texture compromise at i live in science land

texture compromise

i guess this week turned into a texture themed one and i’m not sure why. when i was in Second Life i was big into using textures but when i came over to OpenSim i think two factors made me shy away from textures. first i did not have my “go to” textures that i had collected and created over a few years of being in Second Life and secondly, it seemed that textures became easily corrupted back in the OpenSim 0.6.7 days. maybe having to build everything i wanted from scratch was a factor too, many of the things i had inSL were bought items that came nicely textured

on top of that, we moved three times in OpenSim – from a private grid with Reaction Grid to a grid attached to the main Reaction Grid grid to SimHost. i guess it was easier to just reduce texture use and subQuark likes the “purity” of building with only native tools in OpenSim so that also reinforced my new attitude

like many things, this texture dealio in my head is like a pendulum swinging and now i am leaning toward increased usage of textures (man, that is one sloooow swinging pendulum!)

thank goodness for you though!

i tend to be pretty black and white and am either “on” or “off”. not many shades of gray in my world (like soup is supposed to be hot – what’s with “chilled summer soups”?) =D

the post the other day, to texture or not to texture, resulted in some great comments which helped me frame my perspective in a more balanced manner than if i was left to my own devices (see, i really do value what you say and it does help create who Ener Hax is – thanks!). that post illustrated my dilemma with a landfill compactor and i showed it as it has been sitting for a year with absolutely no imported textures contrasted with a version having 16 textures. it took about an hour to modify textures from cgtextures.com and apply them and i thought it was reasonable that their total file size was 444 KB

using the combined advice you offered, i decided to try again and this time i spent 20 minutes and used four textures totalling 59 KB (first image below). i think the end result is pretty close (the missing signs really stand out though) and considering it took a third of the time, a quarter of the textures, and only 13% the total file size, i think being “middle of the road” may suit me

thanks for your advice! =)

light coloured textures mean easy colour matching in-world & wider use

the original shiny Tonka toy look

the 16 texture version - i do like the signage

the compromise - 33% the time & 13% the texture load - could easily be grungier with the same textures

left to right - 0 textures, 16 textures, and 4 textures

texture detail of white tread plate from the top pic above coloured orange in-world

written by Ener Hax

February 9th, 2012 at 7:05 am

posted in OpenSim

tagged with textures

It is amazing what you can do when you try and minimise things. You can really get some great savings in space, time and data loads when you do that. However, the time cost of doing this can make a project take much longer than it needs to (or is practical).

Because of this the word “Compromise” is probably the most accurately used word, ever…

Paul

9 Feb 12 at 8:45 am

thanks Paul, you make me feel smart in this! =)

i guess compromise is a HUGE part of OpenSim – quality versus bandwidth, concurrency, viewer app vs. plugin, and on and on!

Ener Hax

9 Feb 12 at 9:18 am

Did you make the dozers? Those are cool. One thing I’ve never been that good at is building vehicles.

I remember my early SL days seeing a lot of the castles with such intricate detail…that when I was practicing building, it didn’t really absorb that it was texturing that provided the details…so I spent an enormous amount of time and prim allotment trying to use prims to create the details like rims and etchings, grooves, ledges, various shapes – and especially that fine detail carvings in the woodworks.

I felt like such a total retard when it finally clicked that those elements weren’t done using prims to detail, that was all texture images placed onto the prim surface!