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krizzz Richardson

Registered User

Join date: 5 Jul 2006

Posts: 18

07-18-2006 10:40

I downloaded the preview release.. but i can't login it must be cause my account is new. But how can i preview textures now in the game to see how they look ?

Chosen Few

Alpha Channel Slave

Join date: 16 Jan 2004

Posts: 7,496

07-18-2006 11:48

Using the preview as a texture tester has never been safely reliable in my opinion. Beside the fact that not everyone can get into the preview (as you've discovered), there's not always a preview available to get into in the first place. There are several more steady methods at your disposal, depending on what you're trying to test.

If you're talking about non-avatar textures, any 3D modeling program can show you what a texture will look like on a piece of geometry. It won't necessarily have SL's lighting conditions or exact color management, but it will be close enough. If you don't want to spend money, Blender is the best free 3D modeling application. Jeffrey Gomez has even created an SL plugin for it so you can model things in Blender and then bring them into SL. It won't export the UV info (I don't think) to SL, just the geometry itself, so you still might have to do offset & repeat work in SL, but you can certainly still get an acurate preview of your texture on the geometry in Blender.

If you're talking about clothing, skins, etc, there are several ways to do it. You can simply use the upload previewer in SL (the little drop down menu on the viewer when you go to upload a file has choices to view the texture on various body parts), or you can use a more advanced/complex method. Here's an explanation of the options that I posted in an earlier thread on the same topic:

From: someone

For the official way to do it, go to the dowloads section of this site, and grab the avatar mannequin files. If you're using Poser, follow the included instructions to install the mannequin models as Poser figures. The process is similar if you're using Daz Studio, the free alternative to Poser.

You'll find that in additon to the Poser formatted files, the mannequin package also includes the models in OBJ format, which can be read by just about any 3D modeling package on the market today (Maya, 3DS Max, Lightwave, Blender, etc). The OBJ's are just surface models (no skeletons), so you can't use them for animations, but if all you want to do is preview textures, they work fine for that.

One thing to keep in mind is that these models will never be perfect matches for YOUR avatar. They are just default avs with no slider settings applied. As you customize the shape of your av with the sliders, the UV's move around, so what looks right on one av won't necessarily look perfect on another. As you gain experience, you'll learn what's safely universal and what's not.

For an unoffical method, if you want to preview textures on your av specifically, there is a little hack you can do that will work. It's not very efficient, but it does the job as long as you're carful. Look in your SecondLife\characters folder, and you'll see a bunch of TGA files. The ones you want to be concerned with are head_color.tga, lowerbody_color.tga, and upperbody_color.tga. Rename those files so you don't accidentally write over them, and then give their old names to the textures you're testing (and save those textures in the SecondLife\characters folder). Enter appearance mode in SL, and you'll see your new textures magically become the base skin on your avatar. The change is temporary as long as you don't hit save on the appearance editor, so be careful not to do that and you won't screw anything up. When you're done, just change the old files back to their correct names, exit appearance mode, and upload your new textures to SL.

_____________________

.

Land now available for rent in Indigo. Low rates. Quiet, low-lag mainland sim with good neighbors. IM me in-world if you're interested.

krizzz Richardson

Registered User

Join date: 5 Jul 2006

Posts: 18

07-18-2006 14:32

hmm i tried daz studios.. but the textures in the game are way different then in daz.. isn't there an more accurate way to see textures?

Chosen Few

Alpha Channel Slave

Join date: 16 Jan 2004

Posts: 7,496

07-18-2006 15:19

There are two common reasons the texture would look different in DAZ Studio than in SL. First, if you're using the default figure (or any other figure) instead of the SL avatar figure model, then it will be WAY off. Second, as I said in my previous post, the SL avatar models are at default slider positions. As you change the sliders to customize your avatar shape, various sections of the texture will become stretched and distorted. There's no way the base model can reflect those changes in DAZ, Poser, or any other program, since the morphs SL uses to make the changes won't be present in those programs. As you gain experience, you learn how to pre-distort your texture in the opposite direction to compensate, but there can never be a perfect solution, as every avatar has different settings. As I said before, what looks great on one avatar may look terrible on another.

