Texture issue

[MidNight Marabana]

I have a texture question. Mesh is my own, created in blender. Texture is NOT created in blender. Texture is just a simple 512*512 jpeg uploaded to SL separately and repeated as needed on object in world.  When viewed with just atmospheric shaders (midday) it burns out on the top surface as shown in this pic. (With advanced lighting switched on model/texture looks fine.) OK I get that is just the way the server is showing the model with only atmospheric shaders with sun overhead at midday. My question is, is there any trick or workaround I can do to prepare the texture for upload to prevent this, or possibly something in the SL build edit window to tick? Not everyone has a nice new computer with all options on, and I like to create my items so they look good on all settings. This only seems to happen with light colored textures, my dark ones all seem fine on this setting. Additionally this is to be used on a bed under a canopy and indoors, so the sun burn out looks out of place. I'm guessing it just is what it is, but thought I'd give it an ask anyway. Thanks

[Chic Aeon]

You can learn how to bake your texture using Cycles in Blender -- assuming you don't know how to do that.  Baked textures (when used wisely and with few ambient shadows built in) solves this issue and those with lower graphics setting see the item in a much prettier way than they would with just tiling textures :D.

BUT there is a learning curve for sure.   I have videos that explain how but only for Blender 2.79 and below, not 2.8.   Other than that it will ALWAYS be the Windlight settings that control the look --- it still is of course even with baked textures, just a bit less :D.  

 

Good luck. Maybe someone else has a better answer for you. I typically don't use tiling textures these days. 

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

10 hours ago, MidNight Marabana said:

My question is, is there any trick or workaround I can do to prepare the texture for upload to prevent this, or possibly something in the SL build edit window to tick?

Baked in shadows are made by adding various shades of grey to specific areas of a texture. Blender will make an ambient occlusion layer for you that you can layer over your base texture in GIMP, Photoshop, etc. This has been the "proper" way to do it for years, though it's falling into disrepute in some circles because it doesn't always play well with Advanced Lighting. "Ambient occlusion" is the term to use if you want to look into how to do that.

The old school prim trick of tinting a face slightly grey or beige is the same idea, just without as much control over where. Sometimes it's a good trade-off. Smaller textures, fewer textures, higher texture density, lots of reasons to like repeating textures and use them wherever reasonable. The amount of tint/degree of faux shadow can also be adjusted or eliminated very easily to suit different graphics settings, windlights, inworld placement and computers.

Tinting grey is easy through the rainbow colour box, but beiges are better via the hex code - look them up online and input the six digit # number in the box on the left side of the colour window.

If it's just part of the mesh which will be in shadow (like the underside of the canopy), then you'll need to make it a separate face (material in Blender). This adds some geometry data to the mesh but can save a lot on texture data.

It will be more successful with some textures than others of course, and with some builds/areas of builds. It's easy enough to experiment with though and a good trick to have in your bag (go prim building skills ). Best to try with something approximating the context it will be used in - prim for a roof, under the canopy, with some of the fabrics you'll use for that - beta grid is great but that vast expanse can affect how things read. It gets awkward because something like RL white paper can become quite grey in shadow but our brains still grasp that it's white. SL and fabrics can confuse that. Look at how a similar fabric behaves in similar RL lighting conditions to get an idea of what to aim for.

[MidNight Marabana]

Thank you so much for helping me work through my problems. Your replies encourage me to keep going. Thanks again for taking the time to help.