Latest News Article

[The_Fool76]

This version is no longer in development.  
For the latest version please go here: http://www.minecraft...pha-01-release/

UPDATED FOR 1.7

I have added the new textures and put in a model for the pistons.  So you can now update any pack you have that hasn't yet been updated to at least add in the default textures and make it work for 1.7  (Of course if you have other packs that have been updated you can use those pistons as well.)

I did the contracted piston model since it's just a simple block.  If someone wants to improve it and add the extended version as well I would be thrilled.

----
For those of you who are new (or happen to live under a rock) my Texture Mix Machine is an application that allows you to take the tiles from different packs and mix-n-match them into your own custom pack.  (Think painterly customizer on RedBull)

Previous versions of this were web-based but I found that too limiting as it depended on my getting permission from pack authors to distribute their packs on the site.  So I've gone and made a stand-alone one in C++ that will operate on any pack you currently have downloaded.




Features:

• Works on any resolution pack - you can even mix tiles between HD and default resolution and it will resize as needed.
  (The base pack - on the left - is the one that determines the resolution of the final pack)
  
• 3D preview - See the textures as they would look on blocks in the game
  
• Extendable - Editable config files means you can add your own models to the previewer for supporting Mods
  (See the README.txt for info on how to do this.)
  
• Simple - Ok so more bare-bones but hey it's alpha and I can call this a feature if I want. >_>

Usage:
Unpack and run texmix.exe it will attempt to locate your .minecraft/texturepacks folder and use packs from that. The default save is texmixpack.zip which will be placed into your .minecraft/texturepacks folder.  See the README.txt for more information including how to specify a different save or explicitly point it at a directory to scan for packs.

Once it is running you can switch packs by clicking the round buttons at the top of the panels and then clicking the name of the pack you want.  Switching the left pack will erase any work currently done without prompting so I suggest picking your base at the start and then leaving it alone.

To do the actual mixing, click a tile on the left to pick what tile you wish to replace, and then left-click a tile on the right to pick the tile you want to replace it with. The preview model will update to show your changes as you make them. It's that easy!

To preview a tile on the right without replacing the currently selected tile on the left, right-click instead of left-clicking.

To change between mixing the terrain.png and items.png use the workbench and fish buttons respectively.  
To save your changes, click the button with the disk icon.

To edit what files are in a pack, click the button that looks like a tiny inventory screen.
Clicking files will select/deslect them. Selected files are in green.  Clicking the delete button will remove files
from the pack. (The ones selected on the left hand list.) Clicking the copy button will copy the selected files from
the right over into the list on the left.  Files that are not native to the base pack will be shown in yellow.

The mixer will overwrite any existing file with the same name without warning so be careful. (I strongly suggest backing up your packs before using this tool as this IS alpha software.)

To toggle zoom mode, press the 'z' key.

Changelog
(Ver. 0.1.7)
New Features

• Zip file content editor screen - You can now copy any file from any pack into any other pack.  Note: The terrain.png and items.png files are not listed here as they are handled by the tile pickers.
  
• Fullscreen - The mixer now launches in 1280x1024 full screen. If you cannot run this resolution, then I suggest sticking with Ver. 0.1.6 for the moment. (I should have the ability to toggle between full screen and windowed soon)

Bug Fixes

• renamed sample.mdl to blocks.mdl - It makes more sense this way. Especially if I add more .mdl files when I put in support for modelling mobs and the like.
  
• fixed the cake model - The cake side was using the MC 1.6 positioning. It is now properly located for 1.7

(Ver. 0.1.6)
New Features

• Save dialogue added - You can now change the name of the pack you want to save to while the program is running. This should make it considerably easier to use for most people.

(Ver. 0.1.5)
New Features

• Better support for including alt-textures - Pack creators can now include an alt_items.txt and/or alt_terrain.txt file in their pack. These files are just a simple list of alternative files for terrain and item tiles within the zip. Place each file on it's own line.  See the ones in the included simpletech.zip for examples.
  
