Procedural Textures

1. Open the "Procedural Texture" window
   
2. Click "New Texture"
   
3. Apply various filters for noise, color, distortion... a la Photoshop
   
4. Save the new texture to your inventory
   
5. Use the new texture on a prim
   

1. Players are sent the compact instructions on how to create this texture from filters
   
2. Client app generates the texture locally at whatever resolution is needed
   
3. Texture will never look blury and transmits faster than a bitmapped texture
   

Would this work? Only if the client machine can render the procedural textures in real-time, which may still be beyond the capabilities of the average SL user.

But it's something to keep in mind for the future, so I thought I'd record it here.

I think it sounds like a great idea! Especially since like you said it's client-side and will impose almost no extra server-side traffic. As for performance, unless the texture is animating, it only has to be generated in real-time once. I'm thinking that it can then be cached in memory and behave just like a regular texture in SL's rendering framework. Even for animating textures, a finite number of static textures can be created and cached. Also, the time to generate the texture might be equal to or less than the time it takes to download a non-procedural regular texture of comparable size, so performance might even be faster than loading non-procedural textures.

Thumbs up for this suggestion Have used procedurals for years in LightWave (SO useful - can't work without them), and kind of wonder why SL still doesn't have them.


Lis

I heard they're putting support for pixel shaders in the 2.0 renderer. Procedural textures could be done with that if they let us.

*crosses fingers*

I believe this is mentioned in one of the old Town Meetings from last year as something LL is intending to implement. Be nice to hear where it is on the "To Do" list.