Custom Texturing

Introduction
I learned a lot about texturing while building my upcoming level, Mad Science. Though I'm not a texturing master, I think I have enough valuable information to fill up a webpage or two. For me, making textures is the probably the most enjoyable part of building levels. It is an important aspect, as everything you see is textured. The inside of a barn can be made to look like a church if the texturing is done well.

To make textures you will need a good paint program (Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro...). You should have a fair understanding of your paint program, especially how to use layers, filters and effects, cloning tools, and your imagination.

Where Are These Textures?
Where do we get our textures? Assuming you have an idea of what you are looking for, there are many methods for coming up with what you need. Sometimes you can design the entire texture using Photoshop. However, some textures are a little difficult for the average person to just paint with a mouse. I'm one of these people. For those with less than spectacular artistic talent, there are alternative methods.

We need some stock material to start with. As a texture artist, you will discover that the internet is your best buddy! You can find any kind of image you need with a little patience and some experience with a search engine. In my level, Mad Science, which takes place in a house, I wanted to make some fancy wallpaper for the living room. I had a good idea of what I wanted, but I didn't think I could draw it and make it look real. I thought of taking photos of wallpaper with a digital camera (another valid option), but I was too impatient to borrow a camera, not to mention finding the right design in someones house!

So, I brought up Google's search engine and typed "wallpaper images catalog", or something similar. Up popped wallpaper dealers websites. It took a little time to find a site that had a good online catalog of their designs, but eventually I found a good one. In fact, at one site, I found thousands of nice JPEG images of wallpapers from all over the world, in every pattern and theme I could imagine.

Here are a few of the ones I downloaded...I downloaded dozens of these so I'd have a good selection, and for possible future use. If you find a good source, download everything you can get!

I ended up using the texture on the left for my level. I did a bit of tweaking to get it right. I mirrored it, and then made it tileable, which wasn't too difficult with this particular pattern. Later on I decided I wanted a real fancy carpet for this room to match the walls. Off to the internet!

I think I used sample number two, or a similar one. I believe it needed no additional work to be tileable. Here me now and believe me later, there is a website for EVERYTHING! Look hard and you'll find some nutball with with a site that has just what you need, including game editing tutorials :\

These are not textures that you will find included with Descent 3, to say the least! There are some texture websites that offer free ready-to-use textures, but I prefer to make my own stuff, plus many of these textures suck or are spit out by programs that make random kaleidescopish textures. HOWEVER, I am not above using an existing texture from a library as a base for a new one, or just flat out using it as is. I did find some nice wood textures somewhere that needed to be made tileable (using Photoshop's Clone tool), but other than that, I made no other changes. Incidentally, if you use someone elses work, you should use textures that are offered free or give credit to the original author, if they allow you to use them. Of course you could use them anyways, it's up to you and your conscience. If you plan on selling your work, don't rip off anyone, it could be costly.

Many images that I use as "stock" imagery are just photos off the internet that I later mutilate to my desire. The above examples were samples from an online catalog. I doubt they'd mind if I use them (or so I tell myself). Anyways, to hell with legalities! We're on a mission (and I'm not makin a dime anyways so sue me)!

I have designed some textures from photos that I took with a digital camera. I'll get into that in a future tutorial, but it was fun driving around rural roads and taking pics of old barns and shacks, and seeing the looks on peoples faces when they saw me taking closeup photos of their stuff (mostly from the safety of my truck which looked even more suspicious I'm sure!). What would happen if they play D3 and saw their old barn in my level!? Photos from the web too are usually easier to come by.

