Zaza’s Designs

Summer is here, supposedly (it’s been raining quite a bit recently), so I decided to create something bright and summery to wear.

My idea started with just creating some shorts and a top, but I extended the design to include a bikini, swimming costume and flip flops.

The shorts and top are created as pants and shirt, in a similar manner as the previous outfits, just cutting out sections in different positions to give the desired look. The bikini and swimming costume are both made as underpants and undershirts.

Once I had the basic look, particularly for the top, it was quick and easy to reuse that file (and save under a different name) to create the top part of the bikini and swimming costume, so that all the items I was creating had a similar look. I decided to also add a flower motive on the clothing items, just to give it a little something extra.

The flip flops are based upon the tutorial Creating Prim Shoes Pt 1 (Sandals) by Natalia Zelmanov. To create the flip flops that I had in mind, I altered the design by using one torus prim (non-twisted) to create the strap, rather than the four twisted torus’s used in Natalia’s tutorial. In order to give a good fit on the foot, I rotated the strap by about 20 degrees, so that it was lower down nearer the toes and higher up further back.

One of the difficult parts, was to get the texture for the strap right. SL likes to tile texture patterns (i.e repeat the pattern), but in this instance this was not what I wanted as I just wanted the one flower in the centre of the strap, rather than the flowers replicated. It was a bit of trial and error on my part (with a few uploads) to find the right way of creating the image file (I ended up using a 512px by 512px image with a large flower motive in the center) and then playing with the texture settings - repeats per face, offset etc, to get the texture looking the way I wanted.

Here’s what my images files look like that created the top and shorts (minus the red cut out shapes and clothing templates):

Here’s what my images files look like that created the bikini (minus the red cut out shapes and clothing templates):

Lastly, here’s what my images files look like that created the swimming costume (minus the red cut out shapes and clothing templates):

I came up with an idea for what should have been a simple dress to create. It was a wrap dress effect, by drawing lines appropriately on the items of clothing to create the look. This dress turned out more complicated than I had envisaged.

The wrap dress is made up of a shirt, pants and non-prim skirt. Creating the shirt, pants and skirt shapes was a similar process to the one I used for My First Outfit. However, on this occasion I also used the pen tool to draw lines on the shirt, pants and skirt to provide the “edging” effect of the wrap dress. Unfortunately, I chose to draw one of those lines around the waist where the shirt and the skirt join together. The non-prim skirt doesn’t fit neatly together at the waist with a shirt and therefore creating any pattern or effect at that point is tricky and does not provide a smooth finish.

Tip #2: Avoid creating details or patterns at the waist seam if using the non-prim skirt, as it’s tricky to get a smooth finish due to the skirt not fitting seamlessly with the shirt.

Another thing that was tricky was getting the long line from the neck that curves downwards and down the side to:

1. Meet up at the waist neatly.
2. Curve nicely down the side of the skirt.

I found it difficult to translate what I wanted for my 3D clothes on to the 2D clothing templates, as the templates themselves tend to stretch somewhat around your avatar. To get around my difficulties and repeated attempts of trying to draw the line in the correct place and getting the right amount of curve on it, I decided to splash out and buy myself the full version of AvPainter. Within a short space of time I was able to draw the line within AvPainter on my 3D model, save the images, and then go into my image editing program to recreate the lines with the pen tool following what I had drawn in AvPainter as a guideline. I decided to redraw the lines with the pen tool to create a more clearer defined line.

Here’s what my images files look like that created the wrap dress (minus the red cut out shapes and clothing templates):

As you can see from the shirt file, it was necessary for me to make the band of white around the waist very thick, to help give the effect of a nice white line around the waist when wearing the skirt, as when I originally made a thin line there the skirt made it look incomplete.

This is the first clothing I created in SL. It’s created from a shirt, pants and prim skirt.

Tip #1: It’s important to make “glitch” pants for any outfit you make that has a prim skirt, as if SL is being laggy the skirt can take a while to load, and you don’t want to appear half naked in front of everyone. (That sounds like a bad dream….)

