Why do the skins i upload look blurry

[Kuoki]

So i started making skins. And i'll keep it short. The texures look great in blender. Then i upload them in secondlife and they come out super blurry. I've seen so many HD looking skins around that i'm thinking there must be something i can do. 

they're 2048x2048 PNG format

Blender

SL

[Fionalein]

35 minutes ago, Kuoki said:

they're 2048x2048 PNG format

Why would you want to do that? ... it might actually turn out to be a lag nuke...

And besides... what sizes is the uploaded texture? I'm not even sure SL supports that size. It might be automatically scaled down to 1024² (use your GIMP /PSP/PS to scale more efficient)

Edited April 9, 2018 by Fionalein

[Kuoki]

12 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

Why would you want to do that? ... it might actually turn out to be a lag nuke...

And besides... what sizes is the uploaded texture? I'm not even sure SL supports that size. It might be automatically scaled down to 1024² (use your GIMP /PSP/PS to scale more efficient)

It's not lagging for me. But i'm new to this whole thing so i'm not sure what the right thing to do is, that's why i came here. I just see the skins on other people and notice there's no blur at all. wondering how they do it.  I tried 1024x1024 and it doesn't make it better

[Lillith Hapmouche]

16 minutes ago, Kuoki said:

It's not lagging for me. 

Well, that's fine for you ... but keep in mind that the average SL user has the computing power of a calculator and a network connection slower than a carrier pigeon. A really good creator optimizes their resource usage. 

That said, however, 1024 x 1024 should be absolutely fine for a skin applier. But just like Fionalein suggested: don't let SL do the resizing for you. 
Check what other kind of resize options your program offers and see if they produce better results.
Also try something else than PNG as your file format, perhaps even BMP ... and please make sure that you don't save an unneeded alpha level by accident, should the file format support it. 

On the other hand, the extreme pouty lip shape on the inworld pic might actually lead to an overstretched texture as well, so editing the mouth might lead to better results.

[Fionalein]

AFAIK SL only allows PNG JPEG and TGAs, use the uncompressed TGA(targa) bitmap format for best results.

[Klytyna]

1 hour ago, Kuoki said:

So i started making skins. And i'll keep it short. The texures look great in blender. Then i upload them in secondlife and they come out super blurry. I've seen so many HD looking skins around that i'm thinking there must be something i can do.

they're 2048x2048 PNG format

Yes there is something you can do, two somethings in fact...

SL will automatically resize your 2k x 2k png's down into 1k x 1k jpeg2000's.

So, you can

A) Get a decent image resizing tool, such as Irfanview and manually resize the 2k images down to 1k using it's best resample mode or

B) Produce your textures in Blender at 1k resolution, as the bake system will probably give a better 1k image than trusting SL's uploader to do it for you.

PNG format is fine, it's a lossless file format, and the alpha channel is optional, you won't need alphas for skin work, and SL converts everything to jpeg2000 anyway.

 

[Coby Foden]

On 4/9/2018 at 2:26 PM, Kuoki said:

they're 2048x2048 PNG format

For your information, here is a list what texture sizes SL supports:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Texture_sizes

One thing to remember is that for classic avatars the maximum texture size is 512 x 512 pixels.
For mesh bodies and mesh heads the maximum size is 1024 x 1024 pixels.

You can upload textures in PNG and TGA formats, both are lossless formats. (SL accepts also JPG format but never use that as it is lossy format.)

After resizing your texture, before uploading it, you might want to sharpen it a bit in your texture editor.

[Penny Patton]

Like others have said, the maximum texture size SL currently allows is 1024x1024 (and it probably will not support higher resolution textures until after LL introduces tools which prevent people to using excessivel unnecessary amounts of texture memory).

Like klytyna points out, if you upload a 2048x2048 texture, SL will resize it to 1024x1024 and I suspect SL does not use the best resizing algorithms. But you should also be aware that if you're applying the texture to a system avatar, the max supported resolution is currently 512x512. This will change once the new mesh texture baking feature comes out, which will allow baked system textures to be applied to a mesh body, but even then it's only going up to 1024x1024.

 Also, study up on the importance of texture optimization. It's too often ignored in SL and even if you think you're not lagging yourself, you are. You're just so used to it that you've come to accept it as the default experience. There's no need for a 2048x2048 avatar skin. No one is going to even see that kind of detail unless they're running SL at 4k and happen to zoom in so close that your lips fill their screen.