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Clothing Texture How To
tony
#1 Posted : Monday, October 30, 2006 7:41:59 PM(UTC)
Rank: Newbie

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 23
This guide will show you how to make new clothing texture maps for the avatars in The Red Light Center. We will be using Adobe Photoshop 7.0 but you could achieve the same results using the freely available image editing program The Gimp.

Adding a t-shirt logo


Lets start by adding a logo to an existing t-shirt for the male avatar. Here is the Photoshop file if you wish to examine it more closely.



In image above you can see the the skin, t-shirt and a blue wireframe overlay. The blue lines are the UV coordinates for the male avatar model. The left side of the image is the front of the t-shirt, the middle is the back of the t-shirt and the right side contains the arm. Notice that there is only a single arm in this image. For this model the single arm is used on both sides of the avatar. This was to save texture map RAM. What this means is that both arms will always have the same texture.

Alpha channels

The Red Light Center game engine composites the clothing textures on top of the underlying skin textures. To make your clothing show properly in the game engine you have to create an alpha channel. In the alpha channel of you cloth texture fully white pixels are opaque and fully black pixels are completely transparent. Any values between full white and full black specify a range of transparency/translucency. Below is the alpha channel for our t-shirt. Red Light Center now uses PNG image format for textures that require transparency. Due to the way alpha is used with PNG files in Photoshop you should keep a backup source file in Photoshop format and a 2nd in .png format that you will use in game.


If you wanted to have a sleeve-less t-shirt you would paint the area at the top of the arms black.

Working with seams

The UV coordinates for this particular model are a combination of straight projection and unwrap texture mapping. To make a nice seamless texture you have to ensure that the color along the seam edges are the same. The corresponding seams are highlighted in the image below to help you visualize the process.



  • The green lines show the matching seam areas for where the t-shirt sleeve meets the t-shirt
  • The red lines show where the sides of the t-shirt come together
  • The violet lines show where the top of the t-shirt on his left side
    [The yellow lines show where the seam of the t-shit is on his right side


Adding a logo

We have added a Red Light Center logo to the front of our t-shirt as a Photoshop layer.


Setting up Alpha

To set up the alpha channel to export your image with alpha properly is a bit tricky in Photoshop.

First you need to create a layer mask.



Activate the layer mask.


Copy the Alpha channel and then paste it into the Layer Mask


To see the result of the layer mask click on the Layer thumbnail.


To have you new texture show up in the game engine there are some specific guidelines you must follow:


  • You must save the image as a PNG format image file
  • For shirt/torso textures the image must be 512 x 256 pixels in size
  • You must make a unique name for your image, and it must start with "HMUT_"
  • Male textures are saved in the folder:

C:\Program Files\RedLightCenter\resources\male\textures

In Photoshop go to File->Save As and select PNG in the Format drop down list. For this example I saved the file as HMUT_shirt_t_logo.png

This will (depending on the version of Photoshop you are using) bring up a second File Save Dialog.

Make sure in "Interlace" "None" button is selected.



Adding the shirt to the game


To see you new clothes in game open the following file in a text editor:

C:\Program Files\RedLightCenter\myinfo.ini

Scroll down to the section that says TorsoMapDecal= and change the name to your new shirt texture HMUT_shirt_t_logo.png


[b]
[UserInfo]
WLogonName=mars@prototerra.com
WPassword=
Language=English
GUI=Default
displayTips=True
PlayWorldSounds=True
displaySexSpeedChat=True


[Model]
WUserName=mars
mesh=HM.msh
HeadMap=HMCH001_Spencer.jpg
EyeMap=HMUE_green.jpg
TorsoMap=HMCT001_Spencer.jpg
LegMap=HMCL001_Spencer.jpg
headMapDecal=HMUH_facial_hair_chin.png
eyeMapDecal=
TorsoMapDecal=HMUT_shirt_t_logo.png
LegMapDecal=HMUL_jean_black.png
HeadMesh=HM_Hair_Mid_MedLengthBrown.msh
HeadState=idle
HeadAttachedAs=WEARING
FaceMesh=
FaceState=
FaceAttachedAs=
RightWristMesh=
RightWristState=
RightAttachedAs=
EarMesh=
EarState=
EarAttachedAs=
WearingMesh=
WearingState=
WearingAttachedAs=
ShoulderMesh=
ShoulderState=
ShoulderAttachedAs=
FootMesh=
FootState=
FootAttachedAs=

1stPerson=False
Scale=1.1

[machine]
TextureDetail=High
tony
#2 Posted : Monday, October 30, 2006 7:56:16 PM(UTC)
Rank: Newbie

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 23
Test your work

Start the Red Light Center. Your new shirt texture should show up.


Naming & size conventions

The Red Light Center game engine uses naming conventions to specify what textures go where on the avatars.