The outfit is based upon the tutorials Creating Clothes with GIMP, Flexi Skirts Part 1 and Flexi Skirts Part 2 by Natalia Zelmanov.

(You’ll need to pay a visit to Sirena Hair & Fashion to obtain a copy of Ged Larson’s Loop Rez script which Natalia has packaged with sample skirt panels, along with visiting Carricre Wind’s Caveat Emptorium to obtain the AttachmentSet script if you wish to create a similar type of dress.)

I took a satin texture that I brought from Lauren Fox’s Lauren’s Tiling Textures and used that as the texture for the dress.

The following pictures show my files that created the shirt and pants:

The red areas are the shapes I used to help cut my texture to give the shape I wanted for the shirt neckline and the length of the pants. (Obviously, the red shapes and the clothing templates layers were made invisible when the clothing was uploaded into SL.)

Adding the AttachmentSet script to the prim skirt and applying appropriate settings, allows me to sit down, without the skirt pointing straight down and showing off what’s underneath my skirt to one and all. Which is much more ladylike, don’t you agree?

There are three main ways of creating clothes for your SL avatar:

1. By just using the Edit > Appearance menu within SL.
2. By creating clothing with your preferred image/drawing programme and then uploading the images for L$10 each in to SL, and then using the Edit > Appearance menu within SL to complete making the item of clothing.
3. By using prims to create clothing within SL.

There is also sculpted prims, but as I’ve not learnt anything about them and how to make clothing with them, that topic will need to be left to a later time. The use of sculpted prims for clothing isn’t currently widespread.

A great place to get started is Mermaid Diaries by Natalia Zelmanov. Natalia has put together a list of tutorials of how to create clothing (and as they are an informative resource I won’t go over the same ground that she has - so check them out). She has a great post about clothing templates of which there are three main ones:

1. The official Linden Labs templates.
2. Chip Midnight
3. Robin Wood

I personally prefer to use Robin Wood’s templates, but any of them will help you create clothes that will fit your SL avatar.

As for your image/drawing programme, it’s not necessary to have Photoshop, any drawing programme that has layers will work well. I personally use Fireworks MX (yes that’s quite outdated but it works for me), if you want a free tool there is GIMP. I find GIMP difficult to navigate around so prefer to use my Fireworks programme, although in order to upload my images in to SL I use GIMP to transfer them in to .tga files which is the format that SL likes (as my Fireworks programme cannot export them in to .tga files).

It’s also helpful to be able to view you clothes in 3D to make sure they fit right. It is possible to use SL’s upload previewer, but it’s such a small window and doesn’t show the avatar that it’s not that useful. Instead you can use either SL Clothes Previewer or AvPainter, and best of all they are both free. Having tried both, I found the SL Clothes Previewer’s camera controls awkward, and found AvPainter much more easier to use. Both programmes allow you to load the different textures that you’ve created and see what they look like outside of SL on your computer. It saves a great many L$10 upload costs, as it’s easier to see whether you have edges on your clothes not matching up etc. It allows you to preview images for the head, upper and lower parts of the body as well as skirts. AvPainter has a free demo version available which you can use as long as you like and allows you to view your images, but does not allow you save any changes that you make within AvPainter. However, you can also buy the full version for L$2495 which allows you to modify the clothes within AvPainter and save the results.

Therefore, the basic tools that I use to create clothing are:

1. An image/drawing programme.
2. Clothing templates.
3. 3D viewer to preview the clothing items.
4. L$ for uploading images.

Hello and welcome to my blog.

My name is Zaza Vale and I exist in the world of Second Life (hence forth to be referred to as SL). I’ve just got into making clothing within SL, so this blog will be mainly about how I’ve created outfits and any tips and lessons I’ve learnt whilst making them, along with the odd life event that happens in SL to me.

I hope that this blog will be a helpful resource to others that wish to start creating clothing in SL, and can learn from my mishaps.