I used a small image of a "Programming For Dummies" book and altered it slightly for my Mad Scientist's bookshelf:

	Our mad scientist has big aspirations indeed! The actual texture used in the level is only 64 x 64 pixels, so detail wasn't my main concern. I wanted the title readable and the book to be recognizeable and close to the original. The photo of the book I downloaded had mostly blurry text, as you can see in this image. I made a new "chalkboard" for the cover and added my own text. The font was close enough to the original and still readable. One thing to take note of is that I used this single texture for both the front of the book AND the spine. This creates less work for your video card as it won't need to load two separate textures to render the book. The bottom image was taken within the game. If you search through the D3 textures in D3Edit, especially the Object Textures, you will see many textures with this same idea in mind of having multiple "parts" on a single texture. If you have extra space on a texture, you may be able to use that space for a small additional texture, maybe a button or a small sign. No reason to waste space!
	In another room there is a Donkey Kong arcade machine. I found photos of the actual decals for the original arcade game on the web and spliced and hacked them into only two separate textures. This includes the side of the cabinet, the top title panel, the panel where the controls are, the coin slot area, and the plain blue area that covers the rest of the machine. Instead of using a bunch of small textures, I used a couple of larger ones and got a sharper look in the process. This is one of the textures. I drew the speaker and "25" thing, the rest is vintage Kong! This comprises the top-front of the cabinet, the control board, and the speaker/coin slot. I had a lot of fun recreating this machine.

Here are some before and after pics...the "before" is a photo from the web or some other source. The "after" picture on the right is the result of using portions of that photo as a texture within the game. Note that most textures need a lot of meticulous work in order for them to look proper in the game.
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The photo above (a shrunken version of the original) was the result of a LOT of web searching. The architecture was just what I was looking for. Finding the right building, at the right angle, can be a pretty mean feat. You can see that the building in the image isn't level. It was simple enough to rotate it so that it was level. Then I realized that because the photo was taken from a low perspective, the building appeared to angle inward towards the top. I need a straight building man! To make matters worse, the useable part of the building wasn't wide enough for my buildings. The shadows and trees made sure of that. In the photo there are some nice straight areas, mainly the area just to the left of the center doorway. The first 2 or 3 columns of windows are nice and straight...very useable! With some copy/pasting and use of the Clone tool in Photoshop, I was able to make my texture as wide as I wanted using the same 3 columns of windows. I did a little shading and tweaking to make the repetitiveness less noticeable. I used 2 textures for the buildings. One for the center portion with the door, and one on each side, without the door. 3 big textured faces, side by side, make up the front of each building. I used this same texture for the round building in the center as well. I also made the sign mounted on the rock wall. And the flagpoles. And...

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These French apartment buildings had a lot of character, and the photos were taken from the proper perspective. Cleaning them up for my game was easy. I got a couple of good textures out of this photo (small version shown). I used many such photos of buildings in this golf course...houses, restaurants, liquor stores. It's not easy to find photos of buildings taken from dead straight on, and from a verticle angle that doesn't distort the building too much. If these apartments were photographed from ground level, they probably would have been unuseable. If you find a good site, bookmark it! And send me a link!

Here's that Donkey Kong texture alongside the finished product (except the joystick). This machine is many times bigger than the ship you fly in the game. The texture had to be stretched, even though I used the biggest size possible. That's why I used as few as possible. Not bad, eh?	<<< >>>

Lastly, but not leastly, here are 3 more textures from Mad Science. I hate it when people put writing over their web images so no one can use them, but in this case, I want to wait until the level is released before I give away all of my hard work. At that time, anyone who downloads the level will be able to extract the textures. I won't have a problem with that. I just want to use them first!

I made the cardboard box ones from scratch entirely in Photoshop The skull and crossbones is a font...Wingdings I believe! The cement one started out as a stone texture I found somewhere. I did a LOT of tweaking to it. I believe it was dark reddish when I found it.Since D3 lacked any good concrete textures, I made 6 versions of this. There is a light, medium and dark version, and each version has a texture with the vertical line, and one without.They are also tileable in all directions. I used the clone tool to remove the line, then adjusted the contrast and colors for each version. This texture looks great in the game.

I will release all of these textures soon, including ones not in the upcoming levels. All of the images on this page have been degraded and resized for faster loading (except for the wallpaper and carpet ones...use them).