Severe clipping during house-building

I am in the process of throwing together a little hideout for myself, and I've noticed something extremely annoying when putting the walls and floors together. The pieces appear to be clipping over one another constantly, depending on my viewing angle. Lining up the textures hasn't helped. Is it because I'm not making the walls thick enough (yes, for the time being I'm only using 0.25m thick walls, lol), or does it have something to do with the textures?

I have this same frustrating problem, Konval. If anything, it appears to me that thicker walls make it worse. I'd certainly like to see any tips on reducing this problem

Sounds like z-fighting. are you talking about how two overlapping prims will cause texture flickering?

Your description is a litte vague. "Clipping over each other" could mean all sorts of things. I'd guess you're either seeing Z-fighting, as Daniel suggests, or you're seeing the alpha sorting glitch.

Z-fighting happens when two or more surfaces occupy the exact same space at the same time. The renderer has no way of determining which one to draw in front, so it flips between them from frame to frame. The result is a flickering effect. To solve the problem, simply build more carefully and more cleanly. In RL, you couldn't put two objects in the same space ever, so don't do it in SL either. Easy enough.

If it's the alpha sorting glitch, that has to do with using 32-bit textures improperly. When two or more of them overlap in close proximity in 3D space, the renderer has trouble determining which one to draw first. In most cases, the surface whose center point is physically closest to the camera will be drawn as "in front", and the other(s) will be "in back". As you move the camera, the relative distances can change, and the objects can appear to flip flop back and forth in space. At times, you'll see right through the object that you think is in front to see the object that you think is in back. The computer's definition of front and back is different from yours.

The glitch is an issue with OpenGL, and affects just about all 3D applications in existence, from video games to professional 3D modeling programs. To avoid it, texture more carefully. Use 32-bit textures only when and where you absolutely positively must have transparency. Use 24-bit textures for everything else.

If it's not either of those things, then you'll need to explain further. Perhaps post a picture?

Beg your pardon, I should have explained it in more clarity. But it certainly sounds like z-fighting to me. I hadn't taken into account that you couldn't make two objects occupy the same location---it isn't RL afterall, lol---but I suppose I'll have to fine-tune each of the intersecting planes. Ugh.

If redesigning isn't feasible, you can cheat by making one of the prims very slightly thinner, or move it very slightly on an axis perpendicular to the plane where you're seeing fighting.

This will prevent z-fighting at close distance, but it will still happen, you'll just have to be further away to see it. Ideally - don't overlap parallel faces of prims!

I've actually used z-fighting to my advantage, it tells me that my walls are precisely lined up, then I taper one inward ever so slightly fixing both the seam and the flicker at the same time. With the thinner walls this may be a bit more touchy, so you'd want to edit the taper by hand, like .05 or something. just enough to kill the clip or flicker. good luck!

Can I ask how you can tell whether you have a 32-bit texture? I know how to assure it is when I create it myself, but where do I look when it's a texture I bought in-world?

put it on a prim

put that prim in front of a semi-transparent pri (Meaning part of it is see through, no tall of it is partially opaque)

Move your view around, and see if you can see through the first prim onto any of the texture behind it.

If it is, its 32 bit.

If not, most likely isnt, though.. can just be sorting properly right then for some reason ^^

This site may help. I found it very helpful in learning to build.

http://www.shiny-life.com/2007/10/21/top10-second-life-building-tips/

Two easy ways to tell:

1. If it has any transparency in it at all, it's 32-bit.

2. If it doesn't have any visible transparency, but it were saved incorrectly, it might still be 32-bit. To find out for certain, put it on a prim, select the prim, and press ctrl-alt-shift-T. SL will then report to you the size and bit depth of all textures in your current selection. If you've got more than one texture on the same prim, and you want to know about just one of them, turn on Select Texture in the editor, click on just the one surface, and then press ctrl-alt-shift-T.

ooooh...useful ^^

also instead of matching corners by setting it next to the corner, and hassling with texture offsets for the corner, you can make walls out of 'prim paper'... which is made by dimpling a sphere to .49 & .51 convert to box, set z to .01
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