Many thank-yous to Jason Wright of J Wright Design for his fresh and inspired help in filling a much-needed gap: he pointed out that Torley Textures would be more useful with preview sheets so someone can see what all the textures look like at-a-glance.
This is especially applicable in Second Life, where texture browsing can be a chore. Not just talking about it but doing something, Jason surprise-presented me with his initial designs! After some rounds of iterating and me noticing after all of this time, some of the Flickr sets were backwards alphabetically, he sent me the final revisions, and they're splendid. For example, for Volume IX:
Now when you get Torley Textures @ Here island, you'll notice a preview (aka "contact sheet") in every series' folder. As I mentioned, I've included them on the web too as well as the ultra-download of all texture packs IN ONE CLICK — but note that there is an inconsistency: "DREAMS" and "PLACEHOLDER" in the megapack do not have contact sheets as they fall out of the "regular" continuity. "DREAMS" is an inworld rarity and "PLACEHOLDER" is easy enough to discern — its distro kiosk is currently to the left of the regular Torley Textures, as shown here:
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I’ve had a few astute requests recently to make all the Torley Textures available as an easy downloadable archive. This is also convenient if you aren’t a Second Life member and want to partake in the lush loveliness, or want to modify them then upload inworld.
I asked myself, “Why didn’t I do this earlier?” and then I recalled how I intended to get around to it, but lacked time at the time. (Ah, tricky tricky time.) Fast forward to today, and here we are, over 600 textures of awesomeness:
» DOWNLOAD TORLEY-TEXTURES.ZIP
Enjoy, and let me know in the comments if you have any questions — you can use them freely on commercial products & services, just don’t sell them as-is (that’s foolish, because I’m giving them away for free right here).
As of 2009-05-14, these textures are available on Here island (click to teleport). If you don't see them, let Torley know!
On a lark, I crafted 10 new placeholder Torley Textures. The purpose of these is simple: to make it easier to model a build's geometry. In Second Life, every created object not copied from a prior source has a plywood texture on its surface:
It's a familiar cliché, but not pretty, nor useful, because its flatness makes it difficult to differentiate # of texture repeats and edges of prims, among other things.
Over time, I've noticed more builders using their own placeholder textures. Fine prior examples include:
Sometimes, said "placeholders" end up being used in the final build, because they provide a clean, if simple aesthetic. Subtle shading looks great on a variety of things, from big towers to coffee tables, and certainly beats a flat, dead white. (Related, see my Add2Shiny textures, which are designed to give shiny surfaces a touch more character; subtle and effective.)
While I don't yet know a way to auto-replace the staid plywood — wonder if any Open Source contributors have or are thinking of taking a crack at it? — it's useful to have placeholder textures as convenient utilities. So, in addition to what I've done before, have these for FREE:
As with all Torley Textures, just go to Watermelinden Land inworld and click on the board to get 'em. They're near Grasmere (186, 2, 28).
Special thanx to several Filter Forge creators, including photoman for his Vignetted Edges filter. Makes it a lot easier to come up with your own.
Note that these placeholders haven't/aren't planned to be rolled into a formal larger release of textures, which is why I haven't integrated them with the main TT display.
Now that these are out in the wild, they join the good company of shadow + light kits, and textures with colored mappings to help with precision alignment (related: my previous post about Idea City's Design Center), such as:
So whether you build a lot or a little — or none at all but are curious — what other kinds of "utility" textures would you find useful?
… for all those times that you need one. Including when you're thinking of sculpted prims and cubed watermelons, which is appropriate, because I sourced this texture:
from this photo:
graciously distributed under a CC license.