Tough Technical Texture

Hi,

I would pay 750 linden for a very particular texture. See the attached picture... of two spheres and an elliptical cross-section cylinder. The texture I am after should be *white* precisely where the red area of the elliptical cross-section cylinder is exposed and *transparent* where covered by the sphere prims.

The exact object dimensions to reproduce the shape in the pic are:

- 2 x 2.000m spheres placed 1.414m (i.e. square root of 2) apart
- a cylinder placed centrally, 0.707m from the center of each sphere
- the cylinder dimensions are 2.000m high, 1.414m long and 1.414m wide

Any offers? IM me in world or reply here.

Thx
/esc

I dropped an attempt at this on you in-game. No payment needed. It was an interesting puzzle and I'm not sure if I got what you wanted, but it is kinda close.

A custom made texture will do that for you. But I believe in doing so the red object will have a hollow appearance. Is this what you want? It's a shame SL doesn't have a feature where you can subtract one prim's intersection into another prim, that would solve the problem.

Yes. Using this texture I could appropriately texture each side individually to get the effect I need.


Indeed. But that's not the way SL currently works, so in the meantime this is the best solution...

Regards,
/esc

If I can free up some time over the weekend I will give it a try.

The texture itself isn't very hard to do, but you are more than likely going to have alpha sorting problems. In case you're unfamiliar with the term, alpha sorting is a glitch in the way many video games and 3D applications (including SL) handle transparency. When two objects with partially transparent textures are placed near eachother so that they overlap either physically or by point of view, the renderer has trouble deciding how to draw them. Sometimes they flicker back and forth, sometimes they end up backwards in the depth field (meaning the one in back appears to be in front), but most often, one or the other (or even both) will simply disappear. In most cases, the one that is most perpendicular to the camera will be the one that gets drawn and the other disappears, but sometimes they'll both disappear.

Certain objects like fire and vetgetation are commonly designed to take advantage of the glitch, but for most objects, the results range from annoyingly unpredictable, to definitely undesirable.

Since your spheres are semi-transparent, and the cylinder is going to be partially trasparent, the renderer more than likely is going to have trouble with this. Probably, the cylinder will appear to jump in and out of the spheres as your point of view changes when you move around. From certain angles, the cylinder will probably disappear altogether, and from certain other angles, you'll probably see a completely invisible section in the spheres where the cylinder overlaps.

Sorry to have to be a doom sayer here. Just be prepared that projects like this almost never work out. Don't blame SL for it though. Even high end professional 3D programs like Maya and most video games have problems with alpha sorting. As I understand it, it's an issue with the way the programs impliment OpenGL, and it's common to pretty much all of them.

Actually alpha sorting won't impact this request. The real problem is working out the precise curve required on the tga transparency mask. If all else fails, I shall get out my calculator and utilize my known-to-be-dreadful psp skills.
/esc

I havn't had time to work on a solution. But it looks like the "in the flat" texture shape you need follows the contour of a sine wave. It should resemble an hour glass shape.

Sounds reasonable... so all I need is the amplitude then... heheh