When to texture?

I'm trying to build my first house; forgive me for a newb question. I am making a wood house, using wood textures I created in "Wood Workshop," a very nifty wood-texture generator. I want windows on some but not all faces of the house, and to save prims I'm inclined to use alpha textures, which look pretty good to me. If I weren't worried about windows, I would think I would wait to texture until the frame of the house is complete, since the seams would be smoothest that way.

But if only some faces of the house are to have alpha textures, or if I use different alpha textures for different types of windows, then how do I texture such a house? One face at a time? Do people texture prims before they assemble them in the first place?

Thanks in advance!

Experiment. Thats really the only way you will adapt a style you are comfortable with. Im glad to see you concerned about texturing issues because I feel it is just as important or even more important to the quality appearance of a build. It seems like many treat textures as an after thought or chore and their build suffers because of it.

From my own experience, I texture the first prim entirely with my base texture and then make copies of that prim to assemble the house. It depends on the scope of the build of course, but this method keeps me from having to go back and texture everything from scratch. But, I find myself going back and looking at every face of the build anyway, because the texture repeats and offsets are very important to the finished build.

I like to have the entire prim textured because if you only texture the outside face, the inside bare textured part along the seams often peek through where the prims meet, even if it is perfectly aligned. If the inside of the prims are similar texture or color as the outside facing, it will hide your seams better.

"select texture" is your friend, dont be afraid to change a texture if its not working for you. Also, keep in mind that your offset and texture repeats can make a world of difference of how the finished texture application looks.

I hope you get a lot of tips and tricks on this thread. Its hard to find good texture chat

I got all excited about textures and didnt even answer your question, lol

If it were me, I would use a "complete blank" on the whole prim first so that it would remove the seams on linked pieces. Then I would "select texture" and apply the alpha windowed/wall to the face I want it to show on. Thats how I would start, if it didnt look quite right I would try something else.

One face, or one prim at a time, though not necessarily before assembling the prims. I like to do some coarse texturing with whatever semi-adequate texture happens to be on hand when the raw building is ready, to better visualize how it will look in non-plywood, and leave the real textures and detailled, face per face adjustments for last. Getting the details (offset, repetition etc) right for each prim can take a lot of time, and I don't enjoy redoing half of it when the prim details are finished.

Since you are going to use alpha textures for the windows, you might want to use one during the building as a placeholder and to see where the windows will be going, even if it's not the final texture you plan on using. This way, there's no danger of "forgetting" that a particular wall was supposed to have a window, and you will get a feeling for what the house will look like early on.

Another thing to consider with a window texture is that it won't look particularly good on the smaller sides of your prims - for example, if you have a 10x10x0.5 wall, on the 10x0.5 sides the window texture will be squashed beyond recognition. So if the edges of the windowed prims are visible, you pretty much will have to texture those face by face and use a solid wood texture for the exposed edge.

speaking in general about when to texture, I would recommend fairly early in the process. If you are going to be duplicating a prim, set up your textures on each side first, and then copy it... rather than having to do each one. Remember that if a texture is tiled 1x1 on the "big" side of the prim, you might need to tile it 1x0.2 on the thin side.

Texturing early is also useful for prim types like spheres -- so you can make sure you have rotated the prim appropriately given how the texture is squeezed at the poles...

but there is nothing wrong with creating the basic structure of your house and adding the window textures later.

everyone has their own basic style, whether it be how they work with numbers vs. mouse, or process techniques like this discussion

I, too like to texture early in the build process. It's more efficient, helps minimize tedious repetitious texture rotations when you drag copies of already textured prims (e.g house walls) to use elsewhere in the build. When it's time to do that final tweaking, don't forget the power that shading can give to the appearance of your build. Adding subtle shades of gray (or other colors) using the color palette, can really make the detail work of your build more visible. Best of luck and welcome to the fun!

depends what you are working on, but if you are going to be copying lots of components/peices its usualy easier to texture first then youd otn have to texture the same thing over and over again.

usualy i use a texture that will be on most of the build, like if it will be stucco or brick i will apply that first, then later i add more specific textures.

If you are using alpha window textures i would sugest applying those at least to test them out while buulding, make sure they arent stretching funny on the prim or whatever.

Experimenting is the key and getting comfortable with the little tricks you learn along the way.

Here is one trick I use on occasion. I have a pre-built home, all linked of course, that I want to redecorate with all new textures. I will use the edit texture window and make the entire thing a solid dark or light color. Then go around and change the windows, roof, walls, and floors to suit me. This insures all the seams have the same color and are well hidden. Like starting with a new canvas to paint on. And if the repeats look funny and didnt turn out right-- thank goodness for the Edit Link Part - whew!

Dont forget that when your using "select texture" that you can hold shift and select more than one. For example, if you have have not textured at all and you have a build ready, you can use "select texture" and click all the outside pieces and add a brick texture and it will go to all of them at once. You can also select four inside walls at once and apply your wallpaper texture.

I just noticed more than one comment about texturing "over and over" and this is a work around for that.