Hey guys. Deadbeyond PM'd me and asked for some pointers on how to make 32x textures, so I'd thought I'd oblige. A few notes before I begin:
1)The following guide assumes some basic knowledge of how to use photoshop, paint.net, or gimp. It also assumes that you know how to locate and open the terrain png.
2)I don't want to hear any flak about copying frigginsandvich. I'm doing this as a favor for a friend. I'm also covering several topics (and a different resolution) than he covered in his tutorial, so stfu if you have a problem with me posting this here. Get a life and grow up.
3)I'm posting this here rather in the tutorials section because, quite frankly, no one ever goes to the tutorials section. I didn't even know there WAS one until sandvich mentioned it in his post. 0_o
Okay, let's get started.
Stone
Before you can even begin making textures for a 32x pack, you need a bunch of 32x squares. The easy way to do this is to open up the terrain png and enlarge to 200 % with 'preserve hard edges' checked (which keeps it from getting blurry).
One of the first things I usually start with is stone. Besides dirt and grass, stone is one of the main defining textures of minecraft that sets the 'feel' of any pack. In layman's terms-- if your stone is screwed up, everything else is going to be screwed up.
To start with, color in one of your 32x32 squares. Preferably not with purple or yellow or something equally ridiculous.
This proto-stone is just a flat gray, half-way between white and black. (Note: The middle range of brightness is always the best place to start with any texture-- that way it's easier to make it brighter or darker as needed). This may seem ideal, but stone isn't actually colorless gray in real life. So let's add...yellow-ish green!
There. Much better. Now for some texture.
With 32x, you don't want to reach for the pencil tool (at least not for stone). Instead, use a brush to lightly mark out the dips in your stone.
Here's where starting in the middle range of brightness comes in handy. I scattered some blobs of shading across our smooth square, using a hue just slightly darker than the original background hue. This is important-- later, when we add in the darkest shades to make cracks, this primer coat will help the cracks to blend in without seeming blurry. In other words: Never start out dark. Work your way up to it. It's easy to make things darker by adding more shading.
Now for my favorite cheap trick: Add a noise filter. :biggrin.gif:
Now you may be thinking, 'Wow, my stone's looking pretty good! I guess I'll move on to the next texture!' (or not). But either way, if you load this up into the texture pack folder and start up minecraft you'll discover...
BAD TILING!! MUWHAHAHA!
Here I copied and pasted the stone texture three times, and set up the four squares to make one larger square.
DO THIS FOR EVERY TEXTURE.
It's the best method for catching bad tiling before it can become epidemic. And for those of you who can't see the issues above, I've circled them in convenient red ink. :wink.gif:
These types of errors are insidious, because you often won't see them until you're staring at the fifty block high wall around your castle.
As you can see, there is a nasty little line of lighter gray at the top of the block, and a large bulge that sticks out in the upper right hand corner.
But don't freak out just yet! Both of these things are easy to fix.
Here's the same stone texture after I went back with a darker gray and filled in the line and broke up the bulge.
In the event that your textures are particularly stubborn about not tiling right, you can set them up as shown above. Surround your target texture with four copies, one for each edge. This will allow you to touch up the edges with greater ease. Make sure the layer you're working on is set so that you can't draw over the borders of the texture!
Cobble
Ah, cobble. Everyone's best friend and worst enemy.
There are two basic ways to make cobble, each with endless variations: Chunk, and block. I'll show the first here, and the latter for brick, since the block method can be applied to both equally.
'Chunky' cobble is cobble that attempts to look like its namesake-- aka, raw lumps of stone, like those found in an old brick wall.
With that in mind, let's take the same greenish-yellowish-gray shade used to make our stone and fill in another 32 by 32 square. (I tend to use a slightly darker shade for the base of the cobble, but you are, of course, free to make your cobble lighter or darker than your stone as you see fit).
And now to outline our stones with a slightly darker gray. Again, save the super dark shades for the finishing touches.
Tip: Avoid horizontal lines at all costs! They stand out and look unnatural. Also...
Here I've marked where the cracks between the stone intersect the edges of the textures. In order for your cobble to tile correctly, these cracks must match up on either side! Also, make sure that some of your stones extend over the edge of the texture-- but be sure to include the other half of the stone on the other side!
