BrewOfDaos
Members
64
Jan. 2003
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Jan. 26 2003, 2:20 pm |
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I'm curious if anyone here was planning on signing up for the developer program so that they can create their own textures and models (and eventually program item code). I'm going to sign up today and see how the development package that they give out works. While I'm more of a programmer than a graphic designer, it could be fun and profitable to be able to sell your own line of items. From what I've read, to create say a tee shirt, you create the new texture based on their patterns, you then submit the design for approval (I'm glad they review things), and charge you T$6000 which gets you the design and one copy of the shirt. They then charge you $600 per copy that you want made (which you can sell for any price that you want). I'm sure that other items cost more to create than the tee shirt.
If anyone else is interested in learning this system, let me know. I'd like to work with others while learning. I'm going to apply for the developer program when they go live again today.
-Brew
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Karey
Members
35
Jan. 2003
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I submitted my first tee shirt yesterday! The There part is easy, but I'm really not so good with Photoshop. But I managed to find some decent graphics, and I pasted them onto a black tee shirt and messed around till it was centered and it really worked. I tried to get the trim at the ends of the sleeves and around the collar to match the color of the graphic, but I couldn't figure out how to do it.
There's a glitch in getting a picture of it out of the "previewer" but you can take a screenshot and then crop it to the right size. There's instructions on the official forums.
I was impressed. I never thought I would get it to work. Hope people like Celtic knotwork and I can at least get my investment back.
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Spliff
Admin
843
Jan. 2003
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I've always been really interested in invention, so perhaps I will try to create some kind of new object in There. I'm not interested in creating a new paintjob for an already existing object though. I need to read up a lot more on this, since I'm not sure yet what is actually possible. I think it would be cool to create something like a new vehicle like a monocycle or something like that. I can see that I might have a difficult time with this though, since I am not a programmer.
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UncleJohn
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Jan. 27 2003, 12:29 pm |
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I have made two ladies t-shirts so far. One was submitted and approved about 5 days later and the other was just submitted Saturday. It did take some trial and error to get all of the elements just right, but not too difficult. The first one is here: < Bee There T-shirt >
I did receive one copy (popped up in my inventory automatically) and can go an purchase more for $600 or place in the auctions for $40. The auction didn't make sense though - instead of have bids, people can just buy it. I don't know how I would change it to a regular auction if that's what I wanted to do. I have more than made back my $6000 for submission and hopefully can sell a lot as they add more users.
Cheers!
UncleJohn
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UncleJohn
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Jan. 27 2003, 12:32 pm |
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Correction on link for t-shirt:
< Bee There T-Shirt >
UncleJohn
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Karey
Members
35
Jan. 2003
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It's a beautiful shirt. I haven't seen that many around which makes me even more hopeful about making my money back!
How did you get the collar and sleeve trim! Oh! I fidgeted with photoshop for hours and finally gave up. (Ok, I am totally awful with photoshop so maybe it's easier than I thought.)
Don't suppose you've got a template with just the sleeves and collar toned?
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BrewOfDaos
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Jan. 27 2003, 1:32 pm |
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Great to hear all of your responses. I managed to DL the dev tools in the brief time I was on last night, so I'm going to spend the next few days (Beta off time) playing around with things. I'm more interested in the Model building, but I'll probably just start with the painting to make some money (model submissions cost $50,000 or so, according to their site).
In the long run, I am hoping that they put in provision for adding actual code (there were hints of C++ development for items). I can't find that info anymore, so I hope that they haven't cancel those plans. I'm a better programmer than graphic designer.
-Brew
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ZzeusS
Members
48
Jan. 2003
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Do you have to be approved to even GET the dev tools? I can't sign up now because it's offline. I remember trying yesterday during the uptime and don't remember seeing anything to download. If the dev kit is not tied to an email address does anyone know if it can be posted somewhere - instead of waiting until Wednesday evening?
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Nightscar
Members
14
Jan. 2003
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I was checking it out and i think what U are talking about is located at www.There.com, then click on the bubble at the top that says developers. There is a link in that page that has u sign on and I am guessing it brings u to the Developer Kit download. I donno because it's mon. 
