maintaining resolution on skin texture

I created a texture for my head to test with, and am being frustrated by an apparent loss of resolution. The image looks crisp and detailed when viewed directly, but when applied to my avatar it looks blurred and muddy. Does anyone know why this would be?

How much loss of detail are you talking about? Is it consistent over the entire head (i.e. under the chin vs. the side of the cheek in front of the ear)? I would be more concerned with a blanket loss of detail over isolated loss of detail.

Sometimes unsharp masking can improve details on a wrapped texture. It may make the flat 512x512 texture look rather harsh where it's been applied, but fine once the texture is wrapped around the avatar.

It's typical for the polygons to distort and blur the texture when viewed as an image wrap. Some places are just not going to carry much detail (like the area under the chin where the Adam's Apple would be). Some places will pick up quite a bit of detail (like the cheeks and forehead) because of the real estate given to them on the UVW.

I've come to expect a certain loss of detail when working with avatar textures. I rarely pay attention to the final flat 512x512 texture except on the avatar. I'm usually viewing a 2048x2048 pixel texture while working on it. It's much easier to control details when 16 pixels govern the behavior of one final pixel.

Namssor,
Are you saying then that you create your texture image in PS at 2048X2048, save as a new image (flattened, maybe) at 512X512, and then export that image as TGA?

Sorry if this seems like a stupid question. I'm a noob to SL and I just want to make sure I understand things properly.

-Pyxel

That is what Namssor is saying. It's a pretty simple rule of thumb for digital artmaking; work at a higher resolution than the final output, and reduce image size at the last minute for the final image.

I'll have to look again tonight at what is happening with my image. I was just wondering if there is something in SL that would automatically reduce the image resolution when applying an image as a skin, since the original 512 image appears to be more crisp and detailed than the avatar's face with the skin applied. The lips for example look very different in the texture image and on the avatar.

That's always the case. There's a definite sweet spot for the lip edges. If you stray outside of it then you get smearing around the edges. There's really nothing you can do to avoid that except to adjust feature placement so that problem areas don't have a lot of detail that makes the stretching and smearing obvious.

Awesome! Thanks. If you are using Photoshop, here is a tip: use filter>sharpen>unsharp mask. This could help you sharpen up images that you have scaled down in size. Also, there is a way for you to use unsharp mask non-destructively (in other words, you can play around with the 'level' of sharpening without having to undo all the time). Here's how:

COPY the layer you want sharpened (like the texture layer, or whatever) into a new layer above it. Now on the NEWLY COPIED layer, choose FILTER>SHARPEN>UNSHARP MASK. For the settings, go ahead and MAX out the AMOUNT (500%), and keep the RADIUS at 1px and the THRESHOLD at 0. Hit OK, and in the LAYERS pallet, change the BLENDING MODE to LUMINOSITY. Once you do that, your texture may look really, really sharp, but never fear! Now reduce the OPACITY of the sharpened layer all the way to 0%. Now your image looks like it did before you sharpened it, right? Right. All you have to do now is bump the opacity up until you think your image crispness is where you want it. I typically wind up anywhere from 20% - 40% opacity. The cool thing is, if you happen to import the tga into SL and it still looks a little too fuzzy (overall) or too pixelated, you can come back to the file and simply change the opacity! You'll add or subtract as much sharpness as you want!

Neat, huh?

- Pyxel

Thanks Namssor for the suggestion of using unsharp mask on details. That had barely any visible effect within Photoshop, but made a huge difference on the av when I applied the texture. Running the filter over the whole image gave an ugly result, but when I lassoed a selection around just the lips the filter helped a great deal. After years of texturing 3D models, I still get tricked sometimes by the difference in appearance between viewing the image directly and looking at it applied to a character.

In some ways experience can work against you in here since the av was mapped to make it easy for novices to understand rather than for best quality and consistent poly scale.

You're welcome. Unsharp Mask has helped me quite a bit too.

BTW, I use your preview tool all the time now with skinning. It's helped me produce stuff much faster!