Simple texture editing / Text overlay / etc.

Maybe this has been mentioned before, maybe not, but I was thinking last night that it would be nice if there was a very simple texture edit function in the client.

For example, say I'm working on a building of some kind and I need to create a simple sign, or perhaps a descriptive display for a store of some kind "Mens Clothing", "Ladies Clothing", "Shoes", etc... It would be nice if we had the ability to, say, create a new blank texture in a colour of our choice, or duplicate an existing texture map, and then add some simple text to it, choosing from a handful of fonts (simple helvetica, times roman, etc), sizes, styles (regular, bold, italic, outlined, underlined, etc) and effects (glow, drop shadow, etc), *maybe* even a basic wingdings font of some kind, then saving it once we're done and adding that texture to our objects.

It's a very simple task to load up Paintshop/Photoshop/etc. and create these textures, but those programs can take up precious RAM sometimes (I have 1 gig of RAM so I'm not worried, hehe), and some people have problems with Alt+Tabbing in and out of Windows, so I think it would be nice if we could quickly and easily add text details from within the client.



And as far as actually editing the textures, maybe some other simple functions could be added. Things such as quick lightening or darkening of textures (yes you could change it's colour to grey to make it darker, but sometimes that's not appropriate). Perhaps a simple colour invert/negative for the wackier stuff?

Maybe some texture sizing ability also? Say I bring in a handful of big textures @ 512 x 512 and then realise that they could be shrunk down to 256 x 256 without any noticeable difference, which would save on the amount of time it took to download those textures, speeding up my objects.... but what if I don't want to spend the $50 again to re-upload all the modified versions after I've re-saved them from Photoshop/Paintshop?


Whaddya think? I'm a programmer so I know that the functions I've mentioned here aren't really that difficult to code, certainly not for programmers of the Linden caliber, hehe. I do also fully understand that in the grand scheme of things there are many other more important things to work on. But I think things like this could certainly go a long way in making SL feel that little bit more friendly to use, y'know?


Lemme know if you have any thoughts.

I agree. Being able to make a simple sign or drawing on the fly would be nice. Besides, I suck with Paintshop

you cant be good at everything.

Help the economy, hire someone!
I can't script a lick so I pay scripters (or barter) for what I need.

I would like to be able to open certain applications inside the client, so I don't have to alt tab. It would be nice if there was a 'Run...' command in the file menu, but I would settle for specific programs like Paint, Calculator, Textpad.

Of course I don't even think that is really possible, but it would be nice.

i think the text overlay feature (at least) would be invaluable. There have been times when Yuniq and I have had to upload $30, $40, or $50 in textures, just for the same style sign that says different things. With a text overlay, we would just be able to create signs, give them the same background texture (a $10 upload), and do a text overlay on each one, thus saving $20-$40. for us personally, it isn't a terrible chunk of change , but i know for some people who are strapped for cash, it would be so much easier.

I think no matter what they're gonna have to charge for new textures because it takes up server resources, even if they were to be made in game. But it still would be nice to be able to.

and MJ, I hear ya. I actually have a clothing project that I want to pay someone for, but not until they fix the geforce-driver-broken-avatar problem (i'm too lazy to go back to the old drivers )