Often times, when a new modder opens up a texture, he wonders, what am I looking at? What color on this bmp file goes to what part of the AoM model? This guide will help that person establish the parts of a texture before they even begin.

Part I: The Bottom and Top Sections

The Upper Section

The top part of a texture is the actual texture, the colors and art that will wrap itself around the AoM unit model in-game. It is separated into different parts of the body, such as arms, front body, back body, legs, etc. Many times the head will be in a separate texture, but in special cases, such as heroes, the head will be included.

The Lower Section

The bottom half of the texture, the black and white section, is the silhouette of the team colors. Whatever white is showing, the unit's in-game team colors (blue, red etc) will appear at that spot. Notice that wherever a white spot in the lower half is, the same spot in the upper half is white too. This is so the team color will not mix with a texture color in-game, and produce a darker color at that spot. So if you are making team colors at the bottom, make sure the same spot above is white also. If you do not want any team colors on the unit, simply fill in all the white spots and make the entire lower section black.

Part II: The Coloring Technique

If you are having a hard time figuring out what is what on the texure, use the Color Technique to fix the problem.

A Specific Unknown Part

Do this if you are unsure on a specific detail about the texture, or where a specific part is.

Example: You want to find the front of the Hero Jason foot so you can make laces for the shoe. All you know is where the foot is, but not where the front is.

Enlarged to Show Detail

Color many different strips of vibrant, bright, vivid colors all around where you estimate it will be. Note, this will not work if you are simply editing the look of an AoM unit, but mainly if you are painting a whole new texture, because you can simply paint over the bright colors later. Be sure to make the colors visually different. Now, the area would look something like this:

Now, check it out in-game:

The laces would be best put over the red and gold stripes, based on their frontal location on the picture.

Unknown Full Texture

Do this if you are unsure about the whole texture.

1. First, using the Color Technique explained above, you should color the whole texture, using different block colors on each part. I will use Jason as an example again.

   

2. Next, check out the unit in game.

   

   Clearly, you can now match up what part of the texture goes to the model by color-coordination. This will give you an understanding of where everything is.

3. If you want to, save the picture of the in-game colored unit and keep it next to you as you mod the texture. Print out the colored .BMP file, and keep it next to you as reference along with the in-game picture. Open up a fresh new texture of the same unit, only not colored, and you are back where you started, only this time, you know where everything is.
   

That should help you explore your texture as you figure out what part everything is.