Custom Collars - making the inner edge alpha transparent

[Malayaa Resident]

Hi - I read (in depth) the previous thread on forum about the collar edges picking up random colors, and making the edge a weird color or a grey. Also looked at Tad's visual aids. I have spent the last week making and uploading 50+ temp or local textures onto the tester collar, trying to figure out how to overcome and force an edge color or transparency, by moving a texture around on an alpha background and then seeing what happens to the edge. Looking for the "sweet spot"....if it exists.

What finally drove me over the edge is I got a small alpha texture to work on half (the left side) of the collar, it had a nice invisible edge when applied. When I added the exact same texture to the right side, in the identical reverse mirror location, with plenty of transparent pixels all around, the edge turns grey. I am just cutting and pasting a purchased alpha texture onto the collar template and alpha channel. Why would it work on one side, and not the other?

So I went collar shopping, and noticed that several designers have beautiful transparent edges on all their alpha style collars. There must be a secret. If anyone can give me a hint, it would be appreciated!

[ruby Tierbal]

YAY i to have dabbled in this and cant seem to get that transparent bit to work so i gave up , would love to know how the experts do it , thanks for the thread i will be following. Maybe someone should do collar classes

[Kayleigh McMillan]

Hi

In the first place I hope somehow in the future there will become a feature which allows us to control the border texture better this would give us more freedom in designing our (jewelry) texture.
*whispers I want a merchants edition also ...
But as it is now we need to make sure, if we import the template that comes with the custom collars pack to PSD or something as a reference, to keep a few pixels free in the very center.
Not only in the width but also in the hight.
It is a bit of trial and error to begin with I tend to test my textures on a sample collar via a temp upload in Firestorm to see if the borders are clean enough and go from there to eventually remove more pixels.
Somtimes I avoid the center completely with making jewelry for example and make sure my necklace ends almost at the bottom when I enter the center of the template and move the jewelry elements up again towards the sides such as with a string of pearls.

It is not easy to explain I notice XD

Still I hope it helped a bit

P.s. i noticed somehow some of Nino's jewelry designs are pretty much textured in the complete center while her borders are perfectly clean.
I hope perhaps she knows more about the exact pixel area where the border color is determined and can shine a little light on that.
Because for me it is still trail and error as I don't know exactly how big or small the area involved is.

Here is an example how I avoid the center by placing a pearl at the bottom instead of the center.




For Now I keep the red area on this sample texture free of pixels but I'm sure this could be a way smaller area:

07-18-2013 I removed this template as it turned out way more precise template could be achieved later which is better to use than this one.
I made this template freely available in my kitty shop »

[Malayaa Resident]

Thank you that is very helpful Kayleigh! I must just have something odd with the texture I was trying to use on the second collar test. Earlier on, I created a test with a little hole in the middle and it is just about where your little spot is on your pix!!
(trying to insert image here)
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7426/9248464553_4ebde9aa2c.jpg[/img]

(if image insert doesn't work, picture of successful collar with clear middle and edges is here! http://www.flickr.com/photos/79324043@N07/9248464553/ )

I am motivated now to try again, now that I know there is a pattern!! Thanks again!!

[Kayleigh McMillan]

(07-09-2013 02:18 PM)Malayaa Resident Wrote:  Thank you that is very helpful Kayleigh! I must just have something odd with the texture I was trying to use on the second collar test. Earlier on, I created a test with a little hole in the middle and it is just about where your little spot is on your pix!!
(trying to insert image here)
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7426/9248464553_4ebde9aa2c.jpg[/img]

(if image insert doesn't work, picture of successful collar with clear middle and edges is here! http://www.flickr.com/photos/79324043@N07/9248464553/ )

I am motivated now to try again, now that I know there is a pattern!! Thanks again!!

You're very welcome and I'm glad to hear you found back the motivation.
I have to agree these borders are a pain in the ...
What I think is a pitty is that the location we need to keep free for a transparant border is right in the middle, the most visable part, this makes it impossible in cases like jewelry to make a nice center piece.
If the horizontal offset of the border would have been so that the spot would end up in the back of the collar (less prominent) and the vertical offset so it would be in the bottom corner we would already have way more freedom in design I think.

[dakillakm Resident]

wow! this is definitely a revelation, thanks for sharing Kay! So does this also mean that whatever color of the pixels in that center portion will be the color of the edge if not transparent?

I like your idea of a merchant version. What would be different about it? As it is I find the actual making of large numbers of collars tedious. If there was a HUD or something we could just, for instance, enter the texture of the collar, the color of the border, and the amount we want to create, that would be sooooooo much easier. Then the HUD could just charge us for the amount of collars created?

[Kayleigh McMillan]

(07-09-2013 07:30 PM)dakillakm Resident Wrote:  wow! this is definitely a revelation, thanks for sharing Kay! So does this also mean that whatever color of the pixels in that center portion will be the color of the edge if not transparent?

I like your idea of a merchant version. What would be different about it? As it is I find the actual making of large numbers of collars tedious. If there was a HUD or something we could just, for instance, enter the texture of the collar, the color of the border, and the amount we want to create, that would be sooooooo much easier. Then the HUD could just charge us for the amount of collars created?

I'm glad this helped Daki
Yes, what ever the color of that spot will be will also be the color of the edges.
A merchant edition would indeed be cool with a HUD too everything that makes it easier to work with the collars would be more than welcome!
I imagine a merchant edition as a one time deal perhaps per collar number.
We pay more but we do not have to refill that populair collar number i.e. as it was worth it to invest in a merchant edition.
Just some thoughts and hopes XD

[Kayleigh McMillan]

Lately I did some more experiments with how big the section should be in the center to decide the border color or transparancy.
It turns out this can be a way smaller spot see example above.
In case you like to free that spot from pixels to make a perfect transparant border it is important there are no shadows there either so it needs to be completely clean.
It is an iny tiny spot perhaps not even visable here on the forum you can eventually click it to see a larger version on Flickr or click this link »

[Tad Carlucci]

So they used offset (on the Edit panel, Texture tab) of 0.5 instead of 0.0 .. good to know.

Question, when you're testing the spot, can you test both with the rectangular sample they give you and with a 1024x1024?

One of the tricks to making a collar look really good would be to use a 1024x1024 image. While that can't do a thing to help with pixalization right/left, it will give you a lot more detail in the narrow up/down (the gray line in your example just above).

[Malayaa Resident]

That is a teeny tiny spot! Thanks for posting the revised template Kay, and I will play around this weekend with collars and maybe try a 1024 x 1024 texture like Tad suggested too! Lots of new ideas to try to improve on looks and design...thanks you guys!