Texturing a wall that has a door and window

[insilvermoonlight]

Evening all. I am very new to building. Recently I rezzed a pre-built home on my parcel and went about re-texturing the walls. No problems what so ever until I got to this wall. There is a door and a window installed here and now matter how I adjust the settings I can not get my wallpaper texture to line up like I did on the other three walls. 

How can I fix this? Thanks for your help:)

 

[GreggStar]

youll find its cutpathed, it will be double length so put the texture on it then double the "virtical" then play with the offset, it takes a little messing but it will get there

[insilvermoonlight]

Thank you, okay I tried that and got a little better results, but it is still not matching up. Can anyone tell me in laymans terms why this is happening and how to fix it, so I can understand what is happening? Thanks again.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Its all a matter of playing with the repeats and offsets.  It takes experience and practice to get it done quickly, in the meantime patience.  Texturing is a skill and art all to itself if done properly and takes time to learn.  When not done right, it can ruin even the best build.

You may find a texture alignment script helps you.  These are available for sale.  You drop the scripts in each prim of a linked set and texture the root prim exactly how you want it to look on all sides. Drag the same textures on the faces of the other prims then you give a command and the script aligns all the textures to the root perfectly.  Easy peasy.  The only caveat is that you can only use them on prims that have the exact same textures on them as the root prim.

Another aid is to use a texture grid to align with.  This is helpful when you have server prims with the same texture on one side and different ones on the other side, which is common when you are building a multi room house,  This is a texture that has small numbered blocks on it , sometimes of various colors.  You apply this to the prims and you will instantly see which ones have textures rotated compared to the others, and where you need to increase or decrease the repeats and offsets  Once you get all the blocks lined up in proper order and all the same size, you just drag the texture you want to use on the prim face and its aligned the way it should be.

 

[Indigo Mertel]

There is an easier way to align the textures:

1. In Edit mode select "Select Face"

2. Click on the faces you want to align

3. From the Mapping dropdown select Planar

4. Check the "Align planar faces" checkbox.

That will align the texture on all the selected faces.

[LepreKhaun]

Planar mapping may not always work as expected and, in the case of unlinked prims, won't even be doable [Edited to strike mistaken part of statement, I see as how it is doable after all]. Here's my work flow for these cases.

 

If you separate the texture sizing, then do the vertical adjustment and finally the horizontal tweaking, this will go a lot easier/faster. Also, your final texturing will never be better than the build itself, if there's seams between the prims, there'll be seams no matter how you texture it. So tighten up the build first if needed.

 

Your wall consists of 4 prim boxes, the one to the far left extends from floor to ceiling, has no cuts and isn't hollowed. This naturally makes it your Base Prim, which you'll start with and use to derive the other texture placements.

 

Start with this Base Prim (the one all the way to the left), in Edit Mode with "Edit linked" checked if the wall is linked together. Also, make sure "Stretch textures" and "Stretch both sides" are NOT checked throughout this. Make note (using copy and paste into Notepad) of the <X, Y, Z> coordinates of its Position and also its Size vector in the Object Tab of your Edit Floater. You'll also need these measurements for the other three prims as well when you work your way across, so I usually copy all this information down before I even start.

 

Move this Base Prim into the room a bit, in "front" of the rest of the wall but maintain its Z Position. Change the width of this prim to match its height by pasting its largest Size into the middle Size (figuring the wall thickness is going to be the smallest Size within this vector and X, Y and Z may unexpectedly differ according to how the original builder had oriented things). This gives you a square to apply your texture to. Move this prim to the "right" so its completely within the room.

 

Check "Select face" and click on the wall, open the Texture Tab and apply your wall texture with scales at 1.0 and offsets at 0.0. Rotate it in 90 degree increments if needed. The top and bottom of the texture should now be correctly aligned at this point but it may appear "scrunched" or "stretched" horizontally. If it's scrunched, you need to halve the horizontal scale. If it's stretched, you need to double it. This adjustment has to do with the ratio of height to width of the texture, which may not be square. Make note of the final configuration, ensuring your offsets are still at 0.0. This finishes sizing the texture correctly

 

Uncheck "Select face" at this point.

 

Now it's simply a matter of replacing the Base Prim back into its original Position and Size. Copy and paste that info back in while in the Object Tab of your Edit Floater. Once it's back in place and resized as it was originally, you're done with it, no more adjustments of any sort will be made to it from this point on and everything else builds out to the right from it.

 

Next you have a choice of which of the two prims to the right of that to work with next. Doesn't matter which, whether it's the "stringer" across the top or the prim with the hollow (the "window" prim) first, they're both handled the same.  Move one of them a bit into the room, in "front" of the rest of the wall.

 

First step is to size the texture to match the Base Prim. To do this, you need that square again you had initially. Copy the height of the Base Prim and apply it to the height and width of the prim you're working with. NOTE, height and width may not match X, Y or Z from prim to prim, depending on how they may have been rotated originally. If you apply it to a thickness, don't worry about, hit CNTRL-Z to undo or simply paste in the correct wall thickness later. What's needed is that square area of the same size we had on the Base Prim when we apply the texture. Once you have that, Select face click on the wall area you're working on and apply the texture, with the rotation and scaling exactly as used before. Your texture is now correctly sized on this prim, we won't touch scale again.

 

Now, Select Move and paste back the prim's original Size and Position. Recheck Select face  Do the vertical alignment first using the Vertical offset in tenths, then hundredths and finally thousandths. Then do the horizontal alignment to match the Base Prim. A trick for this is to find a distinctive part of the pattern near the edge of the Base Prim and bring it into view on your working prim. Then move that into the Base Prim's pattern. A final tweaking may be needed on the vertical to get this seamless. However, don't touch any settings on the Base Prim, once you're there, you're done with it, move on to the next and don't touch it again!

 

That's basically it, size the texture correctly onto the prim, replace the prim's Size and Position vectors, align it vertically, then horizontally (with, possibly, a vertical tweaking at the end) and then leave it alone!

 

The final prim, with the "doorway" (as pointed out by GreggStar in the second message) requires one additional thing. Immediately after applying the texture to the square area of this prim, you'll want to double the vertical scale to 2.0 to account for half of it being cut off. Otherwise, same procedure.

 

 

[Indigo Mertel]

@LepreKhaun, planar mapping doesn't work with curved faces and when faces are tilted, but in this specific case it's a piece of cake. Faces don't even need to be on the same plan, I often use it to map textures on perpendicular faces, as is often the case with a room. And, as you noted yourself, prims do not need to be linked. As for your suggestion, it's another way to do it but I don't see how your way can be easier/faster than the few clicks required by using planar mapping.

[LepreKhaun]

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Indigo Mertel wrote:

@LepreKhaun, planar mapping doesn't work with curved faces and when faces are tilted, but in this specific case it's a piece of cake. Faces don't even need to be on the same plan, I often use it to map textures on perpendicular faces, as is often the case with a room. And, as you noted yourself, prims do not need to be linked. As for your suggestion, it's another way to do it but I don't see how your way can be easier/faster than the few clicks required by using planar mapping.

 

 

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That was simply to show an alternative workflow, no recommendation made over any other. If you feel a need for making a comparison you feel a reader isn't capable of, that's fine.