Macro Texture

You can define a macro texture for each texture in its properties using the texture browser (which requires putting the texture into MyLevel). This macro texture is drawn additionally on top of the texture.

It's very nice for repeating textures on large surfaces (mountains, huge walls), but almost nobody uses it... (was heavily used in Unreal 1.

It can produce quite subtle effects, but there are a lot of possibilities.

Procedure

Both textures have to be embedded to the map, because you have to change a texture property which would be saved in the texture package otherwise...

1. Pick the two textures you want to use and embed them to MyLevel. I'll call the textures "texture" and "macrotexture". If you want to copy textures from existing packages you'll have to export them & re-import them.
2. Scale the macrotexture using the properties in the texture browser - right click on the texture (I've used 4.0 here which means it will scale texture.scale x 4.0)
3. Go to the properties of the texture and set its "Macrotexture" property to the macrotexture (again, using the texture browser)
4. Use the texture as usually. You will not see the macrotexture in the editor so you have to go ingame...

Examples

For example the wall structure on the very first shot repeats which leads to stripes and a kind of pattern. On the second shot there's a macro texture which adds dark/bright shades which make the wall look more natural (similar to detail textures but not if you're close to a wall but on large dimension). Same for the stone in shot 3/4 and the ceiling in 5/6.

Here's a basic example of both Detail and Macro Textures in action.

The following 3 images are the textures used :

In this first shot you can see the detail texture. The source texture had its DrawScale set at 0.250000

In this second picture, you can see the "Normal" Texture, with a slight overlay of both Macro and Detail Textures.

In this third and final picture, you can see, zoomed out from the surface, the Macro Texture.

The Macrotexture has a DrawScale of 4.00000, making it 4 times as large on the surface as the normal texture.

You can download the example map and files at http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/dl.php/wiki/examplemaps/macrotexturetest.zip.

Related Topics

• Texture Topics

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Category Mapping