Texture Alignment (Second Life)

My Texture Alignment Grid is used in Second Life for texturing buildings and builds. After sending it out to a group people asked how to use it.

The Alignment Grid

This is the grid. It has the same grid as a sculpted prim (8, 16, 32, 64). Its also compatible with the texture sizes in Second Life (256, 512, 1024).

Use with Sculpted prims

This is a sculpted window that I made and want to texture. I placed my Alignment grid on the frame then used that to identify the texturing I needed to do. From the colours I can see that the outside of the window is row f (orange). That the central vertical bar is also row f, and that the rest of the window is rows g, h and a (yellow, green and cyan).

I paint over rows a, g and h with the interior colour and the rest of the texture with the exterior colour. See above.

I apply the texture to my sculpted window frame and it looks like this.

As a refinement you will notice that the grid is greatly stretched in the X direction. So it would be best to  make the texture larger in the X direction, maybe 1024 x 256, Especially if you put a texture in it.

This is a more sophisticated example. I bought the sculpted prims for the sofa and I wanted to texture them. I applied my grid to the four pillows, the two seat cushions, sides, back and base. Then looked at where the grid fell. Here are a few notes.
The ends of the arms are rows a and b. The grid is highly distorted so no textures here, just a plain colour. Any textures will be badly distorted.
The seat cushion tops are b6 to g2 so I put a square pattern there. The cushion edges are rows a, b and c so I put some edging and lighting there.
The pillows are over row f of the seat cushion, so I added some shadows for them.
You can see that the left and right seat cushions are mirrored

This is a leaf and candle that I am working on. From the texture grid you can see quite easily that the leaf is rows a, b, c and d. The stem is e, f and g, and the candle is h and a (upper). The grid top and bottom columns were also identified and the textures drawn onto the shape.

Texture grid in building

This is one of my buildings that where I used the texture grid to align my textures.

Other uses

I also use the grid when landscaping. I have used it to align ground and prim textures so that the prim texture lined up with the ground textures allowing me to add a dance floor whose edges matched the ground texture.

On every build I use the alignment texture at some stage, I hope you find it useful.
Available from: Second Life Marketplace, Enigma & Spice