Custom road textures tutorial?

[GTAce]

Hope this topic won't annoy anyone, but I searched and haven't found anything.
I need a tutorial to make my own road textures, especially because of the mapping stuff.
I have good Photoshop knowledge, so this shouldn't be a problem, but I'm kinda a noob when t comes to creating textures.

 

[legendsatlunch]

when creating a texture for roads or grass, select just under half of the lower part of the texture. create layer with copy flip vertical and move to top of tex blend it out with transparency, then do the same with the top part of tex, flip vertical and move to bottom, blend out with transparency... then when layed out on the track the texture should blend nicely. for dirt overlays I use 3 textures, one for blend in, one for main, then one blend out.
for sides just use layers and blend in the needed texture. Clone tool is great for adding to a road texture.... use a moderate transparency setting so the edges bend in..... There is a tutorial with "proper " terminology... I have it somewhere.... but if you understand the above it should work fine....

 

[R Soul]

I've found a few on the internet but the results have tended to be rather poor. The textures have looked like they were done on the computer.

You may want to look at cgtextures which has a section specifically for roads. In my opinion you can't beat a photo as a starting point.

 

[legendsatlunch]

^ What he said!!!!!

There is a spray can type brush which when used with either the eraser or clone tool gives a nice ' spattered' pattern for adding or removing bits.....

 

[GTAce]

Thanks guys! Well, making the textures themself shouldn't be a problem, I also know cgtextures, I was just curious about the mapping stuff (bump mapping, diffuse etc.). Unfortunately I'll have to do the textures more or less from scratch, because I couldn't find any road textures that would fit.

 

[legendsatlunch]

Spec and Bump maps are easy, for spec just desaturate the diffuse map, then using the curves tool adjust for shadows and highlights.... I tend to make them darker.. save as tex_s.dds
undo the curves tool back to desaturate the use the bump map plugin to create the bump map.... ( where to D/l not sure) Nvdia dds tools... try nvidia photoshop plugins... can also use crazy bump ( but not a free proggy)
apply the bump sttings save as tex_b.dds
open xpacker, create new material select dif, spec, bump import your textures set up the materials tab and materials etc..... save xpak.... add texture to track... spec and bump will map corectly with the diffuse map...
hope that helps

 

[GTAce]

Thanks! I have the DDS plugin already since ages.
That helped, I am already working on some stuff, we'll see how it will look like in the end haha.

 

[GTAce]

As you can see, your help worked: http://www.racedepartment.com/forum...rg-hillclimb-königswinter.61492/#post-1323848
Thanks again!

 

[RJEMartin]

Hope this hasn't already been asked. I couldn't find the subject covered anywhere so here it is. I created a road texture with Gimp and it loses it's clarity over distance (loads as i go but only at short distances at a time). I have other road textures created by other people that load to a much further distance in the game and am wondering how I can increase my textures ingame resolution. Any help would be greatly apreciated.

 

[martinez]

Make some pictures yourself. I found that shooting from the side (that I see wide part of road and some of the roadside) is better than creating a perspective photo. I usually do a photo, then holding the camera in the same (almost) position, move some meters to the side. This way I can make some kind of "panorama" of the road (more detail, less chances to get repetitive patterns from textures latter).
Then the crucial thing is to make seamless textures. One simple trick is to work on the photos, make one big picture of them all, then crop to desired size (e.g. 1024 x 512). All layers have to be flatten. Then you go in Photoshop to "Filter-Other-Move" (not sure exactly on English names, sorry) and set the Move to the half (in my example 512). You will see how texture repeats in the middle. Now you can paint, stamp etc. to make it better. I usually (before that "filter") make a copy of the layer and then from top (moved) layer I erase (random brush) some of the middle part. In most cases it's enough.
Sometime before the "Move" I use High-Pass Filter to help the picture to be a little more "smooth" in terms of shadows, gamma etc.
Of course you can make seamless textures in both directions, like grass or other ground.
There are several other plugins for PS that make seamless textures - like Pixplant2, but you have to pay for them.

When saving to DDS, you have to add some mip-maps (6 should be enough), then you textures will have more detail in distance. Remember always to use proper sizes - a powers of 2 (4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096...). Textures can be then squares or rectangular (they say that squares work better and take less performance from machine). Sometime you can save textures like 384x384, but mip-maps will not be available.

 

[R Soul]

Useful information but that's not what he was asking about.

Edit the material settings, and find the Mip Bias value. -4 is a typical value.

 

[RJEMartin]

Actually I'm very new to all of this so it is all stuff i didn't know. Thanks tons guys I'll try this and see how it goes.