ALRIGHTTTT this is where the enthused Resi part of me is just doing YAYZERAMA HANDS…. context first… as y'may know, over the last stretch of months, the part of my brain that sez "Torley make textures!" has grown into this gargantuan, watermelony juggernaut. It demands sacrifices. As such, after exploring numerous permutations of computer-assisted, hand-crafted textures, I'm reminded that often, the simplest tools can be the most effective.

I mean, who hasn't heard of changing the brightness or contrast on a TV set? Or desaturating a color photo to make it all monochrome and "vintage"? These are familiar, and eminently useful in the palette of color manipulation. They're like the bread and butter of the "Let's make this look better" world o' graphics editing.

The other day in Second Life, as I often have, I was subtly making a texture look darker by tinting it with a smoky gray. In the course of this, reviving an idea which has haunted me since '04, I wondered why I couldn't just have a slider, or spinner, or something — to turn the brightness down from within the viewer.

As you can clearly see the swatch here, 1 texture — from the upcoming Torley Textures VI (hint hint!) — has been effected in 8 different ways. They aren't the most radical variations, but it gives you an immediate, visual idea of how useful it'd be to do this live-and-direct inworld.

Ever see a texture which is great but too "loud" that you want to use on your walls? Or want to give a flat one more "pop" so it stands out on that new chair/couch/sex bed you're making? Having these three elements:

• Brightness
• Contrast
• Saturation

would help a lot. Obviously there are more, like Hue, which would be nice to have, too. Heck, we already have Transparency and Shiny, which are arguably more esoteric. These are basic fundamentals. Texturing without them is like driving a car with a missing wheel. Once that tire gets put back on, you'll ponder how you ever cruised down the information ultrahighway without it.

See how it could be applied inworld:

Oooooh. Look at the variety! From L-R, that's a normal, transparent, and shiny cube, almost waiting for some magnificent game of Q*Bert to form on their têtes.

So, get your creative juices flowing: adding Brightness, Contrast, and Saturation controls would make textures a lot more usable and flexible in Second Life, because currently, if you want to make even a tiny adjustment of this sort, you have to save the dang thing to disk, change it in an image editor, and reupload it. Wasted time, energy, and resources. Scroos your workflow as well, and that's never nice.

Imagine being able to script these features, as various prim parameters can already be dynamically changed… imagine what this could do for esoteric purposes like trippy art displays, or add to the value of modeling booths, and how animated attachments could appear more vibrant than ever before. Even for machinima: Pleasantville-style effects where a color avatar steps into a black & white room and it suddenly bursts into a plethora of dazzling tones!

Now, I don't know how technically feasible this is, and I'm aware the Texture tab's pretty crowded as-is. But I've already filed an internal issue inquiring about the possibilities. And I encourage you to give this some thought about what this could do for you, too.