For males:
Shirts need to start with "HMUT_" are 512x256 in size and must be saved as PNG files with transparency
Pants need to start with "HMUL_" are 256x256 in size and must be saved as PNG files with transparency

For females:
Shirts need to start with "HFUT_" are 512x256 in size and must be saved as PNG files with transparency
Pants need to start with "HFUL_" are 256x256 in size and must be saved as PNG files with transparency

Sharing your new clothing with the rest of the Red Light Center community

Once you have tested you clothing and it is looking good you can submit your artwork to Red Light Center for review and inclusion in the game. If accepted by the Red Light Center your clothing will be included in a release so that everybody can see and use your tattoos! Please don't submit artwork that is clearly copyrighted by someone as we won't be able to include it in a general release of the game. To submit your clothing textures just click on the My Textures link on your http://social.redlightcenter.com home page.

More Avatar templates

Male Pants and Shoes

You can download the Photoshop template file for the male pants texture here.

Here is an example of the male pants texture with the UV coordinate wireframe overlay.



At the bottom of the image is the area used for the shoes and socks. Note that like the shirt texture there is only one shoe texture that is shared by both feet.

In the image below the seam areas for the UV layout is highlighted in matching colors.


In the following image you can see the alpha channel for the male pants.


The image below shows an alpha channel, with UV coordinate overlay to help you visualize the layout, you could use to make the male character look like he is wearing shorts with no shoes in game.


Female Shirt Template

You can download the female shirt template photoshop file here.

Below is the UV coordinate layout and shirt, in this case a corset, for the female avatars.


Next is an image that picks out the shared seam areas of the shirt texture. Like the male shirt the female has a single shared arm texture.


Now we can see the alpha channel for this shirt texture. Since the shirts are composited over the skin textures you can see how the shoulder straps are made in the alpha channel. Any area that is black the skin will show through.


Female Pants Template

You can download the Photoshop template file for the female pants texture here.  

Here is the female pants texture with the UV coordinate wireframe overlay.


Unlike the male UV coordinate layout the female has unique feet and the shoes are handled as completely separate objects that are attached latter in the game engine.

In the image below the seam areas for the UV layout is highlighted in matching colors.


In the following image you can see the alpha channel for the female pants.



tony
#3 Posted : Tuesday, October 31, 2006 9:53:47 PM(UTC)
Rank: Newbie

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 23
Is it a similar process with PSP? I don't have Adobe, and the whole Alpha channel thing is a bit daunting, to say the least.

Thanks for the info!
tony
#4 Posted : Wednesday, November 01, 2006 7:54:00 PM(UTC)
Rank: Newbie

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 23
Paint Shop Pro should work fine.
Acer
#5 Posted : Thursday, November 02, 2006 1:06:32 AM(UTC)
Rank: RLC Regular

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 100
Great tutorial, tony!!

acer71
Shuqoyqa
#6 Posted : Monday, November 06, 2006 10:59:18 AM(UTC)
Rank: Junio RLC Member

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 66
Female pants template is corrupted or invalid.

Having a mare trying to make translucent stuff, so I gave up. Using the Gimp, click off the eyes on the seams and UV coord layers to make only the image visible, and delete any areas you don't want then save that as .png and export it, and that works.

For anyone as stumped as me by the UV frame on the shoulders, pics of me modelling the framework and a pattern of blobs showing where the various seam sections are on the model can be found here: http://bondage.com/i/1784313/user_pictures.html (blobby pic pending approval, hoping it won't go Premium-members only on me).

I did try to upload it to this site for everyone to see, but that doesn't seem to work either.

Gloves and modified "witchRR" top uploaded to my profile, plus the template shirt with lace gloves.
tony
#7 Posted : Tuesday, November 07, 2006 11:47:14 AM(UTC)
Rank: Newbie

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 23
There was a typo in the URL for the female pants template, fixed. Sorry bout that!

The shoulders for male and female are a nightmare for things like straps etc...

The best way to deal with them is too use a 3D paint package like Deep Paint 3D on the models themselves.

I will be releasing howtos for making static 3D Props, and for doing animations along with example 3DSMax files soon.
Shuqoyqa
#8 Posted : Tuesday, November 07, 2006 2:38:00 PM(UTC)
Rank: Junio RLC Member

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 66
Thankyou. Downloaded, modded, used.

However, it downloaded as HFUT and I saved it as HFUL to use it. I wouldn't expect that to be a problem if I hadn't, but it would have got lost in the directory listing.

Also, the colour codes on the seams are wrong. The legs wrap to themselves, not each other.

Next: shoes! You know I want to design my own boots!
tony
#9 Posted : Tuesday, November 07, 2006 4:22:36 PM(UTC)
Rank: Newbie

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 23
Thanks!

I fixed these files and emailed them to Amber to be posted. Hopefully fixed versions will be posted sometime this afternoon (PST).

