Adding more detail and making a texture look real takes some effort. The know-how is in a tutorial in this series: Creating a Realistic Head in Blender – part 08 – Clothing Textures. In the 8th of the series, CG Cookie Blender is working on the clothes. So, don’t let the title put you off.
You’ll notice Cycles and the Node Editor are not used in the early creation part. So, it is mostly an older workflow. Still, I found the video helpful on a number of levels.
How Bump, Normal, and Depth Maps are created in Photoshop changed in 2017 CC. I hadn’t noticed until I needed to make a normal map. Then I stumbled across this video while checking to see if NVIDIA’s normal map tool would work with the newest 2017 CC.
The video uses the 3D mode. When creating mesh from bump map as shown PS isn’t exactly polygon efficient, but for use in PS and texture creation that isn’t an issue. For a 100+ brick wall PS made just under 500,000 vertices and 977,000 faces, which is way too heavy for Second Life(TM).
I’m playing with Photoshop’s 3D and deciding if I can use it for some of the things I want to make. My choices seem to be PS, Blender, and Sculptris… or to spend money… For work I have Adobe’s suite of apps. But, increasing my monthly software rental cost or spending US$800 or more for a 3D painting app isn’t something I want to do.
So, I’m painting in all three and trying to figure out how easily put fine detail into things I want to make for my Slink body.
What app do you use for making finely detailed textures for clothes in SL?
This is a quick 5 minute tutorial by a kinda cute young man that is easy and to the point. He doesn’t cover all the details or provide all the possible adjustments but, he shows you how to get the job done.
There is an interesting discussion in the SL Forum about a problem some people have had making Normal Maps for Second Life™. Jake Koronikov opened the thread. Jake had a problem with the normal maps creating a visible seam in the model.
Normal Maps from Flickr Search
For instance, the seam between the front and back sides of the avatar leg. Of you were making a manikin and using a normal map on it that seem would become visible as a step on the surface rather than the smooth surface it is supposed to be. You can see his images of the problem in the thread: Tangent spaced Normal Map seam visible in UV border area. (2017 – The images are gone.) Continue reading