Creating Artwork?

I would like to be able to upload some of my favorite images to be created as artwork for my place. I'm not looking to sell anything, just want to create a few pictures. How is this done? One person I spoke to said to get a starter frame (a what??) or create a board (umm, just how is that done?) and add the image as the texture. As you can see, I'm rather lost here. Thanks in advance to any and all replies.

Kimmie, there are some fiddly details like choosing the right size image to end up with a picture that isn't stretched or squished...but we won't go into those here. What you want is the basic procedure, and it's simple.

1. Pick an image on your hard drive. Any bitmapped image will do, but SL will like you better if you can save it as a 512x512 pixel image in the .png file format. If you don't have a paint program that'll save it as a .png file, .jpg will do fine.

2. Start SL. Go to File/Upload image. Browse to the file location of the image you saved earlier. Upload it (it will cost you L$10). The image will appear in a window on your screen. Select Keep. It will be saved in the Textures folder of your Inventory.

3. Rez a plywood cube. In an area where you are allowed to build (your land, or a public sandbox), right click the ground and select Create. Then click the ground with the little magic wand cursor. A plywood cube will appear.

4. Flatten it out. You can do it manually if you hold down CTRL+SHIFT and use the sizing handles to squish the cube into a flat plane. Or you can enter values in the "position" boxes of the edit window. (if your edit window doesn't show those, click More to expand it). I suggest values of X=1, Y=0.06, Z=1 for your first try.

5. Click the Select Textures box in the edit window, then click the front face of your plywood "canvas". Then click the Texture tab of the edit window. Drag the texture you uploaded from your inventory onto the texture box in the edit window.

6. If it isn't already, set the texture repeats to 1.0 both horizontal and vertical.

Your first picture is now complete. For your next lesson, you can rez another cube, resize it and hollow it out, and use it for a frame around your picture.

In some image editing program, resize them so they are nice even numbers that computers like 256x256 pixels, or 256x512, or 512x512. You would probably never need it bigger than that and the larger textures contribute to lag. Don't worry about it being a little distorted, you can stretch it back out in world.

Save the resized image as a TGA. I think some other formats may work too. TGA seems to be the one everyone recommends.

Log on to the world and upload the image for L$10. Make a box. Mess with the X, Y, and Z sizes until you have something that's 3 meters high by 4 meters wide, by about 0.2 meters thick, or whatever size looks about right to you. Select the texture on one of the sides and set the repeats per face to 1 x 1.

Drag your texture from your inventory to the face. There's your artwork. You can stick a freebie frame to it and resize the frame as needed and it's ready to hang.

[Edit: Or better yet, what Lindal said above]

Gee - it's sounds a lot harder than it is when it's all written out, and this is the abbreviated version. It's really is easy though. Just play around with the building tools and some textures you already have in your library and you'll see. If you're really uncomfortable with it, I could do it for you in a matter on minutes.

Thank you, Lindal and Weston for your replies. I now have artwork hanging in my place that I really love.

Make a group of 512 x 512s lined up, that way it only cost you $10 Then in world you can edit the group of pictures around to display one picture on a prim.
LOL something like that, maybe someone can explain it better.

Oh, clever tip!!!! Thank you, Emily.

Yes this is a money saver. Imagine that you have a strip of postage stamps. Your display prim is only the size of one stamp. The others "hang off" the end of the prim and aren't seen at all. By using "scale" and "offset", this can be used to great effect.

You can also use it to change the picture displayed on a particular prim, so if you get tired of one picture, just move another into place.

Animated textures work in much the same way.

There is free frame wizard script that you can use to create a frame around the artwork. Simple, touch and apply. Then when you have chosen the frame you like, you delete the frame script, but frame remains. Now you have a framed picture that is only 1 prim.