Texture editor

[Nic75]

(If this is in the wrong place, could an admin/moderator please move it? Ta.)

 

I went hunting for a metal patina texture and ended up downloading 2 programs. Has anyone else used Genetica textures? They're free and the user license states categorically that they can be used in non-commercial games-- TDM qualifies.

 

The free Genetica Viewer as well as the Wood Workshop can be found here: http://www.spiralgra...iz/products.htm

 

I really wish I had a hundred-odd US$ to spend on Genetica 4.0. Check out their gallery: http://www.spiralgra...biz/gallery.htm

 

To give you an idea of what you can get for free...

 

 

 

 

...and you can render that texture *and* its bump and noise maps separately. Moreover, you can mess with the settings before render, including seed settings that completely alter the noise pattern spread and type.

 

The Wood Workshop, totally free, is something along the same line, and what it produces is pretty damn realistic (unfortunately I was an idiot and didn't export my last render).

 

Anyway, just putting this here in case others want to grab a couple hundred free textures, a rendering viewer that permits an impressive amount of editing options, and a wood 'factory' that rather much lives up to its name.

Edited October 1, 2014 by Nic75

[Atheran]

While it looks good for some very specific textures like marble for example (if you want visible "waters" on it) I wouldn't really use it much else. I'd prefer some fine control on my textures and however many sliders and options I get isn't going to change the fact that it uses a random seed.

 

Of course I may be totally wrong but from what you said I understand it's like "clouds" generator in photoshop.

 

Wood Workshop looks impressive tho'

[Nic75]

While it looks good for some very specific textures like marble for example (if you want visible "waters" on it) I wouldn't really use it much else. I'd prefer some fine control on my textures and however many sliders and options I get isn't going to change the fact that it uses a random seed.

 

You can pick the seed. If you don't like the ones available, the full program allows you to adjust the bumps/normals, noise, and/or light maps to suit yourself. The Viewer only allows you to select the seed, but every texture has upwards of 50 of those.

 

Yeah, the Wood Workshop is pretty cool. My partner's been playing with that instead of playing solitaire

 

And I agree: for "fine-tuning" I prefer to tweak things by hand in GIMP, and I did so for a Wood Workshop texture.

[SteveL]

It's good that it provides bump maps -- that's the stumbling block for TDM with most free texture resources. Our engine relies heavily on high quality bump maps to produce a good look. I took a quick glance at the site too but must admit I stopped looking when I saw it was purely procedural, because like Atheran I thought "ah, marble only". Care to share any images if you've managed to get some good results with anything else?

[Nic75]

I'll play around a bit, then upload a .zip somewhere. As an example of why the .zip's needed, I've got a window texture open and there are 10 effect maps for that single texture(!). So far the window (as well as some cottage windows), crystal, and liquid textures seem to be the ones that regularly use upwards of 3 effect maps; stone, marble, and the rest use 3 or less.

 

The Wood Workshop is a lot of fun to play with, but it doesn't generate effect maps (grrr!). Not much of a problem, because GIMP can work magic on any image if you desaturate it, then fiddle with curves, levels, and threshold. Example:

 

 

 

 

 

I'll park that on a cube today to see how much muting the bump needs, but the effect I want is worn, grooved boards, so I think that bump will work okay (just more grey than black, I think).

 

I'll go play with that window, and other things...

[Nic75]

Erm. Okay so I perhaps need to reduce resolution. At 2048x2048, 8 complete textures with their effect maps total a whopping 187mb *zipped*. Eek.

 

Back to the drawing board...

[Nic75]

https://www.sendspace.com/file/11xryt

 

That's a link to a ~49mb .zip containing 8 different 1024x1024 textures and their effect maps. If you'd like to use any of them, go for it

 

Notes--

 

~ "Granite Techno" is included mostly to show the height differentials that can be obtained with the effects maps (the contrast setting is the one to meddle with to hype those maps). Might be a bit too angular for a good wall/floor texture in TDM, but that's really up to the mappers.

 

~ The Viewer allows so many options and variations that many of the non-geometric presets can altered to the point where they no longer resemble the original. Eg.: "Highlands" is actually a terrain texture, but I fiddled with it so that it can serve as a deteriorated/eroded plaster texture.

