Working on a lifes dream

I know this is kinda hokey, but one of my true lifes dreams is the little house on the water surounded by a white picket fence. So to start my dream in SL, I bought some land, on the water of course, and started to build my fence. I've put up about 10 meters of fence, about 50 individual slats so far. The problem is, each of these slats costs $10, plust the taxes to come. I can see that to surround just the 3 sides of my property is going to get pretty expensive. I know I could make one solid wall at the correct height and put "fake" slat lines on it, but I really like the effect of light between the individual slats, not to mention how realistic they look.

So, after saying all that, I have two questions......

1. Is there another way to build that will give the effect of individual slats without the expense, or

2. Once the fence is built, is there a way to link it all together so it is only one object at say $100 vs 400 individual objects at $10 each ??

Tracey

Alpha.

What you want to do is create a texture with alpha channel so there are transparent areas.

This could be as simple as one upright board with one crossboard -- then the alpha channel would be the non-board areas of the texture. Or it could be a larger section of your fence -- 10 uprights connected with one horizontal board. Again, the non-board sections of your image would be the transparent portion.

This image would have to be a .tga 32 bit.

Then you'd create a primitive say 10 m long by however tall and however deep you wanted it and apply your fence texture to it.

Or OH! If 10m (or smaller on any of the sides) would be big enough for you, you could create a box 10m by however tall, etc. then hollow it out to 90 or 95% and drop it in place around your house. That would only be ONE object.

I'm afraid I can't give you step by steps for creating the tga with alpha, but you've got a couple of choices:

1) ask the texture $gods for better instructions
2) ask one of the texture $gods to create this image for you (probably be cheaper if you give them the base image to work with and all they had to do was the alpha channel and upload it for you)

I think this would work, anyway.

I'm sure someone will pipe up and tell us if I'm completely off base, or if there's an easier way to achieve what you want.

#!

PS. I don't think it's even a little hokey!

Another option is to release the picket fence to the public domain.

Tools -> Release Object

Whenever you release a primitive to public you will be refunded the $10 it took to instatiate it (and you won't be taxed on it).

Of course, others can claim public objects (for $10 a primitive) or delete them, or modify them. However, if they are on your property, most of the users won't notice they're public. And I doubt any of the users would actually mess with them.

I have a alpha channel texture of a simple white picket fence, I need to modify it slightly. Your more than welcome to a copy when I'm online.

Yes cool if you can throw one my way, that would be cool. Id even pay you for it.

they can only modify them if you have set modify permission before you release them to public...unless it has changed in the last two weeks that is. however anyone can delete them, even if they cannot move or modify them.

Thanks Paul.......that would be great. However, I am more than willing to pay for it. Didn't see you tonigght, maybe tomorrow.

Hi, that sounded like fun to make. Anyway, here is my attempt at a picket fence. It's longer/taller than it should be, but just make the section shorter than the texture but tile it one time on the face. It should work. I think it'll cover between posts. Anyway, it was fun to make, here it is, hope it looks ok to you?

Right click and chose save, then load it up into the world.
http://www.ingiebee.com/SL/picket.tga

Oh, shoot, someone told me not to use compression, but I'm gonna check it out tomorrow if it can be used. If you want to try it, here is a compressed version:
http://www.ingiebee.com/SL/picket2.tga

I'm going to try making a fence too, when they open up again, I'll make it public domain

Have fun, love Ingie

You guys are just to nice. Thank you...thank you...THANK YOU. I don't know what else to say.

I put fences on my property, used a cube prim, made as flat as possible (.010) or something. And they look good... except you can see the edge of the transparent object. Its not the texture... basically its look like I have a glass fence with a real fence painted on.

To get rid of the texture on the edges make it all transparent, 90%, and then use Select Texture and select the faces you want the fence to show and put the transparent back to 0.

Nice tip from a thread over two years old!

When I started reading this thread, I didn't realise it was so old, and was thinking how nice it was that people were being kind and helpful for a change. No derisory comments about newbie ignorance; no patronising remarks about how silly it was to dream about a white picket fence.

Strange how things change, isn't it?

I feel quite certain it is doomed now though.

'Tis a nice thread though and interesting to see how things were done back in the day.

Hehe, yeah, I did a double-take when I read the part about being taxed on each fence prim. It was nice to go back in time quite a bit. That was from beta, correct?

Anyway, as Ploy said the outer edges of the fence can be colored white (or other color) but the inner posts will still look two dimensional. Here's where you have to decide if the effect is good enough, or you want to pay for it in prims/tier.

Oh, and if you're doing a picket-style fence with tapered tops, the edges should end with squared-off posts (or tapered only on the inside), or the effect would be odd.

Thank you very much... can't wait to get home to fix it now. I swear there are a million little quirky things with building and scripting that are difficult to find out other than asking someone. Thanks for the patience.

I miss Tracey Kato. I was excited that she might be back and then let down this is just an old thread. It was nice to look back on how nice we all were to each other, once upon a time ago.

That is really cool... I had no idea. My first reaction was that I should take all the stuff that I've done that I give out for free and put their textures into the SL public domain. Then I read on...
Errr, that's a different kind of "public domain" than I was thinking of. Putting something into the public domain should be an irrevocable action, you shouldn't be able to "buy it back" like that, and what's the point of a "public domain" artwork that anyone can destroy all copies of just by finding the original.

Interesting and useful idea, but y'all shouldn't use a term that's really associated with copyright law for something that's really unrelated to copyright. Is that what LL is "officially" calling it, or were you just speaking loosely?

I don't think that's really fair selador... the Building and Design & Textures forums stay pretty friendly and civilized don't you think?

Forseti,

I tend to look use the New Posts button, so I don't necessarily notice which forums individual postings come from.