How to create a privacy wall from a SL image

[SkyeDalton]

Hi,

I'm trying to put a privacy screen around a 1024x1024 skybox, which already has a sky.  I want to create the (semi) illusion of a deep forest around the perimeter.  I was thinking I could temporarily plop down some prim trees close together, take a snapshot, and upload it as a texture with a transparent background to be applied to a prim.  Then I could put a hand-full of prim trees around it so it blends in with the privacy screen.  I'm doing it this way to save on prims.  

In theory this sounds easy, but not sure of some of the technical piece, like what size picture should I upload if each of my 4 sides are 256.  Do I upload a 256x256 texture and apply it to a 256x256 pim x 4 sides?

Thanks in advance for any help.  

[Lindal Kidd]

Your dimensions seem off, and you appear to be mixing pixels and meters.

Is your skybox a 1024 sq m one?  If so, it has sides of 32m x 32m.  While you shouldn't use 1024 pixel textures unnecessarily, you probably should in this case, to give you enough resolution for the large size.  So make your texture 1024 pixels in the horizontal direction.  Height is up to you...if the background prim is 16m high, use 512 pixels as your vertical dimension for the texture, or a texture of  1024 x 512.  Of course, if your texture happens to be, say, 1024x1024 pixels, you can still fit it to a 32 x 16m prim, simply by changing its vertical scale to 0.5.  (If that sounds confusing, just slap some textures onto prims of various dimensions, then play with the scale factors in the Texture tab of the Edit window.  You'll soon understand how it works.)

How you create your background texture is up to you.  You certainly could do it by planting a lot of prim trees and taking a picture of them.  This might help in getting the background image to blend in with similar trees you plant in front of it.  You could also grab a forest image off the web, or take a photo of a stand of trees in RL, or even use a ready-made forest background from the Marketplace.  Here is one that I used for a privacy screen: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Winter-wonderland-winterland-snowy-forest-Panorama-view-background-privacy-screen-seamless-alpha-transparent/3828298

Keep permissions in mind, if you go the pre-made route.

[Mollymews]

3 hours ago, SkyeDalton said:

In theory this sounds easy, but not sure of some of the technical piece, like what size picture should I upload if each of my 4 sides are 256.  Do I upload a 256x256 texture and apply it to a 256x256 pim x 4 sides?

it depends on how tall your screens are in relation to their width of 32 meters.  Like if your screens are 16 metres tall (half the size of the width) then I would go with 512 x 1024 textures to maintain the aspect ratio

the more pixels on the textures the greater the detail. When a small size texture is stretched on a large prim surface then it can look a bit blurry

as this is for a skybox then most of your neighbours in the sky are not as fussed bout screens as they can be when on the ground

edit :

what Lindal said

Edited September 8, 2020 by Mollymews

[SkyeDalton]

Yes, I was mixing pixels and meters.  Duh. 

I'll play around with creating my own and look at a few on MP.  Thank you Lindal and Molly.