Fast Texturing Tutorial

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Teric neDhalir
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Fast Texturing Tutorial

Post by Teric neDhalir »

Now that the use of YATT for building areas seems to be becoming commonplace I thought I'd share a quick way of "dirtying up" the textures in one go before you start adding detail.

First download this file: texturemasks.zip

These files are the masks we are going to use to break up our different texture layers. As you can see they are called bottomlayer_XX, middlelayer_XX and toplayer_XX, where XX is the size of the walkable part of your area.

I'll assume you know how YATT works (there's a website) and how to make a heightmap (but check out the programs Leveller, GeoControl and World Machine if you need an editor).

Let's assume you are making a 16x16 area. Start YATT and import your heightmap in the usual way. On the Settings Browser:
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click on 3. Texturemaps. This opens the Texturemap collection screen:
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Press the "Add" button and import the file bottomlayer_16x16.bmp. Assign a texture to it and leave the Map Generation Rules section blank. Press "Add" again and import middlelayer_16x16.bmp. Assign another texture. At this stage it doesn't matter what it is as long as it is different to the first layer. Repeat the same process for the toplayer. You should now have something similar to the pic above. Bottomlayer on row 0, middlelayer on row 1 and toplayer on row 2. Press OK and on the Settings Browser set Texture Overflow Action to "Merge".

Now continue creating your area as normal. What you will get is three layers of textures in the new area that are broken up by the texure noise masks:
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Now, the fun thing about this is that if you choose the "paint terrain" tool and move it over the main toolset window the three textures appear at the bottom of the Terrain/Texturing window. Click on any of the textures to highlight it and then press the swapper button. You can now globally change that texture for another one. Two things to watch out for; first make sure you do not have the "select terrain" tool highlighted or you will just get the texture replaced in one 4x4 meta-tile and secondly don't use the same texture twice or one of your layers will be deleted and you will have to start again. The way I have made the masks means that the bottom layer has least effect, and is quite patchy and the other layers are more prominent. I tend to use the middle layer for my main texture, say grass, toplayer for dirt, for example, and the bottomlayer for patchy areas of rock/mud or whatever.

There are 82 textures in the toolset, so by my reckoning that's about 531360 possible permutations. Should keep you going for a bit!
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indio
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Post by indio »

Kickass.
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Post by darrenhfx »

Ooo I'll have to try that!

Thanks!
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Post by HEEGZ »

Hrm, I don't think I'm ready for this yet... Still learning YATT though.
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peterdin
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Post by peterdin »

Just fyi: i've been playing around with the L3DT tool and Yatt for a couple of hours.
The nice thing of L3DT is that you can make an area very quickly (with correct texturing!) , customize it and export it.
Then use YATT to import the data.

I've included some screenies of something I've put down in approx 1 1/2 hour. It's a mountain environment and yes you do get lost, the same as in normal mountains :)
its a 24*24 area so it doens't show everything

high cliffs:
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Lost:
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some views:
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Post by peterdin »

and I tried a vulcano...

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Teric neDhalir
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Post by Teric neDhalir »

Interesting stuff, peterdin. I looked at L3DT (as it seems to be a YATT users favourite) but kind of bounced off it. Can you import bitmap heightmaps into it?
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peterdin
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Post by peterdin »

I export/import png's. works great. Didn't try bitmap's but I think they also work.

You only have to be aware of the scale. But you can rescale you heightmap quit easily.

let me know if you need more, perhapswe could chat sometimes in IRC.
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Post by Tridisus »

Forgive me if im wrong but arnt the heightmap generators really only good if you want to make mountains. For low lying terrain I always find it easier to just raise and fall the terrian yourself with a few large brushstrokes then go back in with a smaller brush to add the detail. But then thats just me.

Nice work on the texturemaps though...
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Post by peterdin »

You're right about that.

I played around a bit with flat terrain.
You can re-scale to have only a few meters of height differences. This mimics a "natural" flat terrain.

But then again, perhaps it's easier the way you suggested.

But if you have only a few meters difference and you need rocks in it, then the tool is very good in this because it will calcualte the textures map for you and delivers a "natural" look. This saves an awful lot of time.
e.g. the vulcano thing was done in 1/2 hour (where I spend the most time in making an approriate walkmesh by smoothing down a path)
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Teric neDhalir
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Post by Teric neDhalir »

As there's renewed interest in toolset tutorials could this be moved to the Toolsetting forum and stickied?
Cheers,
Teric
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