T-Shirt Instructions

Creating A Basic T-Shirt in Second Life


When I asked my wife for help on this assignment, she just chuckled at me and said it was my homework assignment and she was going to have fun sitting back and watching me. She did take some pity on me though and pointed me to some tutorials and websites to help me out. I do not claim to want to be a good clothing designer in Second Life; however, there are some excellent tutorials available to help you become the next fashion couture mogul in the virtual world should you desire to be one. Some of these tutorials can be found at

http://nicolaescher.com/tutorials.php

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Clothing_Tutorials

http://heatherdesigns.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/tutorial-on-clothing/

There are also instructional notecards available and classes in world that you can take on designing and creating garments for your Second Life avatar.

After looking through some of these resources I determined that, in order to be a good clothing creator in Second Life, you need to be proficient with an outside graphics or photo editing program such as Photoshop, Photo Elements, or the open source GIMP program (http://www.gimp.org/ ). This is if you want to apply graphics or images to your T-shirts. So I went back to the basics for this first attempt. Here’s my run at making my first ever T-shirt in Second Life.

To start with I went to a private area where I could experiment. This is especially important in sims where public nudity is frowned upon or prohibited. Actually my wife and I rent a parcel in the Steelhead sim so I had it rather easy on that score.

I found it more practical to take off the shirt I was already wearing before I started to keep the software from getting confused as to whether I was looking to create a new shirt or edit the one I already had on.

I right clicked on my avatar which gave me a pie shaped menu with several options. One of these options is “Appearance.” This not only affects the appearance of an avatar where you can change a multitude of shapes and sizes (from short to tall, pudgy to washboard stomach, etc!) but you can create or adjust various clothing items.

After I selected Appearance, a menu appeared with a number of options. I clicked on “Shirt” since that was what I was planning to make and, since I was not wearing one at the time, it automatically gave me the option of creating a new shirt and secondarily asking me if I wanted to wear it right away. I clicked on Yes. I’m now wearing a white T-Shirt and a new object has appeared in my inventory called “New Shirt.” Well, I could stop there but there is a lot more to explore here.

By using the slider bars in the menu I could adjust the length of the sleeves, the length of the shirt, the collar, how loose or tight I wanted it, and even if I wanted a wrinkled T-shirt! I settled on a short sleeve T-shirt since this is Florida!

Two white boxes were staring at me. One was labeled “Fabric” and the other one “Color/Tint.” Well, all shirts are fabric in my mind, but I clicked on it anyway. Hmm, this brought me up a copy of my inventory list. What should I be looking for? Ah, textures! There is quite a collection of textures in the “Library” of your inventory. These come as standard issue for any new avatar. I selected a linen texture, then the color and quickly had a nice Gator blue T-shirt!

Textures are how details are added to everything from clothing to buildings. You can find many free or for sale in Second Life, they can be imported from outside sources, or you can make your own and upload them. This is typically where an outside graphics/photo editing program is needed. If I had wanted to apply a customized texture to my T-shirt (like a graphic of an alligator) I would have to upload a picture of it for L$10. Not only that, I would need some specialized templates that are available for free from Second Life and other Web locations. I found a ready-made template in my inventory that I got for free and explored texturing and the color tint option before I declared myself done.

Okay, any texture, color and tint I could imagine to select from. I also found I could combine colors and textures to get different effects and the different free textures I had in my inventory made for some interesting fabric combinations. A nice picture of a wolf wound up as almost one large eyeball on the front of the shirt! Now I know why the designers use the outside graphics programs and free templates.

One thing I thought of to keep in mind, if you are planning to use any graphics from an external source for textures on anything, be familiar with the copyright restrictions for using some material.

When I got done playing with the different combinations and was reasonably satisfied with how it looked I clicked on “Save As” and gave it the name of “My First Demo Shirt.” Then I decided I was going to now try and build a box…..