Tutorial: Painting Onto the Avatar Mesh Using Photoshop CS4 Extended

Today is going to be a humdinger of a tutorial - learning to paint directly onto the avatar mesh using Photoshop CS4 Extended!

Please note: This tutorial will ONLY WORK with Photoshop CS4 Extended users.

This was a challenge to me when I was first learning how to do it, and to all the squirrels I've loved before, you're all the best for helping me conquer my CS4 avi-painting fears and issues. Now, here I am, explaining it for the masses - so that you guys don't have to beat your head against the wall like I did! At least... hopefully not MUCH. Saving frustration, that's what I am to do. As per usual, click on photos below to view larger versions.

What You Will Need for This Tutorial:

1. Photoshop CS4 Extended (ONLY THIS VERSION will work specifically for this tutorial). A free trial can be downloaded at the Adobe website here. Please note, you will need to create an account to log in and download the demo.

2. The split avatar UVs. You may download them here. Right-click and select "Save As" to download them to your hard drive. Thanks to Robin Sojourner (I believe it was?) for making them!

3. About 30 minutes to read this tutorial! Give yourself an hour if you are following along.

A Quick Rundown of the Photoshop CS4 User Interface

If this is your first time opening up Photoshop CS4, you are undoubtedly saying to yourself, "Wow... this is... different." It surely is. A quick explination of the various parts of the interface (in order by the numbers on the legend):

1. These are your 3d tools on the Photoshop CS4 toolbox. The top one is used for rotation, scale, panning, etc while the bottom is used for zooming and orbitting. I typically set my top one to Rotate and my bottom to Zoom as these are the two options I use most frequently when working with the avatar mesh. To do this, right click on each of the tool icons and select "3d Rotate Tool" for the top and "3d Zoom Tool" for the bottom. When selected, you can freely rotate your 3d model around the viewport. To zoom in and out, make sure your bottom icon is set to "3D Zoom Tool", then press your left mouse button and move your mouse forward and backward to zoom in and out. *IMPORTANT NOTE: You CANNOT Alt++ or Alt+- to zoom in and out on a 3d object. You MUST use the 3d Zoom Tool. If you attempt to AltZoom, your object will NOT zoom in or out, only your VIEWPORT will zoom in or out. This will give the illusion that your object is pixelated. To zoom in on your 3d object, you *MUST* use the 3d zoom tool. Example:

2. The 3d tools can also be found on this tool bar. If you do not want to be right clicking on those tiny icons in the toolbox all the time, this bar allows for quick and easy access to your selected tool's options.

3. The 3d Menu. We will be using this to set up the avatar mesh and get it ready for painting/viewing, among other things.

4. One thing I noticed that annoyed me more than absolutley anything about the new CS4 interface was the fact that images or 3d documents, when opened, dock (or stick) to a stationery spot on your viewport (try opening a couple of images at once - you'll see what I mean). By clicking this menu and selecting "Float All in Windows," your windows will once again float individually instead of docking all together.

5. This is what your layers tab will look like when you open your 3d model. You can see, the main layer is that of the avatar mesh that I have open right now, but there are also 3 sub layers beneath that - the Material_Head layer, Material_Top and Material_Bottom. I'll explain more about this in a few minutes.

Setting up the Avatar Mesh for Use in Photoshop CS4

Now that you have your avatar meshes downloaded and unzipped somewhere on your computer (here is the link again in case you haven't downloaded them yet), go ahead and open up the Female_AV.PSD file. You may also open the male avatar file if you wish, it makes no difference for the sake of this tutorial.

You will notice that, when opened, your avatar is dark and "lit" in a very strange, dark light. This is basically Photoshop attempting to give some ambient shade and light to your object. We want to turn this off, so that we can see only the avatar model and the textures we apply to them, without any artificial lighting. To do this:

1. Click the 3D menu option in your main toolbar. Under this menu, select "Render Settings".

2. A window of 3d Render Settings should open. This will give you a list of options to play with. The only one we need to worry about right now is the top-most one. You should see a drop down menu box named "Face Style". Click on this menu box and select the option "Unlit Texture". This will remove the default Photoshop lighting from the avatar object mesh.

