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Custom Tshirt and Baseball Cap in Second Life

Creating a Custom Tshirt

Creating a simple TShirt with only one color inside Second Life is fairly easy. Simply right click your avatar, then select Appearance. Select Shirt from the menu, then click the Fabric box. Click on blank then Select. Next click on the Color/Tint menu and choose the color you wish, then Select. Adjust the various attributes such as Sleeve Length, Shirt Bottom, Collar Front and other attributes as desired, then click Save, followed by Make Outfit. Creating Custom Tshirts with unique logos is a little more complicated and is detailed below.

1 - First, plan your Tshirt design. For this example, the front of the Tshirt will have the popular 70s/80s phrase "I'm With Stupid" along with the pointing finger on the front, and the phrase "Stupid Is As Stupid Does" on the back. The shirt will be a baseball jersey length, with gray as the torso color and blue for the sleeves and collar. Plan out your own colors, text and images for your Tshirt. Save the image to the desktop as either image1.gif or image1.jpg, depending on the file type.

2 - Go to www.secondlife.com and click on Downloads near the bottom of the page. Click on Templates then save the zip file "Entire Template Collection" to your computer. Below it is a pdf file detailing how to use these templates, which is useful for advanced clothing design. Extract the contents of the zipped folder called CMFF_Template_Set.zip. Move the file CMFF-Master_Template-Upper512.psd to the Desktop.

3 - Open CMFF-Master_Template-Upper512.psd with Gimp. Detailed tutorials on using Gimp can be found here and here. If you prefer to use either Photoshop or JASC Paint Shop Pro, feel free to do so but I will use Gimp for this tutorial, since this tool is free. I will refer to the windows displaying the psd file as Image Window #1 and the window displaying the various selection, text, paintbrush and other tools as the Gimp Window.

4 - In Image Window #1, select View -> Zoom -> 4:1 to enlarge the image, then focus on the sleeves near the bottom. In the Gimp Window, double click the foreground color and set the HTML notation to 3300AA, then press OK. Select the Pencil Tool (Paint Hard Edged Pixels), then select "Circle - 19" from the Brush pulldown menu. Switch to Image Window #1 and click on the sleeve section. Proceed to fill in the both sleeves, up to the wrist section, with this color. It's ok if you go outside the lines as long as you do not touch the other outlines. Use the Edit -> Undo Pencil option if you do go outside the lines, then begin again.

5 - In the Gimp Window, click the Brush pulldown menu and select "Circle - 07". Click back on Image Window #1 and zoom in on the color area. Fill in the very top levels of both the front and back meshes with blue. Your template file should now look like Figure 1.

Figure 1

FIGURE 1

6 - In the Gimp Window, double click the foreground color and enter "808080" in the HTML notation box and press OK. Change your Brush Type back to "Circle - 19" then click on Image Window #1. Fill in the Front and Back Torso sections with Gray, except for the collar. Again, it's ok if you go outside the lines as long as you do not touch the other outlines. Switch to a smaller brush size when filling in color near the collar.

7 - In the Gimp Window, double click the foreground color and enter "000000" in the HTML notation box and press OK. Click the large "T" icon (Add Text to the Image) then click on the upper left shoulder of the back torso in Image Window #1. Inside the Gimp Text Editor, enter the text you desire for the back of the Tshirt, then click Close. In the Gimp Window, increase the Size to the desired amount, then click the icon with the four arrows (Move Layers and Selections). Back in Image Window #1, mouse over the the text until the four arrow icon appears, then drag the text to the desired location. Repeat this procedure for any text on the front torso layout.

8 - In the Gimp Window, choose File -> Open and select the image you wish to put on the Tshirt. This will open up another window, referred to as Image Windows #2 in this tutorial. Inside Image window #2, click Select -> All, then Edit -> Copy. In Image Window #1, click Layer -> New Layer, name it layer2, select layer fill type transparency, then OK. Now click Edit -> Paste and the image should appear in Image Window #1. Next, select Layer -> Scale Layer and adjust the height and width values to the correct size, then click Scale. This is usually a multistep process.

9 - In the Gimp Window, select the icon with the four arrows (Move Layers and Selections), then in Image Window #1, drag the image to the correct position. In Image Window #1, choose File -> Save As and name it tshirt1.jpg, then Save -> Export. Set the Quality to 100%, then OK. Your image should look like Figure 2. You can now close Gimp.

Figure 2

FIGURE 2

10 - Start Second Life and login. Click Inventory, then select Create -> New Clothes -> New Shirt. Remove and jackets and jewelry your avatar is wearing, then double click New Shirt in your inventory. Next, select File -> Upload Image and select tshirt1.jpg. Under Name, put tshirt#1 and the same in description. Make sure you select "Male Upper Body" under the Preview Image As section. Click Upload. You'll be charged $10 Lindens for this.

11 - Right click your avatar and select Appearance. Click Shirt, then Fabric and select tshirt1 from your Textures folder. Adjust your sleeve length and other parameters here. Make sure to set Collar Front and Collar Back to 100% to see your collar color. After adjusting, click Make Outfit. Check all boxes and name the Folder Name Tshirt1, then click Save. Click Save in the Appearance menu then close the menu. Your avatar should look like Figures 3 and 4.

Figure 3   Figure 4

FIGURE 3

  

FIGURE 4

Creating a Custom Baseball Hat

1 - Instructions coming soon.

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