• Generic Block mode preview for alt-textures - Since I cannot really know what tile is meant for what in an alt texture sheet, I just load them all on a basic block model. (Block in the sample.mdl file) This means that the tiles in an alt-terrain.png don't have to be in any particular order to still get a preview. (Mind you it also means that multi-tile textures and objects don't get a custom model.)

(Ver. 0.1.4)
New Features

• Save button - The mixer no longer saves on exit. You must now click the save button.
  
• gui/items.png editing - You can now toggle between editing the terrain.png and items.png images
  
• Zoom - Pressing 'z' will zoom the currently selected tile to 256x256
  
• Source Preview - Right-clicking on the right hand picker will now select the tile without causing a swap. This is useful for previewing potential tiles from a pack.

(Ver. 0.1.3)
New Features

• Now saves ALL the files in the base pack over to your new pack. Note: if you use just an image as your base (test.png for exmaple) then the saved pack will only contain the terrain.png.

Bug Fixes

• The selector no longer resizes incorrectly when changing between packs of different resolutions.

(Ver. 0.1.2)
New Features

• alt pack folder and alt terrain folder - Any pack (.zip) placed in the alts folder will be read by the pack regardless of the directory it is looking at. Additionally any .png in the alts/terrain folder will be read by
  the pack as an alt of terrain.png.  Packs in the alts folder will be prefixed with a * in the listing and files
  in the alts/terrain folder will be prefixed with a +.
  
• secondary model previewer tied to the right hand picker

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue with the side of the large chest model using one of the back tiles instead of the side tile.

Possible Future Features:

• Auto-generated pack.txt with full credits
  
• Support for items.png Done!
  
• Support for mobs Done!
  
• Support for GUI elements Done!
  
• Run-time save naming Done!
  
• Toggle between full screen and windowed
  
• Resizeable window
  
• Previews for mobs and gui elements
  
• Run-time pack directory picking
  
• Drag and drop

Note: Don't take the above list as gospel.

Supported Operating Systems:

• Windows

Linux / Mac versions are pending my deciding how I want to handle them. I can confirm that it WILL compile on those systems but to be honest I don't want to bothered with maintaining multiple builds.  My current plan is to get through the last few features on my Alpha list, do some code cleanup, and then look into finding some folks willing to maintain builds on other platforms.

In the event that the Forums are having issues again, you can also follow my blog at blog.thefool76.com or you can stalk me on Google+.

Download: Texmix.zip

Old versions:

• Texmix_0.1.6.zip
  
• Texmix_0.1.5.zip
  
• Texmix_0.1.4.zip

[Minian14]

That's cool, I used to do that same thing with paint.net.

[Gestankfaust]

That is the coolest thing since pizza!

/watched

Awesome work Fool. Should I do a video with my favorites combined and post it here?

[Lilyo]

I think this could work amazing with installing alternates for texture packs too. Texture pack artists could put their alternates in a sheet the same size as the terrain and then you could just chose which texture you want right?

[champious]

sounds extremely useful, and cool! I was looking for something like this a while back. would save a lot of time   I'm stuck on a mac sadly, isthere any way you could mac it Mac OS X compatible too? ty ty. This might also stop the over posting of mixpacks since everyone would be able to create their own favorite mixtures and would no longer rely on others.

[Diece]

i want to preview the texture on the right thing to see what it looks like and i dont want to replace the actual texture just preview it how do i do this?

[Glimmar]

When Faust says it's cooler than Pizza...it's really cool!

Awesomest editing tool yet. Hope folk quickly realize how important this will become in our arsenal of essential editing tools. As soon as I can, I will package up my alternates so folk can better make their own personal compilations involving any of my textures (assuming anyone still likes anything I do!   )

For quick changes and mucking about sessions, I would see this as being useful for texture artists too, not just those who find it difficult to edit with Photoshop, Gimp and Paint.NET

Fantastic work, mate. I know you have been working on this on and off for quite some time and I appreciate that...thank you!       

[hobocharged]

thats cool but i'm on mac

[The_Fool76]

Gestankfaust, on 29 June 2011 - 01:55 AM, said:

That is the coolest thing since pizza!

