This guide is to help sculptie-creators using GIMP to directly manipulate their sculpt maps. If you're using a different application, try one of the following guides:
Photoshop
Photoshop Elements
Paint Shop Pro
This guide is not meant to teach you how to make awesome textures for your sculpts. If you're looking for something like that, you will have to search elsewhere.
Open the Channels palette. Deselect all but one channel (I usually use Blue).
Go to the menu and select Colors > Invert.
Reselect the other channels.
Go to the menu and select Image > Transform > Flip horizontally.
The GIMP has a channel dialog, much like Photoshop. It looks like the image on the left. If you don't see this dialog, go to your image's top menu and select Dialogs > Channels.
By default, all the channels are selected. Click the Red and Green channels to deselect them, so we're only editing the Blue channel.
Remember that Red = X, Green = Y and Blue = Z, so since we have the blue channel selected, we'll be mirroring along the Z axis. If you would rather mirror along a different axis, select that channel instead.
Now, in your images top menu select Colors > Invert. Here is an example of a blue channel before and after inverting:
Now click the other two channels to select them again. In the image menu, select Image > Transform > Flip Horizontally. If you don't do this, your scultie will be inside-out in Second Life.
Save your mirrored sculpt map and upload into SL.
Find the Layers palette.
Decrease the opacity of the background layer to 1.0.
Save as a PNG. (Export) Use the default settings.
To add alpha protection to your sculpt map in GIMP, you need to use the PNG format.
PNG Format If the layer dialog isn't already open, do so by going to the image menu and selecting Dialogs > Layers.
From here, the only thing you need to do is set the opacity of the Background layer to 1.0.
Now, in the image menu, go to File > Save As. In the save dialog, expand the "select file type" section and select PNG. Hit save.
You'll be presented with a dialog that says the image should be exported before saving. Click the "Export" button. You're presented with yet ANOTHER dialog, asking various questions about how you want to save your image. The default settings should work fine. Click Save.
You're finished! Upload your protected sculpt map into Second Life.
Remember to play around with what you've learned. Experiment. Be adventurous. Make mistakes.
Nothing in Blender is precious.
Return to section:
Introduction | Mirroring | Alpha Protection
