Socially Mundane

Art file optimization.

A huge problem many retailers in SL have is that their products are not seen by many potential buyers who want that product and are willing to pay for it. This is because of the urge many creators have to present high-resolution, detailed “product art”.

Ouch.

Because these textures are nicely detailed, high-resolution images, they take a long time to download. They are in a queue with everyone else’s high-resolution textures… all waiting to download to the shopper’s viewer and it’s worse if it happens to be in a high-traffic sim (see tip #01 about that). Hence: the grey box city at almost every market or mall.

Remember, the hunter is impatient. They are on a hunt. They have places to go, things to do. Often, if the grey boxes don’t start coloring-in fast enough, they’ll teleport away to the next destination on their search result list.

You simply must optimize your product art for this purpose, allowing your textures to rez faster than everyone else’s. The more potential customers that actually see your product art, the more who will translate into actual buyers. It is highly recommended you have points of sale in-world and also at SL Marketplace. Because of this, it will take a little planning when preparing your product art.

A few highly-recommended steps for creating optimized product art that will help boost sales:

Create a high-resolution image where your product is set against a neutral background. Plain white or black works very well, but brighter works better. You want it subdued or “washed-out”. The point is to not take attention and detail away from the product you are showing (note the example at keft). This also allows your texture to compress well when uploaded and still maintain good detail in the image - all translating into fast download, rezzing quickly.

Left: two merchants, each attempting to sell you a prim sword. Which would you buy?

Once you have your product highlighted cleanly and clearly, run a “sharpen” filter on it then brighten it a touch, save an 800x800 pixel high-resolution image that you will use on SL Marketplace - many hunters will shop SLM first because it is faster and more convenient than teleporting all over the grid and dealing with lag and rezzing at each location.

Then save a copy as a 256x256 pixel “vendor version” that you will upload into SL. Yes, that’s right: 256x256 - half the size of the standard texture most will upload for product art. Run that sharpen filter again while you’re at it. This will ensure your vendors rez blazing fast compared to most others. And with your product set against a neutral background, detail will be maintained and compression done well, making it a very small texture to stream to the customer’s viewer.

In a mall booth, this means your vendor textures will rez faster than most others, giving you the visual advantage to hunters and gatherers alike.

Above: A perfect example of why you do not want to use high-resolution images in-world. This screen capture was taken after 5 full minutes of rezz-time!