/watched

Awesome work Fool. Should I do a video with my favorites combined and post it here?

Mmmmm Pizza...  I'm honored that's a pretty high standard to be measured against!
If you want to do a video I certainly won't stop you.

Lilyo, on 29 June 2011 - 03:09 AM, said:

I think this could work amazing with installing alternates for texture packs too. Texture pack artists could put their alternates in a sheet the same size as the terrain and then you could just chose which texture you want right?

Well the current version only picks the terrain.png out of the .zip but it would be easy enough for me to make it look for other files as alternates. That would probably have to be handled with a config though as there isn't a consistent naming scheme for alt sheets among the artists that I've seen.  For now the way to handle that is to rename the alt image to terrain.png and put it in it's own .zip file in with the rest of the packs.

champious, on 29 June 2011 - 03:29 AM, said:

sounds extremely useful, and cool! I was looking for something like this a while back. would save a lot of time   I'm stuck on a mac sadly, isthere any way you could mac it Mac OS X compatible too? ty ty. This might also stop the over posting of mixpacks since everyone would be able to create their own favorite mixtures and would no longer rely on others.

hobocharged, on 29 June 2011 - 12:05 PM, said:

thats cool but i'm on mac

Mac support will happen.  The code is platform agnostic so if I can get access to a Mac to compile/test against I will do a mac build of the binary.  (Either that or I go open-source and let people build their own.) I'll add a note to the initial post about that.

Diece, on 29 June 2011 - 03:58 AM, said:

i want to preview the texture on the right thing to see what it looks like and i dont want to replace the actual texture just preview it how do i do this?

You don't at the moment but that does give me an idea.  I could put up a second model previewer and tie it to the right hand picker.

Glimmar, on 29 June 2011 - 09:50 AM, said:

When Faust says it's cooler than Pizza...it's really cool!

Awesomest editing tool yet. Hope folk quickly realize how important this will become in our arsenal of essential editing tools. As soon as I can, I will package up my alternates so folk can better make their own personal compilations involving any of my textures (assuming anyone still likes anything I do!   )

For quick changes and mucking about sessions, I would see this as being useful for texture artists too, not just those who find it difficult to edit with Photoshop, Gimp and Paint.NET

Fantastic work, mate. I know you have been working on this on and off for quite some time and I appreciate that...thank you!       

I thank you for the praise.  I think the only way I could feel more warm and fuzzy inside would be to swallow a live rabbit.  

I hadn't thought about that, but if you wanted to preview a pack you were working on all you would have to do is swap to another pack and then back again.  It loads from the file every time you change packs.

As for packaging the alternates, see my above reply to Lilyo.  If you (or anyone else) has any suggestions on how you would like to see alternate texture sheets handled, feel free to say something.  Personally I am leaning towards some sort of manifest file that would be placed in the .zip that would tell the program what files are alt versions.

As these forums seem to be less than stable lately, you can also follow me via my blog at blog.thefool76.com

[Gestankfaust]

The_Fool76, on 29 June 2011 - 03:47 PM, said:

I thank you for the praise.  I think the only way I could feel more warm and fuzzy inside would be to swallow a live rabbit.  

I so couldn't stop laughing

o.O

I'll put together a couple texture packs and try it out this week. Most artist wouldn't mind as long as it's just a video, but I'll make sure they know if I can.

[Glimmar]

The_Fool76, on 29 June 2011 - 03:47 PM, said:

...As for packaging the alternates, see my above reply to Lilyo.  If you (or anyone else) has any suggestions on how you would like to see alternate texture sheets handled, feel free to say something.  Personally I am leaning towards some sort of manifest file that would be placed in the .zip that would tell the program what files are alt versions.

If I understand correctly, all I would do is have a zip pack with nothing but an alternative terrain.png file in it of exactly the same dimensions as a normal terrain.png (16x, 32x, etc.). I'm assuming the position of the textures on the sheet wouldn't matter, because the Mix Machine just reads them as squares (is the door tranferred in halves?). I would name each zip file (in my case) as 'Glimmar's Alternate Terrain Textures 1...2...3, etc.' and advise anyone wanting to use them to drop them in their Minecraft Texture Pack folder like any other texture pack and access them through the Mix Machine?

