Creating things like scars in gimp as maitreya appliers.... so pixelated!

[gailahorn]

So Ive taught myself the ins and outs of GIMP, at the least, enough of them to do whatever it is that I need. I like to make appliers for my maitreya body for if Im injured in a scene or a tattoo or whatever it is I might need. However, something has been really bothering me. I try and I try but I cannot figure out how to make it less pixel-y. Other people's things I get off the MP or whatever seem totally fine. Was just wondering how that is done.

[Rolig Loon]

It's hard to tell without seeing what you call "pixel-y", but you might try a couple of things:

First, create your design in GIMP at 1024 x 1024 pixels and then rescale it to 512 x 51 before you upload it. (Be sure that you are actually using "power of two" dimensions, BTW, so your image has dimensions that are always 64, 128, 256, or 512 .)  Simple rescaling will sharpen your image and will make small imperfections less obvious.  Just be sure to do the rescaling yourself.  Don't expect the SL servers to do it well.

Second, be sure that you aren't fighting a "white halo" problem.  Robin Wood has an excellent overview of the issue and a discussion of standard ways to avoid it. My own favorite method is to not create a halo in the first place, by creating a clean alpha channel image and not removing any pixels in the various layers in my design.  It's sometimes just as easy to be sure that the background layer in your image is visible and is filled with some dark color, like black. Those methods and others that Robin discusses are intended to keep the sloppy "white" pixels around the edges of transparent areas in your design from showing and making it look fuzzy.

I usually save images as TGA files rather than PNG, because I feel that I have better control over how I handle the alpha channel, but it's all a matter of what you are used to.