Texturing with
Editor42
Assumptions
This tutorial
makes the following assumptions:
1. That you have an installed and
functioning copy of editor42.
2. That you have configured the settings
properly for editor42 and can open your map.
3. That you know how to move
around the editor42 interface.
If you do not meet these assumptions, you
will have to look elsewhere for information regarding those items, it is not
included in this tutorial.
Explanation
Editor42 is simply
the most powerful way to edit the base terrain textures for a custom map for
BF1942. Battlecraft can do textures, but lacks many features to make those
textures look incredible. Other programs, like 3ds Max, can do amazing textures
but are generally out of the realm of affordability of the average map maker.
Only Editor42 can allow anyone to make rich, amazing textures for their BF1942
custom maps.
This tutorial will attempt to explain how to utilize
Editor42 at a moderate level. We will start with some basics of texturing in
Editor42 and move quickly into more advanced topics. Ultimately it is up to you,
the user, to take what you learn here and experiment, extending and advancing
your knowledge in the art of designing your
maps.
Basics
Texturing the terrain of your map can be done
at any stage of map making. In fact, I generally texture my terrain early on,
and then redo the textures several times as my map progresses. The initial
texture render helps me better see the form of my terrain, and later renders
will correct for changes I make to the overall heightmap or placement of water
levels and so forth.
Editor42 uses Layering to create rich, detailed
textures. Layering is the process of dividing your map textures into various
child layers that render specific textures in specific ways and allows you great
control over the appearance of your terrain textures. Layering will be explained
in greater detail as we go along.
Once you have launched Editor42, open
your map and switch to Texture Mode.
You are
now ready to begin texturing. There are two methods to laying down a texture.
You can paint directly on the map in front of you using the icons for the brush
shapes 
, brush size 
, and brush
opaqueness 
. Or you can simply click the icon to paint the whole map with
your chosen texture automatically 
, but once you
have chosen to do so you can't undo this action (the program warns you of this
before it proceeds). I will focus on the primarily on the later method, using
the brushes simply to gauge how the texture is turning out before I paint the
whole map.
To begin changing textures to suit your needs, click on the
texturing icon in the bottom menu bar 
. An interface
will open that looks like this
Before
you begin, you need to decide how to layout your textures. Editor42 provides you
with several different types of texturing layers to choose from. Let's examine
each one in turn, and use Market Garden as our base map to play
with:
Default - Default is the setting that the first layer always
starts with, and is the same as Plain Color layer in this list. When you click
on the word Default in the texture interface, the following additional types of
layer choices will be presented to you to select from:
When New is selected on the top left, you will have the
following choices of layer types:
Plain Color - This will paint
the map layer a chosen color, and is also the Default layer type. There is only
one sub-layer for this type of layer.
Texture File - A Texture
file layer allows you to choose a specific graphic file from several supported
types (including .dds, .jpg and .tga) and layers the terrain with this file.
Make sure you are using tileable textures.
Noise Selector - This
will create a layer that has two choices underneath that can be any of the other
layers or additional Noise layers. A noise layer creates a texture that has a
random distribution of the two sub-layers.
Height Selector - A
height selector layer will give you two choices underneath that can be any of
the other layers or additional Height Selector layers. A height selector layer
creates a texture that divides the landscape into low areas and high areas using
those two chosen sub layers.
Slope Selector - A Slope Selector
layer will give you two choices underneath that can be any of the other layers
or additional Slope Selector layers. A Slope Selector layer creates a texture
that divides the landscape into flat areas and sloped areas using the two chosen
sub layers.
Stripe Selector - A Stripe Selector layer will give
you two choices underneath that can be any of the other layers or additional
Slope Selector layers. A Stripe Selector layer creates a texture that divides
the landscape into irregularly striped terrain using the two chosen sub
layers.
Color Adjust - The Color Adjust layer has one sub-layer,
and allows you to adjust the brightness, contrast, etc., textures of that
sub-layer.
Geometry Transform - The Geometry Transform layer has
one sub-layer, and allows you to resize and rotate that sub-layer.
I have
yet to use either of the last three, though I can see their relevance and
possibilities, as I expect you can as well.
If you click on Library in
the upper left of the Layer Selection window, you will see the following choices
displayed:
Editor42
has several built in layers in their library that you can choose from to help in
creating your terrain. However, the choices are limited and I personally have
not gone through the process of learning to add new textures to this library, so
we will stick with the New selection and the various layer
types.
Determining Your Top Layer
How best to determine
which type of layer you should start with? Well, it depends on your map. If your
map has absolutely no water at all - no lakes, ponds, rivers, oceans - then
there are lots of choices you can look at, but the best is most likely Slope.
Pick Slope first, so all sub-layers can then be divided up into whether then are
on flat ground or on sloped ground. But if your map uses a combination of water
and land, the best choice is almost always a Height Selector layer. A Height
Selector layer will allow you to set the very lowest areas - those that are wet
- to sandy textures and the higher layers to grass and rock and so
on.
For our Market Garden test, I first paint the whole map (using the
Paint Map icon) with a default color (I chose a light yellow, you can choose
whatever). Since we are rendering a single layer texture it will take almost no
time at all to paint the whole map, but as we burrow downwards into the
sub-layers, rendering time will increase gradually. The result looks like this:
Tip: ALWAYS use Plain Color for your lowest
sub-layers when you are first laying things out, and use multiple colors, it's
much easier to see how the terrain will render and will be divided up then if
you use your final texture files.
