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+--- Thread: Custom Collar Question (/showthread.php?tid=5350)
RE: Custom Collar Question - GhostCollective Resident - 10-02-2012 02:33 PM
@ K "how did you get it to offset since i thought the collar would not allow you to do that? Either way it is a pretty collar."
@ Tad I have a question for you as well, not to be rude but why do most of your answers end up being this long mathematical dialogue that ends up confusing people? What ever happened to simple answers to simple questions. Just my two cents as I know a lot of us are not necessarily a programmer genius or math professor
RE: Custom Collar Question - Kayleigh McMillan - 10-02-2012 02:41 PM
Hi Tatiana:-)
I used the sample collar (included in our custom collar kit) to play with the texture offset as this one is modify.
Though in the final collar this makes no difference as we can't modify that one indeed.
This I did to see if I could find out how the color on the borders was picked.
EDIT I have attached the sample I posted here with an update of my ticket as well so hopefully there will come a better solution as for the predictability of the color the texture border will find.
Maybe it is even possible if the area where the color is picked is marked on the template we use so we can take that in consideration as we design colllars.
RE: Custom Collar Question - Tad Carlucci - 10-02-2012 02:54 PM
What math? I'm trying to avoid math. That's why I posted pictures to help you visualize how some things work on Second Life. I firmly believe that to use things, it's better to have some idea how they work. You don't have to understand the details of the HOW, but it helps to at least have an idea of the general principles.
Still not sure this is exactly what's going on with the collars. It's one possible method someone else mentioned. I thought actually seeing images might help people understand the problem.
As I understand it, the offsets are hard-coded and can't be changed. So the mention of zero repeats and zero offsets is based upon observing the results. As to changing offsets .. well, you can't change it on the prims .. but, for many textures, you can change it with Photoshop or The GIMP and get the exact same result.
Sorry about messing up the web server. Don't know how it gobbled my posts, glad it's working right again.
RE: Custom Collar Question - zivaah Resident - 10-02-2012 06:18 PM
aww poor tad, feels like a math teacher trying to get the students to understand..lmao
RE: Custom Collar Question - Bea Shamrock - 10-02-2012 06:52 PM
Thank you Tad and everyone else who's been looking into this area. I haven't played with the collar making kits but I have one and I find this thread very interesting.
@Tad: I was following ok until the images (maybe I got distracted by "willy-nilly", which is an expression I've always liked
). Specifically, I got confused as to which is "My texture" and which "What SL sees", as the server (?) decided to post 4 images but allow me to open just 2 (the ones that seem to be the same file of course.... 
) ). I'm guessing the flat one is "My Texture" (the one I ca nonly see in thumbnail) but I'd be really grateful if you could explain that part a bit more/again.I think I understood the basic idea regarding the offsets. But maybe not....if you can't change the offsets in the collar itself, are you changing the offset in the texture itself to replicate what you would normally do on the prim?
Thank you
(10-02-2012 11:55 AM)Tad Carlucci Wrote: The color is not random. The texture Offsets select which pixel from the texture to smear over the sides. If the Offsets fall between two pixels (0, the default DOES), then you get a smeared stripe with the top being one pixel's color, smearing to the bottom, being the other pixel. Same for right-to-left.
Repeat 0 can be useful, but you don't want to just use it willy-nilly.
I seem to have confused the board. Here's what I was trying to say .. sorry if it's repeated for you.
The color is not random. The texture Offsets select which pixel from the texture to smear over the sides. If the Offsets fall between two pixels (0, the default DOES), then you get a smeared stripe with the top being one pixel's color, smearing to the bottom, being the other pixel. Same for right-to-left.
Repeat 0 can be useful, but you don't want to just use it willy-nilly.
I made some examples.
First is "Your Texture" it's small, but it's just 4 colored squares.
Next is "What Second Life Sees". I tiled it to Offset (0,0) and scaled it up to smear things together. Notice how the center is a medium gray .. that is what Repeat (0,0) sees there. You could use TINY changes to the offsets to move the color smeared on the face away from that gray to one of the two-color-smeared areas or even into one of the just-one-color-near-here points.
* Tad Carlucci sighs. My posts are getting lost.
* Tad Carlucci sighs. My posts are getting lost.
RE: Custom Collar Question - Tad Carlucci - 10-02-2012 08:16 PM
My posting got messed up doubled and lost it the bowels of the web server for a couple hours.
I meant to post just two. but two copies of each made it there.
The little one with just four colors is "your texture". I made it four colors and chose those because I knew they'd get smooshed in the next one and wanted the blending to be as visible as possible.
