Creating a texture

[Nio Skytower]

Hi, I need some advice, I'm trying to create my own photo texture to look sand-like, but it keeps coming out way too large every time it's uploaded and doesn't look realistic. I tried 1024x1024 and 512x512 and I think I tried 256x256 also!

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Nio Skytower wrote:

Hi, I need some advice, I'm trying to create my own photo texture to look sand-like, but it keeps coming out way too large every time it's uploaded and doesn't look realistic. I tried 1024x1024 and 512x512 and I think I tried 256x256 also!

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I haven't been there in years, but...

http://cgtextures.com

...used to have lots of free, tileable textures. The free membership had a download quota, but I don't remember it being terribly limiting. I'm sure they'll have some tileable sand textures.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

If you intend to use it as a terrain texture it must be a 512 x 512 square to work.  Keep in mind the texture will cover a rather large area so you probably need to make your design on a smaller scale with the square itself or it will look too large when applied to the terrain.

What you may want to do is get a texture grid, a texture with numbered squares, and apply it to where you will be using it to get an idea of the proper scale  you need.  You can probably take the texture you have made and turn it into a pattern and use it to fill a 512 x 512 with several repeats.  The texture grid should help you figure out how many repeats you need V and H.

[Madelaine McMasters]

Nio, are you texturing terrain or a prim? If you are texturing terrain, you're never going to get realistic sand. Terrain textures are tiled across the simulator in a 21x21 grid, and are 512x512 pixels with no alpha. If you upload something of higher or lower resolution, it will be converted to that resolution. If you upload a 512x512 24-bit TGA file, no conversion will be made, the image will be stored pixel-perfect on the SL server.

Now, given that the 256mx256m simulator surface is being covered by 21x21 texture tiles, each of 512x512 pixels, each pixel will be 256/21/512m or 24mm wide. That's an inch! With pixels that large, you can't make anything that looks like sand close up. The best you can do is construct a texture that contains the larger patterns you generally see in sand, like ridges, dimples and color variations.

I'm recalling this from distant memory and hope it's still right.

[Nio Skytower]

Thank You for the Advice, I will try that and see how that works out!

[Nio Skytower]

Hi. No, I'am trying to texture just a prim for something I want to build, but I want the texture to look sandlike, sort of like a sand castle or something to that effect. And everytime I upload a texture and map it, it always looks way to large like in RL and I cannot seem to get it to scale so it looks realistic in SL. I guess I just have a mental block and I'm just not getting it for some reason.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Nio Skytower wrote:

Hi. No, I'am trying to texture just a prim for something I want to build, but I want the texture to look sandlike, sort of like a sand castle or something to that effect. And everytime I upload a texture and map it, it always looks way to large like in RL and I cannot seem to get it to scale so it looks realistic in SL. I guess I just have a mental block and I'm just not getting it for some reason.

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My entire head is filled with mental blocks!

Have you used a tileable texture and upped the repeats? There is a compromize between achieving fine detail (the sand grains) and getting a larger over sculpting, as in the waves and swirls you find on beaches. If you want the texture to show grain structure close up, that argues for repeats. But, the moment you repeat a texture, you begin to degrade the larger patterns. In the extreme, you can increase the repeat count until the entire texture looks like one grain of sand, and the surface of the prim becomes almost featureless.

Can you post a pic of what you've built and describe what you don't like about it?

[Nio Skytower]

Yes, I did try to tile it, but this is all new to me. I did manage to make seamless floor tiles. What do you mean by up the repeats? Is this in Photoshop or editing the prim? It just always looks Magnified in SL, as if I was I were looking at it in RL. I'm just not understanding how to scale it right, so it looks realistic in scale to SL View. That's my dilemma.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Nio Skytower wrote:

Yes, I did try to tile it, but this is all new to me. I did manage to make seamless floor tiles. What do you mean by up the repeats? Is this in Photoshop or editing the prim? It just always looks Magnified in SL, as if I was I were looking at it in RL. I'm just not understanding how to scale it right, so it looks realistic in scale to SL View. That's my dilemma.

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This is inside SL. After you apply the texture, in the Edit window's Texture tab, you increase the horizontal and vertical Repeats Per Face to shrink the texture by filling the prim face with multiples of it.

[Drongle McMahon]

Maybe this will help...

Here are four 16x16m squares with the same gravel texture applied, and starting at top left, across then down, 1x1, 2x2, 3x3, 4x4 repeats. Note the obvious repeating pattern artefact due to low frequency variation in tone across the texture. That is the main problem with repeats. It is possible, but hard, to remove those variations. (There are also tricks with mesh UV maps to mitigate this). On the right is a closeup of the center of the same squares.

[Nio Skytower]

Maddy, Thanks. I think I grasp it now! The answer was really there the whole time. I tried another sample and was able to scale it down smaller this way. I just have to work on teaking the seamless part of the texture, because as it got smaller there were lines visable.

[Nio Skytower]

Thank You very much for the help! I think I understand better now. I have to keep trying till I get it right.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Nio Skytower wrote:

Maddy, Thanks. I think I grasp it now! The answer was really there the whole time. I tried another sample and was able to scale it down smaller this way. I just have to work on teaking the seamless part of the texture, because as it got smaller there were lines visable.

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Well, you wouldn't be the first person staring the answer in the face, Nio. There are seamless sand textures at that place I recommended elsewhere in this thread, but it's nice to know how to make them yourself as well.

I learned how to do this in Photoshop years ago by experimenting on my own. Now there are many tutorials online. Here's one... 

I haven't watched the whole thing, and it is Photoshop specific, but the general idea of offsetting the starting texture by 1/2 in both horizontal and vertical, then fixing up the seams, applies to any photo editing tool.

Google "create tileable textures" to get more tutorials.

Have fun, Nio... and show us something when you're done!

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Drongle McMahon wrote:

Maybe this will help...

Here are four 16x16m squares with the same gravel texture applied, and starting at top left, across then down, 1x1, 2x2, 3x3, 4x4 repeats. Note the obvious repeating pattern artefact due to low frequency variation in tone across the texture. That is the main problem with repeats. It is possible, but hard, to remove those variations. (There are also tricks with mesh UV maps to mitigate this). On the right is a closeup of the center of the same squares.

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I've spent long afternoons trying to even out textures for tiling. The fastest solution I've found is to lower my standards ;-)