Pink Cupcake: Mesh T Shirt Texturing Tutorial

Because a friend needed some help i promised i would write a simple tutorial on how to do a mesh tshirt. This is not the only way and im certain more experienced creators have their own ways they prefer,but this is what works for me and how i learned all on my on.

First things first search the marketplace for Full Perm Mesh Shirt. Be more specific either for men or womens or the style of shirt you are needing.

In your folder you will see premade shirts and textures. You need to open the texture and save it to your computer.( It may say shadowmap)

Now open up photoshop and then File and Open and locate the shirt.

Now you can see this one has no texture on it at all. If yours looks similar to this you will need a simple shirt texture to overlay on this.

You can either google search or simply search the marketplace for a full perm one.

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Now open your tshirt overlay texture into photoshop. Then using the Rectangular Marquee Tool

..drag it over the image to highlight it. Then at the top of your screen under Edit, click on Copy

Now go back to your mesh texture tab.

Then go back to the top of the screen to Edit, then click Paste.

It should look like this.

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Now you need to play with Opacity of the layer.Right click on the layer. Then Click Blending Options. Then in the section where it says Blend Mode, choose from the drop down list Multiply.

Now your texture overlay should look like this.

woohooo its magic! your shirt has texture to it without you having to do much of anything lol.

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The next step is adding shading and highlights. You dont want your shirt looking flat. To understand where to add these look at some images of people wearing tight fitting shirts.

Create a new layer ( top of your screen)
Now select a small round brush and your paint color to black and paint the shading in the proper areas. Example below.

Now you are going to smooth this out by using Gaussian Blur. This is located under Filter, then Blur.
adjust this slowly so it doesnt over blur. It should now look like this.

Highlights.
Create a new layer. now change your paint color to white. Now add highlighting to parts of the body that will poke out the most in a shirt.

Same as above. Use Gaussian Blur to smooth it out.

Change the Blend Mode option to this one to Overlay so its not so harsh.

Wrinkles
(Optional)
New layer, set brush to small size( 5-10)
Now go to Pen Tool ( its below smudge)

Now you need to choose an area to add wrinkles and click by click it will place connected dots.

Now right click over the connected dots , then choose Stroke Path.

Be sure simulate pressure box is checked.

Now click ok.Now you should see a smallish black line.Right click on the line and click Delete Path. Now repeat a few more in various sizes then adjust the opacity.

Now double click the layers over in the tab so you can name them Highlights and Shading ( and wrinkles if you added any)

Do not merge these layer. Click on the small button by the layers that looks like an eye. this will hide the layers until you need them later.

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Now to add cool designs and patterns.

If you are adding a pattern to the entire shirt you can repeat the process above for adding the simple overlay texture.

When you paste your full shirt pattern onto the Mesh Texture you may need to resize it. to do this click the Move Tool

then at the top of the screen be sure this box is checked.

Now you will see that you can shrink the design overlay you just added.Just drag the corners.

Now duplicate the layer ( right click on the layer over in the panel, then click duplicate)
and drag it over to another uncovered area of the shirt.

Example

This pattern overlay is set on Multiply under the blend mode option. you may try others for a different effect.You may also want to adjust brightness and contrast as well as Color Balance to create different color options.

Now unhide hose highlights and shading layers.

see the difference?

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Middle of the shirt design Option.

Open up your design. and Using the Pollygonal Lasso Tool trace around the area of the design you want to use.

Now go back to the mesh shirt tab, then go to Edit, then Paste.

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Now it really depends on what the design is and which Blend Mode option will look best with it. Just play around with them until you find one.

now smooth the edges out around design using the Smudge Tool (

I decided to just slowly smudge out the surrounding color into the entire shirt. Dont knock it lol it works for me :P

Just set the smudge brush to a smaller size and lower strength until you get farther out and raise it much higher and make the brush larger and within a minute you will have it done. Yeah really fast.

Example

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Now Unhide the highlighting and shading layers ( be sure they are on top of the design. Then merge everything.

Done.