Texture quality.

[StoneDwarf]

Hiya,

As the title suggested, I have a question regarding a texture's quality when it's being uploaded to SL. Whenever I upload a texture - regardless of it's resolution - a decent amount of quality is gone whenever i paste it onto a prim.

SL screenshot: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/854/aaaaaaaanl.jpg/

Original texture: http://imageshack.us/f/18/boobooboo.jpg/

Is there something I need to keep in mind, perhaps specific texture sizes for specific prim sizes?

[Freya Mokusei]

Bear in mind that the value that matters to SL is Pixel height and width, snapped to binary-friendly sizes:-

32px, 64px, 128px, 256px, 512px, 1024px. DPI or Px/Inch are... trickier to explain how they affect the texture size, but 1024px is the maximum.

Another technique is to save the JPG as a 24-bit TGA and upload it as a non-lossy image. I think there's a checkbox on the texture upload window.

[Rolig Loon]

Well, for one thing, no matter what the dimensions of your original image were, they get reduced on upload so that the maximum in X or Y is 1024 pixels in SL.  My guess is that your original image is HUGE, so you should expect to lose resolution when it's downsized.  My own general rule is not to worry about super resolution on backgrounds or things that people won't normally spend much time looking at.  I rarely dimension anything larger than 512 x 512. Big textures rez slowly and are truly annoying.  People will either move on before they rez (so they never see your beautiful work) or they wait and wait and then say, "Oh, crap! I thought it was going to be something important." 

[StoneDwarf]

Heya everyone and thanks for your input!

Freya, I am aware of this, the pixel dimensions. However, I yet have to try converting a .jpg to 24bit TGA - will do it right away and see if it makes a difference.

Rollig, I always thought 2048px was the max? Not that it is adviceable - bigger textures means more lag, I am aware of this - but I wasn't aware of the 1024px max. This means that if I, lets say, uploaded a texture above the1024px limit, it will be rescaled by SL, which means loosing quality. Assuming I want to work with 1024px textures, I guess it would be better to re-scale in Photoshop and do some adjustments where needed, then upload. This would result in a better comparison to what I see in Photoshop and what I see in-world, right? And the texture won't serve as a background. It will be used as a texture for a mesh.

Which leads me to Qwalyphi, no, not an a sculpted prim. But I haven't tested it on a square basic prim neither, might as well do that and see if there's a difference.

[Void Singer]

2048 was available for a time, and some existing inworld textures still use that resolution having been uploaded before the change was made, but the current limit is 1024 on either axis.

[Melita Magic]

I notice that some people's textures are crystal-clear and some are fuzzy. Any thoughts on what makes the difference?

I am thinking of trying to make and sell some things. The economy is hitting me as hard as it is most people. 

How do I stop that white line around a texture? How do I keep a texture sharp? I'm thinking of possibly creating my own, but I also have some bought ones I wouldn't mind trying (to make things with.) (I'd much rather learn to make my own that are as good as anyone else's, since other people's have sooo many limitations and who can remember them all? So I end up not using them at all.)

[Rolig Loon]

Much of what you're asking is answered very nicely in the stickies at the top of the old (now archived) Texturing forum.  In particular, take a good look at http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/109/32/80851/1.html and the answer to the question "Why do I see a white halo around my partially transparent images in SL?"  

I really wish that someone would take those very helpful informational posts and copy them into a sticky in this forum.  Chosen Few put in a lot of time writing and updating them.  They are just as valuable today as they were when he first posted them.

[Nefertiti Nefarious]

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StoneDwarf wrote:

Assuming I want to work with 1024px textures, I guess it would be better to re-scale in Photoshop and do some adjustments where needed, then upload. This would result in a better comparison to what I see in Photoshop and what I see in-world, right?

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Yes ... work in whatever you want, the  rescale and sharpen and whatever to one of the possible SL sizes BEFORE  you upload.

[Nefertiti Nefarious]

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Melita Magic wrote:

I notice that some people's textures are crystal-clear and some are fuzzy. Any thoughts on what makes the difference?

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Careful editing and sharpening outside SL, and using an appropriate size texture and repeats so you aren't stretching a 64x256 across the side of a barn.

[Madeliefste Oh]

To me it looks you have applied the texture to a sculpty. Texturing sculpties can make the texture look fuzzy, specially when they are rezzed as very big objects.

With for example a cube you have 6 sizes and on each of them you can put a 1024 x 1024 texture. Not that it will be necessairy in most cases, but it's possible. The sculpty doesn't have this possibility use different textures on different sides. You must cover the whole thing with one an the same texture.

Then you can also have with sculpties that the underlaying grid is not spread equally so the texture stretches more at some part of the sculpt then in other parts, which also causes loose of quality. There is not much you can do about it.

Personal I prefer to upload my textures as tga's in stead of jpg's. And png only for textures that need transparency.

[Josh Susanto]

Part of the problem I see is that the prims are formed in way that does not invite the surface image to speak through the shape of the prim.

A photo of a supermodel is not going to look like a supermodel when she's stretched over any of the standard prim types.

And yet people select images of things they consider to be essentially flat, not realizing that the appeal of the image, itself, is that, in some way, it is not flat. Then they deflatten it arbitrarily, actually adding emphasis to the flatness of the individual flat areas of the prim, and they wonder why it doesn't compel the eye as did the original image.

I'm not picking on anyone in specific here; it's a persistent challenge to builders which few have met very well.

In my own case; I like to think I have tended to do slightly better, but not without a lot of continued effort to improve contour effects.

Please tell me what kind of shape you want out of that texture and I'll try to post the data that you need on this thread.