And I really wouldn't know becasue I haven't gotton my beta test invatation yet.  lol
I hope this helps.
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Karey
Members
35
Jan. 2003
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Once you're accepted to the game, there's no additional approval to be a developer. You do need to get your submissions approved before they are put into the game.
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ZzeusS
Members
48
Jan. 2003
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In case anyone doesn't yet know, you can now access all the developer info including the tools at any time.
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BrewOfDaos
Members
64
Jan. 2003
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Well, the downtime has given me an opportunity to play with the painter tools, and I have a design or two that I'm going to submit, once I've searched the auctions to be sure that someone else hasn't already done them. They are simple so far, just new colors schemes for the tee-shirts.
I'm curious if anyone else has been having problems with photoshop during the save-to-jpg phase? One of my textures is getting altered pretty badly (it's just black on purple), and because of the location of the artifact at the neckline, the mis-colored pixels are getting streched far enough to be distracting. I've got the jpg settings set to the max quality, but it still corrupts the image pretty badly where the black band is.
-Brew
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ZzeusS
Members
48
Jan. 2003
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| Quote (BrewOfDaos @ Jan. 29 2003,11:12) | Well, the downtime has given me an opportunity to play with the painter tools, and I have a design or two that I'm going to submit, once I've searched the auctions to be sure that someone else hasn't already done them. They are simple so far, just new colors schemes for the tee-shirts.
I'm curious if anyone else has been having problems with photoshop during the save-to-jpg phase? One of my textures is getting altered pretty badly (it's just black on purple), and because of the location of the artifact at the neckline, the mis-colored pixels are getting streched far enough to be distracting. I've got the jpg settings set to the max quality, but it still corrupts the image pretty badly where the black band is.
-Brew |
I just use painshop pro 5 now. It's basic enough for those low low quality jpg's they use. I use the basic save with no altering or compression and still notice a little fuzziness when I view it on the model in the previewer. I can only come to the conclusion that the most basic of schemes look good because of the low quality and stretching. And damn cancelling a submital because something else is up there  I don't even look. I've got 4 things in the queue now, and think it's time to quit for a few days
They need to lower the cost on pants and boots... you can do 3 shirts for the cost of one boot set. Crazy!
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ZzeusS
Members
48
Jan. 2003
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| Quote (BrewOfDaos @ Jan. 29 2003,11:12) | Well, the downtime has given me an opportunity to play with the painter tools, and I have a design or two that I'm going to submit, once I've searched the auctions to be sure that someone else hasn't already done them. They are simple so far, just new colors schemes for the tee-shirts.
I'm curious if anyone else has been having problems with photoshop during the save-to-jpg phase? One of my textures is getting altered pretty badly (it's just black on purple), and because of the location of the artifact at the neckline, the mis-colored pixels are getting streched far enough to be distracting. I've got the jpg settings set to the max quality, but it still corrupts the image pretty badly where the black band is.
-Brew |
I just use painshop pro 5 now. It's basic enough for those low low quality jpg's they use. I use the basic save with no altering or compression and still notice a little fuzziness when I view it on the model in the previewer. I can only come to the conclusion that the most basic of schemes look good because of the low quality and stretching. And damn cancelling a submital because something else is up there I don't even look. I've got 4 things in the queue now, and think it's time to quit for a few days
They need to lower the cost on pants and boots... you can do 3 shirts for the cost of one boot set. Crazy!
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bobita228
Admin
391
Jan. 2003
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Hmmmm, I need help. I'm more on the graphics end. I downloaded everything and when I opened them up in photoshop I got a lot of flattened images, look like a framework for 3D work. Is it a matter of just painting and manipulating the existing templates? I'm at a lost. Help! :0
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BrewOfDaos
Members
64
Jan. 2003
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Bobita228, The documentation that came with the painter kit (web-page) goes into a lot of the details, but I'll give you my understanding.
The textures that get mapped onto the models are all just flat jpg files, and the templates seem to be a mapping between the model's wireframe and the 2-d texture. To see how it works, it's best to use the Previewer that came with the painter kit. You can open on of the models that came with the different kits, and the textures should show up on the model. Using one of the menues of the previewer, you can then select the template jpg to use as a texture and you will see how the template maps to the model.
