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[The_Fool76]

Dinnerbone just posted to twitter a link for a tool to convert existing texture packs to the new format that 1.5 will use with each texture in it's own file.

Quote

Texture-pack authors! Here's a handy tool that I wrote to try to turn your packs to a 1.5 format. Helps to prepare!

Converter
The Tweet from Dinnerbone

Looks like we have a bit of work cut out for us.  Need to decide if I want to bother cutting my .xcf files into parts or just copy and paste the tiles out...

[Galahir950]

The_Fool76, on 20 December 2012 - 04:46 PM, said:

Looks like we have a bit of work cut out for us.  Need to decide if I want to bother cutting my .xcf files into parts or just copy and paste the tiles out...

I say copy and paste, it is what I will do. I hate that it doesn't keep parts of the same block together, now beds have 6 textures.

[The_Fool76]

I'm kinda hoping they eventually take things like the bed and other oddly shaped blocks and set them up the way the chests are with the entire skin in one file.  (I figure if they don't someone else will when the API arrives.)

[Gavenom]

I like the program, but It will be a pain on getting the animations to work for 1.5.

[insomniac_lemon]

Gavenom, on 21 December 2012 - 01:28 AM, said:

I like the program, but It will be a pain on getting the animations to work for 1.5.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if you could take existing (image strip) animations and rename them to the file of the block they're supposed to animate and them just working. Well, that is just a plain animation, not sure if they have implemented changing the duration of frames, or even for the entire animation, that may be the biggest pain....

[justproud2b]

Gavenom, on 21 December 2012 - 01:28 AM, said:

I like the program, but It will be a pain on getting the animations to work for 1.5.

insomniac_lemon, on 21 December 2012 - 01:39 AM, said:

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if you could take existing (image strip) animations and rename them to the file of the block they're supposed to animate and them just working. Well, that is just a plain animation, not sure if they have implemented changing the duration of frames, or even for the entire animation, that may be the biggest pain....

If anything we can be pretty sure that they will make it easier at some point if not right away. Mojang consistently surprises me with how much they change things to make things easier for modders/texture designers to stick with their opensource mind frame.

A lot of games talk the talk but don't walk the walk heh

[AidanOrlando]

I am confused, i dont know if its just my system set up or not... but how to i get the "unstitcher.jar" to recognize the texturepack and convert..

[XSSheep]

AidanOrlando, on 21 December 2012 - 03:15 AM, said:

I am confused, i dont know if its just my system set up or not... but how to i get the "unstitcher.jar" to recognize the texturepack and convert..

Well first off, open the jar file with java, it should bring up a menu telling you to select a texture pack to convert and it will allow you to browse to where your texture pack is if it's not in minecraft's texture pack folder, which it opens by default. If you've done that and it you can't find your pack, make sure your pack is zipped (in the .zip format) because that's what format the unstitcher requires as far as I can tell.

[insomniac_lemon]

XSSheep, on 21 December 2012 - 03:26 AM, said:

Well first off, open the jar file with java, it should bring up a menu telling you to select a texture pack to convert and it will allow you to browse to where your texture pack is if it's not in minecraft's texture pack folder, which it opens by default. If you've done that and it you can't find your pack, make sure your pack is zipped (in the .zip format) because that's what format the unstitcher requires as far as I can tell.

Also, I think it should be noted that the unstitcher.jar might need to be located in your /.minecraft/bin folder (along side your minecraft.jar) in order for it to work. I tried it from my downloads and texturepacks folder and it didn't work, but then it worked correctly when I put it in my bin folder.

[Alvoria]

insomniac_lemon, on 21 December 2012 - 03:49 AM, said:

Also, I think it should be noted that the unstitcher.jar might need to be located in your /.minecraft/bin folder (along side your minecraft.jar) in order for it to work. I tried it from my downloads and texturepacks folder and it didn't work, but then it worked correctly when I put it in my bin folder.

I have a dedicated Minecraft folder (separate from .minecraft) and it ran just fine from there. Thought you'd like to know.

I'm seriously hoping that there's a long term benefit to this change, because having each image as its own file is a serious pain in the rear, imo. Don't fail me now Dinnerbone!

[justproud2b]

Alvoria, on 21 December 2012 - 03:56 AM, said:

I have a dedicated Minecraft folder (separate from .minecraft) and it ran just fine from there. Thought you'd like to know.

I'm seriously hoping that there's a long term benefit to this change, because having each image as its own file is a serious pain in the rear, imo. Don't fail me now Dinnerbone!

I can honestly see nothing but good from this as it removed a large majority of limitations that the old design created opening up way more things we can do along with modders to expand things even farther. It also makes things run smoother as the files themselves will only be loaded if needed which will clear up resources for things that in the past would have been impossible due to memory issues.

[XSSheep]

justproud2b, on 21 December 2012 - 04:10 AM, said:

I can honestly see nothing but good from this as it removed a large majority of limitations that the old design created opening up way more things we can do along with modders to expand things even farther. It also makes things run smoother as the files themselves will only be loaded if needed which will clear up resources for things that in the past would have been impossible due to memory issues.

One bad thing is that it makes comparing textures side by side very difficult so it's a lot harder to keep your textures consistent with each other. It's also going to break all of our CTM property files which is gonna take a fair while to fix for those who have plenty of CTM in their texture packs...

