The ideas I'm going to present aren't new; nor are they particularly novel. They are, however, not obvious enough — and as we all know, that's where I come in.

When I made techno music, I often dealt with samples: fragments, or sometimes, fragments of fragments of sound. A lone piano note here, the gaiety of a shaker there, a brief clip of birdsong, to alien FX that sounded like a mothership landing. Samples, as defined by their name, are granular in nature: they're pieces of an overall composition, assembled in such a way which would make an accomplished puzzlemaker proud. Unlike a puzzle, you don't know exactly how the end result is going to turn out. Nonetheless, there is a goal in mind — many of the musicians I admire most make music because they want to, and they want to share it with others.

In Second Life, we have textures: flat graphics uploaded from one of several common formats, mapped onto 3D primitive shapes, prims. By not just slapping them on but changing a variety of settings, including tint, transparency, shininess, and offsets, we can arrive at a result that closer resembles a realistic object, or often, a surrealist approach.

For example, this and a bit more…

+

=

There's much hullabaloo about theft of textures. This is difficult, because when textures are "ripped off", you still have the originals. So what was stolen? I'd say, what I've arguably seen lost has included an artist's good faith, their exclusive control (which is a more unreal perception than an online world itself), and some will also make a case that their sales went down becasue someone else made a cheaper copy.

The path of arguments on that is well-ridden; I'm using it to highlight another aspect of my past, which is stamping audio samples with supposedly inaudible watermarks. Systems like Sonic Trace have been developed to combat "pirates" of not full-length songs, but their extolled components!

Needless to say, this provided me with lateral motivation to make my own sounds. Just as today, I make my own textures. The parallels are uncanny.

For all the content creation that Second Life boasts, it's still shockingly short on texture creation which is:

1. The original work of a Resident
2. Distributed freely
3. Available both inworld and out of it

Now, let's look at these three points closer and what I mean by them:
  

THE ORIGINAL WORK OF A RESIDENT
I won't get rules-lawyery, but I think you know that a great artist has a unique style. Much as some Resis have already amassed portfolios; when you see a new build of theirs inworld, you can identify it at such, without having to check the creator name. Similarly, thinking of textures as little squares of paint, it's not a stretch my own textures:

bear certain Torleyisms, and at the very least, can be tagged easily with labels. Note that this doesn't exclude procedurally-generated and other algorithmic works which were brought into Second Life (I've done those too), altho those are considerably more difficult to claim as "your own", unless you happen to be a Syd Mead of fractals. Or have a distinctive color scheme.
 

DISTRIBUTED FREELY
Not to be confused with "public domain", you can give something out, and retain licensing like Creative Commons. (Disclosure: I'm a big fan of their work.) While this isn't a built-in system in SL yet, you'll notice like on sites like Flickr, it certainly is.

There are some big stores in SL earning their keep by selling textures. This is certainly part of the richness of capitalism which the grid offers. At the same time, there aren't enough freebie texture packs which satisfy both #1 and #2. I've seen the Max Payne textures used on builds, and anyone in a hurry worth their salt knows about Lemog3d. But where's the enthusiasm for "rolling your own and rocking with it"? Still rare.
 

All this brings me to…

AVAILABLE BOTH INWORLD AND OUT OF IT
I have an enduring interest in import & export. I've grown from someone fearful of Flickr to an advocate of it — a pattern I've noticed has repeated itself with other tools — and in addition to sharing raw and postprocessed Second Life snapshots, I also believe components from within should be more accessible. Yes, I know someone reading this is thinking, Torley's getting us on about object and simstate backup! Longterm as an idea? Sure. But today — here — now — December 26, 2006 — we can start with textures.

Let me fertilize a little seed: think of the default plywood texture. How about grunging it up a little? Think of the Inventory > Library folder textures. I've not really seen those remixed, save for the odd parody purpose. But seriously, since those textures are so commonly used, it's worthwhile to open them up, save them to your hard drive, and examine them. What variations on a theme could you orchestrate? What Second Life tropes could unfold as a result of being inspired?

My wife wrote a post, "Flickr Convert Testimonial", about her recent experiences joining Flickr. Touching on what I observed before, how many of you have given serious thought to backing up all those Second Life snapshots named… "Snapshot"? Even if you don't look at yourself as an artist, it's a powerful first start. I bet there's a lot of rich SL history deep within inventories, and it'll never really see the light of day unless you make the choice to share it. As I have.

 
Similarly, in 2007 — preemptive New Year's Rezolution — I'd like to see more Resis have "texture sharing circles". Kinda like knitting groups, but for the glorious 21st century. Instead of exchanging patterns, you exchange textures you made. See a texture that needs better contrast? You can't adjust that inworld with the current tools, so… bring it onto your hard drive, fix it up, and upload it back inworld. Or, just download it from the web, then upload it.

I know the L$10 texture uploading costs will be an irk to some, but that's precisely why I mentioned #3 earlier: post your textures free to a Flickr or any photo-sharing website like Photobucket and Imageshack, and let me know what you've made.

(Remember that by doing this, anyone could conceivably upload those textures into SL, with their name as the creator — even if they're friendly, it may cause confusion. I sure do hope we get asset metadata for first usages soon.)

While I haven't fully-formed this in my mind's eye-in-hand yet, I'm wondering what sort of role Linden Lab could play in spurring texture creativity. I wouldn't go as far as suggesting we could cover your texture upload fees, but I'm personally committed to learning of ongoing projects, groups, and developments of a social nature in the vein of what I've described above. Given my propensity for enthusiasm, I'll latch onto whatever I can find.

Before I go for now, I'll highlight an actual example made by Pompo Bombacci. Lo and behold, it's not one of my textures as applied to prims, but a shirt — meshed onto my avatar! From this…

To this…

YAYZERAMA! How beautiful. Thanx graciously for doing this, Pompo!

Feeling inspired? Go for it!