Custom Collar Question

[Tad Carlucci]

A common mistake is to forget that Second Life wraps ALL textures. If you don't want the color from, say, the top, to bleed over to the bottom, and bottom-to-top as well, you need to be sure there's a few pixels margin at the top and bottom. This is often not noticeable with non-Alpha textures, but it can be quite obvious if you have an Alpha texture with opaque color touching one edge and transparency at the other.

The size of the margin varies depending upon the LOD, as well as prim sizes and geometries. My recommendation, if you want to avoid the problem completely, is to leave at least 16 pixels margin on all sides. For collars, since they will generally only be seen at close range, a smaller margin of just 2 to 4 pixels on all four edges should do.

Of course, you don't want a margin at all if you want the texture to tile seamlessly in one, or both, directions.

If you're Mesh modelling, you can pre-program the margin by ensuring your UV Mapping has the margin. That way you don't need to fiddle in The GIMP or Photoshop to correct your textures.