Making Hi-res Textures...community tutorial thread

[gitech]

Hi and welcome!

Here we will be hosting any artists' tutorials on how to make Hi-res Textures for use in N64 re-texture projects using mainly Adobe Photoshop, its plugins and other related programs.

PLEASE do not post anything but TUTORIALS here! In order to keep this thread clean with just tutorials please post your questions or comments in the " Making Hi-res Textures...discusion thread "

When you post a question or comment in the " Making Hi-res Textures...discusion thread " please include the tutorial name, post #, and/or a link to the post you are referring to in order to make it easier for the creator of the tutorial to answer your questions.

Anyone can post here though! In order to post here please make a complete tutorial!

Helping others is what this is all about and hopefully we can collect a great deal of information here so anyone with the desire can delve as deeply into retexturing as there hearts desire without too much startup troubles.

We want tutorials for ALL types of retexturing techniques and methods. Hand drawn, cartoon, retro, realistic, alternative, techno, future, anything! So artists, start creating your tutorials now!

When you are preparing your tutorials, consider including "supplies", etc...such as textures or a .psd file with the layers "un-merged" so others can follow along or examine the layers for themselves, or just mess with it.

Anyway, have fun!

PS: I will start with two tutorials showing some of the techniques I use when making a hi-res texture.

1. Turok Dinosaur Hunter...The main ground texture with a mix of dirt and grass.
2. Turok Dinosaur Hunter...Lava Animation Video Tutorial.

PSS: Once we have a couple I will make an index of all the tutorials in this thread here in the first post.

[gitech]

Description: Here we will make a ground texture for Turok DH with seamless tiling photos of grass and dirt using the original texture as a base.

Supplies: Photoshop .psd file with layers un-merged: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WJZYU7L6

Notes: PS = Photoshop. These screenshots were taken after I closed PS so the steps in the history column do not indicate steps I took. I will explain the steps with text here.

Ok, first thing I should mention is the .psd file. These are what's called a "Photo Shop Document". When saved in PS without "Merging" the layers, the layers will remain separate when you open the file in photoshop. This will allow you to take a closer look into the techniques and follow the tutorial on your own. Download the .psd file above, extract it, and follow along.

You may use any texture in the .psd file for any purpose you wish. All I ask is that you give due credit if you do. The grass and dirt texture layers I used here were both made for me by Mode7 in a Photoshop plugin called "Luxology imageSynth" then touched up by me.

This tutorial will assume you know the basics of taking a texture from a texture dump, copying and organizing it into the appropriate folder in your hires_texture folder, opening it in an image editing program like Photoshop, and using a method of identifying what it is used for in game before you begin to re-texture it. If you have any questions, remember you can ask them in the Making Hi-res Textures...discusion thread. An answer will probably come in the form of another tutorial.

We will be making this texture:






Step 1: After identifying this texture as the texture that is used as the Main Grass in the game (Turok DH), I reverted it back to the original texture in Photoshop.

Step 2: Resize the texture to 512x512.

Notes: 512x512 is the size I almost always work on a texture, even if I am going to reduce it's size for use in game, which I rarely do. I have also done textures in 1024x1024, 2048x2048 and 4096x4096 for special occasions such as True Dracula in Castlevania LOD)

Step 3: Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V to make a backup copy layer of the original texture. (I just always do this to keep a copy of the original handy. In the pics it happens to be layer 5 which I made B&W, Invert, and Blending Mode "Multiply". This is covered in "Step 11". )

Step 4: Then I went to my texture reference folder and copied the Grass and Dirt textures into this document. Now you can see them as separate layers in the history column at the right in the pics.

Step 5: In the pic below you can see I began by using the "Magic Wand" tool to select the "dark" areas of the original texture. This is going to become the areas were the "dirt" will show through the grass.

Notes: With the "Magic Wand" Tool selected there are some options at the top of the screen that allow you to adjust the functions of the tool:

a. Tolerance: This is adjustable from 0 to 255 that controls the "strength" of the color selection. For this step I used a Tolerance value of ~40.
b. Contiguous: This selects whether the selection area will be "continuous" or if it will select all areas of similar color in the layer. For this step we will leave this option "off" so that every area of similar color will be selected with one click of the mouse.
c. Anti-alias and Sample all layers: I always leave these options "off".






Step 6: Select the Grass layer (Layer 7 in pic) and bring it to the "Top".

Step 7: Right Click/Refine Edge.

Step 8: Turn down all sliders to "0" except for "Feather".

Step 9: Select a "Feather" value of ~14. Hit "OK".

Step 10: Hit the Delete Key 5 times. The Grass layer should now look like the pic below.






Step 11: Select the layer with the copy of the original texture (layer 5 here) and move it between the Grass and Dirt Layers.

Step 12: Alt-Shift-Ctrl-B (Black & White).

Step 13: Ctrl-I (Invert).

Layer 5 should look like this (if you move it to the "Top"):





Step 14: Blending Mode "Multiply" Layer 5.

Step 15: Now it should look like this:





Step 16: Right Click on a layer, Merge Visible.

Step 17: Ctrl-S.

Step 18: Check your work in game.

Step 19: Come back and make Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation, and other changes to fine tune how it looks in game.

Step 20: Done!


Questions and comments are welcome in the Making Hi-res Textures...discusion thread.

Thanks for looking!

[gitech]

This is a complete video tutorial with instructions during the video. Keep your mouse on the pause button to read the text as it goes by too fast to absorb it. The video is also fast most of the time because I am doing so many of them but it does slow down in the middle for 2 of the textures so you can see what is going on.

The Tutorial Video Download: Turok Lava Animation Video Tutorial

Enjoy!

