Moving from IMVu to here, with typ'o's and all ... mainly beginners tutorials.

This is a thread where I will show you the way I create.
I'm not the best creator this site has ever seen but I have fun making things and sometimes my idiotic ideas inspire others to do it different and/or better. At least, that is what I hope for Wink

To prevent that my ideas will be copied from A to Z I often blur specific information. The point is that I don't want you to COPY but I want to give you ideas how to start being creative yourself.

I love how textures can arise just by coincidence, by using random buttons from your graphic program.

I use Corel Paint Shop Pro, either number 12 or 16 depending on my mood.
I'm sure every graphic program has certain similarities so try to search your program for things that are (almost) the same.

I chose this one because BBW meshes are easy to derive from.
Also copy the little wired black and white drawing and paste it into your graphic program.
My program is called Corel Paint Shop Pro and my tutorials may look a bit different from your program. Please try to imagine what it might look like in PS, Gimp etc.

That wired picture is a frame and I made mine look like this
I colored it to make it easier to see what's where.

If you clicked on 'derive from product' the client will show you the regular avatar wearing a skin tight red jumpsuit.

Here's a picture of how it looks when I replaced the red graphic with my colored frame picture:

BTW, ROK = skirt in Dutch, just so you know it I find it easy to know where the skirt begins.

If possible work with layers. Layers make your designers life much easier.
An never work on your original pictures. So I copied my map and closed the original. Why? Because that map is the base of almost every piece of clothes made here.

Open a new layer on top of the the base. And select a part that is going to be the pants. Fill that selected area with a color, a rectangle shape will do, it's of no use to draw around the legs.
Open a new layer and select the top which will be your shirt. Give it another color than the pants.
Save it.
And upload it to the client.
Mine looks like this:

Notice how the turtle neck has the same color as the pants.
If you think you're ready you can upload this to the store but you and me both know that no one is ever going to buy this. I know I wouldn't.
Because it is boring, flat, without texture, details, highlights, shadow parts, wrinkles.

Now because we work with layers we can turn those layers a bit transparent to see the map/wires again.
I myself like to see them because that way I know where fi to find the boobs if I want to highlight them. Please check the picture below to see what t looks like.
While I design I make the layers more or less transparent, I hope you understand that I'm not going to tell you when I did that or not, you'll see it on the pictures.

And now that we look at the transparent version, the next picture shows you why the turtle neck is blue too. That is because the neck-part is situated between the legs. Always keep that in mind.
I've come across a few different frames during the years but most of them work like this:

Because I want this tutorial to be very basic I'm not going to teach you anything (yet) of the opacity map so what we need to do is color the neck in the same color as the top.

Next step: some textures to give our design a natural feeling to it
Now I don't know about your graphic program but mine has some basic textures and we are going to use one of these. So select the pants layer, make the layer complete visible and find a structure that you like.
Now I don't want you to do exactly what I did, I'd rather have experiment yourself.

So please take a look at the following two pictures:

To show you how the arms and neck work, I used a 'blinds'-texture on the shirt to give it some stripes.
The stripes on the body are vertical on the map but horizontal on the neck and arms-part. And when you look closely, the horizontal stripes are twice as small as the vertical ones. That is because the body maps are out of proportion.
The next picture shows you what I mean:

Okay, time to show you the result on my avatar and notice how the stripes on the sleeves have the exact with as on the body, which proves what I told you earlier :

I believe that a belt will be a good idea, so open a new layer and draw a black or brown, or whatever color you prefer on that layer.
We want a little sharp shadow underneath that belt, to give it a realistic feeling. Check the following picture to see what I mean and to see what you need to do:

Not an extreme shadow, I use 0 and 0 values so just a little depth appears:

The belt needs a buckle but that to me if of no importance for the tutorial.

No matter how tight pants are, they always show highlights, shadows and wrinkles. Just look at the following picture of these jeans that I found on the net:

So what we need to do right now is to take a good look at the jeans and come up with ways to make our pants more realistic. Let's start with the highlights. You will find those usually on the upper legs, the but. The places that come a little more forward
Open a new layer on top of the pants section and set your free hand selection on feather, feather 15-17 will do.
Draw ovals, circles, experiment a little and fill them with white.
Now change the opacity of that white layer until you're satisfied with the result.

On my avatar this is the result I got.

Let's continue with the shirt. Just like on the pants there are certain parts that stick out a little. Without any doubt the boobs, they need some highlights on top/in front.
What I can advise you is to check several pictures (on the internet) and you will discover that clothes are not flat but have hightlights and shadows.

Without giving me an example, try to make some highlights on the shirt/top of your map.
Here's my result:

Time for the darker parts/shadows.
Open a new layer above the pants layer and study on the jeans picture again. Not the wrinkles but the darker parts, the ones underneath the knees, near the cross etc.
Repeat what you did with the hight lights only>
The difficult part here is the cross. that is why I colored my frame map so I can see where things stop in the middle part and continue on the left end right parts.
You need to experiment how that works.

Not claiming my shadows to be perfect, I probably will work on them a bit more especially the part between the legs where it's always darker but here's an example how you my shadow-maps look like and how my avatar looks with the shadows on the pants.

Time for shadows on the shirt.
The part underneath the the boobs and arms should be darker, obvious. so open a new layer on top of the shirt layer.
The follow picture shows you two layers that I pasted on top of each other: one shows you what I drew with the feather option on 15 and the other shows you the area that actually showed up after releasing my pencil and that I filled with a dark color.
Please take a real careful look at it, I hope it explains things a bit more to you:

Time for the wrinkles, I myself find that the hardest part.
Check the jeans picture again and notice how every wrinkle has a light and a dark part. The lighter part is that part of the jeans that comes forward.
Open a new layer.
Start drawing some light lines and then some dark ones. Be consequent and always put the dark line underneath the light ones.
After that stretch the drawing a bit from the left to the right, it will make the lines less 'hard'.

