Creating a Business Sign

Can anyone help, I want to create a business sign. I want to import a texture to put on the sign but not sure how to do it, how do I put text on the sign?

Hi, theres no text editors in world, so you need to make the sign first outside of second life.

Once you make the sign, in photoshop or what have you, you go inworld to file>Upload texture. Its L$10 per upload.

Create a prim (You can click the build button on the bottom of your page to do this, or alternatively just go into edit mode), shape it to the size you want, and in the texture tab, put your texture there and you will see it on the prim.

Force "Bright" for best results, IMO.

You can also make the prim shiny, sometimes that looks nice on certain signs. But the shiny will override the 'bright' feature.

I hope that made sense, I`m not inworld so I couldnt see exactly how to do this.

Another skipped orientation? This seems to be getting more and more common. Not sure why.

To upload images to SL, simply click on the File menu at the top of the screen and then click Upload Image. It will cost you L$10 for every file you upload.




What paint program are you using to create your texture? Almost all will have a text tool of some sort.

My thoughts entirely.

I think Chosen you should answer this with go back to Help Island and check out the tutorials there or alternatively check out Ivory Towers.

Thanks for the great responses. I didn't skip orientation and have created other object, I was just having trouble getting text into my sign.

Ok then. It sounded like you were asking how to upload textures, but I guess I must have misread you on that. No big deal either way.

Are you still having trouble with the text? If so, I'll ask again, what paint program are you using?

Signs are the easiest texture to upload.
As long as you Have a drawing or paint program.

Gimp, photoshop, corel draw, illustrator photopaint, etc...

I do lots of signs for people.
Do all work in the program of choice.
Add your background texture. then use layers and add text and effects or what ever.
Then I will flatten the image layers. resize to 512x512 andsave as .tga file.

I use a Basic Template for signs as a photoshop cs3 file.
different layers and then work it that way.
always saving the orginal sign as Photoshop layered file before flattening and saving as tga.

Cathiee

I'd say 512x512 is a probably bit large for most signage purposes, esepcially if the aspect ratio of the sign is not square. I'd go with 256x256 for most squre signs and either 128x256 or 256x512 for rectangular ones. For signs that have nothing on them but text, you can go even smaller.

Remember, every time you put a 512x512 on display, you're consuming either 768KB or 1MB (depending on bit depth) of video memory. For people running on 128 or 256 MB video cards, it doesn't take a whole lot of large textures like that to make a significant dent in performance. A 256x256 texture on the other hand uses just 192KB or 256KB of memory, so you can have 4-6 times as many on display before they make the same difference, and usually they look just as good.

As a general rule, only go with bigger sizes if you have a lot of fine text or other very tiny details that would become illegible at the smaller sizes.

there are freebies kits including text objects, of all letters and numbers, availeble throughout the world. You could create the sign (And texture it) and then place these objects on the signs for your wordage. It should allow the same exact texture, and many signs, without uploading hundreds of textures. The only problem is that it takes away from your prim limit

i whole haetly argee with you but did run into one instance where i needed the sign to be 512 by 512 i was making a sign that was the gold leaf letter ing on a shop window and it was just not clear enough in 256 of course now it takes forever to load so that pisses me off i'm just not happy with that window yet but yea i'm slowly working on redoing all my placecards and other signage and i do see a big differance in how long it takes for the texture load when you tp much much faster at 256soem of the really simple sign i have started using 128 by 256 and that works well

I think it's a bit harsh of you guys to expect Avatars to graduate from Orientation Freakin' Island knowing how to upload a texture with customized text on it, and apply it to a properly sized prim.

I was very proud of myself figuring out how to get the torch out of my hand.

I find this all very amusing...just so you guys know.

We're a funny bunch of little monkeys to someone as smart as you, aren't we?

Excuse me? How was anything I said remotely harsh? All I said was that skipping orientation seems to be growing more and more common, and that I'm not sure why. Any interpretation beyond the literal was yours and yours alone. Notice I did take the time to explain how to do the "freakin'" upload.

In any case, the instructions for how to upload stuff are explained in orientation, so anyone who actually does bother to "graduate", meaning actually read all the instructions before leaving, will know how to do it. Clearly, people who don't do the reading are not graduates, but dropouts. There is a difference.

So yes, I do expect "graduates" to know the basics. I don't expect anything from dropouts.


I never said I expected this person, or anyone else, to know how to put text onto a texture. Most people coming into SL for the first time have never done any graphics work whatsoever, which is precisely why I asked the OP here what paint program he/she is using (twice). Had I gotten an answer to that question, I would have explained how the text tool works in the appropriate program.

How does any of that fit the definition of "expecting someone to know it already"?



I never said I expected this either. You've got quite a talent for putting words in people's mouths, don't you?

In any case, the OP did not ask how to apply a texture to a prim or how to size a prim. He/she simply asked how to upload a file, and how to put text on an image, nothing more, nothing less.


Glad to hear it.

Look, if what you're trying to say here is that orientation is not as simple as it could be, then I completely agree with you. It's been a challenge in SL for a very long time to find the right balance between necessary instruction and information-overload, and to find ways to presenting the material in an inviting manner so that people will be most likely actually to read it. It's not an easy task. If you think you can design a better orientation, by all means do so, and present it to LL, and to all the development companies.

That having been said, when the information is there, and someone chooses not to read it, you can't blame anyone but that person. That doesn't mean that the rest of us aren't willing to take a minute to explain though. Some of us, in fact, spend considerable time volunteering every single day to give free instruction, all without ever asking for thanks or reward in any way.

I don't think it's too much to ask that we not be accused of things or called names for our efforts. Ask yourself if it really makes sense that the type of person who would freely volunteer to help another would also be so "harsh" as you seem to want to believe, or if it's just possible that whatever negative tone you thought you heard when you read all this was in your own mind.



EDIT: Hmm, that's weird. The post I quoted disappeared as soon as I posted this. Moderator intervention, perhaps? Sorry if this seems out of context now. Mods, if you did delete that one, feel free to delete this one too since it's not relevant anymore.

Wow, I wouldn't get too up in arms about the comment, Chosen. The term "a bit harsh" shouldn't cause any offense.

Ironically, I deleted the comment earlier, having no idea you were responding to it, after thinking about how people take things around here. So I don't have any real grounds to defend or discuss it.

See my followup, Chosen. Honestly, no intent to make your post look bad -- just unfortunate timing. You have the ability to delete your own responses.

Why a tga file if it's just a sign? I made some signage for the store I'm opening and I just did a Save For Web and made it into a jpg. Much, much smaller file size and it looks fine for what I need.

The file size on your own hard drive is irrelevant. All images are converted to JPEG2000 at the time of upload. You never actually upload your source file at all.

A JPEG2000 sourced from a JPEG will come out exactly the same size as one sourced from a TGA. What is relevant for determining that ultimage size of the texture is the number of actual pixels in the image, the bit depth, and to a lesser degree, the contrast. See the sticky on file formats at the top of the forum for more information on this.

As for looking fine, it very well might look OK by your own standards, but the fact is a texture sourced from a JPEG will never look as sharp as one sourced from a TGA. If you save out copies of an image in both formats and examine them closely, you will find artifacting in the JPEG that will not be present in the TGA. Those artifacts will then be amplified when the JPEG is converted to JPEG2000 for upload.

In particular, JPEG is really lousy at dealing with hard edges, which makes it far from ideal for text. If you're not inclined to notice such things, or even if you are but you're simply not concerned, that's certainly your prerogative. But since you did ask why, that's why.