How to make SL clothes in the Gimp

Apparently, there are few good tutorials about making Second Life clothing & skins in the Gimp. Or so I'm told. Well, I use the Gimp, so I may as well explain.

Theory

Second Life clothing comes in two types. One type is prim attachments to the avatar, and that's not what we're working with in this tutorial. Those are made within SL, using prim building techniques.

The other type is painted onto a flat picture,then wrapped around the avatar. This is used both to make clothing and to make skins, and the techniques in this tutorial series will work for both.

As you can imagine, wrapping a flat picture around a bumpy avatar means you get some odd distortions to the flat picture. You also need to know which parts of the picture end up on which parts of the avatar.

Linden Lab made a set of reference images available. If you put the reference image underneath your painted clothing, you can see where on the avatar your painted clothing will end up. Chip Midnight and Robin Wood practiced and painted and studied the avatars, and made extra reference images available (thank you, Chip and Robin!), and I'm going to recommend that you use both of those.

I have created a post with a fuller explanation of the theory behind Second Life clothing.

Setting up
I recommend that you read Olila Oh's information on setting up as well as this tutorial - we say things in different ways. However, either tutorial will leave you in the same position: ready to make SL clothing or skins, and with a complete toolkit in your hands.

1. Download Robin Wood's and Chip Midnight's templates. Make sure you get the 1024 * 1024 layered versions. Yes, they're called photoshop files, but the Gimp can read them. You must get the .psd files, not .jpg!
These are our reference images. We use them to tell us where in our painted clothing to put a collar, or a button, or a seam.

To get Chip Midnight's templates from the above link, you will probably need to log in to the Second Life website. However, you can also try
Mirror 1
Mirror 2
or
Mirror 3



2. Blend the two together.
We're doing this so we can take advantage of both Chip's and Robin's work, rather than limiting ourselves to one or the other.

-- Open one (either one)
-- Save as Blended [body section] Template.xcf (for example, Blended Upper Body Template.xcf)
-- Open the other (if you started with Robin's upper body templates, open Chip's upper body templates)
-- For each layer of the second one:
**** Select all
**** copy the layer
**** paste into the first
**** press the little 'page' icon on the bottom left of the layers dialog, that makes the pasted layer a new layer. I've circled the icon in red.
**** name the new layer (use the name it had in its original file).



If you can't find your Layers dialog, re-create it from the main Gimp window. File->Dialogs->Layers. See the image to the left.



3. Press the little 'page' icon again to make a new layer. Call it 'Backdrop', and designate it as white. Then use the up and down arrows beside the page icon to move it to the very bottom of the layers list.
This will help you see the other layers more easily. There's no magic or anything, it's just to make things easier to see.

4. Get a previewer.
A previewer is just a program that will make an avatar shape for you, and wrap your painted clothing around it. It just lets you see what you're doing.

Olila suggests the UVMapper demo and the Second Life avatar mesh files (the .obj ones). I explain how to use this later in this tutorial.

Johan Durant wrote a previewer that can be found at the Second Life Texturing Forum. I haven't used it myself, but there's explanations of how to use it in the forum thread.
While you're there, bookmark the forum. Come back and read it regularly.

Another previewer is AvPainter, which is costly in Lindenbucks, but has a free demo version. Get both versions at the Avpainter page on SLExchange. The demo link is in the description, about halfway down. Again, I haven't used this, but I understand that instructions come with it.

You can also use the SL Beta grid, which is a test version of the SL grid. Go to the wiki page talking about connecting to the preview grid.
A useful site with answers about the Preview Grid is The Second Life wiki.
When you upload on the beta grid, it will claim it's charging you Lindenbucks, but it's charging you beta grid dollars and not money from your actual SL account. Beta grid dollars get renewed periodically; and stuff in your beta grid inventory WILL vanish every so often - it's a test platform and nothing is stable. But it works great for testing your uploaded creations for free.

A final alternative is to use one of the third party viewers which allows you to upload temporary textures. The temp textures don't cost any lindens - but they also vanish the moment the viewer is closed.
Imprudence is one such viewer.

Try a selection of previewers, see which you prefer.

5. Do a test 'garment'. Open a blended template, save it as a jpg (for UVMapper), then open your previewer.

Study your text garment. Compare the blended template in the Gimp to its counterpart wrapped around the 3D model. Get to know it, figure out which part is the neckline, which the wrist, which the hand. At least a little bit!

Practice will improve this, of course.

5a. Previewing with UVMapper.

I use UVMapper. To get my model, I open UVMapper, File->Open model, and browse to where I downloaded SL_Avatar_OBJ.

To use UVMapper, you MUST have Second Life avatar mesh files (the .obj ones).

Because I can't save in the demo version, I have to 'smooth' it every time: just go to the View menu, select 'Smooth', and accept the default settings.
With your model set up, it's time to load the saved template. In UVMapper, go to the Texture menu and select 'Load'.

You should get something like the picture to the right.



Okay, I cheated a little bit. Look under Select->Mode and you find zoom, hand, and rotate tools. I used those to drag the model to where I could show you a better view. In checking clothes, you'll use those tools a lot!

Ignore the fact that the head has a shirt template all over it. The legs do too. UVMapper isn't very smart about that sort of thing.

6. Use the SL Beta grid, which is a test version of the SL grid. Go to the wiki page talking about connecting to the preview grid.
A useful site with answers about the Preview Grid is The Second Life wiki.

You can do all your test uploading to there and save yourself many, many Lindens. Be aware that nothing uploaded to the beta grid gets copied to the main grid: you'll still need to upload your final versions. But by making a habit of uploading your 'final' versions to the beta grid first, you'll discover most of your mistakes before spending any Linden on uploading to the main grid.

Your preparations are all done! Move on to part two.