leaving the Hue alone.

If you look at the large color window on the left of the image above, you'll see what looks like a cross-hair inside it.  Now draw a diagonal through that cross-hair sloping down from left to right.  We will want to work along that line for the skins.  Its probably not a straight line though. I would expect it to be curved away from the extremes at both corners so something more like the red line drawn in the picture to the right would be the right range of reasonable colors for skins.

We want to make the color of the skin a little darker.  That means we will want to move that cross-hair up and to the left a little.  If you play with the S and V values with the controls (circled on the right in the image) you'll find that changing the S value will move the horizontal part of the cross-hair up and down, and changing the V value will move the vertical part of the cross-hair left and right.    So.... moving the cross-hair intersection up and to the right will mean INCREASING the S value and DECREASING the V value.   For now... I would suggest increasing S by 3 and decreasing V by 4 so the final values will be 54 and 60.

Now we want to apply this new color to our copy of the base color layer we created earlier.  So - make sure that the "base.color copy" layer is selected in the layers window, and choose the "Bucket Fill Tool" in the Tools window (it looks like a tipping paint can) then make use of that tool on that layer by clicking on the image window.  You should see GIMP make the change and notice that it the color is slightly darker than it was before.

Saving the File:


It's time to save our work. First we'll save the file as is, but change the name so we can backtrack if necessary.  Then we'll scale the file to something smaller and save as a png file (we have some transparency in this file so we need to use png).

• File->Save As  ... naming the file "starlight_face 110315.xcf"  (the general format of the date is yymmdd in my scheme of things)
• Image->Scale .... choosing 512x512 and clicking ok.
• File->Save As ... naming the file "starlight_face 110315 512.png"  (adding 512 to the name is a reminder that the image was scaled down, if you don't need it's ok to leave it off - but I DO need it).

Changing the skin color on upper and lower:


Making the same changes to the upper and lower textures for our new skin is pretty straighforward now that we have the color defined.  I'll just list the steps for the upper, I'm sure you can work it out from that:

• Load "starlight_upper 110224.xcf" into GIMP.
• Go to the bottom of the layers window, select base.color and click the 'duplicate' button.
• Select the new layer named 'base.color copy' in the layer window
• Select the bucket fill tool in the Toolbox window
• Click in the image window and watch the new color be applied.  (we're using the same color as we did earlier for the face texture)
• Save the file, changing the name as described above
• Scale the image as described above
• Save the file as a jpg image as described above.

Then repeat the above for the starlight lower file.  (all of this takes longer to read than it does to do )

Upload and try it out:


Now go back to the previous blog post and repeat the process to upload the textures and apply them to a new skin.  Remember to copy your current skin and name is with today's date so you can discard it and back up to the previous without running into problems.

After uploading the new textures and creating the new skin we should pause and look the results.   As I mentioned in the previous post, we are now wading cautiously into the subjective so it's totally ok if your opinion of the changes made are different than mine.

Looking at the lips now, I like them better.  They're still 'not quite right' but in my opinion, they're much more right than they were before.  In the previous post I noted five things that were in the 'not quite right' category and I'll repeat them here:

• hand size
• leg length
• face length
• shoulder width
• lips

We'll make changes to each.  But that will be the next post.  *grins*

See ya!
Robin

Your new Skin - Step 3 - Second Life

Hi, I'm back!   And we're ready for the last step - turning the textures we created in the last step into a skin.

Before we do that though we need to sign onto Second Life and do some housekeeping in our Inventory.  I'm going to assume you know how to sign on and get access to your inventory.  You may also have some nice skins and shapes that you are pleased with, so we want to be careful to not muck with them.  To do this, and provide a path for people new to Second Life - we'll copy a skin and shape (and hair and a few other things) from the library and modify those items.

Inventory - New Folder for Girl Next Door

I would suggest 'girl next door' so open your inventory window and look in Library->Clothing->Girl Next Door by Renegade Clothing & Adam n Eve.  Now click on the first line, then scroll down and click on the last while holding down the shift key and copy all those selected by pressing ctrl-c.   Next go back up into Inventory->Clothing and right click on Clothing, choosing New Folder. Select it and paste the items you have copied into your new folder.

Then open that New Folder and make a copy of the shape named 'Girl Next Door' and the skin named 'Girl Next Door Medium Skin", naming the first 'Girl Next Door - edited' and 'eloh eliot's starlight' respectively.

