Texturing Tips

[Zatnikitelman]

Though I'm far from it, I feel like a texturing master! I've almost gotten the texture for my next addon finished. Along the way, I've learned many many useful tips that might come in handy. Once I've finished, I'll created a discussion in the OrbiterSDK category with these and other people's.

• Create a master texture and a program-usable texture.

I'm using GIMP so I'll save one copy as a .xcf file with all the layers and such so I don't mess up the entire texture. Something I didn't think of and wish I had done is create a master blank as well as a master editing-in-progress file just in case.

• Keep the background layer your original map.

By doing this, even if you screw up the other layers very very badly and for some reason save and re-open so Undo doesn't work, you'll still have the original map without having to go back into your 3d program and re-map. Of course if you keep a master-blank, you'll always have a source to work forward from if you mess up.

• Save as you go.

It's impossible to know if a computer failure, or power failure or something else will cause you to lose your work. It's better to lose say 15 minutes, or one section rather than the entire texture or even hours worth of work.

• Blur is your friend!

When copying from a source image (NASA gallery is my favorite) it will never exactly fit the area you're trying to texture. You have two options here. If the are is small, grab the blur tool, and gradually, lightly fill in the area. If it's a big area, select a "solid" area near the "hole" roughly the same shape, copy and paste. Then use the blur tool to gradually blend the previous area into the newly copied area the effect can be amazing once you zoom in to do the detail work, then zoom back out to 100%.

The best laid plans of mice and men... Even if you've tried to make your image line up perfectly with a texture map, there will be mismatches. I typically try to make the mismatches between individual texture pieces so even if the mismatches are on the whole large, they'll individually be small. If it's less than about 6 or 8 pixels, I'll typically just blur across the gap, if more then I use the copy->paste method described above.

• Copy and Paste are your friends

Especially if you're covering a large area with relatively similar pieces like in a cylindrical space station module. Once I've gotten the texture piece sized how I want, I then ctrl+c ctrl+v the newly resized piece and reposition it into the correct area. This method will save you loads of time covering a large area.

• Keyboard shortcuts are your friends

Copy->Paste are probably the two most familiar shortcuts to people, but in GIMP, I'll frequently use the Invert Selction (ctrl+I) so I can click in the blank space of a layer, then select only the good fun parts of the layer. ctrl+shift+A is another good one as that deselects everything. These shortcuts will save you lots and lots of time.

• Use source images wisely

First of all check all appropriate licensing and usage criteria so you don't get a nice letter from some lawer! That's why I use NASA's gallery, since it's the U.S. government, they have to have a certain level of openness and reusability, but always double check!

Don't look at an image and see what it is, look at it and see what it has. A collection of panels here, some wires over there, some solar arrays etc. Rarely will you ever use more than a small part of any image. Just today, I was looking for a collection of cables and technical-looking stuff so I searched for images including the ISS's Pressurized Mating Adapter because I know the exterior has a bunch of random panels and cables and fun stuff. Earlier in the process when I was looking for good exterior panels, I knew Destiny, the Nodes and MPLMs had panels that would work so I searched the NASA gallery for various images of each module even though I rejected probably 99.9% of images I found.