Feral Heart

This is a simple blurb of things I like to do with my textures.

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/rr223/Aleakim/Aedit.png

I have a picture. I want to make a picture to put in-game. If it is a regular texture, it shows up distorted and blown-up and totally indistinguishable. So I played around.

When you put a texture into the files, and call it up in the object maker (on a basiccube.mesh, which is easiest to get a picture on) the texture is 'wrapped' around the object any way it can to fit over and cover it. It is also up-side-down.

To fix this? Rotate the picture 180 degrees (you don't even need a photo-editing software to do this; just right click the thumbnail image.)

I find Gimp is the easiest to do this next step on, because its a few right clicks and a save and you're done.

Open image. It is upside down now (if it isn't, make it so!) this means it will appear right-side-up in game.

Go to the layers palette, right click layer, 'duplicate layer'.

Select the background copy, right click, 'scale layer' and size it much smaller than the original - it should fit in the very center of the image. You may need to play with the size depending on how big the original image is, but you have plenty of wiggle-room.

Flatten image (right click layer > flatten image), save it as a jpg and make sure it's in the files with your other textures and written in the MATERIAL file. As long as the name does not change you do not need to add a new file to the texture material file.

When you load the basiccube.mesh and call up the new material file, the picture (the centered mini one) will appear on the TOP face of the cube. This is because it is centered. This is the only way I have done it so far (I only did it today, after all) so you will have to use the Pitch button to rotate it to the side, unless you want to make a doormat or something and then you can just flatten the cube a bit...

I believe that if you take the miniaturized version of the upsidedown image and, instead of placing it in the center, place it towards the bottom, top, or side of the image, it will appear on different sides of the cube. Perhaps even rotating the image can make it appear right-side-up on the sides of the cube. Feel free to experiment.

I might post a 'place mini image here with this side up if you want X orientation on cube' later once I go through the learning process myself, but I've done enough thinking and explaining for today. XD



Now, with that said. I ask you all to please respect the copyrights of artists and photographers when you are making textures! As a growing photographer myself, I am especially keen on emphasizing this point and even more especially vehement in defending my own artwork from theft. Would I be thrilled if someone asked to use one of my images for something? Yes! Would I give them permission? Probably, so long as the user agrees to respect my work and use it in a limited environment. Many (non-strictly-professional, non-sells-for-a-living) artists and photographers would not mind their art being used WITH permission (I mean, how else would people appreciate it?) but I promise you nothing pisses us off more or draws a more immediate reaction than seeing our work somewhere it is NOT supposed to be.

Heh....talk about ending on a down note... >.> Well, yup, I think that's all I wanted to say.

Sure ^.^ I love teaching people.

I will move this to a new thread to avoid totally hijacking Jazz's thread though. I'll link it once it is made.

Edit: Ok! The intro is made and awaiting pictures.

http://feral-heart.com/index.php?option=com_jfusion&Itemid=2&jfile=index.php&topic=10002.msg138372#msg138372

Some interesting ideas! I didn't even realize I already started doing some of this stuff. You don't need blender to make the dens, certain trees, various shrubs, etc.

I have a sakura (cherry blossom) tree already, from the same map where I got the colored crystal files (linked above.) You can mix and mash textures in the object maker to create different dens - and its super easy to make a texture for a den, rather than making an entire den mesh. Jazz seems to be working more on custom objects than on textures, so maybe if you want a differently shaped den than what the game provides...And yeah you can also mix tree barks and leaf meshes and such. And flowers, though they're kind of funky flowers the game provides.

I'll link some of what I am talking about if Jazz doesn't mind...? And not in picture form so I won't lag up the thread lol. They're just standard objects the game has by default, I think.

Oh o.o
I feel kind of embarrassed I forgot about this thread.

I got the heightmap onto the game and couldn't save it at the time. The problem thankfully has never reoccurred.

I ended up with a much more interesting (and certainly more shiny) map than the first one. lol

Thanks for the responses, all were helpful.