Question about Snapshots

I think this is probably the best forum to ask this.

I am trying to find out the resolution of a Snapshot taken in SL and uploaded. If I take a snap and save direct to disc its 1280 x 964. Prob because I run at 1280 x 1024. If I upload it as a texture then its a lot bigger than the snap that uploaded direct. To complicate it even more, I saved a snapshot to disk as a texture and it came out 512 x 512. Not even the right aspect ratio.

The reason I am asking is that I am starting to save more directly to disk so that I can be selective later and only upload any I need to use in SL.

Hope that makes sense.

When you upload textures (any textures; the upload process has no idea what's a snapshot and what's not), it always gets rounded to the nearest power of two on both axes. 1280x964 should come to 1024x1024. Are you certain it was actually 512x512?

To avoid this automatic resizing, ALWAYS size your images to power-of-two numbers yourself before you upload. Unless you really need high resolution (which 99.999999% of the time you don't), I'd start by downsizing to 512x482 or 256x241 (in Photoshop, go Image -> Image Size...). Then pad the image by "mounting" it on a square canvas (Image -> Canvas Size...) to prevent the aspect ratio from changing.

If you don't want the padding to show in SL, simply adjust the repeats per face on the prim displaying the texture. A setting of .94 on the vertical should do the trick if I'm doing my math right (and I'm sure someone will feel compelled to point out if I'm not).

Thanks Chosen. The 512 x 512 was the result of a snapshot taken in SL and uploaded straight away. Not from disk. I then saved it as a testure. The idea was to determine what resolution SL saved it in the first place. What I am trying to do is get the shots back into SL at the same resolution that they must use when we take a snap pay 10L and save it.
I am starting to suspect its 512 by something.

Hmm. I guess I misread you the first time around. That's a good question. I can't remember the last time I saved a snapshot straight to inventory. I always go straight to disk with them. I don't know if it's a fixed size or if it's determined by your SL window size or some other factor.

If you want to test the resolution of a snapshot or any other image in SL, simply apply it to a prim, Select-Texture it, and then press ctrl-alt-shift-T. A little message will pop up in the lower left of the screen, showing the object name, the texture name, the texture size, and the number of the face that it's on.

Thats a brilliant trick. I didnt know that one. I am opposite to you. Most shoots have gone straight to the inventory so far.

There's some element of your window size/shape in the snapshot you take. The snapshots I take tend to be rectangular (I think 256 X 512, but not sure, never tested it), whilst a good friend of mine surprised me by handing over some screenshots that were square, and all of her screenshots are square, she wanted to know how to get the nice rectangular ones...

I suspect it takes the snapshot and then resizes the window with it's power of 2 algorithm, but that's only a suspicion.

Regular snapshots (without fiddling with debug) direct to inventory have a limit of 512x512. Depending on your screen aspect ratio, the texture can result from total square ones down to things like 512x256 and 512x128.

Snapshots to disk are always the size of your display resolution or the window which the SL client is in.

If you want to take panoramas, run SL in windowed mode in the highest resolution possible and squash the window vertically. It will show more than the regular fullscreen mode. Also don't forget the ctrl-8 and ctrl-0 keys to change camera angle.

When hitting ctrl-alt-shift-T, wait for the texture to fully load before hitting it, because SL loads it in increments from 32, then 64, 128 and finally up to the correct resolution. If you hit the key halfway through, it will show a lower pixel dimension.

Chosen. How do you get at 482 and 241 as neither are powers of two. Or is it only important one side is a power of 2.

Thanks.

Go back and read your first post young man!

A snapshot saved to disc with a non-powers of 2 aspect ratio can be resized keep proportions so that one side is a power of two. 1280 -> 512 say. The other side will change (because we're constraining the proportions), but is now unlikely to be a power of 2 as well. 1280:512::964:386, 1280:256::964:193. I'm not sure if Chosen was suggesting you don't contstrain the proportions, or if my or his maths is dodgy... I suspect the first of those, you're keeping more information if you resize to something else, although I'm not sure why you don't resize directly to 512 X 512 in that case.

Anyway, the next step is to enlarge the *canvas* not the whole image so it's a power of 2 in both directions, so it will upload nicely. The image on your disk can be any shape you like. It's only when you upload to SL you *need* the powers of 2s on the sides, if your graphics card can cope with SL it can cope with oddly shaped images in PS or similar.

I have re-read young lady...doh. Chosens sums are right for my image size but padded out with a border to bring it to the power of 2 value. I might resize my screen resolution to something easier to divide.

I have problem, that I can not upload edited picture as snapshot.

I would appreciate help.

Thanks