Resolution of avatar texture

Quick question:

How is the resolution of the avatar textures decided? Is it always the same or are they scaled to the size of whatever the largest texture that's baked into them is?

I'm guessing it's the latter since peeps have been saying about not uploading clothes at the size of the templates, but just wanted to be sure this isn't something that's been overlooked.

People say not to upload clothing at the template resolution (I presume you are talking about Chip Midnight's templates) because they take longer to load than if they were smaller. The general "rule" is to not upload a texture that is bigger than 512. The same goes for any texture uploaded, clothes or otherwise. Texture are whatever resolution you uploaded them as. They only change if they're odd sizes, I believe. Hope that helps.

Thanks for the reply Helen, but I was wondering if people were saying that just because that's what you'd immediatly assume was right and hadn't actually taken notice of if it was the case or not. Just a thought that occured to me the other night.

This is only a guess from my side. I actually held back replying to this post in the hopes that someone who knows for sure would give the answer.

It makes sense if the resolution of the skin for the head, upper and lower body dictates which resolution to bake all the textures for that part into. When you look into the Character folder on harddisk where you have installed SL, you will notice most textures are at a resolution of 512x512 pixels. To my understanding these files are read, baked, converted and uploaded to SL's server each time you adjust in Apperance and save, so it would be logical these images dictates the size of the baked images.

Expert comments from someone who knows are most welcome!

EDIT: It's the local SL program who does the baking, resizes, converts to JPEG2000 and uploads the baked textures when you adjust in apperance. A little unsure if local program also bakes and sends updated textures when you change clothing or skin.


Lis

I have found there really isn't any reason to go over 512 x 512 300dpi for skin or clothing because once it is in the game the detail gets lost pretty quick. 1024x 1024 600 dpi doesn't look any better than 512 x 512 150 dpi for most instances but takes forever for others to see it. A simple, cartoonish type skin you can get away with 256 x 256 72 dpi pretty well although on close zoom it will be a little jaggy on edges.