Revision as of 18:19, 14 December 2012

• Before making your own textures, you should check out Custom Content Websites for textures. Otherwise, you can try to make your own.

Using an image editor

• First, download an image editor of your choice, such as The Gimp
  • It isn't possible to tell you how to make any texture you want in one tutorial.
  • Instead, google how to make the texture you want, there almost certainly is a tutorial out there somewhere.
    • With some textures, there are things you should do to them to make them more realistic, such as adding dirt. Keep that in mind.

• Then you will probably want to make it seamless.
  • In Gimp go to Filters → Map → Make Seamless, and Gimp will make the texture seamless by modifying the corners.
    • For other softwares, you can probably find plugins which help you do this.

• An alternate way to make textures seamless can be found here and a different version of the same tutorial can be found here
• As for size: your texture should be 512x512 at a bare minimum. If the texture is too large within Sandbox, you can always use /vscale to fix it. Always use powers of 2 (512, 1024, 2048) for dimensions.

• Now you should save it and you are done!

• If you want, you can continue and make shader maps for your texture.

Using a generator

• There are many great texture generators out there to use. Here's a list of some good texture generators, all should be free.
  • FXGen
  • Neo Texture Edit
  • Blender also has a very good texture creation program.
  • Allegorithmic MaPZone is a very powerful texture creator. If the site does not load, it's likely down, as it was for a few months. You may have to wait and check later.

Using 3D modelling and image editing

• Many texture makers use 3D modelling programs to create textures which have 3D aspects such as depth. In this process, an artist creates a high-poly 3D model representing the texture they want to create, e.g. a metal panel or something similar. Once this is done, they create a medium-poly model which is an optimized option of the high-poly. From there, a low-poly model (a plane) has the textures of the medium-poly model baked onto it. Textures can include ambient occlusion (AO), which is often used to create diffuse maps or bump maps, along with actual bump maps and normal maps.