How To: Texture Zones

I don't think this qualifies as a fansite post. My shiny new SL blog has a new article about dividing textures into zones. It's a beginner-level introduction to an intermediate texturing technique which will make you more efficient, make your builds more impressive, and generally bring about world peace.

Very nice work and great mini tutorial, btw you owe me a cool looking cart now

Julian, that is positively brilliant!

I've done that for simple projects, like making one texture that will be used for four different signs, by showing only partial repeats and adjusting offsets. And I regularly work with texture templates for clothing in SL. Yet I hadn't considered extrapolating from there, to do all sides of a planned object!

It was an excellent tutorial. Perhaps a bit thin for the beginner on how to select just the part of the texture that you want for the object, but the highlighting trick will help a lot there.

Well done!

ive done this many many times before, and probally much more in the future thanks to plannar mapping

as long as your camera is true, works every time

I'd love to have the option to display the map plane with tiling (and maybe have a field to input the aspect ratio) so we could get a screenshot that included it. It would make using screenshots as a guide for texturing a whole lot more useful.

Nice tutorial, Julian, and awesome texturing job on the cart!

Just to add to it. You can actually take 'straight on' screenshot easily by attaching the object to your HUD. This way you don't have to deal with perspective distortion in your screenshots.

Good idea. I wouldn't have thought of that.

I use a simple script:

default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        llSetCameraEyeOffset(<2, 0, 0>);
        llSetCameraAtOffset(<1, 0, 0>); 
        llSitTarget(<0,0,3>,ZERO_ROTATION);
        
    }

}

Put that in a prim, sit on it, and you get nice orthogonal picture. Adjust the exact camera position (llSetCameraEyeOffset) to control how far it is from the object.

Thanks for the input, everyone. "How To" might have been a little ambitious as a title. "Introduction" would be better but I plan to get more in-depth later.

That is a great tip about attaching the object to a HUD point for template screenshots. Usually I take shots after hitting Control-Zero a few times to adjust the field of view (Control-9 to reset) since I only need approximate proportions but I will try the HUD method for sure.

Before I start trying this in-world, are there any additional tips on textures zones and how best to use them?

Thank you for pointing this out. I wish more content creators (even the for-fun ones) would try to understand this.

Those of us who've done game art are used to packing textures like this, usually because we're only allowed one or two 512x512 maps per object. (And usually a LOT less.) Also, don't be afraid to reuse a texture, but stretch it out or rotate it otherwise try to hide the fact that it's the same texture you used for the wall but now on the ceiling.

There's no reason to use a 1024x1024 texture for, say, the railing of your walkway when likely %99.99 of the people on SL will have their camera a good 7m away from it.

Then again, even I myself have been guilty of "oh I'll just use seperate textures.." but I try to keep it to just 3-4 small-sized maps. I mainly do that when I want to be able to change the hue of the texture just by adjusting the prim's color.

good job for this tutorial , but i would like to point a little thing, this is like, the basics of texturing for real time rendering, what is a shame is that only now someone made a tutorial to make it , considering its what you have to learn in the real world before even starting to texture.

it's probably one of the many reasons SL's performances suck

there should be a link somewhere in SL's documentation or something that direct peoples to this way of doing, so they learn this one straight away

i always wanted to know more about mapping and zoning! you rock!!!

I'm trying to figure out how to better integrate traditional 3D designer workflows in to Second Life. Has anyone looked in to exporting objects from Second Life (possibly through OGLE?) and texture mapping it with Deep UV or a similar tool, then bringing those textures back in to SL?

This is very helpful , if only it was forced to be used or at least have a limit on Texturesize to Object size. Such as 1m>300PX