Once you've created your own texture, replace the previewer texture with the one you've created to see how it looks.
The html document that comes with each item kit tells you which models go with which textures, which is very important.
Once you've got one model loaded up in the previewer, it should all make a lot more sense.
-Brew
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ZzeusS
Members
48
Jan. 2003
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| Quote (bobita228 @ Jan. 29 2003,19:22) | | Hmmmm, I need help. I'm more on the graphics end. I downloaded everything and when I opened them up in photoshop I got a lot of flattened images, look like a framework for 3D work. Is it a matter of just painting and manipulating the existing templates? I'm at a lost. Help! :0 |
Welll... that's exactly what it is. a normal model texture that's a flat image. The trick is to make something that looks like a real shirt when it's mapped over the model. It does take a little bit of real effort and is not exactly easy. Anyone can blast a texture out in 256x128 and wrap it around a tshirt model and submit it. The good ones have wrinkles and shadows. Check out the Leather Tee on that Bad Kitty side in the other forum.. that's good stuff.
#edit*
Oh, yes. To add onto what Brew said.. I save the file and Replace it on the Preview about 20 times before I get what I want. I'll change something, save, alt tab, Edit, Replace texture.. look at it. rotate it around.. alt tab, edit the texture a bit.. save as something else +1 like blueshirt1, blueshirt2, etc etc. because the dang Preview does that dds file and you can't keep editing the same texture without a lot of word deleting the old dds files. So I just increment the filename. When I get done I'll call it +final, and usually end up with something like Womens-blue-shirt13-final. But that's just me.
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Snark
Members
3
Jan. 2003
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One enormous help I've found, aside from owning Photoshop in the first place, is using the mapping template out of the clothing catalog to precisely identify the boundaries used when wrapping the texture around the model.
This is the rough procedure I used in creating a bomber jacket (not uploaded after seeing Lumpy's fine work) out of the letterman jacket model:
1. Opened the original letterman jacket texture in Photoshop, and then copied in the (same-size) vector-lines texture, both found in the graphics directory. I made sure to keep the mapping texture on top at all times, screened over lower levels.
2. Used the polygon lasso to select slightly outsized sections for the back/right, left, undershirt, etc., and filled those selections with an arbitrary color, keeping each element (jacket shell, lining, shirt...) on a different level. Save this as your working file - layers are your friend.
3. Whipped out a VERY rough outline of shirt collar, seam, and buttons, jacket snaps and collar, and so on.
4. Flattened out the image, saved as jpeg, then used the previewer to see just how much the lines of detail were distorted after application.
5. Repeat ad infinitum until satisfied by shading, wrinkles, color, patches, etc.
I didn't run into any problems with having to renumber the files. During editing, I repeatedly flattened, saved with Ctrl-S, switched to the previewer, and hit 'R' to reload the texture. It is a blessing that the model is held in the same position during a reload. And...layers are your friend.
Snark.
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bobita228
Admin
391
Jan. 2003
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Thanks for the tips ZzeusS and BrewofDaos. I"m going to give it a shot this weekend and see what I can do with it!! Thanks!
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Phedre
Members
121
Jan. 2003
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Hi All,
Ok i have a few tips and trix i will share with you and answer some of the questions posted in this thread.
Compression:
You notice that the texture looks different on the model than in your paint program? Well that .dds file that shows up is the compressed file that THERE uses - this is essentially video card specific file format. It takes jpgs, pngs and compresses them to a smaller size so that it is not a big download on the end user side. What happens when you compress files is the colour range is changed. It does its best to keep all the colours but sometimes all you see are blurry images. The best textures have the least amount of colour to begin with which is why There looks so cartoony. OR a small colour range in the same tonal range e.g. light gray to dark gray - like my leather tee (thanks ZzeusS!). Another trick is to make your master texture bigger than the 256x128, hit the Sharpen button a few times before downsizing it. You get much crisper lines. Uncle John's Bee Tee could have used less colours and sharpeness added to stop the blurriness. Having said that the blurriness can be usefull for gradients and those tie dye tees i've seen. So you need to have a clear idea before you start as to your end aim.
