Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Castle Textures – Set 5

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

It’s been a while, but finally here is a new texture set, and several more are on their way.

This one is another set of castle walls, with a few flagstone floors as well.  There are a couple of walls with windows, and these come in opaque and  transparent versions.

You can see them all in the texture gallery, and here’s a quick preview:
Castle textures example

As usual, you will find them online at the store, and also in the Second Life
marketplace:

Second Life Marketplace page

Main Store (in-world)

You will also find them in Inworldz, in the Templar Creations Main Store at Tulare 134/220/22.

In other news
Ah yes, the new Second Life Marketplace website. It replaces XstreetSL, and  broke all the links from my texture galleries. Fun. I think I’ve now corrected all the links, so clicking on the gallery thumb-nail pictures should now take you to the right page.

Castle Textures – Set 4

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

If you missed the TextureMania hunt, the Castle Textures set that was the gift from Templar Creations is now available for purchase.

The set of textures consists of miscellaneous stone wall and wood floor textures, designed for Castle builds (although many of the floor textures could easily be used in other kinds of builds).

There are 30 textures, all at 512×512 in size.

Here are a few samples, and you can preview the whole set on the Texture Gallery page.

Castle Textures Set 1, Sample 1

Castle Textures Set 1, Sample 1

As usual, you can find them inworld, at the main store, and on the XStreetSL site:

XStreet Page

Templar Creations Main Store

You will also find them at the Templar Creations store in Inworldz, if you are a resident there.

TextureMania Hunt

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

Mandi Blanco has organised another hunt, this time dedicated specifically to textures (including sculpt textures). Naturally, Templar Creations is taking part, along with a host of other (very talented — check out the gifts page on the Texture Mania blog!) texture creators. It starts today (1 July 2010), and you can find more information and hints at the official Texture Mania blog.

See you there!

Inworldz Store

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

Second Life is not the only game in town when it comes to virtual worlds. Amongst the various worlds that are based on Second Life technology, Inworldz is currently expanding rapidly and attracting a lot of attention, so I have decided to set up a store there and contribute to the growing community.

If you are an Inworldz resident, you’ll find the store at Tulare, 136/222/22.

Yes, sorry, no SLURLs for Inworldz yet, so you’ll have to open the map and do a manual search! If you are new to Inworldz, be aware that it is still in beta, so come prepared for it to be occasionally a bit unstable, and to be missing some features. It’s still well worth a visit, though, and there are usually plenty of friendly people at the welcome area to help you get started and introduce you to the world.

Dark SF Textures – Set 2

Monday, May 31st, 2010

This is my second set of textures with a dark science-fiction theme (think ‘Quake’, or similar games). Lots of metal plates and piping, and a few lights and control boxes thrown in. All the textures are 512 x 512, and you can view them all at the Texture Gallery.

To buy this set, either visit the main store in-world, or the XstreetSL page:

XstreetSL Page

Main Store

Texture Galleries

Sunday, May 16th, 2010

It’s always been difficult to provide a good way of letting people preview a texture set before they buy it. I put samples of the textures on the Xstreet pages, but these only show a few textures, and tend to load slowly (possibly because of the amount of traffic that the Xstreet servers are dealing with). I have vendors in-world which display all the textures, but this being Second Life it can take quite a while for them to rez, so going through an entire set can be tedious.

Well, I now have an alternative, in the form of Texture Galleries on this web site. You should see a list of the Galleries down the left-hand side of this page. Each gallery will display a set of thumbnails. Hover your mouse over any thumbnail, and the full-size image will be displayed. Click the thumbnail to be taken directly to the Xstreet page for that texture set.

Enjoy!

Going Places

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

I am moving Templar Creations to a new host this weekend. The address will still remain exactly the same, and in fact if all goes well you won’t notice any changes at all. I’m hoping that the transfer will be as seamless as possible, but if the site vanishes for a while, or doesn’t quite work properly, that will be the reason.

Medieval Textures and Farmhouse

Saturday, May 8th, 2010

Not one, but two new releases. They are closely related though — one is a set of Medieval Village textures, and the other is a Medieval Farmhouse which makes use of some of those textures.

The Medieval Village texture set consists of 34 textures, including both transparent and non-transparent versions of the four textures which incorporate windows. (The Farmhouse uses the non-transparent versions, in case you were wondering).

Note: These are the same textures that were freebies in the recent TextureMania hunt. The only difference is that the thatch texture has been replaced, and the transparent windows have been added.

The farmhouse is a small prefab, only 22 prims, and covering 16m x 16m, so it should fit comfortably even inside a small 512m parcel (unless it is a very oddly shaped parcel).

A few samples:


As usual, they are available in-world at the main store, and on-line on the Xstreet website:

Templar Creations Main Store (look outside for the Medieval Farmhouse)

XStreet – Medieval Village Textures
XStreet – Medieval Farmhouse

Exhibition Hall Textures – Set 1

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

I recently completed a small commission project, building an exhibition hall for the Geneva Motor Show:

I created a number of textures specifically for this, and I’ve taken these and improved them a bit (I think!), added some additional ones, and am now releasing them as a new texture set.

Here’s a few samples, and an example of them in use:

As usual, you’ll find them on XStreet, and in-world at the Main Store:

XStreet Page

Templar Creations Main Store

Victorian Interiors – Set 1, Take 2

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

An explanation and an announcement

Charity Tearfall posted a brief, complimentary review of the Victorian Interior textures on XstreetSL (thanks!), but suggested that it would be good if the windows were transparent.

Well, she’s right, it’s always useful for windows to be transparent!

Unfortunately, and as you are probably aware if you are a resident, Second Life has certain ‘issues’ with transparency, especially if one transparent texture is in front of another (and especially if they are slightly at an angle). There’s more about this in a previous blog post of mine, if you want the gory technical details. (Scroll down that post to read about “the dreaded Z-order bug”).

These days the situation has been made worse by the fact that many (most?) of the recent hairstyles in Second Life make use of transparency. I’m sure you’ve seen the odd effects which happen when these hairstyles get in front of windows or other transparent prims.

For that reason I’ve started avoiding transparency whenever I can.

But other builders in Second Life might (and obviously do!) have different views on this. So for them I’ve released a second version of the Victorian Interiors texture set, this time with transparent windows.

As usual, you will find it in-world at the Templar Creations store:

Templar Creations Main Store

You’ll also find it on XStreetSL, here:

Victorian Interiors – Set 1 – with Transparent Windows

And if you are in search of the original set, with opaque windows, you’ll find that here:

Victorian Interiors – Set 1

I hope that’s transparent enough…