 

~ "Microbial Tenements" is a stone texture with a slight metallic cast, which is handy-- zoom it right out and multi-tile it, and now you've got a pitted cast iron texture.

 

~ "Liquid Metal 2" is one of those textures can could be applied sectionally-- you just want *that* section of the texture applied to object X. Nice texture if you want to mock up reflections on metals, and even glass.

 

...and the rest are just mess-about-for-fun, but some folks might find them useful. "Dead Grass Stone Path" is really nice, and "Long Matted Grass" is almost photorealistic. "Medieval Rose Window (Night)" would fit TDM to a T (although I think it might be better to use the "daylight" version and have the game engine apply shadow).

 

There ya go. Later.

 

ETA: I forgot to say that the .zip contains RENDERED images. They're all .png, not Genetica's .gtx format.

Edited October 5, 2014 by Nic75

[SteveL]

Thanks. As you say, the natural surfaces are photorealistic... presumably generated from texturizing real photos. The rock surfaces and your highlands adaptation are quite cool.

Textures need to be rendered without shadows for use in game by the way. The engine adds the shadows using the bump map.

[Atheran]

Will take a look at the zip soon. But that bump map you made from the wood planks is...ugly.

That's why I prefer RGB->Greyscale conversion almost always over full desaturation.

 

By the way Ndo2 makes a great work for generating bump/normal/height (useless without displacement) etc. And the basic version of it is free.

Needs a lot of fiddling around with sliders to get good maps but once you make custom settings you can save the profile, for example wood planks.

 

But Ndo2 NEEDS Photoshop (is a plugin for it, not working with other texturing programs afaik) and does NOT create textures. It simply creates maps from an image.

 

PS. Basic version is like 1 year old with little to no updates to it. But it still gets the job done pretty well.

[Nic75]

Textures need to be rendered without shadows for use in game by the way. The engine adds the shadows using the bump map.

 

...which means that a lot of Genetica stuff is gonna be problematic, because it adds shadow. The window texture is one. There's no shadow added in the "daylight" version, so that would be better.

[Nic75]

Will take a look at the zip soon. But that bump map you made from the wood planks is...ugly.

 

Oh, dude, it was way worse than "ugly" It was several magnitudes of godawful. It produced very impressive canyons, and my reaction was pretty much:

 

Ended up just washing out the original image, and didn't touch the threshold settings. Much better.

[New Horizon]

...which means that a lot of Genetica stuff is gonna be problematic, because it adds shadow. The window texture is one. There's no shadow added in the "daylight" version, so that would be better.

 

There must be a way to render the texture without shadow though, right? Isn't the shadow simulation an option? Having pre-rendered shadows is going to make the textures next to unusable since the textures would have shadows baked into them that are all in the wrong position and would never move if a light were moving.

[Nic75]

There must be a way to render the texture without shadow though, right? Isn't the shadow simulation an option? Having pre-rendered shadows is going to make the textures next to unusable since the textures would have shadows baked into them that are all in the wrong position and would never move if a light were moving.

 

Nearly all of the architecture textures (windows, doors, etc.) have pre-rendered shadows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In other textures categories you'll find similar shadows in any image meant to be representative of a heavily crenelated surface (light from above-left/right). However, in that case the shadow's slight enough that it shouldn't matter... or maybe it does?

 

 

 

 

 

[Lux]

http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/gen2tutor/using_effect_maps.htm

 

Step 2

Now we will turn out attention to rendering the texture and its effect maps for use in our 3D environment. You will notice that like most textures created in Genetica, the preset that we just opened has highlights and shadows baked directly into the texture itself, giving the tiles a three-dimensional appearance. However, these highlights and shadows may not correspond to the position of the actual light source in our final scene. We will therefore activate the Color Only Render button in order to strip away these baked highlights from the texture, allowing our 3D environment to add its own highlights as needed. The following image shows how the texture will look with and without Color Only Render active.

[Nic75]

Lux-- that tutorial is for the full version of Genetica itself, not for the Viewer. Even when selecting "Color only" in the render options, the Viewer renders that dratted shadow. Sorry.