What is the name of the default texture that appears on a prim when it is created, and where can I find it?

[Jennifer Boyle]

I want to use that wood texture on a mesh. I assumed that it was available in the library, but i couldn't find it. Is it available? Where?

ETA: I found it! I clicked the "Default" button in the texture edit window.

Edited May 12 by Jennifer Boyle

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

7 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

I want to use that wood texture on a mesh. I assumed that it was available in the library, but i couldn't find it. Is it available? Where?

ETA: I found it! I clicked the "Default" button in the texture edit window.

It's also worth remembering that you can set the default wood texture (and other SL default textures) via script using llSetTexture and the appropriate constant (or UUID key) which can be found in the SL wiki.

[animats]

17 hours ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

It's also worth remembering that you can set the default wood texture (and other SL default textures) via script using llSetTexture and the appropriate constant (or UUID key) which can be found in the SL wiki.

There are more built-in texture UUIDs, but they're mostly of historical interest. Stone, rubber, skin, water, etc, plus some default mainland land textures. There are also the standard textures for Linden trees and grass, and fourteen standard bump maps (not normal maps). If you look around in the really old regions around Da Boom, you can see some of those being used. Viewers still have to handle these, but there's no reason to use them in new content.

(Now that sky, land, water, and starter avatars have had upgrades over the last few years, maybe Linden trees could use an upgrade. They're the last of the un-upgraded early content.)

[ChinRey]

16 hours ago, animats said:

(Now that sky, land, water, and starter avatars have had upgrades over the last few years, maybe Linden trees could use an upgrade. They're the last of the un-upgraded early content.)

I did some in depth research into procedural vegetation a while ago (with a lot of help from Animats, thank you!) and the conclusion was clear: it can not replace well optimized manually made meshes. And don't tell me SpeedTree has solved it, it hasn't. SpeedTree is indeed used on the Unity and UE platforms but not extensively and the Unity manual actually warns against high poly trees, mentioning how a single tree sometimes can lag down an entire scene. Look at the Bellisseria trees, crude, angular, uber-laggy with sky high land impact. They are modern procedural trees (probably made by tree[d], I think I recognise the style) and it's the best we can hope for: too laggy to be used in large quantities and not nearly detailed enough to be used as feature trees.

But with that being said, a simple procedural tree generator like the one used for the existing system trees, can well be a good compliment to custom made mesh trees. We some fairly minor modifications, it can easily generate trees similar in style and quality to the Bellisseria trees but with far lower streaming and render costs.

There are four changes that should be made but only the first two are critical:

1. More and better textures. This is by far the biggest limitation system vegetation has. Alpha masked vegetation textures were hard to come by back in 2002 and LL had to just buy whatever they could find. This is dead easy, any half baked texture tweaker can do it. The only problem is that system vegetation data is stored in an xml file that is downloaded with the viewer. So LL will have to be persuaded to add new variants to that file.
2. Bigger trees. When LL changed max object size from 10 to 64 m, they overlooked the system vegetation. 10 m is no size for a self respecting tree. The downside to fixing that oversight is that we may end up with 64 m tall plumeria shrubs - as if the 10 m ones we have now aren't bad enough.
3. A better trunk/branch mesh. This isn't really critical but the standard mesh shape used today isn't really ideal. The main model has quite a few superfluous tris and vertices and the LOD models are all rather dodgy - especially the mid one.
4. Customizable trees. As I mentioned, the system vegetation data is stored locally in xml files and not downloaded from the server. However, a system tree is generated from a dataset with only 21 parameters (and some of them are redunant and can be eliminated). Storing the data locally may have made sense in 2002 but not with the computers and connection lines we have today. By storing system tree data server side as regular assets it would be possible for creators and users to add their own tweaks and models without having to convince LL to add them to the xml file.

For those who want to know more about how system vegetation works, I wrote an article about them for the OMRG wiki: https://omrg.org/w/index.php?title=System_vegetation (Sorry about the missing images. They were lost when the wiki was hacked a while ago and still haven't been rcovered.)

Edited May 13 by ChinRey
typo

[Codex Alpha]

One of the best 'creator' ladies posting on technical issues over the years. Thanks, I have always enjoyed the information you have provided everyone.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

On 5/13/2024 at 4:35 AM, animats said:

There are more built-in texture UUIDs, but they're mostly of historical interest. Stone, rubber, skin, water, etc, plus some default mainland land textures. There are also the standard textures for Linden trees and grass, and fourteen standard bump maps (not normal maps). If you look around in the really old regions around Da Boom, you can see some of those being used. Viewers still have to handle these, but there's no reason to use them in new content.

(Now that sky, land, water, and starter avatars have had upgrades over the last few years, maybe Linden trees could use an upgrade. They're the last of the un-upgraded early content.)

Yes, I wouldn't recommend anyone try to use the legacy default textures that are still floating around, however all the textures listed on the wiki page I linked are still relevant and commonly in use (i.e. things like TEXTURE_BLANK, TEXTURE_TRANSPARENT, TEXTURE_MEDIA, the invisiprim textures and the default BOM textures).