I need to read your readme a little more dilligently to find out where the resultant edited terrain file goes and what happens to the two that are being mixed. However, I better get pack to my piston edit (nearly came out as 'positron' then! Lol!). Haha, next update for Minecraft will be a positronic brain...something I could do with at the moment.

Eating a rabbit for a warm fuzzy feeling would be a similar experience to eating one of my pizzas.

[The_Fool76]

Glimmar, on 29 June 2011 - 05:01 PM, said:

If I understand correctly, all I would do is have a zip pack with nothing but an alternative terrain.png file in it of exactly the same dimensions as a normal terrain.png (16x, 32x, etc.). I'm assuming the position of the textures on the sheet wouldn't matter, because the Mix Machine just reads them as squares (is the door tranferred in halves?). I would name each zip file (in my case) as 'Glimmar's Alternate Terrain Textures 1...2...3, etc.' and advise anyone wanting to use them to drop them in their Minecraft Texture Pack folder like any other texture pack and access them through the Mix Machine?

I need to read your readme a little more dilligently to find out where the resultant edited terrain file goes and what happens to the two that are being mixed. However, I better get pack to my piston edit (nearly came out as 'positron' then! Lol!). Haha, next update for Minecraft will be a positronic brain...something I could do with at the moment.

Eating a rabbit for a warm fuzzy feeling would be a similar experience to eating one of my pizzas.

Your description of the process is quite accurate.  After a bit of consideration I think I'll just provide a secondary directory that it reads for packs so you don't have to clutter up your texturepacks folder with packs that won't work in the game.

Yes the picker currently does single tiles at a time. So the door would be done in halves as would the bed.  I initially debated making it aware of the multi-tile textures like doors but decided against it as this provides more freedom. (Could do a bunch of alt textures for door tops and bottoms that match up.  Say just a series of different windows on the top for example.)

The resulting terrain.png is wrapped inside a .zip and dropped into the texturepack folder.  By default this is named texmixpack.zip  The pack will only contain the modified terrain.png at the moment.   The source packs are unchanged. (Well unless you use texmixpack.zip as a source in which case it will be overwritten with the new one.)

I feel I should warn you that it does NOT save anything but the terrain.png to the new zip so giving it the name of an existing pack on the command line will blow away all the other files in that pack.  In any event I strongly suggest backing up your texture packs as this IS alpha software.

[Lilyo]

I think you should make it clear that this could be a potential customizer tool for texture packs as well, in which case the alternates are put in a file with the same dimensions as the terrain, named terrain.png, and put in a zip of its own in the texturepacks folder. If you really want to extend on the idea of a customizer, than you could make it so that the program also reads any file named alternate.png maybe, which would still be the same size as the terrain to make it simple?  

I see this as being far more functional and useful as a customizer.(which is essentially what it is too) I'm not sure if it'll be all that popular if you're concentrating on making it more of a mix two or more different packs together.

I also suggest that you give the option of zooming in on the terrain maybe? Either way, this is an amazing tool.

[The_Fool76]

Lilyo, on 29 June 2011 - 09:58 PM, said:

I think you should make it clear that this could be a potential customizer tool for texture packs as well, in which case the alternates are put in a file with the same dimensions as the terrain, named terrain.png, and put in a zip of its own in the texturepacks folder. If you really want to extend on the idea of a customizer, than you could make it so that the program also reads any file named alternate.png maybe, which would still be the same size as the terrain to make it simple?  

I see this as being far more functional and useful as a customizer.(which is essentially what it is too) I'm not sure if it'll be all that popular if you're concentrating on making it more of a mix two or more different packs together.

I also suggest that you give the option of zooming in on the terrain maybe? Either way, this is an amazing tool.

I just uploaded a new version that includes some more options in support of pack customization.
(download link is in first post)

New Features

• alt pack folder and alt terrain folder - Any pack (.zip) placed in the alts folder will be read by the pack regardless of the directory it is looking at. Additionally any .png in the alts/terrain folder will be read by
  the pack as an alt of terrain.png.  Packs in the alts folder will be prefixed with a * in the listing and files
  in the alts/terrain folder will be prefixed with a +.
  