[justproud2b]

XSSheep, on 21 December 2012 - 04:26 AM, said:

One bad thing is that it makes comparing textures side by side very difficult so it's a lot harder to keep your textures consistent with each other. It's also going to break all of our CTM property files which is gonna take a fair while to fix for those who have plenty of CTM in their texture packs...

I can see the CTM thing I haven't gotten to far into that. I also don't understand the other part because I do every texture in a single file in Illustrator 1024x1024 then import them into a terrain file that is sized for the size texture pack I need in Photoshop then exported as a png. I just never thought of the comparing textures outside of the game would be convenient but that's probably just the way I do it and am used to only working on single files where you guys are used to working in the terrain file.

Although if there is one thing watching and speaking with you guys is you all are really smart and effective so I am sure as a community everyone will adapt and find new effective ways of accomplishing what you need.

[XSSheep]

justproud2b, on 21 December 2012 - 05:11 AM, said:

I can see the CTM thing I haven't gotten to far into that. I also don't understand the other part because I do every texture in a single file in Illustrator 1024x1024 then import them into a terrain file that is sized for the size texture pack I need in Photoshop then exported as a png. I just never thought of the comparing textures outside of the game would be convenient but that's probably just the way I do it and am used to only working on single files where you guys are used to working in the terrain file.

Although if there is one thing watching and speaking with you guys is you all are really smart and effective so I am sure as a community everyone will adapt and find new effective ways of accomplishing what you need.

What I mean is that it's hard to keep your style consistent and make sure that the colours of each texture work well together if you can't see them all on one sheet and you just work on them individually. That might just be a personal thing though.

[insomniac_lemon]

XSSheep, on 21 December 2012 - 05:21 AM, said:

What I mean is that it's hard to keep your style consistent and make sure that the colours of each texture work well together if you can't see them all on one sheet and you just work on them individually. That might just be a personal thing though.

A palette for the entire terrain will now be harder to do (well, unless you decide before hand and index a file with those colors and use that for every image), although as a side effect is does mean that you will be able to per-block palettes much easier, and also you will more easily be able to index those to make the files to make them smaller while not needing to reduce the colors (like how default has way too many un-needed colors), or worry about the indexing while working on new blocks.

Also, maybe someone can make a restitcher.jar with Dinnerbone's unstitcher.jar so pack makers could travel back and forth freely (to an extent) relatively easily, so they can work with textures together like we can now.

[monsterfisher]

as a matter of fact you can still keep using the terrain file to create the textures and the just use the tool to snip it apart when you add it to the zip file. att least thats a possibility if the programm will be up to date with the current minecraft version.
in terms of ctm i am also kind of scared since i use them quite alot to add extrablocks to the game, either way its a step in the right direction performance was a big problem for too long now afterall.

[justproud2b]

XSSheep, on 21 December 2012 - 05:21 AM, said:

What I mean is that it's hard to keep your style consistent and make sure that the colours of each texture work well together if you can't see them all on one sheet and you just work on them individually. That might just be a personal thing though.

insomniac_lemon, on 21 December 2012 - 05:26 AM, said:

A palette for the entire terrain will now be harder to do (well, unless you decide before hand and index a file with those colors and use that for every image), although as a side effect is does mean that you will be able to per-block palettes much easier, and also you will more easily be able to index those to make the files to make them smaller while not needing to reduce the colors (like how default has way too many un-needed colors), or worry about the indexing while working on new blocks.

Also, maybe someone can make a restitcher.jar with Dinnerbone's unstitcher.jar so pack makers could travel back and forth freely (to an extent) relatively easily, so they can work with textures together like we can now.

I'm not sure about paint.net or gimp, since a lot of people use those but with photoshop you can set slices for a files and name them. So you can ultimately work on one file and split them in the program. Not sure if the other programs used have a similar feature. I will check into it.
edit:

In gimp it's called "Guillotine (Image > Transform > Guillotine)." it slices by guide or “Slice” filter (Filters > Web > Slice)

In Paint.net it's called Slicing

[Samiboula]

I'm not sure if this is good or bad, depending if your packs use a lot of CTM and animations, but the HD fixes will probably be useless now. I'll explain, in case you can't guess why.

Spoiler:

Here is the terrain.png, at normal size.


Now, someone wants to make a 32x texture pack, so they resize it.


All well and good! But, if you test it out in game without a HD patcher, you will get fire and portal and stuff in weird places (but most people know that). This happens because it's trying to load the animated textures as if it's a 16x pack, look at this.

It shows where it's trying to load the 16x textures, in the top left. You can see where the lava, portal, and water are in the 16x bit, and they are on the same textures that get the messed up textures in game, the pumpkin, bricks, etc.

If the files are all separate, there can't be an overlap of the 16x textures on 32x, so in theory, there should be no need for MCPatcher other than for animations, CTM and stuff.

[Taiine]

Well this wont effect me much, I already do each texture in it's own file then copy it into the terrain.png,

But will only the terrain be effected? Or items as well?

[Samiboula]

Taiine, on 21 December 2012 - 12:32 PM, said:

Well this wont effect me much, I already do each texture in it's own file then copy it into the terrain.png,

But will only the terrain be effected? Or items as well?

Items will be affected too.