Need help with wall texture placement

[AlexaShade]

I have just figured out how to put a wall texture on one side of my house walls but they tend to stretch on some walls and come out vertical instead of horizontal on others. What am I forgetting to do?

Also can anyone recommend a good texture site or store in SL? I am looking for traditional stripes, floral and exteriors.

[KarenMichelle Lane]

Alexa,

Textures are such fun - I have spent hours having toying with them to get them "Just So".

Basically a texture is just a graphic image that you may apply to a face of a prim or to any and all of it's sides.

Depending on the type of texture you have created and how it's edges are designed and aligned you can get a wonderful effect by controlling the:

o Offset [both horizontal & Vertical]

o Repeats/Meter [both horizontal & Vertical]]

o Orientation [Rotation, and Horizontal & Vertical [  ] flipping]

Play with these options on the Edit / Texture tab with just the face you want to adjusted selected. Also, beware of the urge to just hit the Apply button. It has a mind of it's own and will read the values specified and try to calculate the "intended" changes with "interesting" results.

The default orientation you are experiencing comes from when we build and create the basic prims we use. For instance, sometimes we forget that a cube has a specific X, Y, Z orientation and six sides, each with a unique identification and texture orientation. We typically will remember this after we try to hollow out one and the hollow is not visible because we rotated the cube to suit our needs and not to maintain a specific x,y,z orientation.

This also happens when we stretch a prim to size it for our needs. The texture settings change automatically along with our efforts even if no texture is applied. We tend to notice the end result after we apply a texture to a prim face.

So remember to reset a prim face's texture settings to what you want to start with [my usual starting point is [1 x 1] and I let the texture options calculate the repeats per meter - then I adjust the proportions of the texture to the desired visual proportion for my needs - then correct the orientation & offset - then adjust the repeats to duplicate the texture on the side of the prim to the proportions of the other build sides. Repeat on each joined prim face till done.

Remember, understanding the relationship of decimal notation to the object size can be very useful in making these adjustments quickly.

Also, not all textures are created equal. Pictures of images we like that we import my not repeat well because the "edges" are not designed to align with or color match with the opposite side.

I don't believe we are allowed to recommend a specific SL Business in our replies but I'm sure you will be privately messaged with recommendations.

 

[AlexaShade]

thank you for your help I will play with it a little more and use your recommendations as a guide

[KarenMichelle Lane]

You are so very welcome. I used to fear texturing now I enjoy making them when time allows. Learning Texturing allowed me understand the relationship of the X,Y,Z coordinate orientation and it's importance to building more than any other lesson or experience in SL. I'm grateful now that I loved Algebra and Geometry in school.

Oh feel free to "Accept" the answer if it solves your question. I'll send you LM's to my fave Texture Stores when I get home from work.