As for the most "acurate" method, it's the one outlined in the last paragraph of my previous post. To preview textures on YOUR avatar inside SL (so that you know the texture works with your particular slider settings), temporarily replace the appropriate TGA files in your SecondLife\character folder with the ones you want to preview. Those are the files SL uses to determine what your avatar's base skin looks like. If you replace them with others, your skin will become whatever the new files are. Just make sure to change them back when you're done.

_____________________

.

Land now available for rent in Indigo. Low rates. Quiet, low-lag mainland sim with good neighbors. IM me in-world if you're interested.

krizzz Richardson

Registered User

Join date: 5 Jul 2006

Posts: 18

07-19-2006 01:22

ok ill try the latest although its only a workaround.. I dont mean shape, but I mean colours and such do not represent in DAZ waht it looks like in the game

Also the last option is kind shitty when you need to change a thing or two with previewing the texture

Chosen Few

Alpha Channel Slave

Join date: 16 Jan 2004

Posts: 7,496

07-19-2006 05:26

Yeah, it's an akward, silly workaround, not exactly an elegant solution. It's cumbersome for sure. It is the most acurate way to do it though. There really should be a "locally preview texture on avatar" option built into the SL client. Since the process can be done manually, there's absolutely no reason a little utility couldn't be built in to do the same thing automatically in memory instead of actually having to change file names by hand.

As for DAZ Studio's colors, yeah, that's always going to be a problem when working with multiple 3D applications. Unless both apps have the same lighting conditions and the same color managment process, texture color schemes will always look a little different in each one. SL has so many different lighting factors in play at all times, it would be next to impossible to replicate them even in the best 3D programs, let alone a freebie like DAZ Studio.

_____________________

.

Land now available for rent in Indigo. Low rates. Quiet, low-lag mainland sim with good neighbors. IM me in-world if you're interested.

