| Reasons
you need custom textures: When
you have an idea that just won't work with the existing Unreal texture set, its always
nice to have your own texture set on hand. The world of Unreal doesn't contain the
need for Waffle House textures, so if you want to put a Waffle House in your level, you
will have to import some custom textures.
A Waffle House
So obviously if you want to go beyond what you are allowed to
create with what is already there (textures included with Unreal), you will need to know
how to import your own stuff. And here is how
Importing Textures into UnrealED
Importing into UnrealED is quite easy. There are some
things you have to know first though. Your custom textures/graphics should be in the
form of 256 color bitmaps (*.bmp). They don't have to revert to any sort of pallete,
but they must be 256 color. Also, the size of the image has to be a certain size...
The width and height of your bitmap must be a power of 2.
Powers of 2 being 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, and so on. No
exceptions. You cannot have a width of 192 or 384, even though those are round
numbers they are not powers of 2. So if your image doesn't conform to that, you will
also have to resize it.
You will need a good program like Paint Shop Pro or Adobe
Photoshop to do things like resize, convert to 256 color, etc. I use Paint Shop Pro,
you can download the shareware at www.jasc.com.
So, thats how big and what format your textures should be in.
Now to import them into the editor.
In UnrealED, go to the texture browser. There are 8
buttons at the bottom of the browser. To import a bitmap (of correct color depth and
size), hit the Import button. Choose the file you wish to import, and you will be
prompted with the next window...
When this window comes up you will need to set a
few things. The first thing you should decide on is the Package name. The name
of the package you enter here will be the name of the package (.utx) - And it cannot be
the same name as any other package (That includes other textures, music, sound, maps,
etc.) - So you can't give it the same name as your map. Once you decide on a name,
enter it in the Package line. Next up is the name of the texture. Give it a
name that describes it well, but do not use ANY spaces at all. When I first imported
textures, I was using names with spaces, then I wondered why I couldn't apply the
textures... It just messes things up. After naming the texture, move on to the
Group line. The Group is a subsection of your texture package. See how
packages like SkyCity have groups like Wall, Cieling, Floor, etc. You should group
your textures if you are going to have a large collection. Pick a good group for
that particular texture and enter it in.
Properties
I won't get into anything advanced in this
tutorial, but just to let you know... Generate Mipmaps is something you should always
enable. Mipmaps (I'm sure you know) are increasingly sampled down versions of the
textures used farther in the distance, to prevent ugly repeating textures like seen in
older 3D (or imitation 3D) games. Try making a room the full grid in BUILD and give
it a texture to see what I mean. Masked - Check this when you have a texture that
has some spots on it that are transparent. This is complicated (making textures that
are masked) and will be covered later (in an advanced tutorial) - So don't be checking
this box now. Blur this texture - I don't know why you would want to do that, and
Import as bump map, leave this one alone for now as well.
Creating those Packages
Import a collection of textures into the same
package. Once you are done, you need to save the package. Hit the Save button
in the browser, and it will be saved with the name you gave it. Whenever you make
changes to the package, remember to save. You will want to keep the same filename so
textures in your level you already added won't get messed up.
Deleting Textures
This isn't rocket science. When you have a
texture you don't want in your package any more, select it and hit the delete button.
Resave the package.
Exporting Textures
If you lost your source files and want to get
some copies of stuff you already added, or if you want to grab some textures from another
set, export it. Select the texture and hit the export button. You will be
asked for the filename of the exported file. It will be saved as a PCX file.
Editing the texture's properties
Hit the edit button to edit the properties of a
texture (and to bring up a bigger preview of it than in the browser). Textures, like
everything else, have lots of properties. Some are pretty useful though. This
is covered later in an advanced tutorial.
The rest of those buttons...
Apply... You should know this one, it applys the
selected texture to the selected surfaces in the editor. Same thing as clicking the
texture after the surfaces are selected.
New... Save this one for the advanced tutorials
as well. This starts a new texture in the editor, but it is not a regular type of
texture, it is an Unreal ART engine animated texture that you can create in the editor.
They can be quite useful and cool, and there is a lot you can do with them.
Load... Well, I covered every other button,
hehe. This loads utx Unreal texture packages. If you haven't found this yet,
your levels must look weird :)
Well, thats all for this
tutorial. You should know how to create your own texture packages now. In a
later tutorial, more advanced things will be explained, like Unreal's animated textures,
how to give your texture detailtextures, making masked textures, and more things.
Maybe even a little on how to make the textures themselves, but that isn't really this
site's focus. As for now, this tutorial is complete! You should have learned
all the basic tools of UnrealED now, and you should be able to create some nice basic
maps. Advanced editing is your next challenge. |