Mapping:
Think of the 3d model as if it were a tube - with a piece of paper wrapped around it. The paper is the texture. When you lay the paper flat if has an impression where it was on the tube. Same with the texture map templates - those show you where the model has been unwrapped to a flat piece of paper. A good idea is to take these templates and have them as a layer in Photoshop,make them semi transparent, that you switch on and off to see where you are lining things up, like edging on sleeves and logos etc. If you can remove the gray pixels from this image the better.
Catalogue Images:
You can make better catalogue images by Useing ALT-->Printscreen when the previewer is active, and paste that into a new image in photoshop. Do this for a front and back image. Then all you have to do is make them the correct size (190x135), but you can manipulate the background colour, add sfx and have better close ups in the image than the Snapshot feature allows. See my Bad Kitty images - those are my catalogue images not just the images for the site.
Wrinkles, shading etc: My Leather Tee
Heh, well this is not that easy but doable - being an artist and years of making games has given me an edge. But you can do this to. You need photos or images that you use as background to get the wrinkles etc. Make sure your source art has a front view and back view. You can take digital images of your stuff then paste and resize to fit the shirts templates etc. There are places where the texture needs to squish down to where it maps correctly and that does take a little fiddling. Just keep the tube/paper idea in mind when you see the wrinkles stretching or doing something odd. Sometimes making those areas where you get wonky lines a solid colour is just the best thing to so - you might notice that the leather tee is pretty much solid on the sides and shoulders to accomodate odd mapping.
OK, i think that is it... any more questions?? 
Miss P Miss P
:::make me your sin:::
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ZzeusS
Members
48
Jan. 2003
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Fantastic Phedre, thanks for the catalog image tip. I was annoyed that it only captured that one image in the Previewer. Is there any way to rotate the model to exact coordinates, or do you just manually rotate and snap pictures for each.. oh wait I bet you rotate to one position and then load each texture, then snap a pic.. rattle out a buncha cat pics at once? Hmm.. then I guess I'm not really asking anything. But since I typed so much I'm going to post it anyway. Since there are only 4 people reading it anyway
it's kinda funny how many people in There that have good ideas but don't know how to Photoshop, or artists that don't have the scratch to submit, or are for some reason nervous about downloading the tools and diving in. As much as I want to offer tips ingame I can't help feeling that I would be introducing more competition.. heh heh.. so I just ask for their ideas then rip them off! just kidding.. I do give out tips.. but I haven't actually had anything approved yet, so it could be that I just suck...
I've actually already blown my gaming budget in There submitting new stuff..lol. Now I'm gonna have to start ebaying some old computer junk for There scratch.
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BrewOfDaos
Members
64
Jan. 2003
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Thanks, Phedre, those tips will help wonderfully. I think that I'm goign to have to limit my painting to non-beta hours, so I probably won't get to try anything more till this weekend. I'm also going to stick with tees until I come up with an idea worth spending the time and money one a better class of item for (exept those men's bunny slippers.....I think I have a good idea for those  ).
-Brew
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bobita228
Admin
391
Jan. 2003
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I finally was able to figure out how to use the Painters kit. And the previewer definitely helped. Thanks to everyone for their great tips!! I do have one question. Anyone know how to make a v neck shirt? I saw couple of guys iwth button down shirts as well. Is there additional templates that I'm not finding? Any suggestions would help!!
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BrewOfDaos
Members
64
Jan. 2003
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Unfortunately, they have not yet released all of the templates and models for the different types of clothes. The button down shirt is called an Oxford shirt in there, and there is no developer model or texture for it. Nor is there any way to submit textures for it.
Hopefully they will be releasing more textures soon.
-Brew
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bobita228
Admin
391
Jan. 2003
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'Drat  Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait.
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Spliff
Admin
843
Jan. 2003
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Does this article indicate we will be able to create entirely new objects in There soon?
