Tutorial: Combining SL Clothing Templates ~ Preparation for SL Clothes and Skin

For this preparation tutorial you need to downloade Robin Wood and Chip Midnights free templates - you can find the links under the links on the left of this page.

I work in CS2 but the steps should be very similar if you use a newer or older version of photoshop or Gimp. Also I work with .psd files for this tutorial and can't help you with the .jpg files as I simply havent looked at them *smiles*

Ok lets start. Open your graphics programme and Robins head layer and Chips head layer. I've put mine up like this and made the layers palette larger so it is easy for you to see what i mean.

(front pic is Robins and back layer is Chips)

Now create a new document make it 1024 x 1024 pixels. Keep the other two docs open aswell. What you have as the starting layer doesnt matter, we will end up deleting it so you dont have too many layers you dont need.

For a couple of minutes forget chips template we will work with his in a few moments. So have Robins template and your template in clear view. Now click the following layers on robins holding ctr down (this way you are selecting more layers at once and the transfer will go faster).

The layers you need to select are all those below the shading layer (you might want the shading layer aswell it's completely up to you). see the pic below

Now hold shift down and left-click your marked layers and drag them to your 1024 x 1024 layer once there release the left mousebutton and shift. (using shift to do this places the dragged layers in the same posistion in your new file as they were in the old one). Close Robins template you dont need it any more (remember to save your own template however ex. Head Template.psd - Keep it .psd!!! never save it as anything else or you wont be able to work with it as you want later on.

Ok from Chips template you need everything except the background layer. Repeat the steps you just did with Robins layer and drag the selected layers to your own template (I've put them below the layers from Robin to make it easier for myself). Now your template should look like this. (left picture is how your template should look when all except shading is selected and the right picture is when it has been selected to show. Also note that for the right picture i've created a folder to put it all in and called it UV-Maps. Doing this will mean that whenever I need the uv-maps later on when making skin or something. I can just click the little eye and have them show the guidelines for what I need.

That's it you're done with combining the head template for Second Life!!

The next template is the upperbody template. Again you need to make a new doc and make it 1024 x 1024 pixels. After having done the same steps (taking the layers etc.) your template should look something like this.

Save it as .psd and close it your upperbody template is complete.

Next template is the Lowerbody template. Again create a new doc 1024 x 1024 pixels - repeat the same steps as above for the lowerbody template. The final result should look something like this:




Save it as .psd and thats another template done. So on to the last one, the skirt template!!

Create a new doc again 1024 x 1024 pixels and repeat the steps from earlier and you should end up with something like this:

Save it as .psd and take a deep breath cause guess what??? You've just finished your preparation for making skin and clothes for Second Life!!!!!!!!

Well done!!!

If you have any questions or comments please let me know. I am new to blogging and tutorial writing - others have written tutorials and mine are bound to resemble them, but my goal is to let you all know how I've done and what have worked for me. This is part of it, and though it seems odd to combine the templates like this, it is a huge help when you make clothes :0)

Have Fun All!

The Story behind this Second Life Designer

My Second Life story began a couple of years ago, or well three years ago ~ may 17th 2007.

I came to Second Life after having spent months of thinking about logging on and trying it out. I had just been accepted into the Business university the previous summer, in the other end of the country and was feeling a bit homesick for I dont know what time that month. So I created my first SL avatar and today numerous av's later I start blogging aswell :0).

My first avatar was Delaila Congrejo. She was a dancer on a club called The Hangout, on a sim called Burg2. (the sim and the club doesnt exsist anymore). Here I met a lot of really nice and fun people. The first person I met was the manager Lilia D, who saw my newbie look and took me to The Dove and handed me my first ever L$100. When I kept returning to The Hangout and started talking with the other dancers and visitors I eventually ended up as one of the dancers.

The Hangout had good traffic, amazing atmoshere and was a perfect entrance into Second Life. I became a manager and later a part owner of the club untill i later on needed a break from sl. But during the happy days of The Hangout, I couldnt help but noticing what people wore and what they talked about wanting to wear so I started looking up tutorials for making clothes in sl.

The first one I came across was the mermaid diaries by Natalia Zelmanov http://www.mermaiddiaries.com/2006/11/build.html. To say I learned a lot from her tutorials is an understatement. I learned how to make clothes and shoes, how to make poseballs etc. Her blog is amazing and I can only advise you visit her blog if you're just starting out as a sl designer ~ She has tutorials for Gimp (a free graphic programme) and photoshop.

As Delaila I started my own little shop on The Hangout grounds. The style was primarily modern clothes and costumes for 60's events. So in short it was clothes for the environment I was in, in my Second Life.

Delaila was very much a clubgoing girl here in Second Life. The time came to leave Hangout and find another SL job, and here I ended up as a dancer on the female version of Sixxpack. I knew I wouldnt really fit in, cause lets face it I dont understand secondlife "intimacy" and I was there for a very short period as a dancer. The whole stripping thing ended with me needing a break from Second Life.

