Make SL Faster - Free Textures Project

In the interest of making SL run faster by getting more people to work from a common set of textures, I would like to round up support for a project to gather up large bunches of *useful* good quality textures to be given away free to everyone (especially new residents).

I know we have some texture packs now, which have been quite helpful so far, but the greater variety we can pull together into these packs, the less we'll have to rely on independent uploads, and the faster SL will be for everyone.

Being an extreme slacker, I am reluctant to lead such an effort unless absolutely necessary, but I'll start off by posting this idea and see if anyone else wants to take off with it...

Thanks for reading =D

-- Kex

Great Idea Kex it would work so well to have textures that were set in the servers to make things run faster and Yes it would speed things up.

However the moment you instituted it. It would stifle creative nuances across the board and kill Second Life totaly in the end.

Big hug but sorry.

Shadow

Why would this stifle creativity? I mean, I understand that, with more people having more access to more textures, there'd be more use of said textures. But having a texture that few or no other people have isn't the defining characteristic of what makes something special and unique in SL, is it?

And I don't think Kex is suggesting that, from now on, *all* textures should be shared amongst everyone, for free. Just that maybe a chunk of the ones out there right now be distributed freely, for more diverse use of them and, yes, faster loading times.

Please note, Shadow, I'm not trying to be argumentative (I'm really tired, and feeling icky, so my tone might come out that way.. sorry). I'm just not seeing where you're coming from. And I'd like to, because I'd hate for SL to lose it's creative flavor.

Heh, I can only assume that was a misunderstanding or a joke =P

I think it'd be fun to garner intest by having some building contests constricted to only whatever textures are assembled as part of this package. Just to illustrate just how flexible a limited set of textures can be, when the prim and texture parameters are played with correctly. It might be surprising just how much variety one can squeeze from one texture, if enough attention is given to tweaking the prim and texture settings.

Kex, would you standardize on 256x256, 384x384, or 512x512 as the maximum size? Would you want to pre-organize them into folders by type, or by tilability?

Anyway, I think it's a great idea, and I'll be sure to contribute some textures-- and example objects-- to it by and by.

I would like to note that the existence of texture vendors in game is a mitigating force to texture over-proliferation. That is, every texture that you buy in game instead of uploading is a texture that is already on the server and maybe already in some player's cache.

Indeed, looking at Kex's proposal, the idea is good but the work is labor intensive and tedious. How do you solve that problem? Financial incentive. Linden Lab incentive? None needed, the "market" has provided.

I'll add a little plug for Drift Monde's "Textures Unlimited", a well-stocked, well-organized vendor of textures with reasonable prices and very clearly stated usage policy: you may do anything with these other than just sell/give them as textures. So you can build something with the textures and then sell that thing. I have no connection at all with TU other than as a satisfied customer.

why stop at textures ?

Would it somehow be possible to have a "community" folder ?

where every texture,object,script,clothing,etc that is loaded into this folder is available to everyone throughout SL.

Users could still have their own folders separate and only place items into community when they wanted.

But would this speed things up ?

does SL recognise that my texture called "jamaican sunset" is the same as the one in your cache ?

It confuses me that we can have many items that are all called the same thing.

and the texture piracy ? Ouch ! once it is in Community folder all rights are lost ???

This is a great idea Kex. I think the most important thing here is (A) giving newbs more options, (B) providing more textures that are commonly used as to help the speed of the servers. I also sell textures from a vendor and I sell them at upload price. I also allow full permissions on them. I agree that more things not just textures should be shared throughout the world. But I digress... Kex I will happily give you some textures. C u in-world!

Thanks for the support.

I think the goal is to go for a wide variety of textures, not too much stuck on any particular themes. I'd like to provide at least one texture which is suited for a job, so that for various needs there is a good probability that people will have at least one texture conveniently available to use.

This will probably take a while, as there's a lot of sorting to do, and I'm quite the slacker, but if anyone has any textures they'd like to give away, just set them Free to Copy and drop on my profile. Put your name in the texture description field if you'd like Attribution, a reference to your store, etc =)

I may build a store somewhere to make these readily available. I'm also thinking a script to help sort through the large bulk of already freely available textures might be a good thing to look into as well.

Thanks again,

Kex

I have a bunch of textures that I give away at every Basic Texturing class I teach. Not sure how many, probs close to 200ish..

fen-

Kex, I have hundreds of free textures on my land in Sage. Trees, plants, flowers, fabrics, metals, stones, woods, wings, all kinds of strange stuff

I'd be happy to contribute them. I also have more textures in inv I haven't gotten around to boxing up to distribute. I will work on them as well to add to the collection.

Thanks,
Candie

I'd be happy to make/donate textures for this. Am currently a bit crunched for time but I can still crank some stuff out. Any special requests?

Olympia