creating textures

[shezan74 11]

Yes, i know, i already searched a lot on the forum for info's.

I've found this: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=86018 and some other higly technical explanations but i'm searching (and search function doesn't help me :( ) for a simple tutorial on HOW TO CREATE TERRAIN TEXTURES from terrain images. What kind of files i must create (_NOHQ, _BLAH, _...) and how to create them :)

There is something like this around?

[bushlurker 45]

Good point... I'm particularly interested in the "nopx" textures and how to make them properly.....

B

[mikebart 1]

well, this is probably something i can help you guys with for a change :), atleast with the way I do it.

you need a _CO, which is your detail texture, a _NOPX, which is the normal map with a heightmap in its alpha channel for paralax, and then a _MCO which appears at a certain distance to replace the _CO.

I use highpoly geometry for about 70% of my texturing, Im not sure how much BIS do it this way, although I think for some of the textures where they've used rocks which appear to potrude from the surface via the _NOPX i'd say those rocks have probably been baked from high poly geo.

1. For the grass I started with a tilable soil texture covered with models of dead leaves, thats the high poly and all that information gets baked into the plane below, in this case the output is a _NOHQ map, a _CO map and an ambient occlusion map, which gets multiplied over the _CO.

2. Then I add the baked textures of the dead leaves to a material and apply it to a new plane in a new max scene, this plane gets grass and other small plants modelled over it, all highpoly.

3. I bake the textures again, this time the output is a _NOHQ map, a _CO map, an ambient occlusion map and i heightmap, which is placed into the alpha channel of the _NOPX

If you want to give this a try in 3dsmax, heres a more detail tutorial of baking multiple maps using the projection modifier:

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17688

If people are interested I could out a more specific tutorial together, but im sure if you were to apply the tutorial above to creating ground textures you'd get the idea.

But its also very possible to get good results just using photoshop.

[cctoide 0]

The above is pretty useful; you might also want to check out Beton's tutorial.

[shezan74 11]

The above is pretty useful; you might also want to check out Beton's tutorial.

That what i've seen and i was searching for :)

Thank you cctoide