All about Texturing - Various Authors
Texture
lines above and below Door portals
by
George Maciver
Ever wondered how to get non stretched
textures onto walls above and below doors without having to
stack rooms? If you're clever, you'd be surprised how many
ways there are to work around this problem. Here are a
couple of hints to get you started.
Diagonal
texturing lines above and below Door portals
By
Titak
One can also make those floor and ceiling parts diagonal.
1/ Click on the door in 3D view. A red frame will
appear around the door in the 2D grid.
2/ Click on the door again and the red frame will
change into a single red line.
3/ Click to change the direction of the red line.
4/ Now use the D/E and R/F buttons to raise/lower one
side of the floor/ceiling line.
"Sometimes you have to find out where the
texture line is to begin with but you'll soon get the hang
of it."
I found out that using the Flatten floor and Flatten ceiling
features puts both floor lines and both ceiling lines in the
same spot. So when you want to divide the wall section below
a door into two parts you can simply press the D button
(floor down) And the R for the ceiling part (ceiling up).
This works with all wall sections, as long as the first
floor and ceiling lines are visible, and can save time.
How to make
5 texturing Rows on Walls
by
Croft Storm
One of the most annoying things about the level editor is
that if you create a tall room you inevitably get stretched
textures, so you often neeed to create stacked rooms to
acheive height. You might think that the maximum number of
rows is 3, but you can actually get 5. This is briefly
mentioned in the manual but very easily missed:
First of all open a new project and select a few wall
panels.
The Q & A keys act like the floor + & - buttons. Try them
out and raise the floor a few clicks.
The W & S keys act like the celing + & - buttons. Try them
out and lower the celing a few clicks.
The E & D keys are used for creating an extra floor layer,
called the sub-divided lower wall. So press E a few times
and see you new row rise up!
The R & F keys are used for creating an extra celing layer,
called the sub-divided upperwall. So press F a few times and
see you new row lower down!
So ultimately the extra rows aren't some kind of bug, just
often overlooked as they can only be controlled by the
keyboard keys E,D,R & F.
How to
select small Triangular Textures
by
George Maciver
When selecting triangular sections of textures for difficult
or small areas, you can use the key below the Esc key and
beside the 1 key to toggle the green triangles. This key may
vary from country to country, so maybe the tilde key will
work for you instead.
How to
adjust Texturing lines on floor and ceiling Blocks
by
George Maciver
Ever wondered how to straighten texturing lines on floor and
ceiling blocks?
Use the E and D keys and arrows! Put the
arrow to the corner and use the E or D key to raise or lower
the texturing line.
For ceiling blocks, simply use the R and F
keys with the arrows, instead of the E and D keys.
How to
apply whole textures to Broken floor and ceiling Tiles
by
George Maciver
Having problems applying textures to broken tiles and
getting them to match up?
Hit the Alt key at the same time as you
apply the texture with your left mouse button and your
problems are over. Holding the Alt key down while right
mouse clicking on the texure will rotate the whole texture
cleanly. Holding down the Ctrl key and the Alt key while
mouse clicking will allow you to flip the texture cleanly
too.
How to move
Texturing lines on solid Columns
by
George Maciver
Trying to move just one corner of a texturing line on a
column? Frustrated because everytime you try it, lines on
the other side of the block move as well?
Simple! Hold down the Ctrl key while
toggling the arrows. You will be able to select and move
just one corner and no other lines will move.
This will also work on partition walls
dividing up a single room.
Understanding Crack Mode in the TR Level Editor
By
EssGee and eTux
Crack mode is a very useful but under-used feature of the TR
Level Editor. Its purpose is to highlight badly aligned
texture wall panel segments. When these segments are aligned
correctly there are several benefits.
1. It ensures that lighting features of a room have
continuity (e.g. shadows and the way light features fall on
a wall).
2. It helps eliminate ‘cracks’ in walls. This can be seen as
fine white lines of speckles between wall panels when
texture panels are badly aligned. When the wall panels
segments are correctly aligned the ugly lines will no longer
be visible.
3. It highlights the gaps in wall panels in underwater
rooms, where it looks like the texture panels are splitting
apart. When the wall panel segments are properly aligned the
underwater wall will appear sealed and no longer split
apart.
While it is best to use the "Crack Mode" to avoid all cracks
(and best done so by checking them from the first day you
build the level) you shouldn't go crazy over fixing every
one of them. Keep things reasonable - judge for yourself if
or how much harm the cracks do - for example if fixing some
cracks doesn't go together too well with your architecture
or texturing style, no need to fix them. You'll see for
yourself though, that it makes a difference in underwater
rooms or rooms with atmospheric lighting.
Here are some graphic tutorials that explain the general
concepts of crack mode. Hopefully these tutes will help you
to achieve a more professional look to your level.
Getting rid
of the Wallpaper Effect
By
George Maciver
Here is a screen shot from the early stages of development
of one of the levels of QRS's recent release 'Egypt and
Beyond'. The wall paper effect is very evident:
Here was my suggestion:
Little tip for you, rotate every second wall brick tile
180 degrees to get rid of the wallpaper effect.
Here was QRS's reply:
Rotating them did not work so well (for this texture) but
I made half of them mirrored and that did the job!
And here is the difference! Startling eh!
Of course, your job is made much easier if
you use blocks of 4 or 6 textures, like these rock textures
from the title flyby level of The Last Revelation:
How to get
rid of the wallpaper effect on water
By
Michiel
It might help to load a temp texture and put numbers on the
lava textures (if it has 8 textures, number them 1-8.
Then rotate the view so you look at the left side of the 2D
map and texture the faces like with the following numbers:
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6
2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7
3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8
4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 1
5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 1 - 2
6 - 7 - 8 - 1 - 2 - 3
Then it might look better. Also see this picture about
wallpaper effect on water:
Texturing Large Areas
Tip by Dhama
It can be difficult to apply textures to large rooms, so if you
first copy the 256x256 texture and on the copy, place
numbers 1,2,3,4 etc. on each of the 64x64 cells and then
apply them you can ensure they are in the correct sequence
and rotated correctly. Then afterwards replace the
'numbered' texture with the original, and you will have a
perfectly textured area.
Rotating Difficult to see
Triangular Textures Correctly
Tip by George Maciver
Here is a good tip for ensuring a triangular texture is
rotated properly into position.
Place your triangle texture. If you're not sure it's right,
place a totally different, easy to see texture there and
rotate it into position. If you then apply the same triangle
of your corrct texture, it will be properly applied. Alt Z
is a pain, but used with this method does make things
easier.
Let me illustrate. In this particular editor screen you can
see which one of the textures isn't right. However, it isn't
easy sometimes.
Simply select a contrasting texture, select the same
triangle, and apply, like this:
Now it's easy to see the texture isn't placed properly and
it's simple to rotate into place.
Now all you have to do is select the same triangle on the
correct texture and apply it and it will be right.
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