{"id":111,"date":"2009-11-20T22:02:10","date_gmt":"2009-11-20T22:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.templarcreations.com\/?p=111"},"modified":"2009-11-20T22:02:10","modified_gmt":"2009-11-20T22:02:10","slug":"textures-a-few-quick-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/templarcreations.com\/?p=111","title":{"rendered":"Textures – A Few Quick Tips"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some hints and tips that might make working with textures quicker and more\u00a0efficient.<\/p>\n

1. Instantly apply a texture<\/strong><\/p>\n

…without even opening the Build dialog! Simply drag a texture from your\u00a0inventory onto the surface that you want to texture. The texture will instantly\u00a0be applied to that face. Obviously this will only work on prims that you have\u00a0modify permissions for.<\/p>\n

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2. Applying a texture to multiple faces<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the Build menu, tick ‘Select Texture’ as usual, and select the first face.\u00a0Then hold down the Shift key and click on any other faces that you want to\u00a0texture, even on completely different prims. Then apply the texture that you\u00a0want, via the Texture tab. The texture will be applied to all the selected\u00a0faces.<\/p>\n

The only catch to this is that sometimes Second Life is a bit flaky about\u00a0actually texturing all the selected faces, so don’t unselect straight away, and\u00a0simply re-apply the texture if it doesn’t ‘take’ to all the faces.<\/p>\n

3. Using the dropper<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the Texture tab, click the texture image to bring up the texture selection\u00a0dialog. There is a small ‘dropper’ icon at the bottom of this. Click this icon,\u00a0then click on any other prim face, and the texture from that face will be\u00a0selected for the current face. This will only work to pick up textures that you\u00a0have copy permissions for.<\/p>\n

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4. Choose between the texture selection dialog or your inventory<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are two ways to directly get a texture onto the texture tab (and hence on\u00a0to the selected prim or face), either by dragging a texture from your inventory\u00a0onto the texture image, or by clicking the texture image to call up the\u00a0texture selection dialog.<\/p>\n

Both have their pros and cons.<\/p>\n

The Texture Selection dialog will search through your Inventory, and will only\u00a0show you the textures or snapshots that you can apply as a texture. It will hide\u00a0everything else, including textures that you cannot use (probably because you\u00a0don’t have copy permissions for them). This is useful, but if you have an
\ninventory of any size it can take some time for the list of textures to fill up.<\/p>\n

If you use your inventory instead, you don’t have this delay, but of course you\u00a0will be shown everything, including textures\/snapshots that you cannot actually\u00a0use. If you try to drag these onto the texture image, the cursor will change to\u00a0a ‘stop’ icon to show that you cannot use them.<\/p>\n

5. Use the Library<\/strong><\/p>\n

Down at the bottom of your inventory is a folder called Library, which contains\u00a0a default collection of stuff that Linden supplies to every avatar (they\u00a0sometimes add to this collection, so it’s a good idea to take an occasional look\u00a0here for new things). It includes a useful and varied collection of textures.\u00a0Before you spend your hard-earned Linden Dollars buying a new texture, look here\u00a0first, to see if there is already something which suits your needs.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

6. Use the Library’s default transparent and media textures.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you need a fully transparent texture, or a texture to display videos on (a\u00a0subject which is beyond the scope of this blog entry), the Library has default\u00a0textures for these (they are at the top of the Library ‘tree’, not in the\u00a0Textures folder). The advantage to using these is that they are very likely to\u00a0already be in the viewer’s cache, and hence won’t need to be downloaded, which\u00a0means that they will rez much faster.<\/p>\n

8. Use the bumpmaps and colors<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve mentioned this in a previous post, but it’s worth repeating: experiment\u00a0with the bumpmaps option on the Texture tab. Using bumpmaps, and applying\u00a0colors, can create good textures without making use of a texture image at all\u00a0(simply change the default ‘plywood’ texture to ‘blank’), or can create useful\u00a0variations of existing textures.<\/p>\n

Also worth repeating is the example to illustrate this technique:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some hints and tips that might make working with textures quicker and more\u00a0efficient. 1. Instantly apply a texture …without even opening the Build dialog! Simply drag a texture from your\u00a0inventory onto the surface that you want to texture. The texture will instantly\u00a0be applied to that face. Obviously this will only work on prims that you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8,9],"tags":[18,19,85,100,103],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mv-sl-tutorials","category-textures","category-tutorials","tag-build","tag-build-dialog","tag-second-life","tag-textures","tag-tutorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/templarcreations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/templarcreations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/templarcreations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/templarcreations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/templarcreations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/templarcreations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/templarcreations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/templarcreations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/templarcreations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}