Keeping a Single Side Transparent

Ok... I have a bunch of boxes and only one side is transparent, using an alpha texture. I want to be able to change the texture of the boxes multiple times WITHOUT losing the tranparent alpha texture side in the change, which always happens. So for example I highlight 3 boxes and change the texture to whatever.... bricks or something and that makes all the sides of all 3 boxes that texture. How do I do this and keep the single side transparent with the alpha texture??? It's making me crazy!

TIA!!!

Use the "Select texture" mode in the edit window to select only those prim faces where you want to change the texture (add to selection using shift click). Of course it's easier to just change the whole object and then drag the transparent texture back on the face where it was

Edit the prim, click select texture, the press shift and left click on the transparent side, this will leave all the other sides selected and deselect the texture you dont want to change, then drag the texture into the texture tab window.

Those are great suggestions ) THANKS! Any way that's easier because it's not 3 boxes, it's more like 60-70 and I can easily see myself changing textures at least 10 times. Maybe like a lock in the texturing window would be a kewl feature for future releases... Well any additional ideas if ya think of em would be awesome! THNX!

That's an awful lot of boxes. When you start talking large numbers like that you might want to think about a scripted solution.

You could put a script in each box that reacts to texture changes. When the alpha side changes, it puts the alpha texture back on it. As long as each box uses the same side for the alpha, one script would work. If the sides vary, you would have to customize the script for each of the different sides.

That would work... It is all the same side... I'm not much of a scripter though lol. How can I get it to react with the texture changes to make the one side stay alpha?

integer PRIM_SIDE = 0;

default
{
    changed(integer change)
    {
        if(change & CHANGED_TEXTURE)
        {
            llSetTexture("f54a0c32-3cd1-d49a-5b4f-7b792bebc204", PRIM_SIDE);
        }
    }
}

Drop this into a prim and edit the first line - replace 0 with the number of the side you want to keep transparent. If you don't know which side is which, just try it out or read more info here http://secondlife.com/badgeo/wakka.php?wakka=side

If you are going to go the script route, you would be better off using llSetAlpha instead.
Simply replace the llSetTexture line with

llSetAlpha(0.0, PRIM_SIDE);

this way your client doesn't have to waste time downloading an invisible texture, that side never appears as the grey-box-with-white-border, and - most importantly - I can never remember the UUIDs of my alpha textures, but "0.0" is easy

WOW! FANTASTIC!!! Can't wait to try it, thank you so much!