Decorating Guidelines

P\_Dee's Showroom

These **Decorating Guidelines** can used for basic as well as experienced decorating. They outline the basic principles and conduct for decorating. Most topics on this page only describe the best practices, and there do not offer any reasons why this is the best practice, further reading is required to understand the reasoning behind this.

## Props

To do any decorating  place props via the Prop Editor, in general these props are optimized as much as possible. However, it is important to understand the more complex a prop is the more resources it requires from a computer. A flat prop would, such as a sign\_01 would only require 4 vertices, 4 edges and one face. This is in general the smallest possible prop possible within Utherverse, a primitive cube in comparison has 8 vertices, 12 edges and 6 faces. As you can see this requires more resources of a computer. Of course it's possible to have props with over 32.000 vertices and edges and faces. Making it entirely possible to have very complex props, in most cases these will not have more impact in terms of loading. The biggest load on the actual prop is the textured map that is attached to it, and not the prop itself. The number of props used can greatly very on the distance between each prop. The more props an avatar is facing with their camera, the more load this computer will experience. Therefore you should build in such a manner that people stay in the center of your build. That way if they pan around they will not have to load many props. The better decorators space things out accordingly.

**Note:** It is not good practice to use the Sound props as simple signs because they load their wav sound into the game irregardless of setting the prop's State setting.

## Images

Images have a lot of different aspects that keep them loading efficiently and optimally in Utherverse. Textures are discussed in more detail on the Textures page.

### Photo editing software

A very common question is what program should you use to create textures and images.

The best program is Photoshop, however since most people will not be able to afford this, Gimp would be the best free alternative. It is entirely possible to use other programs such as Microsoft paint or paint.net. However, due to the way these programs function they generally do not utilize the best possible end results.

### Size

Images should be scaled to a multiple of 8 pixels, the most optimized images are those scaled in a square, such as 32x32, 64x64, 128x128 etc. The image should be sized to the actual prop dimensions. This can be a bit more tricky. In general all props have been created for maps with a dimension of 256x256 pixels. However, this is not the case for a lot of the props who generally are optimized for 512x512 pixels or even 1024x1024 pixels instead.

As you will probably notice, that a 512x512 pixel image will be far more crisp and detailed then a image of 64x64 pixels. While you can entirely add bigger images to increase the detail of such a prop, usually this also means you scale the prop bigger, say by a factor of 2 or 3, or even bigger.

While all this is said, you will also notice that if you scale a sign prop only on a single axis X, the dimensions also will scale a bit off. This generally means as the scaling is 1x2x1 now and since signs do not have a Z axis. The image on it will be stretched from Z to Y. Now in order to optimize this, you can mix and match specific multiples of 8. Such as 512x256. This will ensure the image is not distorted and that the computer only has to do a minimal amount of loading.

### JPG vs PNG

Most decorators will only ever need either of these file formats. The JPG should be used for most prop and should be kept as small as possible in terms of file size. The smaller the file size the more optimal it is.

A good website to optimize created images and textures is https://compressor.io/

Secondly to understand, in certain cases one should use PNG and this is when you want to display and alpha level on a prop. In common terms the transparency layer. This creates a see-through effect through parts of a prop, usually in conjunction with the transparency setting in the state tab. As with JPG, PNG images should be kept as small as possible in terms of file size.

## Collidables

Collidable props are a bit of a two faced issue in themselves. The Utherverse templates for properties have been created with two different settings. And this effects the loading of collidable images. Unfortunately, there is currently no list or explanation from Utherverse on which properties have which setting enabled.  The collidable props loaded on your computer use about 3 times the resources of a prop on a computer. Meaning the load is increased by a multiple of 3.

The case were the visibility is enabled at any distance. This is where props are loaded no matter where they are located within the property. This makes it more stable in order for avatars to interact with the props. However, this also means if you place a prop 50000 pixels apart, you will still load it on your video card. There is no much you can do but only collide the props you need collided and use as few as possible.

The second type of property is where viability is enabled only to a small specific LOD. Meaning only a small portion is loaded on a video card. This means you can use a lot more collidables then the other type of property. However, too many collidables on a small enough area will still cause issues in terms of loading.

In both cases it is always better to make the collidable props itself invisible from other props. This will increase their load slightly, as it will not attempt to load any images on this, however if the cached web image or other scripts are attached to the collidable, making them invisible will have no effect on load or performance.

## Web Browser

This is recently changed from Internet Explorer to Chromium. This can now be used for HTML5 application. However, note that this still causes a lot of additional resources on computers compared to a cached web image. Therefor this should be used for specific application such as video, and sporadically gifs and other animated images.

## Double-sided props

Reduce double sided texture setting which is often, by default, switched on. Switching off double sided causes most props respond by no longer painting certain triangles, but some furniture does stay texture double sided despite it being switched off. Very often cabinets, ceilings, floor, grass etc. all has texture double sided on. Worst of all is that that the flash script does switch texture double sided on by default, so many SWF files are also unnecessary visible from the other side.

## Avatars

The numbers of users you intend to have in a property, greatly affects the decorating. If you throw a party with 50+ avatars present in a location, you should make your property as optimal as possible, with keeping all the above guidelines in mind. It would also be wise to keep the number of props to around 1000 mark.

Avatars require a lot of resources from computers. Especially cause clothing textures can be pretty heavy on load, since they are on animated models.