Creating Textures

This info relates to UnrealEd 2.0 and earlier (with notes below about 3.0) Texture creation and was partially referenced from Unreal Technology article by Tim Sweeney.

Size, Formats, etc.

Color: Textures need to be in a 256 color(though it can be created in 16 million and then reduced to 256) PCX format(makes it's own pallette) or bmp format(needs to be palletized) before being imported into unreal. They may be made in any paint program that supports this file type.
Resolution: They may be made in a resolution ranging from 72 (low) to 256 (normal)and 512(preferred). A lower resolution version of this texture will be placed into the game if need be (old or inferior graphics card).
Size: The size of the texture can range from 1x1 to 1024x1024 as long as it is done in powers of 2 (since 1x1 is supported this explanation makes no sense to me either, hehe. Wormbo: 2 ^ 0 = 1, so it actually does make sense) and they do not have to be square (umm they can be rectangles too, hehe).
Animated: Files which are parts of an animation should be saved as yourtexname_A01, yourtexname_A02, etc. This will let the editor know that they are part of an animation.
Naming: When naming your texture be sure not to name them the same as any other texture in unreal, be as original as possible, if by chance there are two texture with the same name it will throw the engine off, this is bad. (I have read that this is not as much of a problem in 3.0 but better safe than sorry, ZxAnPhOrIaN recommends using a prefix of some sort to seperate your tex (i.e. Zxan_GrandCanyon)
Tiling: When creating a texture for a wall, floor, or any other large object, it is necessary to realize one thing, it needs to be tileable (all of it's edges need to be able to touch it's opposite edge and blend nicely). If a texture isn't tileable it will look awful in game leaving scar marks where the edges don't blend. There are a few ways of doing this. One way of doing this is to copy a selection of one edge and paste it onto the other and mirror it before releasing its selection. This way works but quite often results in odd effects so isn't the recommended way of going about things. My recommendation is that if you are using Photoshop or PSP to download the Simple Filters at http://www.btinternet.com/~cateran/simple/ and use either the quick tile or the halfwrap to do this. The half wrap works wonderfully since it takes all of the edges and folds them inward (showing you how they will connect) after using it patch up where they touch and save the texture (be sure that it has been reduced in color before saving). I also recommend saving a 16 mil color copy of your texture as well, in case any editing needs to be done or if it is a base texture that will be used for the creation of dozens of other textures.

Notes for UnrealEd 3 so far

Well you still go through most of the same steps as b4 except for a few differences.

color: it doesn't seem to need to be 256 color, I imported a few tex at 16 mil with success.
import options: there are a few more now including detail hack (a lovely little way to avoid distance maps by the looks of it), generate mipmap doesn't appear to be as vital now, but that could just be my new comp. so stick with the older thoughts for lesser computers, LOD is whatever it is for now until I mess with it more or learn otherwise, Alpha I imagine is the effects channel of a texture since they were so kind to add that this time.
file format: it seems to allow for bmp, pcx, tga, dds, and upt (upt is an Unreal Paint file)

Creating Textures

Size, Formats, etc.

Notes for UnrealEd 3 so far

Related Topics