Wall texture scale?

Hello, sorry if im asking this while its already been talked about elsewhere.

I am about to create my own backgrounds/wallpapers for walls in my SL sim.
I want my houses to look unique so i'm going to photoshop them myself.
Now I was wondering what kind of scale I should use in photoshop, at what size (px X px) does a image become blurry in SL?
Lets say I want to make a wall with a door in it, lets say I want to make this wall 10m high in SL and I want to add a second floor at 3meters high (yes I know thats not very high in SL but I use rl scales, my sim is 6ft in Sl).

With other words, when making a piece of set in Photoshop what scales should I keep in mind?

For almost all interior textures, 512 x 152 is quite adequate. You'll be able to apply a texture at those pixel dimensions to most wall prims without seeing any fuzziness. Before you begin working, I'd suggest reading the sticky on files sizes, formats, etc. at the head of this forum and then doing a few experiments to see what textures of different sizes and styles look like when they are applied to your own prims in world. In the end, you are the best judge of what looks good. Spending some time and a few L$ on experiments is worth it.

See the big orange sticky on texture sizes at the top of the forum? Read it.

If there's anything in it that you don't understand, ask away.

Thank you!
I knew I could have found it in the forum somewhere but kept using the wrong search words... I used to be a blonde
Cheers!

Well I guess im still a bit too blonde.
Ive read through it and seen a lot of technical information that is a bit too far over my head.
I am wondering if perhaps there are some templates i can download, simply a 10X10 wall with realistic scale wall, door, etc, on it that I can use when making my wall.
One wall im making is 10 meters long, the one next to it 8, they have to match and the image on them has to link up exactly without quality loss.
So it would be handy to have some sort of standard I could work with just with the clothing template you can download anywhere.
Especially if you need to build a 10 x 10 wall that you are going to use as a backwall for a building with two floors, it might be tricky to keep saving and editing till you get the scale right.

You may as well be inquiring about a template for a piece of string, Jo. The answer to your question doesn't get much simpler than Chosen's recommendation to read the sticky on texturing.

And I'm shocked at your outright blondism: for Heaven's sakes, is it just because they have more fun?

But in that other thread there is a lot about size of the file, not really the scale, or at least I can't seem to find it.
If I want to build a wall thats 10 meters high with a image on it that relates to 10 meters in real life, how many pixels should I make it in photoshop?
If I draw a picture of a door on a wall in photoshop that should be lets say 2 meters high in SL, how many pixels should it be?
I just seem to overlook how it works.
I would just love to download a image of the internet of someone whos made a nice wall texture for SL so that I can use that to experimente with in stead of making, saving and altering images again and again just to get the sizes right.

I really used to be a blonde, I did have more fun then but thats probably because I was 8 years old and I wanted to be a pirate when I grew up and spend most of my time climbing trees and running around screaming

go to your inventory, go to the folder at the bottom called library, open it, open the folder called Atoll Textures (or something similar) and in there are early textures for walls with windows and doors, I think you will also find a fully constructed shack in there too made from these textures, this may help you understand about how textures are used.

Yes but how does that help me when making a texture for a wall in photoshop?
Can I export it or download it on the internet somewhere?
How do I know how many pixels those windows are and how many pixels off the floor they are so I can do the same with the texture I am creating myself?

you can download them. take the texture in the library and drag it up to the texture folder in your inventory part, open the texture so you can see it in the window, now I'm not in SL so this is the simple explanation, go to the tab that you use to upload textures, and you will see 'save texture' (I think that's the wording), click it and it will save to your desktop.

most textures are 512 x 512 pixels, you can have 512 x 1024 pixels for a wall, but that's a little overkill, textures should be saved at 72 dpi. you have to do the maths to work out your window size and position, if your wall is 5 meters tall, then 512 pixels = 5 meters right?

you can save the texture in number of formats, I use .tga (targa) but you can use png or jpeg too.

It's 3.30am here, so that's all I can give you tonight/this morning

Ohoooooohhhhh thank you so VERY much!
I have been looking for info like that for ages, I didnt even know I could download images from my SL folder!
Fantastic, I can work with this, it will save me a lot of hassle.
Brilliant!

Its 4.29 here, I should be in bed... but now I want to make more walls
Thanks again, sleep well!

Not all of the information in that thread is directly relevant to your question, but certain sections of it are. The final section of the starter post, for example, is entitled "Choosing the Best Texture Size For the Job". That and the section immediately prior, entitled "Allowable Texture Sizes", are what you really need to know.



That's not an answerable question. There's no such thing as "pixels per meter". You can put any size texture on any size object. There's no correlation whatsoever between pixels and meters.

What you should be thinking about is not "size" of the object as measured by units of 3D space (meters), but the amount of screen space the image is likely to occupy. If the item in question is meant to be something that will most likely be viewed from a distance, then it's not going to fill much of the screen for most people. In that case, a very small texture will look just fine. But if it's something people will walk right up to, or zoom in on and examine in detail, then a larger texture may be necessary.




Again, that's not answerable. Meters have absolutely nothing to do with pixels. A 2-meter door viewed from a hundred meters away might be 10 pixels tall on your screen. The same door viewed from one meter away might be 1000 pixels tall on your screen. How large a texture you should use will depend entirely on how much screen real estate you think the door is likely to cover under normal circumstances.

Remember, the larger the texture, the more of a hit to performance it will cause. For that reason, always use the smallest texture you can get away with for the given task. In most cases for doors, I'll go with a size of 128x256 or 64x128. Occasionally I'll go as big as 256x512, but only if the door needs to be very detailed, and if I'm reasonably sure that people will be likely to spend time examining it at a relatively large size on their screens.



Hopefully it's starting to make a little more sense to you now. If not, keep on asking questions. That's what we're here for.



You could download a dozen different wall textures at a dozen different sizes. Again, there's no direct correlation between the size of an object and the size of its texture.

Think of it kind of like painting a wall in RL. You could certainly ask a question like "How much paint would I need to cover an 8x10 meter wall?", but there would be no easy answer. We'd have to know an awful lot about what exactly you're looking to do in order to formulate a suggestion. For starters, we'd want to know are you doing a mural or just covering with a single color? If it's a mural, you'll obviously need a whole lot more paint than if it's just monotone. The more details you have to create, the more paint you'll need.

The same concept (loosely) applies to your wall texture in SL. If the wall needs to be very detailed, like that mural would, then you'll need a large amount of pixels to convey the information. But if it's just going to be something simple, then a much smaller amount of pixels will do the job. The physical size of the wall in in-world meters is the least relevant part.




I'm told I was blond when I was a toddler. My mom likes to say "You had the loveliest blond curls I've ever seen." I'm not sure I believe it. My hair is quite dark, and has been for as long as I can remember. But I did love to climb trees and I'm sure I screamed a lot, so we've got that much in common.

I never wanted to be a pirate, though. I wanted to be a starship captain. You didn't happen to want to be a space pirate, did you? You'd better not attack my starship!