[edit] Amber has the files updated! Thanks Amber!

Shoes/hair/hat howto's are planned. My preference would be for people to do the rigging of the shoe models to the character models so we don't have to spend time on this side tuning rigs.

I will also be working on animation how to's and will include a fairly full set of sex/dance/idle animations.
Shuqoyqa
#10 Posted : Friday, November 10, 2006 3:53:20 PM(UTC)
Rank: Junio RLC Member

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 66
Wheee! Lots of textures uploaded, and screenshots on my profile.

In doing the camouflage one, I discovered that the downloaded template shirt is 512 x 256 and the downloaded template pants I have are 512 x 512. I made myself a camouflage image, just a big flat sheet, and used the clone tool (rubber-stamp jobbie) to copy areas of it into the colour layer for a texture. Gimp and PhotoShop will both allow you to select the area you want to affect, then paint over it with a very fat brush, which is handy. On the pants, I painted the same texture onto the 512 x 512 and saved it that size, and it works in-game. When I shrank it to 256 x 256 then painted onto it, the blobs came out twice as big on the pants as on the shirt, so there's a scale issue there to bear in mind when drawing.

Two big things I've found are vital when drawing these things: shadows on the skin around them (I draw them in with a small fuzzy brush or tiny pencil, typically in 10%-20% opacity black) and wrinkles. A simple small fuzzy brush dodge and burn will produce a bright stripe above and dark stripe below to give an illusion of a wrinkle, and it makes it all a lot more like clothing and less like body-paint. There are shadows in seams and under pockets to. Think about where they'd be darker and where clothing would buckle, eg where a strap tugs at it.

If doing textures that run over from top to bottom, I'd recomend making a single image and pasting it into the top of one image and bottom of the other as the easiest way to line them up. At the shoulders, I've been trying to avoid doing anything complex. The stretching and distortion when the arms move make it very hard to get anything to really work near there. Plain colours along all the seams make it a lot easier, if you can get away with that.

Where things wrap around, e.g. around the legs (near centre of texture file to edge of texture file) bear in mind that the 3D coords don't line up across the texture, so you can't just draw a horizontal line and expect it to join up. To find the ones that correspond, count up from the obvious line around the top of the ankle, near the bottom of the cloured part fo the template image. The distance between two points aong that seam may not be the same on each side of it in the texture file either, so I go by fractions of its length.

Translucency is useful. My red waistcoat texture has transluent black back with clear holes in it, creating that sweet moire pattern. The peach blouse is also translucent, less so at the wrinkles. To achieve this in Gimp, select the area in general with a rectangle or noose or whatever's appropriate, then use the select-by-colour tool to select the part you want to affect. You can select in addition to current selection, deselect from it or select only the parts that are in both, which is the obvious choice for this. Only peach-coloured areas in the selected area. Then I erased with 10% opacity to make it translucent, then deselected the wrinkles by colour and repeated to get the see-through fabric effect.

Those sleeves were originally long but beign skin-tight it didn't work, hence the roll-ups. Your textures have to be skin-tight designs until they let us make our own frillas and skirts and ruffs and floppy sleeves. Then I'll really go nuts on it. Wink
Shuqoyqa
#11 Posted : Friday, November 10, 2006 8:09:29 PM(UTC)
Rank: Junio RLC Member

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 66
Hello all.

Im trying to make a batman costume, i'm using photoshop, i followed all of the instructions and gave up after 9 hours.

Can anyone give me some advice please?

Is it possible to download it from elsewhere?



Bruce Wayne
tony
#12 Posted : Saturday, November 18, 2006 10:58:08 AM(UTC)
Rank: Newbie

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 23
Here is a tip to keep in mind when you are making clothing and tattoo textures.

Don't use fully black (8bit per channel RGB of 0 0 0) or fully white (8bit per channel RGB 255 255 255) in your artwork. The rendering engine can do a better job of illumination if you leave some "floor" and "ceiling".

If a texture is fully black it can't really pick up environmental lighting, the final pixel color on the screen is multiplied by 0 0 0 from the texture resulting in 0 0 0. Make your darkest colors in the range of 14 14 14.

Same for white, if the texture color is 255 255 255 then there is no way for the texture to be brighter due to in game lighting. So limit the upper range of values to 241 241 241.  
joeyj45
#13 Posted : Tuesday, December 19, 2006 4:08:57 AM(UTC)
Rank: Newbie

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 1
we could use someones help plz devil69 and i are getting maried and i have no id how to get a tux for me and a dress for her could some one walk us through it step by step or make us some when it comes to computers i know not a thing sorry but we need help !!!!!!!!! thank you all   Smile
shyayumi
#14 Posted : Monday, January 01, 2007 11:13:46 AM(UTC)
Rank: Newbie

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 2
I wanted to ask if I modified the texture of a clothing so that it look like that my avatar is naked is that allowed ?

