From: FD Spark
I have had few textures that came in just great and vanished.
I'm not sure what you mean by "vanished". Do you mean you uploaded the textures to SL, and now you can't find the files? You can find them in your SL inventory, but when you view them they appear transparent instead of opaque? You downloaded them from somewhere on the web to your computer, but now you can't find them on your hard drive? Something else?
From: FD Spark
I am puzzle when do I use tga or jpeg.
Simple answer, always use TGA. Never use JPEG for SL or for any other 3D application.
JPEG is a lossy, highly compressed format, a relic from decades past when adequate storage space for an uncompressed image was hard to come by. When JPEG was invented, a single uncompressed print-size image could have filled an entire hard drive. Nowadays though, storage space is obviously cheap and practically unlimited, so the need for JPEG compression in most applications is long since gone. The format has since found itself a home on the web, the last place where small file size is still more important than image quality. It's only because web pages are such an every day thing that JPEG is still a common format. Otherwise, it would have gone the way of the dinosaur ages ago.
TGA, on the other hand is exactly the opposite. It's uncompressed, super high quality, simple for computers to read, has an entirely predictable file size, and it supports transparency. For these reasons, it has been the industry standard format for texturing for many years now. For SL purposes, TGA is always the best way to go.
Just so you know, after you upload an image to SL, it won't be stored as a JPEG or as a TGA. Everything server side is JPEG2000, a different type of compressed format. If your source image is a JPEG, you end up compressing not just once, but twice, giving you the "copy of a copy" effect, which isn't always pretty. Sourcing from TGA, you only have to compress once. Also, using TGA is the only way to incorporate transparency in your images.
From: FD Spark
jpeg seem to come up as textures when I send it while tga files come up as photos
Not sure what you mean by that. When you upload an image to SL, regardless of the source format, the new file should end up in your textures folder.
From: FD Spark
I am puzzled I spent numerous L on textures and I can't find the new fabric ones I made.
Have you tried searching for the files by name? It also helps to set your inventory to sort by date. That way, the most recently added stuff is always on top.
From: FD Spark
Also how do I texture wood what options do I use?
That's a pretty big question. What painting program are you using? What type of wood are you trying to replicate? For what purpose?
The answer to "how do I texture wood" can be dramatically different, depending on your answers to those questions. If you want a simple solution that won't require much artistic labor on your part, you might want to check out Wood Workshop from Spiral Graphics. It's a simple, free application for auto-generating wood textures. It works pretty well for what it is.
