Written 12 August, 2008
Textures: Painted or Photosourced?
Sweetie long ago taught me the distinction between painted and photosourced textures in Second Life, but I didn’t think much of the difference until we found a skin store that sold skins that were as realistic as possible at a resolution of 512 x 512, down to pimples and wrinkles and ingrown hair.
Ewww!
Photosourced textures essentially bring real-life images into Second Life. Painted textures are hand-created—drawn. So which is better?
Both types have their champions. I use photosourced textures on occasion (for instance, for road signs), but both Sweetie and I are firmly in the painted texture camp. Our skins and most of our clothing was painted by an artist.
I could go on and on, but I think I’ll instead present some pairs of textures. Drawn textures will be to the left; photosourced textures will be on the right.
2 comments:
Drawn, unless there is no alternative.
The photosourced samples suffer from flat lighting, which is a bit unfair to them, but.. looking closely at the sign, it looks out of focus, and there's nothing showing how it's attached to the pole--instead it looks as if it were glued on or stuck in a notch in the top of the pole. It just looks out of place in a way that breaks verisimilitude.
The photosourced skin is scary. It reminds me of Sandra Bernhard, who is _almost_ beautiful but disturbing, as if she'd gotten a mouth transplant from Mick Jagger or Joe E. Brown.
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