Texture Mapper Examples

Crash Prefect contacted me about his use of my Texture Mapper software (with free demo). He co-owns a MMORPG game called DarkLife. The first thing that they used my texture mapper for was an upgrade shop. The shop uses only one texture (512×512), but is very detailed and composed of many prims. Even the logs inside the shop use the texture as well as a chair and a rug with showdows. The only thing that uses a separate texture appears to be a pile of hay. It’s impressive, and exactly the sort of thing that I intended the software to be used for to help cut down bandwidth, lag, and upload fees.

A picture of the interior view of the DarkLife upgrade shop. All textures are composed of one texture. Only a portion of the texture is displayed on each face.

Here you can see how Crash Prefect had laid out each “smaller” texture. The texture mapping program allows you to select the smaller texture and tells you the settings that you need to apply to each face to show only the selected area as an individual texture. You can see where some of the textures were used in various places in the interior of the building.

After speaking with Crash, he noted that the hay was originally part of the texture, but had to be separated because he needed to use an alpha mask. Using textures with alpha transparency on buildings would cause a lot of alpha clipping, so the texture was separated.

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Assembly Completed

I assembled my SFG box yesterday and created enough Mel’s Mix to top it off. I even painted the wood white (except for the inside). After work today, I created the grid and attached it to the top. My lower back and the arches of my feet are very sore. I am deciding what I should plant. I’m a little confused if I should plant this week, or wait until after a short vacation. I will not be around to water the plants. Thunderstorms are predicted on the day that I leave, but after that it’s sunny all weekend.

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Nursery Visit

I called ahead to find that Medows Farms Nurseries had the Vermiculite (24.99) in a large bag. I got there and the thing looked extreamly heavy. I tried to lift a corner and was shocked at how light it was. It’s like a big paper bag of styrofoam. Looking for compost materials, I felt very confused. I wasn’t sure what was considered as compost materials. Nothing appeared like the products displayed in the SFG book. I asked someone outside to help show me where the stuff was. I picked up a bag of leaf compost (4.99), compost manuer (2.69) and compro (5.99). In all, I spent 38.66 today. I now have everything needed to start my SFG for a total of 89.59.

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SFG – Finding Supplies

I started gathering supplies for the Square Foot Gardening (SFG) method. I spent about 45 dollars so far. Here is what I found: 2″x6″x8′ studs (2 * 4.72 = 9.44), 1″x1/4″x4′ popular wood (6 * 1.72 = 10.32), 3CF pete moss (8.96), Cow manure (5.77), Premium manure (2.47), and 3′x50′ Weed Free Premium Fabric (13.97). I still need to find some Vermiculite and three other types of compost before I can start on Mels Mix. I ran around four different stores looking for materials, but came up a bit short. I think I’ll start looking up local nursaries and make a few calls this comming week. At least I will not have to hunt down soil in the future unless I want to make a few more gardens.

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A square foot garden

My wife is interested in gardening this year, so I started looking up information about it. I found tips on greenhouses, raised garden beds, and all sorts of stuff. It appears that many people are using a square foot gardening (SFG) method by Mel Bartholomew. I ordered a book about it and received it in the mail today. It seems pretty simple. I don’t know how green our thumbs are. If this thing is as simple as he claims it is, the color of our thumbs will not make much of a difference.

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