llSetTextureUpdateChange Paint on texture?

Hi ALL,

Is there any way/possiblibility to paint/draw lines pixels/change alpha on existing prim's texture?

I mean something which would be called llSetTextureUpdate which would work similar to existing textureanimation function applied to downloaded texture?
Once texture is loaded and this new script function would be called, it would
run texture drawings changes and UPDATEs would be applied at once at each client after his SL client application downloaded jpg2000 texture and painted frame on prim's side.

For the beginning function call should be able to contain line drawing from x,y with set color or alpha.

Iam asking for this as I LOVE SL and 3D capabilities it gives me for my 3D applications,
however i am missing basic user friendly 2d real life like terminal features.. 2D is part of 3D world and should not be forgoten as its easier to use in subdomain of 3D.

Currently I saw pppl showing up to 6 characters per prim coze they could not script paint on the texture this is also causing also more reasouces usage by entire system and for user it means slow "on prim screen" visualisation. This would alo enable speed up entire system as some textures can be painted and used instead of beeing only raster downloaded.


Let me know your view on this topic so if this would be greatly desired .

AFAIK, no, this is not possible.

Edit: it's possible to change the alpha level of a prim's face, but it's for the *whole face*.

best way to acheive this look is to make the texture outside of SL

use paint or something similar

SL can import textures in BMP, TGA, JPG, JPEG extensions as i recall, but TGA is the preferred format

so make a texture, then import it. simple as that.

if you want to draw lines on top of an existing texture that you have full rights to (ie: transfer, copy, modify) you may export that texture from SL to your hard drive to edit outside of the SL client. to do this, simply open your texture so that you can see the image, go to your file menu and choose Save Texture As...

thank you for reply,

Raeyan Aldrich - It is not a problem of changing texture manual way .. problem is if you need to automate it, make quick change on texture to show changed information which can have tousands of permutations.

For example I want to show visitor BBC rss news...

Showing text floating above object is not user friendly solution and goes way away from user's RL 3D world perception/expectation... which is main factor why SL is atractive as users understands it nativly as they grown in RL 3D domain.

So lets go back to BBS rss news feed rendering, what methods are possible right now:

1.Set Texture on prim with PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_URL and run Flash with rss reading (already done in-world)

2.Set Texture on prim with PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_URL which downloads JPG
as a texture .. JPG can be autogenerated on our web server to display lates RSS news.(already done in-world to show flicker images based on tags)

3.create prim per character ( each prim would have one character texture)

4.create combination of characters as set of areas on big texture (more texture because of texture size limit woudl be necessary) and display needed combination on prim and connect more prims to create sentences. (DONE i saw up to 6 characters per prim )

5. create per character object and simply REZ them in sequence they apear in news sentence.

6. HUD solution


Cons of above solutions:
5-is prims most extensive most parcel owners would be able to aford it
4- is cumbersome slow as SL client need to download big textures JPG2000 loading effect is causing par of sentence look blury etc.. not consistent solution
3- still prim extensive
2- JPG has to be generated each time SL avatar request a action... LAG due to jpg download speeds
1- No interaction possible -limitation of QuickTime ( its possible via transfering commands to your webserver and then pulling them from flash script but it would be slow)
6- not expected by user - User doesnt have experience of wearing any HUD system in real life so this solution is not USer friendly. its liek sitting int the different car manufacturer each time with different controls... confusing

+All solutions which requires quicktime are not robust solution as they require:
-hit play button on movie control
-user has to enable flash playing in QuickTime which is by default OFF


All I am trying to say is that by adding painting/drawing capabilities by script to displayed texture would add IMHO huge benefits for SL script applications and increase usage of 2d in 3d enviroment. That means we will be able to make 2d application in SL much easier with added 3d feel when needed/usefull for client.

I understand the points you're making.

The correct process for such things is to put them into feature suggestion and votes. It can also be a good idea to chat to Kelly if you can ever get him in world, he's likely to be able to fairly quickly say whether it's at all likely to be doable - that isn't the same as it will be done, but gives you an idea of feasability.

My first thought... it's unlikely from the way things are structured, but who knows. I agree it would add value, but there are hundreds of other things that can and will, and are on the list too.

Eloise Pasteur thanks for reply.

I understand that SL have tones of features requests especially with more ppl joining ==more ideas and SL is about "your world your imagination" IMHO this is what drives SL
success:"not having final goal".. so ppl can create world to their needs. This includes new API features as well. I like that lindens listens.. I was in SL 2 y ago and had idea about interconecting RL bussineses to SL... however at that time I was missing llhttprequest. Now i see mature API which is doable for most needs and even if script painting on texture wouldnt be implemented there are workarounds(need more prims.


Beeing dev in rl and receiving features request from customers for not related apps makes me think more before posting SL-API feature request...
first I would like to know what other SL devs think.

thanks Llauren Mandelbrot ,

Yep "XyText". is good option.

I was thinking more about 7th workaround...: what about particle emmiter which would drop text characters textured particles. I think it might be doable with one small problem: all characters will be always facing user wherever he moves.