The larger one .. notice the colors are in a different pattern. The White at the top-left of it is the bottom-right corner. The texture is repeated and the center is where the repeats meet. That is Offset (0,0), and it lies on the very corner of the texture ("your texture") which I am painting onto my prim's face. A repeat of (0,0) means "repeat NONE of this texture across the face of the prim".
What happens is it finds it's BETWEEN the pixels, so it takes a bit of this and a bit of that from the four corners, smooshes and .. for the four colors I chose .. ends up with a medium grey.
Now, since I'm doing this on *my* prim and not the collar, I can wiggle the Offset values around in the Edit Panel's Texture tab. By doing that, I'm moving the point from dead center off to the sides. As you can see, I get different colors because it's using a different bit of this and a that.
This is the EXACT same process which is causing that bit of black to smear over to the other edge on that Zebra textured color I found in-world and posted a bit earlier. It's because Second Life does not just paint pixels and be done with it. It has to deal with all sorts of sizes, shapes, and view angles. So your nice, pretty texture gets stretched, and squished, and your nice, clean, clear colors you see in Photoshop get smoosh and smashes together as Second Life tries to come up with "what should have been between those two pixels" in your image. Or find it has two colors from different parts of your pretty picture and only one place to put them.
The question is: knowing all this, how can I use it to try to work around the problems it causes when I make a collar?
For the long edges, like I showed with the Zebra pattern, the solution is simple: If it bothers you, try a thin stripe of solid color along the edges and use the same color for both the top and bottom edges.
If that works, that color will also be the color of the prim sides.
But, say you don't mind, or can't notice the problems at the top and bottom edges, but you get a horrible, ugly color on the sides? There are two ways to proceed.
First, since you don't want a solid color along the edges, you could try putting a tiny dot of color at all four corners of your picture. That color will be the edge of the prim. And those dots might be so small, or blend in so well, nobody will notice them on the outer face.
Second, you could look at your image. Maybe you can find some place where there is a bit of color which is the same at the top and bottom, Go into Photoshop or The GIMP and shift/wrap your image around a bit so they fall on a corner instead of somewhere in the middle. In The GIMP, this is Image (or Layer), Transform, and check the box to be sure it Wraps instead of discards the part shifted off the side.
Something else I'd do which *effect* the severity of these problems is .. I don't particularly like how Second Life will smash stuff together (up/down on the collar) and stretch it out (right/left around the collar outer face). And, of course, I want the clearest picture possible. So I do NOT use square pictures. Most of you probably know this already, but some might not: textures to NOT need to be square. They can be any of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, or 1024 on each side, and the sides don't need to be the same.
Yes, you don't really need to use those numbers. But, personally, I don't like how Linden Labs fiddles with my images, so I *ALWAYS* scale them in The GIMP (or Photoshop) so they're one of those numbers high, by one of those numbers wide BEFORE I upload. That stops Linden Labs from changing my work on me. I just choose sizes which look good when smooshed and stretched. Firestorm Temporary Textures are good for checking before paying for an upload; or go to the Beta Grid and check there on a "live" Linden Labs grid paying with funny money.
RE: Custom Collar Question - Bea Shamrock - 10-03-2012 04:46 PM
Thank you so much Tad!!!!!!
I'm still having a couple of issues to fully understand the first part but I can now try it out and experiment and I think that will dissipate any remaining doubts.
The other two parts I think I understand (and cool Gimp feature I didn't know about!)
In LL viewer, which doesn't have temporary uploads, maybe I can use local textures (if I don't crash like last time) before uploading the final version.
Thanks so much again for explaining it!!!!! Off to play with textures!!!!!!
RE: Custom Collar Question - Tad Carlucci - 10-03-2012 06:48 PM
Read the image. Maybe it explains it better with pictures as examples.
RE: Custom Collar Question - Bea Shamrock - 10-04-2012 04:52 PM
The last image (the enlarged grey one) is a lot similar (to me) to what I see in the colour pickers in the areas where one colour transitions into another.
RE: Custom Collar Question - anna Acanthus - 10-07-2012 06:31 AM
i just started fiddling about an hour ago and i think really the best solution would be for the collar to be sculpted so that the texture would wrap around totally. A bit painstaking for the creation of the texture but at least we could get exactly to where we want to.
Will make a sculpt collar to test that this it works sometime.
Either that or have a double application like texture 1 for inside and out and texture 2 for top and bottom.
Sounds complicated to put into practise but i'm sure it'd be a breeze for KCR.
Whatever, that band really does leave an dissatisfying unfinished feeling as Kay says ...