I came back to sl, a few months later with my new av called Angelica Darcy. Ange did more or less the same as Delaila though. She became a hostess on Sixxpack, and it was great fun to be there ~ I wasnt stripping, but I could enjoy looking at the guys dancing and joking. Since they only allowed female visitors at that club and I was one of the staff I didnt get uncomfortable working there. And I made a lot of new friends there aswell. I started a new little shop and sold the same kind of clothes as I did as Delaila, though with a new addition ~ medieval gowns.

Angelica visited a medieval roleplaying community (Delaila had been there too but not actively) called Avilion http://www.blogger.com/www.avilionorder.com or inworld (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Avilion/5/133/42). I quickly became a part of the community there and loved being an elf. It didnt take long for me to start making medieval clothes there. But for some reason it didnt sell well - it sold better than my shop as Delaila did. So I started investigating what my fellow roleplayers wore and then it dawned on me... My designs didnt have shading, didnt have other textures than the default one you get when you use the paint bucket and dont add extra features to the template. I tried solving it by getting textures from various textile pictures on google and it solved my problem for my level of ambition at the time.

Meanwhile reallife began taking me out of sl ~ as it tends to do from time to time. This meant that I lost interest in designing and my frustration with gimp and with all tutorials being for photoshop didnt excatly make it more interesting to keep designing. So Ange roleplayed and worked and at some point it all get frightfully boring to be Ange, and so she shared the same fate as Delaila ~ A quick trip to the SL accoung page and the cancellation button.

One of my friends, who knows about my little hobby called sl and who had seen my creative side, didnt want me to just give it all up. And so he gave me Photoshop as a present. I was soo thrilled and got back up on the horse and looked for tutorials on google. This time I thought "well if i have photoshop then why not try my luck at skin making??" And so I looked for skin tutorials and found Olilas. It is an extremely wellmade and easy to understand tutorial she has. http://olilas-secondlife.com/tutorials-by-subject/

As you can imagine with my previous av record, I created yet another av. Her name was Aya Exelbirth (yes yes I picked that last name because I knew I wanted to called her skins "Birth Designs"). Aya also got heavily into roleplaying in Avilion. As Aya I made skins (which didnt sell cause it really isnt easy to make really good skin), shoes and clothes. The clothes got better and better but it still wasnt good enough to have a store that could "pay for itself".

I ended up using reallife money, more than I wanted to. And as a student in real life you dont really have the luxery of "casting money away on a game", but it was soo easy just to uploade L$3000 here and there. No I didnt go bankrupt and I have never had a problem with paying bills etc, but I couldnt ignore the evil spiral that occured everytime I was inworld and saw a gown here and there that I "had to have". So I forced myself to take time off SL again.

That time off lasted for about a month. And again I created a new Av. Her name was Dela Savira and she didnt get to exsist for more than 1½ month LOL! This is such a bad track record of keep getting new av's. Anyways as Dela I was a drow in Avilion, which was extremely funny. I got into hair making as Dela - never got a shop for her though. But I have to say this I HAVE THE DEEPEST RESPECT FOR HAIR MAKERS, Seriously! Recolouring prims is hell! especially when you have a hairstyle that has more than 10 prims in it. And it's not enough just to do it by the normal change texture tab under the builds option no no no cause you dont want a little ring to appear on the otherwise ends of the hair. Which means you have to click that little side of the cylinder and make it transparent and then repeat it at the top so the av doesnt have little circles on the top of her head where theres no hair.

So again I got frustrated and took a break and then i got Ayla Serenity, I still have her and no I wont cancel her. Ayla was created january 5th 2009, she is so far my "oldest" avatar and I have no plans of ever cancelling her or not using her. She is very active with Oblivion Fashion and the store is doing really well. (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Paperweight/34/69/24). The only creations I have in the store is medieval clothes. The clothes is for women, men and children. Yes some outfits have shoes or boots in them, but it is all kept in the same style. And I would deffinately advise anyone who wants to have a store in Second Life, to specialize themselves within one area.

Does this mean I only use Ayla now? No it doesnt. I have another active alt called Vilya Firecaster. Both Ayla and Vilya creates for the store and both are very much active members of Avilion. I roleplay Vilya as a child (Ayla as an adult elf), and this is because I, like most others, have a childish side to myself and it is extremely fun to be able to act childish and not give a da... from time to time. Naturally when I created Vilya I knew she would be a child avatar and I also knew she would be a hatchie. This opened up my ideas for making childrens clothes in SL and that in return gave more to learn.

Am I an expert on SL and clothes making? Absolutely not. I am an example of someone who had no idea how to use a graphic programme who taught herself to use it. I am a person who had no idea how to run a store who now has her store and outlets pay for themselves. I dont use reallife money on sl and i dont cashout. Second Life is my hobby and a game to me (but I cant imagine not being part of it and I am amazed how much SL have taught me) and real life always comes first no matter what.

So what is my idea with this blog?

I plan to ofcourse let everyone in on Oblivion Fashion Releases ~ It's my baby hehe
I plan on writing little stories that has absolutely nothing to do with Second Life - or rl for that matter

And lastly and the primary reason for getting on with this blogging thing (I am new to it) I want to write tutorials free for everyone to use, ofcourse it'll be with the angle of medieval clothes. But I plan on doing what I can to help others with their SL business, even if I'm not one of the biggest and most succesful people in sl :0)