Select your blur-option and you really need to find the option that makes you feel satisfied about the wrinkles. I do believe it is very personal. Maybe use a Gaussian blur, an average one, it's up to you.
I used the average one but that doesn't proof anything

You can now mirror the wrinkles so that both legs look the same.
That is the easy way out, I prefer to make both side different for a more natural feeling.
Turn the opacity of the layer very low so the wrinkles will look real.
Hopefully you get the feeling by now so I make you work on the arms and the neck yourself.

GOOD LUCK!!
And loads of fun

BTW, this is how my creation looks like after playing with it a bit more:

What a huge difference compared to the 4th picture posted in this tutorial, right??

Everything you make black in an opacity-map will become invisible, everything white will be visible.
And there's the grey area that will make things semi-transparent depending on the grey-scale you use.

To make it easy for everyone I will continue with the design I made in the above tutorial.
I just want the entire outfit to look a bit more suitable for the summer.
So how about capri-pants and a cool t-shirt?

Start with the wired map again and open a new layer. Fill the layer with white and make it a bit transparent to see the layer below.
Find the knees and select an area below the knees that you make black.
Also make the neck-area black, a turtle neck is to warm in the summer, right?
And I prefer short sleeves in the summer too.

Check what the result looks like before you make the layer solid again:

When it's solid black and white, save it.
While in the client, click on edit' next to your texture map, the one that has been white up till now and search for the map you just made.

Apply changes on top of the client and this what the result will look like:

Still a bit to warm for me so we're going to make more parts invisible.
Select your Ellipse tool and start right in the middle of the upper bodypart.
I also have the red area from the minimum coverage guideline (MCG) pasted on my map and that makes that I never make my AP stuff by mistake.

Let me show you how I try to make unique textures/fabrics for the clothes that I make.

I start by opening a new 256 x 256 pixels file.

In this case I randomly placed stripes that I filled with orange (picture 1)

(1)

Then invert the selection and fill the rest with another color. I used brown because I wanted to make something with a sixties feeling. (picture 2)

(2)

Now I chose for Effects/reflection effects/patterns and started playing with the offset settings, the number of rows and columns and the rotation angle.
Please do whatever pleases you, don't try to make your picture look like mine'. this is just a tutorial to show you how things arise by playing with any button.
Picture number 3 shows you what I liked at that moment:

(3)

Next thing I decided to experiment with: Effects/distortion effects/ displacement maps. Lets see what happens when yo start plying with the textures there?
After trying several settings I decided that I was happy with this (picture 4)

(4)

It already has this 60's feeling in my eyes so a this point you can stop or either decide to try out some more. One can always return to this result if one doesn't succeed.

So while looking at all my effect options I decided to go for Effects/artistic effects/Chrome and I really liked the darker effect that I managed to get there. (picture 5)

(5)

Picture 6 shows you my end result. I saved it to my hard drive for later use.

Take a look at the middle, a bit larger, picture below. I just drew some lines on a pink background and started pushing effect buttons in my graphic program.
Patterns, kaleidoscope, wind, colored foil and whatever result pleased me, I saved to my hard drive. (the smaller ones)
Whenever I need them I can always change the colors a bit, draw some shadow or add some highlights.

I'm not saying every result is to die for but it is to show/tell you that buying textures from others isn't really necessary: start being creative yourself.

The fabric from the dress here below was made from bits and pieces from textures I made just by coincident.

The above picture is my attempt to make water (I actually like it myself *lol*)
How did I make it?

Well, I made a photo of water in a swimming pool a while ago, so I opened that picture just to have an example. Not to imitate it.
Then I opened a 256 x 256 image which I filled with a blue-ish color. As you can see in the picture below:

If you want to do the same: next step is to add a new layer and draw some lines with feather on. Just set the feather option to any number you prefer.
Fill with a darker blue color (as the picture below shows):

Now go find the Gaussian blur in your graphic program and blur the darker blue color. (see picture below}

Open a new layer and choose a color blue very close to white. Start drawing lines with your brush. Use different sizes. It doesn't have to look very realistic.(my result looked like this:)

Now, if possible, make layer 2 and 3 seamless. Paint Shop Pro has an automatic effect button for that, I don't now about other programs.

After that, go find the motion blur in your program and start playing with the angle of layer 3 (the white lines) until you are satisfied with the result. It has to look realistic.
It is also important to make the layer more transparent.

Your water texture is ready now.
If things are not clear enough, don't hesitate to ask me Wink
_________________

Just by accident I made ^^ this ^^ padded seat texture.
So I'm going to tell you how I made it. It probably needs some refinement but I leave that up to you
As usual I used Paint Shop Pro X2 (I just can't get used to X6) and I advise you to carefully look at the pictures and think of similar option in your graphic program.

Open a new 256 x 256 and fill it with some kind of gradient.(image 1)

(1)

Then choose for blinds effects. Start with horizontals and choose your settings so that there won't be a half blind in the picture. (picture 2)

(2)

Now get back to the blinds in your effects and go for the vertical blinds, use the same with and opacity option as before (image 3)

(3)

Sharpen

Now use your selection tool and select every square that you see, leaving a little opening between each square. When you look at picture 4 you will see what I mean.
Go find your inner bevel tool. (image 4)

(4)

Start playing with the settings until YOU are satisfied! If you thing my example looks like crap, you're right: make it better!!
If you check image 5, you will see that you can't even see what settings I used! *lol*

(5)

Time for the buttons: open a new layer to work on.
I used pencil size 12 with a matching color. Piece of cake. (image 6)

(6)

Inner bevel is the next effect. Make the dots look like buttons. (image 7)