• secondary model previewer tied to the right hand picker

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue with the side of the large chest model using one of the back tiles instead of the side tile.

Speaking of models. I currently have just a placeholder for the repeaters and no model at all for the bed.  If someone wanted to do either of those models, I would be thrilled. (See the sample.mdl file for information on defining models.)

As for the comment about a zoom feature, yes, that would be nice.  HD textures get kind of scrunched at the moment making it hard to see them clearly.

[Lilyo]

I also noticed a problem where if you open an hd texture and then close it and open a SD texture the selection stays at 32x32 instead of shrinking down to 16x16 if that makes sense.

[Gestankfaust]

You so side tracked me the rest of the day....

I only experimented with the same size packs I had in the folder (32x - Glimmar's, Croco's, and mine), but I don't think I've seen a better pack ANYWHERE!!



Don't wanna spam up the thread, so I'll just post the first screen and link the rest....



http://i225.photobuc...ust/screen7.jpg
http://i225.photobuc...ust/screen6.jpg
http://i225.photobuc...ust/screen5.jpg
http://i225.photobuc...ust/screen3.jpg
http://i225.photobuc...ust/screen2.jpg
http://i225.photobuc...ust/screen1.jpg

[Glimmar]

Lilyo, on 29 June 2011 - 09:58 PM, said:

I think you should make it clear that this could be a potential customizer tool for texture packs as well, in which case the alternates are put in a file with the same dimensions as the terrain, named terrain.png, and put in a zip of its own in the texturepacks folder. If you really want to extend on the idea of a customizer, than you could make it so that the program also reads any file named alternate.png maybe, which would still be the same size as the terrain to make it simple?  I see this as being far more functional and useful as a customizer.(which is essentially what it is too) I'm not sure if it'll be all that popular if you're concentrating on making it more of a mix two or more different packs together. I also suggest that you give the option of zooming in on the terrain maybe? Either way, this is an amazing tool.

Have to agree with this...and will be a fantastic tool in your library of texture packs, Lilyo.

Gestankfaust, on 30 June 2011 - 02:09 AM, said:

You so side tracked me the rest of the day....I only experimented with the same size packs I had in the folder (32x - Glimmar's, Croco's, and mine), but I don't think I've seen a better pack ANYWHERE!!

'The Dark Ones'.

[The_Fool76]

Updated for 1.7
I have added the new default textures as well as a model for the piston in it's contracted state. If someone wants to add an extended piston model I would be thrilled.  

Lilyo, on 30 June 2011 - 12:05 AM, said:

I also noticed a problem where if you open an hd texture and then close it and open a SD texture the selection stays at 32x32 instead of shrinking down to 16x16 if that makes sense.

Good catch.  I'll fix that in the next version.

Gestankfaust, on 30 June 2011 - 02:09 AM, said:

You so side tracked me the rest of the day....

I only experimented with the same size packs I had in the folder (32x - Glimmar's, Croco's, and mine), but I don't think I've seen a better pack ANYWHERE!!

Heh that's great!  I've been considering adding a possible feature to save a file that can be used to share mixes without sharing the mixed pack itself so we could all get to enjoy the things people have created. (Basically a list of what tiles are from what packs.)  But that's a ways down the road.

[Gestankfaust]

The other thing it does is save the pack with only the terrain.png inside the zip. I added a whole packs worth of stuff, but when I corrected a texture I missed, it re-saved it with only the terrain...lol

Not a huge issue if you remember to make a copy to use apart from the "test" one.

[The_Fool76]

Gestankfaust, on 30 June 2011 - 04:59 PM, said:

The other thing it does is save the pack with only the terrain.png inside the zip. I added a whole packs worth of stuff, but when I corrected a texture I missed, it re-saved it with only the terrain...lol

Not a huge issue if you remember to make a copy to use apart from the "test" one.

Funny you should say that...
*updates with a new version that doesn't have that flaw*