Account after certain date?
krizzz Richardson Registered User Join date: 5 Jul 2006 Posts: 18	07-18-2006 10:40 I downloaded the preview release.. but i can't login it must be cause my account is new. But how can i preview textures now in the game to see how they look ?
Chosen Few Alpha Channel Slave Join date: 16 Jan 2004 Posts: 7,496	07-18-2006 11:48 Using the preview as a texture tester has never been safely reliable in my opinion. Beside the fact that not everyone can get into the preview (as you've discovered), there's not always a preview available to get into in the first place. There are several more steady methods at your disposal, depending on what you're trying to test. If you're talking about non-avatar textures, any 3D modeling program can show you what a texture will look like on a piece of geometry. It won't necessarily have SL's lighting conditions or exact color management, but it will be close enough. If you don't want to spend money, Blender is the best free 3D modeling application. Jeffrey Gomez has even created an SL plugin for it so you can model things in Blender and then bring them into SL. It won't export the UV info (I don't think) to SL, just the geometry itself, so you still might have to do offset & repeat work in SL, but you can certainly still get an acurate preview of your texture on the geometry in Blender. If you're talking about clothing, skins, etc, there are several ways to do it. You can simply use the upload previewer in SL (the little drop down menu on the viewer when you go to upload a file has choices to view the texture on various body parts), or you can use a more advanced/complex method. Here's an explanation of the options that I posted in an earlier thread on the same topic: From: someone For the official way to do it, go to the dowloads section of this site, and grab the avatar mannequin files. If you're using Poser, follow the included instructions to install the mannequin models as Poser figures. The process is similar if you're using Daz Studio, the free alternative to Poser. You'll find that in additon to the Poser formatted files, the mannequin package also includes the models in OBJ format, which can be read by just about any 3D modeling package on the market today (Maya, 3DS Max, Lightwave, Blender, etc). The OBJ's are just surface models (no skeletons), so you can't use them for animations, but if all you want to do is preview textures, they work fine for that. One thing to keep in mind is that these models will never be perfect matches for YOUR avatar. They are just default avs with no slider settings applied. As you customize the shape of your av with the sliders, the UV's move around, so what looks right on one av won't necessarily look perfect on another. As you gain experience, you'll learn what's safely universal and what's not. For an unoffical method, if you want to preview textures on your av specifically, there is a little hack you can do that will work. It's not very efficient, but it does the job as long as you're carful. Look in your SecondLife\characters folder, and you'll see a bunch of TGA files. The ones you want to be concerned with are head_color.tga, lowerbody_color.tga, and upperbody_color.tga. Rename those files so you don't accidentally write over them, and then give their old names to the textures you're testing (and save those textures in the SecondLife\characters folder). Enter appearance mode in SL, and you'll see your new textures magically become the base skin on your avatar. The change is temporary as long as you don't hit save on the appearance editor, so be careful not to do that and you won't screw anything up. When you're done, just change the old files back to their correct names, exit appearance mode, and upload your new textures to SL. _____________________ . Land now available for rent in Indigo. Low rates. Quiet, low-lag mainland sim with good neighbors. IM me in-world if you're interested.
krizzz Richardson Registered User Join date: 5 Jul 2006 Posts: 18	07-18-2006 14:32 hmm i tried daz studios.. but the textures in the game are way different then in daz.. isn't there an more accurate way to see textures?
Chosen Few Alpha Channel Slave Join date: 16 Jan 2004 Posts: 7,496	07-18-2006 15:19 There are two common reasons the texture would look different in DAZ Studio than in SL. First, if you're using the default figure (or any other figure) instead of the SL avatar figure model, then it will be WAY off. Second, as I said in my previous post, the SL avatar models are at default slider positions. As you change the sliders to customize your avatar shape, various sections of the texture will become stretched and distorted. There's no way the base model can reflect those changes in DAZ, Poser, or any other program, since the morphs SL uses to make the changes won't be present in those programs. As you gain experience, you learn how to pre-distort your texture in the opposite direction to compensate, but there can never be a perfect solution, as every avatar has different settings. As I said before, what looks great on one avatar may look terrible on another. As for the most "acurate" method, it's the one outlined in the last paragraph of my previous post. To preview textures on YOUR avatar inside SL (so that you know the texture works with your particular slider settings), temporarily replace the appropriate TGA files in your SecondLife\character folder with the ones you want to preview. Those are the files SL uses to determine what your avatar's base skin looks like. If you replace them with others, your skin will become whatever the new files are. Just make sure to change them back when you're done. _____________________ . Land now available for rent in Indigo. Low rates. Quiet, low-lag mainland sim with good neighbors. IM me in-world if you're interested.
krizzz Richardson Registered User Join date: 5 Jul 2006 Posts: 18	07-19-2006 01:22 ok ill try the latest although its only a workaround.. I dont mean shape, but I mean colours and such do not represent in DAZ waht it looks like in the game Also the last option is kind shitty when you need to change a thing or two with previewing the texture
Chosen Few Alpha Channel Slave Join date: 16 Jan 2004 Posts: 7,496	07-19-2006 05:26 Yeah, it's an akward, silly workaround, not exactly an elegant solution. It's cumbersome for sure. It is the most acurate way to do it though. There really should be a "locally preview texture on avatar" option built into the SL client. Since the process can be done manually, there's absolutely no reason a little utility couldn't be built in to do the same thing automatically in memory instead of actually having to change file names by hand. As for DAZ Studio's colors, yeah, that's always going to be a problem when working with multiple 3D applications. Unless both apps have the same lighting conditions and the same color managment process, texture color schemes will always look a little different in each one. SL has so many different lighting factors in play at all times, it would be next to impossible to replicate them even in the best 3D programs, let alone a freebie like DAZ Studio. _____________________ . Land now available for rent in Indigo. Low rates. Quiet, low-lag mainland sim with good neighbors. IM me in-world if you're interested.

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