PIC, who or what are you?

So, while setting up a vendor, which a friend has partially done for me.

I took a picture of myself wearing a t-shirt, downloaded it, edited it in photoshop,
saved it and uploaded it to sl.

Well... the pictures my friend had taken had a blue square icon next to them,
while mine were mere textures.

Scratches head.

Vendor didn't like them.

What are these "picture" files really? just a bmp or something?

Wolfie!

All pictures uploaded from your computer will be seen as textures. Snapshots have the picture icon you mentioned.

The texture will function as a photo, however. The photo of me in these forums, it is a snapshot that was saved to my computer and cropped to fit the dimensions to be used as a forum avatar. I have also used it in my on-line profiles.

I hope this helps you?

Jen

Doesn't help.

The vendor script requires a pic, while photos of our avatars are fine with a texture.
I'd like sl to speak english... JPG GIF BMP without dumbing it down.

How is a PIC different from a jpg/bmp/gif?

How can you download it, and re-upload and the image is still "magically" a "pic"
when you edit and re-upload it's merely a texture.

Or is there something I'm missing as to where these pics emenate from?

Wolfie!

sometimes, you just have to rename the texture. So your texture becomes "mePIC" or some such. Depends upon the vendor. The vendor isn't looking for a particular file format, but a naming convention so that the script "knows" what items are pictures and what items are notes, inventory, and so on,

sometimes perhaps, alas, not in mine.

Wolfie!

might help to know the vendor you are using or contact the creator and ask them

hard to know exactly what is wanted when we do not know what it is wanted for

Re. the naming convention:
It's not enough to just add "PIC" to the name of the texture. The name also has to be the same as the item it relates to. And iirc, PIC has to be in caps.

Example:
You want to sell an object called "Great_Stuff".
The photo of the object has to be named "Great_StuffPIC". "This_is_photo_of_stuffPIC" won't cut it.

Is there a ReadMe file in the vendor?

No, that's not what I'm doing.

I have my vendor set like this:

t_shirt

t_shirtPIC

now it's ok if the files are so called "snapshots"
but if it's a "texture" it won't work... even if I shove a "PIC" on the end of it's
name, it remains a texture.

Rather like if I renamed a TXT file called "michael jacksons thriller" to MP3 and
hoped that it would spontaniously become a music file.

What I think I need is some kind of script which turns textures into the snapshot
format, whatever it is.

Wolfie!

err set the permissions the same as a snapshot? snapshots are just like textures

I had problems recently with a vendor not displaying the textures due to a minor scripting booboo (probably due to the Linden lab bugs we are experiencing as I had been using those vendors previously) suddenly it would not display my textures

anyhow make the textures have full permissions sometimes that is the problem

other then that it sounds like the person who wrote the instructions on set up is not being clear? also the vendor should not care if its a jpeg or a bitmap..

lastly i believe the snapshots are bitmaps hehe

BMP?

Yes I had the same thought, but no.

I uploaded an image as a BMP in various formats, nothing, always a damn texture.

I also tried jpeg and tga.

The vendor recieves the texture and it reminds me of "Little Britain".

"Computer says No".

Wolfie!

*cringe*

spelling mistake.

*ducks*

Wolfie!

Wolfie, no matter what format you up load an image it is convert to another standard fomat on the server side. The little Blue icon you are talking about is a snap shot taken in world. These can only be taken in world. And textures which are upload have the rainbow checker patter. You cannot change the item type. So if the vendor only take one or the other I'm afraid you are stuck. You could take the uploaded texture apply it to a box and take a snap shot of that. But then you are talking 2nd gen there and can get ugly. or wear a box on your center HUD attachment and apply the texture to that. Take a snap shot of that with the Show HUD object in snapshop box checked.

Hi Wolfie,

1: There is absolutely NO format difference between a "Snapshot" and a "Texture". Both are stored server-side as JPEG 2000 format files. Both are interchangable in ALL SL functions. The ONLY difference is what icon shows, and where they initially are stored. The icon just tells you "This originated in-world and never left" in the case of a snapshot, or "At some point this was imported into SL" in the case of a texture. You can export a snapshot, and import it back to SL to give it the texture icon, but there is no way to give an imported texture a snapshot icon. Doing this doesn't change the file format at all. Shapshots default to your Photos folder, whereas imported textures default to your Textures folder.

2: If you're trying to access either sort of image via a menu dialog of some sort, you MAY need to move the image from the textures folder to the photos folder, or vice versa. Usually people encounter this when they are rying to use the building tools to put an in-world snapshot on a prim. They find they can't see the snapshot to choose it until they move the snapshot to the textures folder.

3: When importing textures into SL, I strongly advise you to save them as Targa format (*.tga files) in your graphics program before you import. 32-bit tga for stuff with an alpha channel for transparency, and 24-bit tga for things like your retouched snapshot, that don't need transparency. The JPEG format can also be used if there is no transparency, but it is not recommended, as the image quality doesn't come through quite as well. DO NOT use other formats, and DO NOT use compression! SL is limited as to what formats in can successfully import, and it's going to convert anything you import to a JPEG 2000 file for in-world use anyway. (When you export a snapshot or a texture, it converts to *.tga format.) The format you saved the file as is probably the problem here.

4: Before you import a file, make sure it is resized to one of the following dimensions in each direction, in pixels: 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, or 1024. They don't have to be square, but any other dimensions will get re-sized to the nearest one of these choices, and SL does a worse job of resizing than your graphics program will.

What vendor system are you using, precisely? I've used a lot of different ones, and they DO have different naming conventions that they require, as well as different methods for getting the files into the vendor.

as has been pointed out it will always be a texture that is the one and only option in SL unless its a snapshot saved in SL which I was under the impression doesn't exist any longer have not tried lately so i am not sure on that one

also many people have said what are the instructions?

upload as tga or jpeg not bitmap lol i was just saying that I thought I remembered them being stored once upon a time (when I email a "postcard" which is a snapshot it coming out as bitmap)

Anyhow there is no PIC aside from this at this point it would be a good idea to post the instructions for the vendor I suspect as do others it has to do with "how" they want the texture/snapshot indicated or how you are uploading it

there are only really two choices in SL tga for 99.999999 % of stuff or if your wierd like me when i make a sign or something I use jpeg (I also believe that i use jpegs in vendors sometimes hehe)

but honestly there is not a whole lot of choice in SL its tga or jpeg but mostly TGA there is really no snapshot

uncompressed TGA files which may or may not require a transparency channel depending on what your doing that's it very simple

Anyhow at this point i would say for further help please post the instructions cause everyone has pretty much said the same thing

you can't upload or make a snapshot its TGA or JPEG and its probably a naming convention for the vendor hehe