Now, let's make that first layer a
Height Selector layer. Click on your texturing icon, click on the words Default
Layer, and choose Height Selector. Now, click on the Edit button to the right of
the layer name and you will be presented with a new interface that shows you the
sub-selections for the Height Selector layer:
As you
can see, the default layer choices for this are Plain Color again. Go ahead and
click on the edit icon next to each color and choose different colors for the
two sub-layers. I've chosen green for the top layer (grassy areas) and yellow
for the bottom layer (water/sandy areas… the bottom layer in a Height Selector
layer will be the lower part of the terrain). Click on Ok until you're back to
your map and run a little test if you like. You'll probably only see one color
painted on your map. In order to determine at what height the two different
colors will appear, we will need to adjust the Threshold settings. Threshold
settings will do slightly different things for different level types. The best
thing to do is simply play with these two sliders, moving one at a time and then
testing. Clicking on the Proof button on the interface will open a large box
that will give you some idea of what the texture might look like. I use the
paintbrush tools to paint small portions of my map until I start to see the
results I seek. In this case, I found setting the upper slider to 36 and the
lower to 48 worked well enough for what I was trying to do, and the results
begin to look like this:
You can
see the green is now appearing at higher spots, and the yellow only at the
lowest spots.
Well, you could stop there, but you wouldn't have begun to
tap the potential of Editor42. Let's create a few more levels of child layers
and see what else we can do.
Go back into your Texture interface, click
on Edit beside your Height Selector layer, then click Plain Color in the top
layer choice. The upper layer, as you recall, is our grass, but grass is not
uniform across the landscape as we all know. If you look around you, two things
should come to note very quickly: 1., grassy areas are not uniform (there's dark
grass, thin grass, spots where the grass is worn out, etc.); and 2. on slopes
there usually isn't much grass at all, or its thinner or very different. Using
this information, we will sub-divide the grassy areas into flat but varied areas
and sloped areas.
But which first????? Either is actually a good choice,
but in my case I'm going to choose Slope Selector first, then sub-divide that
into a single texture rocky layer and a Noise layer. The Noise layer will be
further sub-divided using two separate textures. You could possibly do the Noise
Layer first, then subdivide that into two slope layers if you prefer, with each
slope layer having different types of textures.
So I set up my Slope
Selector layer. In the interface that came up when you clicked on Plain Color,
choose Slope Selector and click OK. Then click the edit button beside Slope
Selector. You will once again be presented with an interface similar to the
Height Selector Interface. Leave the selections as Plain Color for the moment,
and change the colors to easily recognizable ones. Then play with the Threshold
selectors and paint on your map (paint an area that has good flats and slopes
together) until you start the see the results you are seeking. I've chosen green
for the upper selection (in a Slope Selector layer the upper choice is for
flats) and a dark red for the lower selection (the slopes). The default
threshold values give me the following results when I paint:
Pretty good, but let's make it not quite so distinct a change.
Look for the slider called Threshold Width. That changes how clear the line is
between one sub-layer and another, and by increasing it they will blend and
overlap more. I increased the value to 0.40 and now this is the
result:
You can
see that the green is now blending into some of the red areas, and the red is
blending out into the green more, which is more to my liking. Too abrupt a
texture change is generally very jarring unless it is a road or some other
man-made feature.
Now let's make the grassy areas less grassy and more
changeable. Click on the words Plain Color in the upper box of your Slope
Selector layer and choose Noise Selector and then click on Edit. Once again you
will be presented with two sub-layers, and with two threshold sliders. And
again, let's change the colors so we can see what's going to happen. I've made
the top blue, and the bottom color green. With the default threshold values I
get the following:
Not
exactly what I want, it's too muddy looking. Let's play with those Threshold
values again. I get the results I'm seeking with the top one at 0.21 and the
bottom one at 0.45, which looks like this:
It's
less "mottled" looking, the blue areas are more distinct and fewer.
Ok.
So you've created your layers, painted them with bright colors, tested and
retested. What now? Well, it's time to go back to all those bottom layers and
change Plain Color to Texture File, then select the texture file of your choice.
In my example, let me list the layers and what I'm choosing for textures, then
show a final render.
Top Layer, Height Selector: No texture choices here,
it's divided into two sub-layers.
1st Sub-layer, Slope Selector: Also no
choices as it is further divided.
2nd Sub-layer, Plain color: This is my
sandy river bottom, so I choose a sand (dark, wet) texture.
Slope
Selector:
1st Sub-layer, Noise Selector: Also no choices as it is further
divided.
2nd Sub-layer, Plain Color: My rocky slopes, a rocky texture is
needed.
Noise Selector:
1st Sub-layer, Plain Color: My blue color, now
it becomes a sandy (light colored) texture.
2nd Sub-layer, Plain Color. My
green grass, so obviously I choose a grass texture.
Now paint another
area and see how it's looking. Once you start putting textures on, you might
find need to fiddle with your thresholds again. In my case, here's what I
have:
I think there's a little too much rock in my rocky
slopes, and not enough sandy areas in my grassy flats. After a little adjustment
of those threshold levels again...
That
definitely looks a bit better to my eyes, the grass is more "broken up" and not
so uniform, and the rocky slopes have more grass growing on them.
The
only way to learn is for you to take this simple basic example and expand upon
it. Try some of the other layers instead of height, slope or noise. Make more
sub-layers, test how it renders. People can tell you a thousand times over how
to do things, but the best way to learn as always is to try it yourself, figure
it out on your own. With the basic knowledge you have learned here, you should
be able to begin to see the potential, and the ways that you can expand this
information to suit your own maps.
Best of luck to you,
soldier!!!
Cpl. Reynolds