[mode7]

Hi gitech, nice reading from you to and thanks for the nice Tutorial! Didn't had time to watch the video yet. Also thank you for being the first person here who showed us that photos actually CAN be used as textures, if it is done right.

I also made a tutorial, which is the first out of three on how I do High Resolution Textures based on Photos. This one covers the BASICS. Such fundamental issues such as.

• Where can I find good base pictures?
• Which pictures are suitable for textures?
• How do I prepare a picture for tiling?
• How does perspective correction work?

I also try to give some advice from my own experience, so you might be able to avoid some pitfalls I stepped in.

Create a high res texture out of a photo - PART 1: BASICS
EDIT: Many spelling mistakes here - sorry but it was a long day

Part two will be about how to make a picture tiling and how to match it to look like the original texture.

Part tree will be about more complex textures like blended ground textures and fences, doors etc...

[mode7]

Here is part two of my tutorial triology on making High Resolution Textures based on Photos. This one covers more ADVANCED issues like:

• Create a seamless picture that tiles properly
• Find a suitable texture in the game and understand how it works
• Use Color Match in Photoshop

Create a high res texture out of a photo - PART 2: ADVANCED

[gitech]

Notes for video tutorial and tips for watching:

1. Set your video player to 'repeat' so that it will loop back to the beginning and play again.
2. Why? It really helps and is neat. I have watched it 3 times in a row. It's mesmerizing and dramatic.
3. Turn up the volume. It is very quiet in the beginning.
4. I ripped all of the music and sound effects myself used in this video.
5. It is hard to follow. Watch it as many times as needed. Pause/rewind to catch something you missed, but watch it once all the way through first.
6. This technique is what I use a lot. It is easy once you get a system down and an eye for it. It's like coloring in the lines like when you were a kid and keeps the original look/shape of the original texture.

Majora's Mask Tutorial Video Download: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GZWKYBGC

Enjoy!

Here is a preview of what it looks like in game:

[gitech]

Video Tutorial - Turok DH - Tek Bow Weapon

Hi guys, here is a quick video of me doing the Tek Bow in Turok Dinosaur Hunter.

This download also includes the Photoshop .psd files and textures used in the video.

Video Download: TUROK BOW TUTORIAL

[gitech]

Tutorial: Getting started with N64 Retexturing

The "hires_texture" folder is where you would put a "hires texture pack" that you can download from various threads here in our "Hight resolution texture projects" forum.

Or, it is where you would place "your" hi-res textures if you made some from your own texture dump of a game.

To do your own hires textures you would first check "dump textures to files" in the video plugin and play through the game that you want to dump and retexture.

A new folder will automatically be created in your "plugin" folder called "texture_dump". In that folder another new folder will automatically be created for the game you "dumped" textures from with the "correct name" for the game. By "correct name" I mean it is the name that the plugin created for the folder and is the name that the plugin recognizes for that game(it's also the ROM's internal name as it appears in the top of PJ64 when the game is running). This means that when/if you make a hires texture of your own you will need to place it in (save it to) a folder of the same (exact) name that YOU create within in the "hires_texture" folder. That way the plugin goes to the "hires_texture" folder to look for the games textures instead of the ROM.


Play through one "area", "level" or "room" at a time and take (copy) the textures that dump for that "area" AFTER you have fully explored it and just BEFORE you leave the "area" to go to the next, such as defeat a boss or go through a door. Create a new folder in your (plugin/hires_texture/"game name") folder with the name of the "level" or "area" you just copied the dumps for. Paste the textures that you copied from the dump folder for that area into it your new (plugin/hires_texture/"game name"/"area name") folder you just created.

For example your folder directory would look like this: ...Desktop\Emulators\N64\N64 Emulators\project64 1.6\Plugin\hires_texture\CASTLEVANIA2\CH ARACTERS\FRIENDLIES\CARRIE FERNANDEZ\CARRIE 2ND COSTUME\2ND POISON

*All of the folders in capital letters were created by me/would be created by you. This example is of a folder directory that is pretty advanced but I put it here to show you what kind of folder creation/organization you should use to make sorting through all the textures you create easier when you are faced with thousands of textures to keep track of.

Once you have all of the textures for an area in the folder you created above you can open the texture you want to change (make "hi-res") in an editing program like Photoshop, do what ever you want to it, use "Merge Visible" to combine the layers, and save it.

(Note: make sure there is no background layer. If there is, then copy and paste it with Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctlr-V...and then delete the "background layer".)

It should save right over the old "lo-res" texture, and now you have a hi-res texture that will replace the old one while playing the game.

For reference you can download this hi-res texture pack and learn more about retexturing from my experiences here: Castlevania LOD Hi-res Texture Pack WIP

[gitech]

(Please Sticky this thread. Votes to have it stickied are on page 1 of the "discussion thread".)

The video is speed up 1.5 times to make it under 10 min for youtube. Actual time to make this texture while taking the video was 15 min.

Also, I am mostly going to the menu to do things I usually do with keyboard shortcuts like Copy, Paste, Transform, and Undo/Redo...to show you what I am doing.

Feel free to ask in the Making Hi-res Textures...discusion thread if you have any questions.

Download: Video Tutorial for a Mortal Kombat Texture

Also, here is the Photoshop .psd file so you can follow along or use the textures contained within for your own retexturing efforts:

Download: mortalkombat464da668720vp2.psd

Enjoy,
Jay

This is the texture from making the video and the one that is in the .psd file download above. I did the one on the last page quick just to see what would work for this texture and make a quick post. Then I made this one while making the video. It's (slightly) different and I like it better.

[mode7]

I've made a brick texture tutorial video. It's in flash format and fully annotated.
Check it out over at http://www.n64redux.com