< http://www.thereuniverse.com/cgi-bin....=4;t=12 >
"The startup will provide a C++ interface this spring to let experienced individual programmers develop objects in the online world and work with a handful of professional developers later this year to extend the online world based on the company's application programming interface."
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BrewOfDaos
Members
64
Jan. 2003
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I certainly hope so. I remember thinking that would be the case when I read that article. I haven't heard much about this feature from There, so I assume that it's quite a ways off. I know that I'm a better programmer than artist, so this is my best bet at creating useful things for There.
-Brew
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Chiasmodus
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| Quote | | save as something else +1 like blueshirt1, blueshirt2, etc etc. because the dang Preview does that dds file and you can't keep editing the same texture without a lot of word deleting the old dds files. |
Hello! I'm new here (and There too lol) so I haven't read through everything to see if this has been mentioned in another thread, but what I like to do rather than changing the file name for every change, is just use the "File... Reload" command in the Previewer after I've saved my changes to my texture. 
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Anubis
Members
92
Feb. 2003
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Um, you guys should talk to an avatar named Mad_Duggan. He's in There all the time and I've been told that he built the only user made object in the world - those little gnomes.
So now I'm a little confused as I was under the impression that building your own objects was already an available option but somewhat difficult for a non-programmer. I did not check this out however, I will ask him next time I see him.
Anubis
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sluggo
Members
139
Feb. 2003
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I may be crazy, but building a gnome is modelling, not programming, I'm thinking the C++ would come in giving the object properties (the gnome has nothing but an about to it). It's just a 3D model otherwise.
I would like to look more into this, and would be willing to work with artists to create new things that do require some programming (even if the gnomes require any it can't be all that hard, the kind of stuff I can bang out in 2 hours or less). I'd like to get involved developing vehicles, or other objects you can interact with. I can model and texture, but very poorly, programming is my real forte, so I'd need an artist to make things that don't suck ™ .
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sluggo
Members
139
Feb. 2003
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Oh.. I think the coolest thing would be a virtual nintendo that actually worked, but that may take a while to pull off . I've done more 3D programming that 2D, so taking a dimension off might be a weird mental jump back :P
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LoneStranger
Members
7
Feb. 2003
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Since the game makes massive use of the web to give you information, it wouldn't be too hard to make an arcade game from Flash or some other interactive multimedia type, and link to that. I doubt they would let people link to stuff outside of there.com but it's a means for There to create their own arcade games for the game. Then people could just buy arcade boxes for their houses. £§
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TruSoulja
Members
59
Feb. 2003
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I would like to see Radios that you could buy. These would connect to a winamp Shoutcast server which would be hosted by outside servers (since There servers need all they can get). The DJ could speak, and play music, or even sportscast events, just like regular shoutcasts.
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sluggo
Members
139
Feb. 2003
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Dang, I think I've just lost a few weekends... lol, the Flash Idea is a good one. Never worked with it (I'm a C head mostly), but I think I've found something that will 'make do' until we get the C++ dev kit .
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BrewOfDaos
Members
64
Jan. 2003
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You already can link to stuff outside of There.com by using the link field of brochures and fliers. It works pretty well, but the page that you are linking to needs to be formatted to fit into the There default browser window. Also, for those that haven't yet figured it out, all of the There windows are browser windows, so you can grab bookmarks to pages by right clicking on the window (in case you want to create a link to "My Auction" items for a brochure, for example).
As far as the programmer's kit vs. the model builder's kit, it sounds like the programmer's kit is quite a ways off, but the model builder's kit works (sort of), but not many people have submitted items yet. The Gnome is the only one yet approved, but from what I understand, there are a couple more models in the approval pipeline. There is working out some model export bug before approving any more. Once the programming kit is available, it will hopefully allow people to create all new items with all new behaviours (such as linked teleporter pads, hoverplatforms, or even gnomes that moon random passerbys  ). As far as models that can be sumitted right now, I think that it's pretty much limited to hoverboards and simple furniture.
-Brew
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ZzeusS
Members
48
Jan. 2003
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I would really like to see a web page link in There to open an in-game browser. This forced task switch to IE or WMP is quite lame.
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