Game Design Music and Art

Textures? For 3d games... – bwoogie

bwoogie

Member

Posts: 380
From: kansas usa
Registered: 03-12-2005
where do you guys get your textures for your games? do you make them in a paint program or do you use actual photos and then edit them?

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~~~boogie woogie woogie~~~

ArchAngel

Member

Posts: 3450
From: SV, CA, USA
Registered: 01-29-2002
I'd second that question. How do you make textures?

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Soterion Studios

Seven7
Member

Posts: 50
From: USA
Registered: 03-16-2005

Textures can be made by just about any program that edits BMP, JPEG, GIF,
TGA files etc. Maya and PhotoShop are widely used. Although these products
are expensive, there are some free ones, like "Gimp". You can use any pic
you want or generate you own.

As far as "How to", that is dependent on what you will be doing with your
texture. Will it be static, dynamic in usage? Will it be flat, or wraped
around a frame?

If you have ever played "Unreal Tournament", there is an map editor that
comes free with the game. Whats cool about this editor is you can create
your own textures and plug them into the game. So for example, if I take
a picture of my dog, sister, mom, wife or whatever, I can take that picture
and put it into the game using the map editor. No when I load and play the
game, I will be seeing a picture of my dog, sister, mom, wife in the game!
Cool!

Texture are basicly pics. If you want some dynamical look (3D look) to them
then using PhotoShop or Gimp. The only limitation is your imagination.

j.

Rhyolite

Member

Posts: 86
From: UK
Registered: 08-04-2004
I think the toughest bit is getting textures to 'tile'. Although some textures will just be used as a single image, you will often find you need to tile your images so you can cover a large area with a small repeating pattern. Some paint applications (usualy the better ones) can help you match the edges up to create seamless joins. Even so, you should look for images, take photos or create your own bearing this in mind.

Remember, you only have so much graphics memory for storing textures and its surprising how quickly you can fill it up if you use high res textures. Also, many graphic cards only support square textures with a size to the power of 2 - so thats like 32x32, 64x64, 128x128 etc. Additionaly, some old graphics cards only support upto 512x512 textures (Voodoo2 etc) and even some fairly recent gfx cards only support 1024x1024. Finaly, you can usualy use one larger image which contains many smaller textures and use your 3D engine to 'chop out' the bits you need (using UV coordinates). Fianly, resuse images wherever possible.

Rhy

[This message has been edited by Rhyolite (edited March 17, 2005).]

goop2

Member

Posts: 1059
From:
Registered: 06-30-2004
I personaly like "fake" textures better than pictures. It looks more realistic to me.

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I dont like siggys. They are to hard to think up :(

ArchAngel

Member

Posts: 3450
From: SV, CA, USA
Registered: 01-29-2002
but... how would you match it up with the model, like a character. like I see a texture for a 3d model and it's all warped and crazy looking.

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Soterion Studios

Rhyolite

Member

Posts: 86
From: UK
Registered: 08-04-2004
All 3D models are created from many (often 100's or 1000's) of triangles joined together. Each corner of every triangle is reffered to as a vertex and has a position in 3D space (x,y,z).

Each vertex on your model, as well as having a co-ordinate in 3D space, also has a UV coordinate (x,y or more accuratly u,v). The UV coordinate is a reference to your '2D' texture and is used to position the texture on your model. The UV coordinates each have a value between 0 and 1 and refer to a point on your texture. For example (0.5, 0.5) would be a point at the exact centre of your texture. Note that UV coordinates usualy have there origin in a different place to most image processing applications!!

You will need some UV mapping tools to help you map the texture to the model (although you can do it manualy if you have full access to the model data - but not really advised in most circumstances). Top range modelling tools have this feature built in, but there are some freebies or cheaper versions out there.

A well known 'cheap' tool is 'Ultimate Unwrap'. However, if you search around you might be able to find a link to the older free version.
http://www.unwrap3d.com/

'Milkshape' is a fairly well known budget 3D modelling tool with 'some' UV manipulation built in (but pretty poor tbh)
http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/index.html

Another cheap modelling tool (no idea about UV mapping support though)
http://www.wings3d.com/


And maybe check out some of the game resource sites for tutorials etc
http://www.gamedev.net/
http://db1.3dbuzz.com/
http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/platinumdefault.asp


Its a fairly big 'topic', so hope those help you get started.

Rhy Out

[This message has been edited by Rhyolite (edited March 19, 2005).]

ArchAngel

Member

Posts: 3450
From: SV, CA, USA
Registered: 01-29-2002
gracias.

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