As I am a regular member not a VIP member.

Since I am new and I thought I ask around a bit first.
Shuqoyqa
#15 Posted : Tuesday, January 02, 2007 8:09:47 AM(UTC)
Rank: Junio RLC Member

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 66
It's not allowed for freebies, only VIPs.

I think free-user female avatars can go without shoes legally, though.

You don't need a blank texture to do it. You can just have FootMapDecal= and not add a file name. Well, you could. Now we have a new engine and ... er ... I suppose it's Foot= without a filename now.

For clothing, I think it goes {H or U} {M for male, F for female} {W for underwear, U for outerwear} {H for head, T for Torso, L for legs} {underscore} {text name given by creator}, e.g. UFUL_camo_shorts is female outerwear for the legs called camo_shorts.

Anyone care to tell us what the first character is for? Are user-created textures still H or is everything U now? Do the H textures still work?
shyayumi
#16 Posted : Tuesday, January 02, 2007 8:12:37 AM(UTC)
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Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 2
Ok Thx for the info.
Shuqoyqa
#17 Posted : Thursday, January 11, 2007 11:24:27 AM(UTC)
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Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
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For those of us cross-dressing to check out textures for both genders, the sequence is:

Enter world
Customise to avatar of appropriate gender
Show Changes (this saves your current set-up to your MyInfo.ini file)
Open the Program Files/redlightcenter/MyInfo.ini file in Notebook
Put the name of your texture into the Clothing lines. Ignore the TorsoMapDecal= line from the older version and use:
Quote:
ClothingTorsoMap=UFUT_poet_shirt.png
ClothingLegMap=UFUL_knots_and_laces.png

Save that file.
Customise and Don't Change (which copies your MyInfo file to your in-game set-up).

If you want others to see it after they download their copies, you have to click Don't Change to get it on-screen for yourself, then Customise and click Show Changes for the rest of the world to see it ... if they've got it, that is.
Shuqoyqa
#18 Posted : Saturday, January 13, 2007 7:10:51 AM(UTC)
Rank: Junio RLC Member

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 66
I'm just brainstorming here, but does this mean that you can edit the faces picture file, and edit in your face?  So you could walk around and actually look like you?  Or does it only work for clothing and tattoos?
Shuqoyqa
#19 Posted : Saturday, January 13, 2007 11:11:43 AM(UTC)
Rank: Junio RLC Member

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 66
I see no reason why not, although you can't change the shape of the face, only the colours. You could certainly add all the necessary freckles, moles, scars, white areas in eyebrows etc to make a very close match, and / or do your own make-up, though.

Actually, we need freckles. Good call! Freckle time.
Shuqoyqa
#20 Posted : Friday, February 02, 2007 3:48:51 PM(UTC)
Rank: Junio RLC Member

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 66
[quote author=Caleb83 link=1162237320/15#17 date=1168672251]I'm just brainstorming here, but does this mean that you can edit the faces picture file, and edit in your face? �So you could walk around and actually look like you? �Or does it only work for clothing and tattoos?[/quote]
Yes, you can alter the face file to make a face that looks like your own. I asked someone to do that for me and he did a great job. I know a few others have too. Good luck! (I still can't figure out how to do textures!)
midnightwolf33
#21 Posted : Saturday, March 03, 2007 10:55:55 PM(UTC)
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Posts: 53
I would like to know how to do layers. I haven't figured that out yet in my Photoshop. Any suggestions would be helpful. Kisses> Love
midnightwolf33
#22 Posted : Sunday, March 11, 2007 6:48:04 PM(UTC)
Rank: Junio RLC Member

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 53
I want to try making my own clothes but, sorry if this sounds rude, I want to be the only one able to wear some of them. Is there a way to make clothes that only I can wear but others still see in the game?

Thanks in advance!
Shuqoyqa
#23 Posted : Sunday, March 11, 2007 7:04:35 PM(UTC)
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Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 66
No.
Shuqoyqa
#24 Posted : Monday, March 12, 2007 5:31:15 PM(UTC)
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Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 66
[quote author=OH_Barb link=1162237320/0#21 date=1173638884]I want to try making my own clothes but, sorry if this sounds rude, I want to be the only one able to wear some of them. Is there a way to make clothes that only I can wear but others still see in the game?

Thanks in advance![/quote]

If you make clothing and want to be the only one to wear it, you can ask others not to. But, don't be surprised if either a) people wear it or b) people don't bother to download something they can't wear.
Shuqoyqa
#25 Posted : Wednesday, March 14, 2007 3:47:59 AM(UTC)
Rank: Junio RLC Member

Joined: 2/12/2008(UTC)
Posts: 66
Thanks for the replies! Like I said, I don't want to sound rude, but I made it especially for someone. Who knows? maybe nobody else would want to wear it anyway! lol
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