Legacy:Creating Textures

This info relates to UnrealEd 2.0 and earlier (with notes below about 3.0) Texture creation and was partially referenced from Unreal Technology article by Tim Sweeney.

Size, Formats, etc.

Format 

UT uses only 256-color PCX or BMP. UT2k3+ can use any bit-depth PCX, BMP, TGA, DDS, UTP (Unreal Paint)

Color depth 

UT will only use 256 color (8-bit). UT2k3+ will use any bit-depth up to 32bit (for RGBA8 or TGA with alpha channel)

Resolution 

UT can use any power of 2 from 1x1 to 512x512, with 256x256 being normal. UT2k3+ will support any power of 2, from 1x1, 2x2, ..., 2048x2048. They do not have to be square, e.g., you can use 512x256.

Animated 

Files which are parts of an animation should be saved as yourtexname_A01, yourtexname_A02, etc. This will let the editor know that they are part of an animation.

Naming 

When naming your texture be sure not to name them the same as any other texture in unreal, be as original as possible, if by chance there are two texture with the same name it will throw the engine off, this is bad. (I have read that this is not as much of a problem in 3.0 but better safe than sorry, ZxAnPhOrIaN recommends using a prefix of some sort to seperate your tex (i.e. Zxan_GrandCanyon)

Tiling 

When creating a texture for a wall, floor, or any other large object, it is necessary to realize one thing, it needs to be tileable (all of it's edges need to be able to touch it's opposite edge and blend nicely). If a texture isn't tileable it will look awful in game leaving scar marks where the edges don't blend. There are a few ways of doing this. One way of doing this is to copy a selection of one edge and paste it onto the other and mirror it before releasing its selection. This way works but quite often results in odd effects so isn't the recommended way of going about things. My recommendation is that if you are using Photoshop or PSP to download the Simple Filters at http://www.btinternet.com/~cateran/simple/ and use either the quick tile or the halfwrap to do this. The half wrap works wonderfully since it takes all of the edges and folds them inward (showing you how they will connect) after using it patch up where they touch and save the texture (be sure that it has been reduced in color before saving). I also recommend saving a 16 mil color copy of your texture as well, in case any editing needs to be done or if it is a base texture that will be used for the creation of dozens of other textures.

Related Topics

• Texture Topics
• Category:Legacy Basic Procedure - Tutorials:
  • Create A Material
  • Import The Texture
• What is and how to create an Alpha Channel
• Legacy:Creating Textures/Animated Real-Time Textures

Discussion

Mychaeel: Here's a zipped tutorial in HTML format about making textures (by monsto). Because he's short on time at the moment he asks that somebody put it on the Wiki: http://mb.link-m.de/wiki/Building_Custom_Textures.rar You will need winrar or another decompression program that recognizes the rar format.

Creating Textures without base materials - http://www.lightwave3d.com/tutorials/surface/texture_building/texture_building.html

Texturing 101: Building Textures:- http://www.lightwave3d.com/tutorials/surface/texturing/texturing_buildingtextures.html

The ........ (texture can be) ... created using only one subdivided polygon, no drawings, nor photographs, nor images of any kind, and this comes straight from the renderer, no post processing applied.

Highlander: "For the financially challenged" :)

Free is good, The GIMP is quite an excellet (Free) Image editor. Its pretty good for making textures etc.

A useful tool for avoiding problems alligning textures onto curved surfaces can be found at http://www.planetunreal.com/fordy/textalign2.htm.

Kerlin: Attempted to refactor.