3. Click Okay.

4. Save your avatar mesh. You will want to get into the habit of doing this ROUTINELY. Every couple of minutes or so. Photoshop CS4 Extended is EXTREMELY resource-heavy and your computer will INEVITABLY crash at least once. SAVE YOUR WORK!

You should now have your avatar mesh open, unlit, and ready to be played with!

Applying Texture to the Avatar Mesh

Like stated in the legend above, you have several different sub-layers on your 3d object. These layers are actually the textures that are currently connected to your avatar mesh. Double clicking any of these layers will open the texture that is connected to them. For example, let's try this simple exercise to demonstrate how these layers work:

1. Double click the Material_Top layer. This should open the layer as if it were a normal image being opened in Photoshop. (NOTE: All of the textures currently applied to the avatar mesh are sized to 512x512. Feel free to resize them to anything you like - I typically size mine to 1024x1024.)

2. Create a new layer by clicking the "Create a New Layer" icon on your layers tab (it looks like a post-it note!).

3. Draw, paint or paste anything on to this layer, within the avatar mesh. Think of it as coloring inside the lines on a coloring book.

4. IMPORTANT: Save the layer before closing it or switching back to the 3d avatar view (do NOT "Save As" -- this will kill the relationship between the file you save and the file attached internally to your 3d object - to save the file, simply go to File > Save or press Ctrl+S on your keyboard). Unless you are on a high-end computer, you should save the image and then close it before going back to the 3d view. Attempting to switch back to the 3d view on a lower-end computer could result in a crash and loss of work.

5. Once saved, close the file and switch back to your 3d view to see your handy work. As you can see, we now have a neatly written "Ryker Was Here!" painted directly onto the torso. Please note, you can delete or hide the avatar UVs in the texture file at any time (the colorful lines) They are not necessary for your work, but are useful for seeing exactly where seams fall on the avatar object.

Editing the files directly is not the only way to add texturing to your layers, oh no! Let's try another exercise to see just how far we can push this baby.

1. Double click the Material_Head layer to open it up. Create a new, empty layer above the avatar UVs, save the file, and close it. Repeat this step for the Top and Bottom layers as well. NOTE: The reason for doing this is because when painting directly onto the 3d avatar, which is what we are about to do, you will paint onto whichever layer you have selected (or highlighted) in the texture files; it is a best practice to always add new work to a new layer to allow for easier mistake-correction.

2. Now, lets go back to the 3d model and just start painting! Select your paint brush tool, and paint something onto your avatar. I am going to paint over the waist line to demonstrate the pipeline between the connected textures on the object.

3. Once you've done this, save your avatar mesh and double click your files to check your painting. For mine, I will check the top and bottom layers (because those are the two I painted on). As you can see, wherever I painted onto the top and bottom layers, as well as the waist line, all have the proper application of paint to the connected texture files, on the new layer I had created.

There is one more method of applying texture I want to show you! Go ahead and delete those old layers from each of your texture files and create new ones for this next exercise.

1. Still in 3d view, create a new layer in your Layers Tab. This new layer should appear above your 3d avatar object layer in your layer list.

2. Using your paint brush, paint anything on to this layer over the avatar mesh (again, be mindful of the lines).

3. Once you have your drawing situated where you want it to be (I am going to place mine directly over the waist seam again), press Ctrl-E to merge it DOWN onto the 3d layer.

4. Once again, open the layers you have merged your drawing down onto to double check that they are on the new layers you created.

This last method is incredibly useful and can be used to apply textures, pictures, shapes, hand paintings, practically anything really, to your 3d avatar object - seamlessly.

Whew! That was a LOT of explination.

A few notes before wrapping up:

1. While hoping that the textures you create will all be seamless once uploaded into Second Life, this simply cannot be guaranteed. Double checking your textures in Second Life and touching up as needed is recommended.

2. ALL of the toolbox tools can be used on your avatar mesh. This includes the clone tool, which is incredibly useful for touching up seams on the avatar's sides when creating clothing. As mentioned above, these tools will only work with the layers you have selected in the texture files.

3. Play around! These steps are just an introduction and the beginning to using Photoshop CS4 to create content for Second Life.

Go forth and create! I will do my best to answer questions in the comments of this post. A special thanks to Annyka Bekkers, who helped curb my sanity while I was trying to learn how to use CS4 for content creation back in March!

Until next week!