Wondering about Materials

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

I have been looking at the specifications for the Materials System.

SL Wiki Page on Materials

Some recent fiddling I was doing with texturing a prim-object lokks as though it won't be treated in quite the same way.

At the moment I can take a texture map and combine it with the color setting. If the texture is a light, fairly neutral, tone th color setting can set the colour, while the grey-scale features of the texture will show through. (A thought: does this require Basic Shaders to be used, the old-style shading system? Checks: not that I can see.)

From the descriptions, it looks as though the old Color value will be ignored if there is a texture map (diffuse texture), although some similar effects might be possible using the new textures.

I undertstand that the Materials system will not apply to the textures on an AV, skin or clothing, and so this old trick might still work there.

It's an easy way of tweaking an object, and I have no idea how often it has been used in the past, Materials, a s a whole, looks to be a good deal, but this is a possible annoyance.

 

[Jenni Darkwatch]

Good question. To me the spec doesn't necessarily indicate that the color (tint) gets entirely ignored, but to be honest I'd imagine if materials get applied to a surface, old tricks probably will break in more or less unpredictable ways. On the other hand, if the material system materializes (pun intended), a lot of old trickeries might not be needed anymore anyway.

[Rolig Loon]

FYI, your link to the Materials page has an extra "http" in it, so it returns an error.