OK, the housekeeping is done.  What we have now is a placeholder for our new skin, 'eloh eliot's starlight' and a placeholder for any shape modifications we want to make after making the new skin 'Girl Next Door - edited'.  Excellent!

The next step is to make our skin.... but .... well.... you know, there will be nudity involved.  So you will need to find a safe place where you can go and people will not be upset seeing a naked avatar.  If you know of such a place, great!  Skip the rest of this paragraph and go there.  If not, I can't give you such a place... but I may be able to guide you a bit in finding one.  First - don't go to a PG place.  I shouldn't need to get into why - just don't.  An Adult place is probably best - but Mature may be OK too.  An Adult sandbox might be good - or some place that is not used very much.  As you look for a place - read the rules and respect them.  If they say no nudity, move on to another.  Sooner or later you will find a place where nudity is acceptable.

Next we need to upload the textures you created using GIMP in the last step.  At the top of the screen, choose File->Upload->Image, then navigate to the folder on your computer where you stored the textures we created in the last step.... select one and press "Open".  Then on the window that you get in the Phoenix viewer, check "Temporary (Free)" and click "Upload".  Do this once for each of the three files, and get them all uploading into your inventory.   You can watch them appear by opening your Inventory->Textures.  You will see each appear in turn, and you will note that the name is in italics - and that it is a temporary file.

Girl Next Door - standard shape - standard medium skin.

Ok ... now you should be in a place where nudity is allowed, so remove all your clothes and wear the "Girl Next Door - edited" and "eloh eliot's starlight".  These are the place holders and now we'll make them the real thing.  The image to the right of this paragraph is what you should see.

She is a nice looking girl.  Sadly though she has a rather nasty problem.  No nipples.  *grimaces* I don't really understand the whole no nipple thing, but we won't dwell on it.  The next step is to create our new skin.

Here's how to make your new skin.

Edit Appearances - Skin

Right click on your avatar and choose "Edit Appearances".   You will find yourself with a window that gives you lots of ways to change things about your avatar, including the skin you are wearing.  If you look in the upper left you will see "Skin" listed.  Once you click 'skin' you will see a panel with three windows open up: note the three red arrows pointing at the small windows in the picture to the right of this paragraph.

The topmost window is the one that will receive the "Face" texture.  The middle window is the one that will receive the "Upper" texture.  And the bottom window is the one that will receive the "Lower" texture.

Now open your inventory window and find the Inventory->Textures folder.  Click on the "starlight_face" texture and drag it to the topmost window within the Edit Appearances window.  Then click on the "starlight_upper" texture and drag it to the middle window within the Edit Appearances window.  Finally click on the "starlight_lower" texture and drag it to the lower window within the Edit Appearances window..... and click Save, then click Close.

Girl Next Door - Standard Shape - Eloh Eliot's Starlight Skin

It make take a couple minutes for your new skin to appear and become clear - but once it does it should look like the image at the right.

Yay!  Nipples!  She looks pretty good doesn't she?  *does a happy dance!*

Now... let us pause for a few moments and bask in your achievement.  You have made a skin!  Of course, since we used temporary textures uploaded for free, it won't last.  In a few days you'll find that one or all of the textures on this skin have been 'grey'd out' - meaning you've lost the temporary texture.  To make it permanent you'll repeat the steps we took above and NOT check Temporary (Free) when you upload.   (And you need to have some money in your account.)  Then when you drag this permanent texture to the skin, it will not be lost after a few days.

Now look your skin over.  Use your camera controls and move your view around.  Zoom in and zoom out.  It looks pretty good, right?  

If you're like me though, you're seeing some things that you would like to change.  This usually registers as a 'hmmm that's not quite right' feeling.  Of course, it is purely subjective.  What is 'not quite right' to me may be just fine to you - and that is a GOOD THING.  It would be a horribly boring world if we all looked alike and all thought alike.   That said, I'll give you my list of things that are 'not quite right':

• Hands... perhaps a bit large
• Shoulders .... perhaps a bit broad
• Face ... perhaps a bit long
• Lips .... upper lip is not quite right
• Legs ... perhaps a bit long

Most of the things above have to do with the shape, but the Lips certainly have something to do with the Skin.   We'll edit the shape later, but first let's continue our work on the skin.  As it happens, Eloh has given us several options in the files she has provided.  And one of those options is for a different 'style' of lips.  We'll play with that in the next post and see what happens.

See ya later!
robin