Textures don't display true white

[SunshineNroses]

Please forgive me if this question has been asked many times before. I've spent the afternoon googling and have searched the forum here as well, and I feel a bit overwhelmed at the moment.

I am new to building, and have been working on a house. It's a very simple house built out of box prims, and at present I'm trying to do the exterior textures. The problem is that even when I use a white texture, the exterior appears gray to me.

I have the "color"  set to white. The texture preview appears white. But it still shows as gray.

Daylight settings are set to midday right now, I haven't customized anything in the environment editor.

Thanks for any help you can provide. I feel convinced this is an easy fix, and yet I've spent hours trying to find the answer and haven't managed to.

[Bouttime Whybrow]

try applying "full bright" from the texture tab. that might be the issue.

full bright keeps it lit regardless of the surrounding light.

[Qwalyphi Korpov]

The resident who provided the previous content, if any, has replaced it with this generic statement.

[Rival Destiny]

Yes this has been my experience as well.

And fullbright, meh ... I find if you set part of your build to fullbright then you might as well 'light it up' cause the rest just doesn't look right.  It can be tedious working with whites.

 

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Tomorrow or the next day when the sun is shinning (the sun always shines in SL) go outside and look closely at a true white object (some white car or building or even a box).  You'll see that that white is not really white looking on the sides.....it has a tint of gray (or if there's something with a bright color next to it it will have a tint of that reflected color too).  Your eye sees white because you know the object is white and your mind "sees" white.  Color is nothing but reflected light.......the more reflected light on any side will be more true to the color of the object.  The sides don't have as much reflected light as the top where the sun is shining more directly on it.......the sides will not appear to be the same, "true", color of the object. 

SL actually does a pretty good job in that respect but since your mind doesn't dictate what the color "should be" your eye sees the difference.  There's only so much a virtual environment can do to convince the mind that things you see should look like it does in RL.

I want to add that if you have shadows enabled it aggravates the difference.  One of the main reasons I think shadows look so ugly in SL.

[SunshineNroses]

Thank you very much, this is very helpful. I've never really thought about how white appears before. I will check for shadows and then quit worrying about it.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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SunshineNroses wrote:

Thank you very much, this is very helpful. I've never really thought about how white appears before. I will check for shadows and then quit worrying about it.

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This is the right attitude. No matter what you do to make it look pure white to you, even if someone duplicates that, they are going to still see it differently because of the way their viewers and computers render things.

[Coby Foden]

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Bouttime Whybrow wrote:

try applying "full bright" from the texture tab. that might be the issue.

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Please don't!  :smileysurprised:

Full bright textures on a building, furniture, shoes, clothes, jewellery, plants, etc. does not look right.

At night they look plain silly.

Full bright has its right uses, but it's none of the above. :smileywink:

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Coby Foden wrote:

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Bouttime Whybrow wrote:

try applying "full bright" from the texture tab. that might be the issue.

---

Please don't!  :smileysurprised:

Full bright textures on a building, furniture, shoes, clothes, jewellery, plants, etc. does not look right.

At night they look plain silly.

Full bright has its right uses, but it's none of the above. :smileywink:

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That's not entirely true if you ask me. Plenty of regions have a very limited sun cycle, set to either nighttime or midday to get a certain atmosphere. On sims like that you can get excellent results with fullbright textures in combination with prerendered light effects. That looks ten times better than non full bright textures in combination with the SL lights. Ofcourse if someone decides to override the default sun settings, the effect is often gone and things indeed might look silly. So for purpose built items full bright can be a big help, for buildings that are going to be sold I wouldn't use them.

[Penny Patton]

I have to agree with Coby. Even in a midday setting "fullbright" just does not look right. I cannot think of any example of a fullbright object looking good unless it was a visible light source itself.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

I can assure you it looks amazing at night. I have used the technique quite some times always with good results. Just think dark alleys, parking garages, cellars and other areas with prerendered light effects. The only downside is ofcourse you will have a very hard time keeping the number of unique textures within reason.

Daylight will probably be a lot harder because of the lack or misplacement of highlights, so maybe that wasn't the best example. Anyway, I never tried that, so I can't be sure.

[Penny Patton]

I have seen bullbright used for such effects but never been impressed by it. I ten to find a better solution is a mix of good SL lighting (a lot of people underestimate what's possible with SL lighting and tend not to experiment with it) and overlaying alpha prims with subtle glow effects to provide hjighlights.

 

Of course, the best solution would be if LL finalkly gave us features like specular maps, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Penny Patton wrote:

I ten to find a better solution is a mix of good SL lighting (a lot of people underestimate what's possible with SL lighting and tend not to experiment with it) and overlaying alpha prims with subtle glow effects to provide hjighlights.

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You might kill your graphics card, or at least your framerate in the process. For example the parking garage has three tube lights, all casting shadows, the light bouncing off walls to the next surface. No matter how many SL lights or glowing effects you add, you will never get the same realistic effect as the prerendered textures do.

[Penny Patton]

I'm not saying prerendered lighting and shadows aren't a good idea, they're brilliant. I'm just saying you don't need to use fullbright to make them work.

