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emi-liano
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Editing textures tutorial

Sat Mar 15, 2014 12:31 am

EDITING TEXTURES TUTORIAL


what will you need:
1 FrostyBits texture converter; to extract .dds from .itexture
2 Any dds editor; to edit the texture i will be using photoshop with a dds plug-in.
3 Any hexadecimal editor; to restore the header of the texture so the game can read it ( i will use HxD hexeditor)
4 ddsviewew to view textures (optional)

1- Find the texture, back up, and extract:
Once you find your desired texture, make a back up, (you will need this back up later) and extract it with FrostyBits, just by drag and drop the texture to the FrostyBits windows. (don't do this process with the original texture and make sure you extract the back up texture in a working folder, not the game folder)

You will see this windows with the info of your texture, my texture is housebackdrop-1.itexture.
after you extracted the texture with texcon your texture file has changed, now it is a dds.

Image

2- 1st Renaming
rename the file to dds (change the extention from .itexture to .dds)

3- Importing:
open the file with your dds editor to start editing.
use this settings to import
Image

you have two choises now, you can start editing over this file, or copy the content of the texture to put it in a big texture (housebackdrop-1.itexture is a file of 256x512, really small size).
this is the ingame quality:
Image
I am going to take the long road because i want a big texture (more quality); i am going to use a 2048x4096 texture size, keep in mind that i have the same pixel ratio that the housebackdrop-1; so a texture of 2048x2048 or 4096x2048 is not going to work, it has to be the same ratio that the texture to edit.
This is the original texture
Image

This is the big edited texture, i took this texture from i don't remember what. but you get the idea, just find a texture that match your original texture pixel ratio to use as a base, and paste the original content here to start editing; keep reading to understand more.
Image

3-a Editing the texture
since i want a big texture, i will have to put the content of the original texture (the small) to the big texture.
to do this you will have to find a big texture to use as a template, sorry i have no shortcut to do this, i just start to open textures based on the size and cross my fingers to find the desired one, in this case i needed a texture that was vertically twice bigger than horizontally, because the original was 256x512 (verticalXhorizontal).
Once you find the big texture make step 1, 2 and 3 with this big texture.
Now that you have the two textures opened, transfer the content of the small to the big one.
Go to the small texture and select all, copy,
Image

now go to the big texture and paste,
Image

then resize but do it proportionally, so the small texture fill all the space from the big texture, and do not go out of the edges, edges are important because the game will automatically join this edges to create walls and new houses.

Image

Image

3-b Editing the texture
In this case i will be creating a texture from scratch, so i will be creating the walls, then the windows, then the dors, and making sure that the texture can be automatically joined to create new houses, to do this you have to keep an eye on edges and how texture can blend itself, to avoid this bug:

Image

4a- saving the texture
to save the texture you have to check what dxt format the texture that you used as a template is, so open the extracted texture with any hexadecimal editor, in my case i have to open the big texture i used as a template since i will be saving that archive not the small one, i use the small one only as a guide to know where to put the windows, doors, etc.
As you can see, the texture is a dds file with DXT5 format.

Image

4b- Flatten the image if needed, then if you like change the image mode to 32bits/channel (optional). then press save as
chose dds, and select DXT5 ARGB 8bpp interplorated alpha.
Image

leave all the other options as default and press save
NOTE: when you save a dxt1 image use DXT1 RGB 4 bpp | no alpha. Because if you use 1 bit alpha the image will take several minutes to save and there is no visual diference.

5- Changeing the header of the file:
now you need to open with the hexeditor the original unmodified texture and the modificated texture.
Copy the header of the unmodified texture, like in the image below and paste it to the header of the edited texture then save.
Image
paste it to the header of the edited texture then save.
Image

6- 2nd Rename:
Rename the image from .dds to .itexture, paste it to where it belongs, archive the map file with mod tools, and enjoy the naked ladyes on this great, now even greater game.

UPDATE:
Thanks to graspingcp we found this error
after he did all the steps this was the resulting texture:
Image
this happens because sometimes you have to copy the header in a diferent way as usual
so this is the original header and how to copy, note that i copy one bit less
Image

and this is where/how to paste
Image
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two new textures from graspingcp:
Image
and
Image
-----------------------------------------------------------
some jet texture
Image

just by editing the texture you can have dinamic flags of anything you like.
Image
real textures test

Image

Image

Image

The helipad without the"H" to use as floor
Image

Some jet texture and the huge death star
Image

Real houses
Image

Thanks to:
Danilius
Badbaubau
Bochi
and the authors of the tools used in this tutorial.
Last edited by emi-liano on Wed Mar 19, 2014 9:07 pm, edited 8 times in total.

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zesty
Posts:426
Joined:Tue Feb 19, 2013 4:30 am

Re: Editing textures tutorial

Sat Mar 15, 2014 10:57 am

I guess it would be another evolution of modding :o

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int3nse_nfs
Posts:43
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Contact: Website

Re: Editing textures tutorial

Sat Mar 15, 2014 11:55 am

You are Awesome. BTW are the new buildings destructible :p ?
Here is my blog!

Http://www.techindie.com

graspingcp
Posts:8
Joined:Thu Jan 31, 2013 7:21 pm
Location:Sweden

Re: Editing textures tutorial

Sat Mar 15, 2014 12:59 pm

Awesome tutorial emi-liano!

But I cant find any download link to the texture editor :(
Image

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RobbingHood
Posts:3305
Joined:Mon Dec 17, 2012 8:50 pm

Re: Editing textures tutorial

Sat Mar 15, 2014 2:47 pm

graspingcp wrote:But I cant find any download link to the texture editor :(

http://www.mediafire.com/download/wmt6g ... onvert.rar

EDIT: Thread stickied.

emi-liano
Posts:102
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Re: Editing textures tutorial

Sat Mar 15, 2014 7:15 pm

int3nse_nfs wrote:You are Awesome. BTW are the new buildings destructible :p ?

Sadly no, i think you must saw this buildings, they are in the back of the US base in heavy metal, among others maps, but with this system you can edit any texture of the game, soldier textures, weapons cammos, vehicles, destructible houses, etc.

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int3nse_nfs
Posts:43
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Re: Editing textures tutorial

Sun Mar 16, 2014 8:23 am

What if we changed the soldier texture..,.. will there be any problem with hit detection?
Here is my blog!

Http://www.techindie.com

emi-liano
Posts:102
Joined:Wed Dec 26, 2012 3:49 am
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Re: Editing textures tutorial

Sun Mar 16, 2014 5:09 pm

int3nse_nfs wrote:What if we changed the soldier texture..,.. will there be any problem with hit detection?

I Don't think so, the texture is only what you see, the physical atribute is somewhere else, in the havokphysicdata files.

badbaubau
Posts:193
Joined:Mon Feb 11, 2013 8:50 am

Re: Editing textures tutorial

Sun Mar 16, 2014 7:03 pm

Everything that modding can be used as a hack or against one
Examples of this kind of what you can do with some simple settings in client side.........I tried to find ways to make clean shooting
for movies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHgxLy9k_6Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRJxyUsBR4A

and is on public server not my server

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Sammuel
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Re: Editing textures tutorial

Sun Mar 16, 2014 10:59 pm

badbaubau wrote:Everything that modding can be used as a hack or against one
Examples of this kind of what you can do with some simple settings in client side.........I tried to find ways to make clean shooting
for movies




and is on public server not my server



THE HOOVER BOARD! :P

ontopic/

amazing work. :D
Check out my latest project! http://popcorntime.io

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