Yes, the wild rumors are true: your humble reporter has indeed designed his first piece of clothing, vaulting him I suppose into the ranks of "Second Life fashion designers" (albeit in this case in a pathetic, noobie way). For those who don't know, just about everything involved with Second Life has been released in a way so that all general players can create things themselves; from landscaping to buildings, clothing to hairstyles, even body parts. Most of these things are built as a standalone collection of primitive vector objects, or "prims;" such prims can be joined, stretched, manipulated, and have images projected on their sides as a "texture."

Clothing within Second Life is an exception, however; pieces there are no more than a specific image created within Photoshop (or equivalent imaging software), itself wrapped around a complex prim object called an "avatar" and in the shape of a human being (most of the time). You can think in some ways of this avatar shape, in fact, as a multilayered image in Photoshop itself; how, for example, you can attach up to four layers of images around an avatar's torso, showing simultaneously, to simulate up to four layers of typical clothing (gloves, undershirt, shirt and jacket). What clothing designers are doing is not creating a 3D object under a CAD/CAM model, like what builders of objects do; they are creating a graphical 2D image in Photoshop et al, one that will be "wrapped" around an avatar's shape in the grid to create a 3D illusion.

How one imports such images, then, is by laying them out in a very specific way within an application like Photoshop; to make things much easier, in fact, Linden Lab releases free downloadable templates that lay out reference lines in toggable layers. (Veteran designers like Chip Midnight, then, release their own versions of templates, often much more complex than the official Linden ones. In that the entire process is open source, this is of course perfectly legal of them to do.) As you can see in the above screenshot, once you get the hang of such things as multiple layers and alpha channels, the rest is fairly easy; you just fill in where the blank spaces are, with the results being what your avatar is eventually going to be wearing. The above photorealistic wrinkly t-shirt, for example, is a free one that Linden includes among the templates; perfect, as you can see, for simply opening your text tool and adding your own wacky catchphrase.

Then it's simply a matter of saving the image in Targa (or .tga) format, a standard option in most good imaging software; then you upload the image within Second Life for 3 American cents, and texture it onto a new shirt you create (or new panties, or new shoes, or new eyeballs, etc). Ah, but as you can see here, the first time I tried doing this, I forgot a basic lesson that the tutorials even tell you; to first turn off the guidelines before saving, in that they will literally show up on the clothing otherwise. Dude, I'm all Tron and s**t!

Okay, so back to our Photoshop file, where this time I correctly turn off the guidelines and turn on the alpha channel; this allows me to basically paint on a blank photorealistic canvas, as you can see, and create whatever kind of t-shirt I want. Not that difficult at all, really, if all you're looking to do is create a simple promotional t-shirt for your company, or a wacky t-shirt to give to friends, or a souvenir t-shirt to give out at a special event. Once you import it into the grid and marry it to a new shirt, voila; the game engine stretches and blurs all the edges into a cohesive piece of clothing, with of course its ultimate success entirely relying on the designer's capabilities. That's where people make big bucks from being fashion designers in SL, and gives them the right to actually call themselves fashion designers; not from the mere opportunity to make clothes, which as you can see technically any schlub can do, but from old-fashioned attention to all the details, as well as the touches that come from experience and talent.

I'm a big fan of the funny t-shirts the satirical publication The Onion offers; I always thought it'd be fun to offer a series of related grid-only t-shirts through my own blog, for readers or new residents who are looking for something basic yet funny to wear. Of course, you can see the lingering problem I'm still having; that whoever first designed the free template didn't do a perfect job, and in fact left a small black ring around the neck. I need to go into Photoshop and remove that very carefully; then finally I'll be ready to crank out some goofy t-shirts as a free handout to readers. (How it will work: the shirts will be bundled with the HUD magazine, a link to the website, and a landmark to our headquarters, into a one-prim "poster" of next month's issue. Clicking on it will give you the chance to upload the items into your inventory if you want; taking a copy of the poster will let you display it at your own store or land, in return for a free eighth-page ad next month, hint-hint, hint-hint.)

And of course, what's some free corporate handouts without a chance for brand identity projects? Don't you all just hate the crap out of all us snarky marketers?! I'm trying to keep it not too distasteful in ITG's case; just a little text ad for the blog on your back, much like sponsored t-shirts in real life as well. I hope people won't find that too much of a burden in exchange for the free clothes, or too distasteful a corporate display. And of course, if I have the patience to become a better designer, I'll expand the plans for official clothing, especially when it comes to the new adult magazine -avatar- opening in January; in that case I might actually release some commercial clothing to be sold for retail price, under an umbrella "avatar" brand that references the magazine but isn't necessarily tied to it. (You know, like how J-Lo sells perfume and crap under her name.) As mentioned before, though, that'd only be if I became a better designer, and at this point there's no guarantee that's going to happen; I might just continue to leave it in the capable hands of all those full-time fashion designers out there.

As always, I'll document the process if I end up learning more; if nothing else, I do hope ITG can sometimes show people the first details of things they've always been curious about. To share your own beginner design tips (which would be much appreciated), do make sure to point your mouse down to the comments section and click away. Oh, and incidentally, here's something interesting about Linden that I didn't know myself until this week: that they maintain a gigantic and very useful fashion portal at their corporate website, using their resources to help the hundreds of designers and fashion publications out there get additional notice and customers. It's definitely worth a look, if you're seeking much more involved publications about the fashion industry than what ITG is.