Double-Sided Texture

Building using prims, sculpties and meshes. Texture creation techniques.
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Gusher Castaignede
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Double-Sided Texture

Post by Gusher Castaignede »

Hello creators, does anyone know whether recent server
update supports Double-Sided Textures on a single plane
mesh? Or do we still require using 2 plane meshes?

Thanks
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Re: Double-Sided Texture

Post by Gregg Legendary »

Myself i make faces on both sides when needed and material each side and that works
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Re: Double-Sided Texture

Post by Snoots Dwagon »

If I understand the original question correctly I agree with Gregg. The Terraport signs we use at Wellspring world employ that method. When creating the mesh I specified the same texture plane for both sides of the sign. The result: changing the texture on one side also changes the other.
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Re: Double-Sided Texture

Post by Zed deTremont »

Hi Gusher,
Perhaps a bit more in detail, I'm sorry no idea what is known by you or not so just to be on the safe side.
Polygons have only one side, the normals face to one direction on the backside it will be transparant. If you want to have the two sides visible that means you need (in this case) 2 planes one for the (example) up one down. You can combine them in whatever 3D software you use to one mesh object.
To be able to apply different textures or different parts of one texture and be able to move them independent of each other you need to make 2 texture faces. Way to do this is quite simple. just apply a (in Maya) Lambert material and give both a different colour. For blender just use a none specular material with different colours that will do the trick.
If you combine you will need only 1 prim for the two planes if you don't combine you double and have 2.
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Re: Double-Sided Texture

Post by Gregg Legendary »

For those using blender... make your 2 sides and if you are using the same material ie texture and the same settings as well you can hit ctrl J to join them and in to what on upload will be 1 prim...
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Ada Radius
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Re: Double-Sided Texture

Post by Ada Radius »

Another method in Blender is the solidify modifier, which replicates the topology, UV mapping and vertex weighting on the reverse face. You can choose whether or not to create a rim to connect them, and how thick to make that rim. If you want the sides to take different textures, then assign different materials to them (Properties > Materials). So a 4 sided plane, solidified, could have up to 6 faces.
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Re: Double-Sided Texture

Post by Gusher Castaignede »

Thanks for replies everyone, so it seems still requires both sides of a plane mesh, 4 polygons.. awhile back did see a trick used using particles for tree leaves because it always faces the user...
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Re: Double-Sided Texture

Post by Snoots Dwagon »

There are all kinds of fancy tricks, but some of them have hidden downsides. The particle tree leaves for example: it's a neat trick... but particles quickly take up viewer space. A world can only have 8,192 particles on at the same time. It's very easy for a single region to top that amount... so imagine that situation on a 64 region megaworld! In times past I've seen particle generators so poorly designed they would lag an entire region. Fortunately they fixed that bug and those days are past. These days when you hit the 8192 particle maximum, particles simply stop working properly, as they're literally fighting one another for Viewer space.

So one must use particles very sparingly. The rule of thumb: Only when absolutely needed to produce a desired effect. (Does one really need a particle engine shooting out particles when no one is within 96m?) One can have particle engines turn on and off depending on proximity of avatars.

Another downside is flexis. Flexis can be used for all kinds of things, from lovely dresses to sails on ships to tree branches swaying in the wind to flags flying on a parapet. But, flexis lag. The more flexis there are, the more lag there is. The larger the flexis, the larger they lag. Fortunately it's not as bad as it used to be, but it's still good to be aware that those are randomly moving prims and drive the physics engine crazy.

We could make a list, but it's good to be aware of the limitations of the system and stay well this side of the safepoint.

Just thought I'd mention. :P
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Re: Double-Sided Texture

Post by John Mela »

The viewer, not the server, generates particles when the object is within draw distance. As far as the server's concerned, particles are nothing more than a bunch of numbers stored in the prim's data. If nobody's around to see the particles (like trees falling in the forest), it's just those numbers sitting doing nothing, with zero effect on sim performance.

In fact, turning particles "on and off depending on proximity of avatars" would possibly add to lag by (presumably) using a regular sensor to detect when an avatar is there.
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Re: Double-Sided Texture

Post by Snoots Dwagon »

Which is why I stated: "but particles quickly take up viewer space."

From what I was told by a tech years ago, particle information is sent to the viewer by the server (as you state). All particle activity after that is performed by the viewer and does not impact the server. Since it is viewer-side, each user will see a slightly different display of particles at different times. However, particles are limited by region (not sure how that works). So from what I understand, if you have a particle generator on a region that constantly generates 8,192 particles... it's going to be a real drag on all particle scripts in the region.

That information may have changed over the years, I dunno. This would be fairly easy to test. I do know that on one well-known region (which uses a LOT of particles due to their heavy shop content and special effects) one has difficulty getting a particle script to work on their small sandbox... and there are no particles within sight.

Turning particles off wouldn't impact the server; it just prevents the viewer from displaying particles. To my knowledge no sensors are involved.

(This information is apt to be updated by a tech who knows the inside workings of Opensim and current viewers. I'm only a specialist on cookies.)
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