More questions on texturing

Ok folks, now the way I understand it (and please correct me if I am wrong), is if I want to make a flexi prim skirt, I first have to make one of the 'pleats', i.e the flat shape that can then be repeated several times to give me the skirt. Now say I want to texture this pleat by using a single motif, e.g a celtic knot which has to appear around the base of the pleat. How do I texture it so that the knot appears in the right place. Also, what if I want the celtic knot texture to tile itself over the entire flexi skirt.

Basically my question is how do I go about doing different texturing effects when using inworld prims. In the first case, I would like just one instance of a pattern to appear at a specific place on the design. In the secone, I would like it to tile all over the prim. Are there different ways to achieve this.

I would also appreciate your input on texture sizes. Do I stick with the 256x256? Can I adjust this to other dimensions such as 256x100 for example.

Thanks for your time.

Hi Ayesha, there are numerous ways to make flexi skirts. The basic skirt is simply sections of a cylinder arranged in a circle usually with some sort of tilt to form a cone shaped skirt. And more often than not, designers use the same texture on each prim, so it simply repeats.

But you can apply different textures to each prim in the skirt. My suggestion is to make one texture to upload and apply sections of that texture around the skirt in concurrent fashion so the overall design appears to be across the entire skirt.

You do that by adjusting the horizontal parameters in the texture field while editing one texture face at a time. That is also how you'd be able to precisely position any features or details.

Cheers!

Hi Blaze,
Thanks for your quick reply. Most of what you mentioned is clear, but I cannot figure what you mean when you say "adjusting the horizontal parameters in the texture field while editing one texture face at a time".

If you can explain that in a little more detail, it would be great.

Thanks

Blaze is the expert, not I, but maybe I can help.

When you put a texture on a surface, there are some fields in the Edit window you can play with, include horizontal offsets. Suppose you had a texture that is larger than the individual prims. You can offset it to the left on one prim, to the right on another, and to the middle on the third. When the three prims are together, they look like one copy of the texture spread across all three.

One thing to keep in mind. There seems to be some sort of Texture bug being investigated right now that causes textures to not stay where you put them. I don't know if that will have any impact on this case, but it might be interesting for you to follow, just in case.

Yeah, like Lee said, on the edit field in the texture tab there are fields to make the prim only use certain parts of the texture.

You'll adjust the 'Repeats Per Face' and the 'Offset' fields as needed. So if you had a skirt texture that you want to wrap around the skirt then you'd adjust the repeats and offset each piece.

And in actuality it really depends upon how you build the skirt, on how you apply the textures. A texture will wrap around a cylinder by default (the wrap of the cylinder is one face), but if you build the skirt with copies of the same cylinder segment, you'll see the same pattern section on each one, so you use the offset values to show other segments of the same texture (or if you want it to show the entire texture on the cut prim, you adjust the 'repeats per face'). To do that, simply go to the texture panel in the edit window and change the value--play with it and you'll see what i mean.

If you want to change only the one face of the prim, you'll need to click on the Select Texture radio button above the tabs, so your changes will only apply to that one texture face.

The other option is to build the skirt with individual sections of the cylinder so that when you apply the texture, each cylinder segment will show the proper texture part of the skirt by default, but it's more tedious to build a skirt that way, unless you have some sort of automation tool.

I hope that helps. I know there are more detailed and better explanations of the repeats per face and offset values here in the texture forum, but that should get you started.

In edit, click on the texture tab. At the top you have squares for applying a texture or a texture and a tint and i take t you have already figured that part out. Just below that you can chose a default or planer mode of applying your texture to your prim. I don't know the mathematical definitions for these, but you can experiment and see what results you get. Below that there are options for repeats per face. Below that is rotation. At the bottom there are options for offset. The repeats per face rotation and offset are the tools that you use to get the knot to land on the right part of the prim. I find it best to just play around with these numbers and see what happens until you get the results that you want.

Have fun.
-Sylvia

Blaze, Lee and Sylvia,
Thanks!!! You have explained it so clearly. I need to try out these techniques in-world so will refer to these messages whilst I try to texture a skirt.

I'll keep you posted of how I do.

Might I suggest the intermediate Texture class at Idea? its self paced and covers this very subject. Takes about 30 minutes.

Send me a skirt

Better yet, make me a Sports Coat with flexi prim tails. Think Don Johnson in Miami Vice

lee

Thank you Sterling, I think that's an amazing "Idea" .

Will do Lee, one sports coat with flexiprim tails coming up.