Free Hi-Res Texture Alignment Pattern

I've been using Robin Sojourner's free test pattern for a few years now, and it's been great. However, I've found I've been in need of a more detailed pattern for some time now. Today, I finally got around to making one, and I'm happy to share it with the community for free.

The basic color/number scheme is almost the same as Robin's, but I've doubled its size to 1024x1024px, and I've added a 100x100 grid checkerboard. The checkerboard allows for easy visual alignment of repeats/offsets in SL to three decimal places.

Enjoy.





A copule of things to note:

1. There's some slight artifacting due to the fact that power-of-two sized images cannot be divided perfectly into decimals. You may find the artifacting actually helps with alignment, as it provides additional visual cues at the per pixel level.

2. On some of the lighter colored tiles, the checkerboard may be a bit hard to see if you don't have a high contrast monitor. If you find this to be the case, you might want to bring the image into a graphics program and increase the contrast in those areas.

perfect timing =) thnx

thanks a bunch!

/me uploads...

82fc2390-61af-4fa2-6e65-7b80fa22e6cd
06a83cc4-5fb6-3bf2-7bba-66160393276a

Kudos dude .. nice one .!.

Been using some similar grids to measure and texture map but yours is very nice.
Thanks for sharing it.

How dumb would I be if I had to ask what the map is used for? I've never seen anything like it and I'm so in love with all things graphic since I've joined SL, I'm excited to think that this is yet another new thing to learn..

So Chosen, what is this used for?

Thanks Chosen .. great share.

@Dnali .. briefly ( without stepping on Chosen's toes as you asked him directly ) ..
stick this texture on any size prim and adjust the U/V repeats per face untill the grid matches then when you replace the texture with your own it will tile perfectly.

I have a question. Why use base10? Why not use base16 and divide by 32 for the grid?

Just curious is all.

Awesome. I've been needing this!

Thanks, Chosen.

Oops. I guess I should have mentioned that up front. Thanks for asking.

As Jax said, use this pattern for aligning a texture across multiple prims. Apply the test pattern to all, adjust the repeats, offsets, and rotation on each until the numbers and squares line up. Then replace the test pattern with your own texture.



Good question, Abu. 8, 16, or 32, or any power of two, would work better at the per-pixel level. However, since all the in-world parameters are decimal, it makes sense to have the pattern be decimal as well. In other words, by dividing the texture decimally, the grid units on the texture are the same as the units used in the editor.

This makes it really easy to see exactly how far out of alignment things are to start with, so you can align them very quickly. For example, let's say you're working with two surfaces that happen to start out 3 full numbers plus one small square off from each other. You know right away that all you need to do is offset one of them by .31, and then everything will line up.

Were the texture in a base 2^x configuration, you wouldn't be able to work so quickly. You'd need to work either primarily by trial and error (nudge things a little bit, then a little more, oops too far, go back a little... until you get it right) or else you'd need to be doing a lot of math conversion between base 10 and base 2^x on the fly, which I'm sure nobody wants to do.

Make sense?








Maybe I this will help, in case anyone's still wondering:

Each full number (two large squares) represents an offset of 0.1 in the editor.
Each large square represents 0.05 in the editor.
Each small square represents .01 in the editor.

This all makes for fast, easy alignment at the 2-decimal level, and then fine tuning at the 3-decimal level is very simple from there.

Very useful, Chosen! Thanks a bunch for sharing it.

Gotcha, Chosen.

Wonderful. Thank you so much Jax and Chosen. Something new to learn and try.

Thank you so much for this post and image. You really know what you are talking about, and you are so very generous with your time, effort and knowledge. In fact you have done so much already to help me and others like me that I am hesitant to ask this, (and I'll stop blathering on now after realizing that I'm probably laying this out a bit thick but my sincerity is real) so here goes....

Would it be too much to ask if I could get this texture in-world somehow?

It isn't so much that I don't want to spend the 10L upload fee, as much as that I am learning, and somehow I will find a way to do it wrong and screw it up. Trust me on this one.

Thank you again for this and all of your other wonderful posts. I can't get enough of them.

Thanks for the kind words, Hope.

You won't screw it up. Just do this:

1. Right click on the image in the original post, and select "Save Image As..." Choose a location for the save, name the file anything you want (just make sure it ends with .png) and click OK.

2. In SL, go File -> Upload Image, select the file you just saved, and click OK.

That's it; you're all set.



Alternatively, you could use the UUID that Sindy posted to assign the texture via script. Just copy the following to a script, and drop it in a prim:

default
{
state_entry()
{
string texture = "82fc2390-61af-4fa2-6e65-7b80fa22e6cd";
llSetTexture(texture, ALL_SIDES);
}
}

I don't know what to say, except WOW! Both ways worked! I am just so delighted with myself that I could just bust. I especially love the way that I learned how to put a texture on an object using a script.

Thanks again!

Or, plan C, send me an IM and I'll pass you a copy..

Ooh, I got it to work too...how cool is this!!!

Yes. 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F

Could do base 8, too.

Yes, you could, Lee, but as I said, that would make it no longer easily compatible with SL's in-world tool set. Everything in the editor is decimal.

If I've got my texture divided hexidecimally, and then I see that I need to move it over by, say, two and a half squares to bring it into alignment, I need to do a whole lot of math to know what that translates to in decimals (roughly 0.156). However, with the texture already in tenths and hundredths as it is, it's pretty easy to see exactly what that distance is visually and just type it in. You might not get the 6 on the end right away, but you'd definitely see the 1 and the 5, and then arriving at the final 6 would just take a quick minor adjustment.

Remember, most people who are not programmers (which is 99.999999% of the world) think almost exclusively in base 10. Asking people to think in another base and then translate that to base 10 on the fly in order to use the editor is a pretty tall order.

I was curious what was different between the two textures posted. To the eye they seem identical.

They're identical images, but the locations are different. Some people have outside images turned off in forum preferences, so they can't see both images.

Excellent templates BTW, Chosen. I have Robin's version loaded into Photoshop's texture field. I'm sure I'll be playing with these soon too!

Thanks, Chosen!

Is there a vidual tutorial on this? visual learners really lose out on forums without seeing it happen!