 Doomed Ship and, to an even greater extent, Insilico do very well with these effects with great success.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Not in all cases no, but if you keep your textures non-full bright you will get very strange lighting effects, especially in corners, where one wall will be a lot darker than the other, while "in reality" they would be lit the exact same way. Any subtle light effect will be "overshadowed" by the SL lights and it will just look off...by a mile. I have tried that with horrible results...in various circumstances. I do need to add I use 3ds max for the lighting, professional software most people won't have access to, although i think a program like blender would give pretty good results aswell.

[Bouttime Whybrow]

i'm not a big fan of full bright either, but it does have it's uses.

i'd rather not be as dogmatic about it as you though.

maybe you can suggest something to the op that can help with their issue?

[Coby Foden]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

 

That's not entirely true if you ask me. Plenty of regions have a very limited sun cycle, set to either nighttime or midday to get a certain atmosphere. On sims like that you can get excellent results with fullbright textures in combination with prerendered light effects.

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I've been to some shops which have full bright textures everywhere, and no actual light sources anywhere.  That looks really terrible at night time.  It seems that it's full daylight.  However when you look at your avatar or other avatars naturally they are not lit at all due to lack of light sources.  So the shop looks like it's day, but the avatars look like it's night.  Very terrible combination.

Only by adding plenty of local lights the avatars are lit too and things look better.  Prerendered lights do not light the avatars, so lots of properly placed local light sources, with proper amount of light, are needed to make things look natural.

One downside is that things look different depending on has the user shadows on or not.  With shadows on it seems that the local lights are intensified.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

The example I gave included a limited sun cycle.... textures baked at night will look pretty bad at SL daytime and vice versa..I won't deny that, but that's not at all what I said. I know fist hand how the pre-rendered lighting can look at nighttime and it's a lot better than anything I have seen with the SL lighting.

I don't know where the "hotspot" is when it comes to graphical load. Lots of unique textures which are needed for baked lighting and lots of local lights to get some atmosphere are both pretty heavy. people like myself without shadows on can only render 6 local lights at a time as far as I know, meaning lots of local lights close together will give a terrible result.

[Bouttime Whybrow]

are you sure you are not confusing "glow" with full bright? they are not the same thing.

[Coby Foden]

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Bouttime Whybrow wrote:

are you sure you are not confusing "glow" with full bright? they are not the same thing.

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Yes, I am very sure that I have not confused things.

 

• I know what is full bright.

• I know what is glow.

• I know the difference between them.

I have used both plus actual local light in some light sources I have made (i.e. boat navigation lights).

 

 

 

Light in prim + full bright texture + glow in prim = Hey, we have created a nice light source.

(When we use shadows we can even create directional light source, but that's another thing...)

[Rolig Loon]

Almost any feature can be misused or overused.  I agree with Coby that I have seen some pretty ghastly nighttime effects on sims where entire buildings are lit up like Christmas trees with fullbright.  It's a common  newbie building error.  Used properly, though, fullbright is a useful tool.  Signs and advertizing displays can be much easier to read with fullbright than without it, for example, and many light sources look more convincing if they are fullbright (as well as being point source lights).  I use fullbright on some kinds of flowering trees during the daytime because it makes the colors more realistic, but I switch it off at night by script because those same colors look garish then in fullbright.

I have found little redeeming value in glow, which becomes almost radioactive if you use more than a very tiny bit.  Similarly, I am still unconvinced that shadows are worth the drop in FPS.  They're nice, but quirky and not much to rave about IMO.  And, shadows mess up some other features. (See SH-2322 and SH-1838 and SH-2337, for example)

[Coby Foden]

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Rolig Loon wrote:

 

I have found little redeeming value in glow, which becomes almost radioactive if you use more than a very tiny bit.  Similarly, I am still unconvinced that shadows are worth the drop in FPS.  They're nice, but quirky and not much to rave about IMO.  And, shadows mess up some other features. (See

SH-2322

and

SH-1838

and

SH-2337

, for example)

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Yes indeed, glow must be used very sparingly.  I use tiny bit of glow in light sources, to give them a little bit of "life".  I like shadows a lot, they are useable with fast computer.  However, as you pointed out, they are not perfect yet.

[Penny Patton]

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Rolig Loon wrote:

I have found little redeeming value in glow, which becomes almost radioactive if you use more than a very tiny bit.  Similarly, I am still unconvinced that shadows are worth the drop in FPS.  They're nice, but quirky and not much to rave about IMO.  And, shadows mess up some other features. (See

SH-2322

and

SH-1838

and

SH-2337

, for example)

---

If I had to choose either/or between fullbright or glow, I'd take glow in a heartbeat. I use it extensively, although often in very minute amounts.

Adding 0.01 to 0.03 glow to metal surfaces gives a much more believable metal effect than shiney. It's invaluable for light sources and water effects. Used in conunction with colour tinting sides of prims for light and shadow effects it can be great for creating the effect of light reflecting off of surfaces, too.

That said I wouldn't be so quick to give up fullbright. It has its uses (vendor imagery and light sources are perfect examples, although I'd argue glow is more valuable for the former, and proper lighting makes the latter unnecessary).

 Shadows, if you have a computer capable of rendering them at an acceptable framerate, are absolutely brilliant. There are a few sims out there which really use shadows well as a part of the sim design. Then again I haven't experienced any of the problems in those Jira tickets and I can understand that people on less powerful computers fall to unacceptably low framerates when they try to enable shadows.