posted 05-27-09 05:39 PM EDT (US)
This is a tutorial made by Tilanus Commodor. It will explain the basic aspects of texturing based on a unit from the mod The Ancient Age (TAA).
= LinksBefore you start texturing, you must know how to create a new unit. This Tutorial by Lord Tahattus should give you all answers you need:
If you are new to Photoshop and the work with layers, check out this tutorial first.
Two important things about the FileConverter you need to know. Most beginners get errors when they try to convert tga-files back to ddt. Mainly this happens cause they forgot to add the number signature.
Note:
The Targa files of this version are not able to save targa files with alpha channels. Therefore you need to download the new Targa File Format, check the link on top. Once downloaded, open the installation directory of your Photoshop, delete the old targa file and extract the ZIP paket in this directory:
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Okay, you adequately understood how to create a unit. An opened texture in front of you and you have absolutely no idea how it works.
Well, every texture is divided into parts. Unfortunately you can't just texture the model. The difficulty of textures is to find the parts in the texture on the ingame unit.
There are some textures which have an identical structure, but most of them are different.
So your first job is always to find out where the parts of the texture are shown in-game. There is a special method for that, the so called "colour method". Here the current texture of the Roman Hastatus and its previous original texture, the Age IV Longbowman:
As you can see the Hastatus texture has the double size (128x128) of the Longbow texture (64x64). Larger textures allow you to make more detailed skins, be aware that you should enlarge the image just with x2 or x4 but not with x3 or x5 cause otherwise you will most probably mess up your texture and it won't work. If you think it's necessary to enlarge the texture (and that can be quite often), I recommend you the double size.
You can see the numbers and letters outside the texture I added. They'll help you to understand the parts of this unit:
A/B - arms and hands
C/D - legs and feet
A - helmet
B/C/(D) - upper and lower body
D - obviously for weapons & shields
A - head/face
B/C/(D) - upper and lower body
D - obviously for weapons & shields
In Photoshop you work with
). Probably you won't finish the texture in one move, often you will improve your texture a few times. So it is be advisable to save your texture as The Hastatus psd-file has several layers: background, helmet, breast plate, belts and also layers which help me to find out where things of my texture appear in-game. These layers should not be too large and have a different colour so that you are able to distinguish each of them ingame. This is called the
I did that with my unit when I wanted to find out back and front part of the body, thus I created two squares: One red, one green, saved and converted the Targa file back to DDT and later on - ingame - I saw red and green parts on my unit. The colour method helps you orientating yourself in the texture. You can use this universal method for all parts of the texture.
Now let's continue with the
From the tutorial of Tahattus you should know that black will be replaced ingame with the playercolour. So it's your job now to have the right relation of white and black parts. Grey parts are half-playercolour and half-original texture. It's important to know that texture colour and the brightness of tones in the alpha layer are adding each other. So a black part in your texture darkens the player colour in spite of the fact that this part in the Alpha Layer is 100% white. Therefore player colour parts in the texture are mainly white or have only bright colours.
There is an easy way to get only special parts white. For the Hastatus I selected every layer that is
After you selected all the needed parts you switch to the alpha channel and just press the delete button of your keyboard
In the alpha channel you should avoid using Antialias tools, make sharp outlines, otherwise you'll have half-playercolour/half-texture parts ingame, which look spongy.
This chapter is about making bumpmaps (following:
There's a little trick to avoid that: 1.) If you're done with your normal texture, merge all layers to one, copy the layer, 2.) Open a new psd file and paste the merged layer into this, 3.) Go back to the psd file with the normal texture and undo the merging step and
There is a common system to name these files to see the difference between the normal colour textures and the bumpmap which belongs to it. You just attach a
Bumpmaps may be own textures, however, you do not have to create any new things, because bumpmaps always base on the textures you already made. Take a look on these two bumps,
You know one of them. However, both are made of textures which you can see in part I and V. I deleted all the parts which are not supposed to be shiny, as you can see I changed the opacity of the shoes - so it's partially shiny.
There are two colours you should pay attention to in bumps: red and blue. I can say that the way of shade of these colours is important. Take a look on already existing bumpmaps and try to immitate their style.
To be able to make bumpmaps you need a Plug-In for Photoshop. Download it here:
After you installed the Plug-In in your Photoshop directory, you'll find it in
Now you are gonna learn how to work with it, therefore I made a little overview which I'll explain
Filter Type:
Scale:
If you're looking closely to them you can find some distinct differences. 'Biased RGB' looks inverted, while 'Max (R,G,B)' and 'Colorspace' look quite similar concerning the way of lighting. Nevertheless even the last two methods are different. While 'Max R,G,B' has rather a hilly texture, 'Colorspace' has a clearly smoother appearance. So when you have a unit with wrinkled clothes 'Max (R,G,B)' would be the best choice. Hitherto I always took either Colorspace or Max.
.. for 3D View Options read Step 3.
Press '3D Preview' - happy watching, you can change the angle via mouse/keyboard.
After you finished your settings, agree to them by pressing 'OK'. Make sure that you closed the 3D Viewer, the changes won't be approved before the Viewer was not closed (if you used it).
That's it.
As I said bumpmaps are own textures, so the way of incorporating them is exactly the same as with basic textures:
By the way, even Bumpmaps have an
It's already explained in part III how to create Alpha Layers, for bumps obtains this rule: black parts are the less shiny, soft parts - white parts the opposite and grey again in between. I recommend using white only for metallic things and (dark) grey for leather for example - things which still reflect a bit of the sun light. There are also units who don't need any white or grey, but just a black alpha layer. Here the Alpha Channel of
Totalling the amount of textures you should get a 6. Inside your folder there should be 2 psd-files (normal colour texture + bump), 2 tga-files ( " ), 2 ddt-files (converted tga-files). Right? Fine, then let's open the last chapter.
Let's say your unit is using a shield, a hat or anything else from another unit. Of course you have to texture this too. I had to do that with the shield of the hastatus and it goes like this: Since the shield of the Hastatus is originally the shield from the bolas warrior the texture of the shield is logically inside the bolas warrior texture. What you do now is simple: You make a copy of the bola texture and rename it to what it is supposed to be, in this case:
Then you start editing the texture, blacken all parts which are not needed for the shield. Since it's just another texture and not another special type, you can do the same things with it as with the first texture, enlarge it for more details, use an alpha layer etc. - the shield of the Hastatus looks like this:
You don't know how to give unit attachments? Check Lord Tahattus Tutorial again.
Just enjoy.
[This message has been edited by Tilanus Commodor (edited 07-21-2009 @ 10:51 AM).]
