Jaggies and other bothersome questions

Disclaimer: I am not a graphic artist but have dabbled with a variety of paint programs since Deluxe Paint on the Amiga and I currently work with Paint Shop Professional Version 8 but far from being proficient in it.

My main problem is jaggies (My clothing looks too blocky at the edges.)
http://www.geocities.com/keliryn/jaggies.jpg

I create each item as a PSP file 1024by 1024 using Chips templates, then alpha it and save as tga file. Then I upload to SL. Should I be using a different file type to create with? What size file should I be uploading? (Not sure how that effects rezzing time) Is there a blending technique I should be using to help with the jaggies effect?

Any help would so be appreciated?

I doubt the size will affect the smoothing of your edges, but you should be uploading clothing at 512 X 512... 1024 is kind of on the big side.

As Alaska said, 512 x 512 is the size you want to upload. Going with 1024 will make it take 4 times longer for each artical of clothing to rez on people's screens than it would at 512, and it will contribute to lag (lag defined here as dropping people's frame rates). It takes a few avs wearing 1024's instead of 512's before there's any noticeable slowing, but every bit helps. Stick with 512.

Anyway, to answer your question about the jags, it looks like you didn't have anti-aliasing turned on when you made the texture. If you're unfamiliar with anti-aliasing, it is the process of simulating smooth lines by combining colors along diagonal edges. There should be a setting for it in whatever tool you used to to create the coloring.

That having been said, it is not possible to eliminate the jags entirely. When you zoom in so close with your camera, you are blowing up an area made of just a few pixels at normal image size to what becomes hundreds of pixels at full screen size. Compounding the problem is the fact that the 2D texture gets stretched and distorted as it wraps around the 3D avatar model. Take a line that appears straight and smooth in 2D, apply it to an akward part of a 3D model, and that same line will now be all kinds of jagged, bent, and broken. You can correct for that by pre-distorting the texture in the opposite direction before applying it to the model, but it will only work for that one model, and then only if the model is not animated. As soon as you put it on an av with a different body shape, or move the cuirrent body into a different pose, it will look messed up again. That's just an inherent trait of 3D modeling & texturing. There's not much you can do about it universally, at least not with the way SL currently handles texture mapping. The only soultion, unfortunately, is to address each occurance on a case-by-case basis.

Anyway, turning on anti-aliasing in your paint program should help a bit. Start with that, and see how it turns out.

If you want to smooth the jaggies a little more than what normal antialiasing can do, try adding a very faint spread of dark pixel information off the transparent edges of your texture in addition to antialiasing. I use Photoshop ( and I'm sure this can be duplicated in PSP and GIMP too) and an "Outer Glow" or "Drop Shadow" layer effect set to a dark purplish color on "Multiply" for this. The result can actually enhance the realism and depth of the clothing by adding a cast shadow on the skin/clothing from a simulated light source. Cast shadow from natural sunlight produces a slightly purplish hue.

512x512 is the only pixel size you should work with on the avatar. No matter what the pixel size of the original texture is - 1024, 512, 256, etc. - it gets baked at 512x512. Resizing should be done within your image editor.

Something else that might help:

Is the hardness of your paintbrush set to 100? Try turning it down so the edges are softer, and then making the alpha mask for the item by making a layer mask based on the opacity of your item, and save that to the alpha channel.

If this method produces white lines around the edge, as it is wont to, bleed the colour out over the edge of your design, so that it goes past the edges defined on the alpha mask.

It's worth upgrading to PSP9 if you can. Get the trial version.

Thank you all for your responses. I have already had better results with your suggestions.