EPTlovablemikey's Custom Texture Thread
If any of you are like me, you're bored stiff of Blizzard's default textures. They're very well done, look great, and get the job done; however, they've run their course. So, what do you do when you're sick of default textures? Make your own! That's what I did and I'm going to share my results with you all, you lucky dogs.
Materials:
NVIDIA .dds plugin for Photoshop
nDo normal map plugin for Photoshop
Photoshop
$1,000,000 for Photoshop
Step 1: Find Textures
You'll need textures to work with, first of all. Get onto Google or grab your digital camera and start collecting textures! Don't take every texture that comes your way. There are some things to take into account when choosing textures:
♥ Make sure the images are at the very least 1024x1024. That is the size that the editor stretches or shrinks all terrain textures to. If your images are smaller than that, the editor will stretch them to be 1024x1024. If your images are larger than that, the editor will shrink them to be 1024x1024. Simple, right? Here is what a stretched texture and a normal texture look like:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Lz7ix.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/p7Woz.jpg)
♥ To change the dimensions of your images without distorting them, follow these steps:
♥ In Photoshop, go to "Image/Image Size."
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/PWq3b.jpg)
♥ In the window that appears, find the width and height and select the smaller one.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/l8Dct.jpg)
♥ Change the smaller side to 1024.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JKktn.jpg)
♥ Go to "Image/Canvas Size."
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/NLLpi.jpg)
♥ In the window that appears, find the width and height and select the larger one.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/OC5tI.jpg)
♥ Change the larger side to 1024.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/rmlrJ.jpg)
♥ A warning will appear explaining that some of the image will be cropped off. Press Proceed.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/YSeEb.jpg)
♥ Is it really that easy?! It is!
♥ In addition to having the proper dimensions, your images should have the proper DPI (dots per inch). 72 DPI is what you want; no more, no less. 72 DPI is the resolution for computer monitors. If your images are below 72 DPI, they will look grainy and of low quality. If they are above 72 DPI, they will increase in file size with every additional dot per inch. Not only that, but you won't see the benefits of higher DPI images. Since a computer monitor only displays at 72 DPI, 300 DPI images will appear as 72 DPI images on-screen while still using the amount of memory necessary for a 300 DPI image, and that's stupid. In Photoshop, you can check for DPI:
♥ Go to the menu bar and select "Image/Image Size."
♥ The "resolution" is the same thing as the DPI.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/QdPVt.jpg)
♥ Try to avoid images with strong shadows. Here are some examples to give you an idea of what I mean:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LrHyK.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/P7QT8.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/604R1.jpg)
There are several good reasons for avoiding them:
♥ Shadows are created in-game. If your textures have shadows that conflict with the in-game shadows, because they are facing different directions for example, the lighting will look confusing.
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♥ Images with strong shadows will cause the light areas of your textures to pop out and the shadowed areas to stay flat, once the normal maps are applied. This gives textures an unevenness that is unappealing.
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♥ Picking textures that lend themselves to effective tiling can save you a lot of headaches. For all the other textures, there are a few problems you can run into. Guess what they are:
♥ The more shadowed areas there are, the harder your images will be to tile. Some images with small amounts of shadows can be altered to remove them, but if there is too much shadowed area, you won't have enough unshadowed content to use to cover up the shadowed areas.
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♥ Landmarks on textures can also give away their tiled nature. If you have a big rock in your image, when it's tiled, that rock will be repeating regularly across the terrain. It can look odd if not dealt with, but it isn't necessarily a bad thing. Keep it under wraps and everything will be OK.
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♥ Avoid images that aren't facing perpendicular to the texture. What you want are evenly flat textures, not ones where you can see any perspective. Images with perspective in them are practically impossible to tile. Here are some examples of what you want and what you don't want:
+ Show Spoiler [Bad Perspective] +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DNrst.jpg)
+ Show Spoiler [Better Perspective] +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/rKxMr.jpg)
+ Show Spoiler [Good Perspective] +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ylGp7.jpg)
+ Show Spoiler [Better Perspective] +
+ Show Spoiler [Good Perspective] +
♥ The amount of zoom is also important. Images that are zoomed in too close end up looking gigantic in-game. Blades of grass can be as big as Marines if zoomed in too much.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/F3mmr.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/30F25.jpg)
♥ Blurry images don't make good textures; grainy images don't make good textures either. Make sure your images are in focus from edge to edge.
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Keeping all of these things in mind, you'll be on the fast track to selecting top notch textures. Remember, what I'm explaining are not rules that must be followed, aside from the 1024x1024 dimensions and 72 DPI rules. You can make a texture out of anything you want. If you take these points into account though, you'll get believable results.
Step 2: Tiling Textures:
Depending on your images, tiling can be a breeze or the exact opposite. The two most significant factors in speeding things up are how closely your images are to matching the criteria in the "Find Textures" section and what types of textures you're trying to make. I've found that dirt and grass textures take only a few minutes to make, but paved stone and brick textures require significantly more time. Make sure to put the necessary time in though. If you cut corners, it will show.
To start with, lets make a dirt texture. You'll be very happy with how easy it is. Before you know it, your armies will be dying on your very own dirt! So, without further ado:
♥ Select a dirt texture and load it into Photoshop. Once it's loaded, make sure its dimensions are 1024x1024 and its DPI is exaclty 72. If you skipped Step 1, that's where I explain how to do that properly.
♥ Now that we're all set up, you might be asking yourself, "but Mikey, how will I know the edges of my image will transition seamlessly to create a border-less texture?" To that I will answer: Like this!
Go to the menu bar and select "Filter/Other/Offset." What the Offset filter does is shift the seamed outer edges of the image to the center of the image. Having the seamed outer edges moved to the center allows you edit the seam out of the image. What's so special about that? Well, since the seamed outer edges are moved to the center, that means the seamless middle is distributed along the outer edges. So, once you get rid of the seam from the center, after you offset your image, you will have a seamless tileable image. Pretty handy, right?
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♥ Knowing how to prepare an image to be tiled is great and everything, but how can the seam be covered up? A very fast way to do this is to use the "Clone Stamp" tool. Using that tool, we can take any section of the image we want and draw over the seam.
I'm still working on the thread. I'll be updating periodically.
Be sure to visit lovablemikey's Map Thread.