Create Texture inside SL? Only the Snapshot feature.
Write graphic words inside Secondlife? I know two ways to do that, and one is prewriting the entire ABC into texture files and then displaying one by one like Xytext, the other way is to simulate a LCD display, by turning objects alpha on or off .

If you want to do some random psycho textures, there is another way, create various grayscale textures with alpha channels and create various prims and put them like layers one over another so the transparent part of one texture will reveal the under object with another texture, play with texture offset, rotate and colour randomly that will ensure you a large ammount of random textures (I have seen things like that as dance floors)

Just to clarify all i want is fastly show text on board prim to change text.
Right now I found that even if there was script function to paint on texture it would be executed in land simulator and texture would get downloaded by client so it would have desired effect ... real sollution would be texture addon ->vector language defined texture.
Like that script or user will be able to update texture at client side just by adding one vector to texture "svg" definition.

So fast notice boards.. boards for lecturer, 2d multigames, RSS viewer vissible immediatelly all would be possible.

Before posting as suggestion iam waiting for more comments. For now iam doing it with prim expensive way.. i creating 1-2 non textured prims per character so at least i can display imemdiatelly 128 characters on my land which reminds me i need bigger land.

Great topic about something I posted here: http://bloghud.com/id/2514

I have been wanting to get text from the web/rss to prims for a while (I did a flash based RSS news and slideshow viewer)

I am currently wondering if I was create an 'LCD' (SLCD) object - like one characted on a calculator and write sripts to tell it what 'lights' to light up, to display the approprite charecter. I could do this by first having a notecard which had the appropriate binary codes for each character supported. Then I would use this to tell the SLCD what to light up.

Would this be more cpu intensive? ie: telling a prim (many - each with a script) what colour to be - or, is telling a prim (less of them) what texture to load (each character) easier on the servers?


I'd love to hear some insight before I try this out - even then I (thin k I) would have to call a liason, with the required toolset to tell me the script load.

cheers,
Koz

Hi Koz,

Interesting idea, Oe suggested similar LCD approach by switching prims alpha on and off i would say its same speed as changing colors.
From my experience changing colors is much much faster especially because prims in SL been made to tackle problem with internet bandwidth so packets from simulators are just sending changed/added prims states postition and all parameters u can set on them instead of extensive mash details found in desktop 3D modelers. Changing color should be faster mainly because client doesnt need to precache texture first. Once it has a texture difference should be unsignificant.

How many prims you will need with LCD approach per character?
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If I count properly its 14 prims maybe it can be done with less but still making linked prims per real 3D character would take max 2-4 prims. So i think its better to create characters prim instead. Speedwise I found that once these characters are rezzed in client it takes "no time" to rezz them again at different position. For increased speed I am not texturing them just using color.

If you want texture approach check speed and usability of "XyText".

Made a full production whiteboard (with other features) that basically does what xytext does, only better, faster, with a single character texture. Also, it's as efficient as you're going to get on a character-per-prim basis. It currently reads live chat, notecards, plays with slides, video.. But the underlying frontend technology can be used for all sorts of other things (if you want to give me some ideas ).

Total character count and prims per board:
900 character model - 199 prims
600 character model - 138 prims
300 character model - 77 prims

Check it out in Puea (96, 107, 27) - K.R. Engineering Headquarters.

It's on display with slideshow mode open. It's reading from a notecard simultaneously as well, and appending text. You can control it by clicking on it.. The sim's performance has been in the gutter lately though, so it probably won't work miracles while you're there. But if text-appending is turned off (so that new lines of text from chat or from the notecard erase existing text) it runs quite fast, even for being in bad performance conditions.

If you have questions, shoot me an IM.

Tyken Hightower , thank you. I checked your displays.. cool fastest I saw in second life... even tho... now i know its possible just dont know how. Do i need to buy one to reverse engineer?

As u saying u use "...single character texture..". I saw them disapearing 4 -3 chars at once so you somehow place 4 textures on one prim face?

300 chars per 77 prims ... hmm how its done without texture with char combination?

Well, if you're just going to try to copy the code, you could at least buy one.

Ok i will buy one to reverse eng. it, u deserve it ! Thanx.

BTW I did 3d characters(1-3prim per char) displaying mainly for any 3d object to be identified based on its distinguishable shape and/or for rss news scrolling around earth globe.
I need 2d board with easy/fast text chaning mainly for quick messaging to/from my htc mobile. I hate any interfaces where user has to learn something .. it has to be natural as real life ... and within SL we can take advantage that user understand similar RL interfaces naturally.

As in town hall on 20th12.2006 was mentioned LL will try Q2-Q3 2007 to implement

html on prim

which would enable functionality i was missing . Thank You LL.

300 characters in 77 prims. the latest xy text I've seen ( http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/XyText_1.5 ) puts 10 characters per prim by using 2-character combinations and 5 faces per prim - so if it's one character per face, that makes it seem like 60 prims can display 300 characters. the other 17 prims can be doing the rest of the functionality and appearance improvement