Texture Tutorial and stores, circa February 2007
The Texture Tutorial was created by Robin (Sojourner) Wood in 2005. The Texture Tutorial was and is a set-by-step guide to creation and placement of textures within Second Life.
Initially a landmark in Benten (58, 101), the tutorial moved in early 2007 when a club in neighboring Daikoku forced Ms Sojourner to move to a private island, Livingtree (128, 107). She has since expanded on the tutorial, opening a library featuring in-world books covering advanced texture techniques.
From the introductory notecard:
The tutorials are a comprehensive, in-world, self-paced set of nine tutorial "stations" that teach you how to work with textures in Second Life.
As you touch the objects at each station, or sub-station, you are handed a notecard that explains the concepts behind that particular facet of Second Life texturing. Most of the notecards contain illustrations, and several also contain scripts or textures for you to use.
The cards and instructions are as clear and detailed as I could make them. No prior experience is assumed, so they are good for the "newbie" to Second Life, or to texturing. By the same token, they are rich enough that several experienced Second Life designers have told me that they've found things that they didn't know.
The tutorials begin with an Overview discussion of the definitions of "texture" and where you can find them in your Inventory.
From there, it goes on to discuss how to prepare textures in your favorite graphics application for use in Second Life.
Station 3 explains everything you would ever need to know about the Texture Tab of the Edit dialog; what all the choices are, how they work, and how to use them to tweak and fine tune your textues.
Station 4 is a discussion of Transparency in Second Life, including how to make an upload an image with an Alpha Channel, and how to avoid "white halos," "edge lines," and so on. It also discusses Alpha Sorting problems.
Station 5 discusses Prim Faces; how to texture them individually, and how to determine which is which. A script is included to color-code them, for ease in script writing.
Station 6 explains everything about UV Maps, including what the U and V stand for, how they work and why, and the difficulties you might encounter in Second Life because of the nature of UV Maps. Each prim type is discussed, and solutions are provided for things like the texture distortions in tapered cubes and prisms.
Station 7 discusses animated textures, and includes modifyable scripts for the various kinds that are possible in-game.
Station 8 discusses the maps that are used on the various "materials" in the avatar, including the good points and pitfalls of each one, and how to work with them to get the results you want.
Finally, Station 9 wraps it all up, with a few extra hints and tips, and some advice.
For additional study, there is a Texture Library next to the Tutorials, which has books you can read for free while you are there, or buy for a small fee and get your own copy.
Texture Tutorial and library in its Livingtree location, August 2007
The original build was reprised in the Second Life fourth birthday, including period content dating from its original inception.
The Texture Tutorial was mirrored onto the teen grid, initally in Card (147, 29) before moving to Tutorial Island (61, 207).
Related Link[]
- Texture Tutorial (in-world)