Another useful tip-- be sure to include shading for the tops and bottoms of the stones that sit at the top and bottom of the texture. Otherwise they'll end up looking rectangular and awkward.
Again, check for tiling. Don't worry about the little imperfections for now-- just make sure that the stones line up the way they're supposed to. The minor flaws will be smoothed out as we add more shading, and fixing them now will only waste your time.
Went back and darkened up the intersections between cracks. NOTE: For both chunk and block cobble, the intersections between cracks will always be darker than straight cracks.
Here I've started shading in the stones themselves, lighter on the top, darker on the bottom. Some roughness is desired-- the stones will look unnaturally slick if the shading is too perfect, or if the highlights are too bright.
Darkened the cracks even more to add definition....
So now we're done, right? Not quite-- now we need to check for tiling.
Oops. Looks like there are some tiling issues. That one stone stands out too much, and those small stones fall very inconveniently into a straight line. Tip: For natural textures, any sort of straight line is baaadddd.
But don't worry! Both of these problems are fixable.
And voila. One large, obnoxious stone becomes two. After a few more touch ups for tiling...
Not my best textures, but you get the idea.
Brick (or cobble block method)
'But I don't like raw chunks of stone! I want to build cinder block walls!'
Never fear, I can teach you how to do that too. As stated above, although I'm demonstrating brick in this section, these tips can also be easily applied to cobble.
To start with, lay down a background color. I prefer my bricks a little on the orange side, but you can make them pink for all I care.
I usually discourage using the pencil tool, but here you need it to lay down nice, clean lines. For basic horizontal bricks, make sure the lines are evenly spaced (unless you're going for the irregular look), and put one of the lines at the bottom. Why? It's very easy to forget that there needs to be a divide between the row of bricks at the top and the row of bricks at the bottom. Putting one of the cracks along the base of the texture acts as both a nice shadow and as a way to prevent ending up with a row of double-wide bricks.
Now add in the vertical spacers to define the edges of the bricks. I'd recommend not having any fall on the same vertical line-- from experience, it tends to tile awkwardly on the large scale.
Variety is the spice of life! Make some of your bricks a slightly different shade from the rest. And I do mean VERY slight-- anything more than a miniscule difference will stick out like a sore thumb. Also be sure not to have two accent bricks adjacent to each other-- this creates a very obvious grouping that will cause your brick texture to tile strangely.
Now here's where things get tricky. First: Pick a lighting direction and stick to it like super glue.Nothing looks worse than a texture with two different light sources. Here, as you can see, I have my light coming in from the top left. On most 'block' style bricks you will want to highlight the top and left edge of the brick with a slightly lighter color than the brick itself, and the bottom and right edge with a slightly darker color. But wait! That's not all...
Here I've done the primary shading for the rest of the bricks. See that one little pixel in the upper right hand and bottom left hand corners, where the light shading meets the dark shading? That pixel is important. Because of the limitations of 32x textures, the only way to show sharp corners is to have this pixel match the shade of the center of the brick. It's a simple optical illusion, but trust me, it makes your textures look a lot better.
This next step is small, but important for making realistic bricks. Put down your pencil tool and pick up your brush again. Now go back over the cracks with the same shade you made the cracks with-- and lo and behold, some darker pixels are thrown off onto the bricks. This gives them a necessary irregularity that we'll enhance in the next step.
Using your brush, take a shade just slightly darker than the main color of your brick (but lighter than the dark shading) and speckle the interior rectangle of the brick, concentrating on the area away from the light source. Do the same thing with the highlights and the shadows, using colors just slightly darker (or lighter) than the area you're working on.
And finally, darken the intersections between the cracks and add touches of shading as you see fit.
Planks
Another main texture, one that also helps to set the mood of the pack.
Planks come in as many different styles as cobble, with everything from floorboards to wooden crates popping up in texture packs. Below I'll show you how to whip up quick RPG style wood.
Again, start with a base color and add the lines defining the edges of your planks with the pencil tool.
Now loosely rough out the wood grain using a brush tool and a color slightly darker than your base. Again, you can always go darker.
Don't worry about being messy at this stage-- we'll go back over the cracks at the end.
Go back with a darker shade and add even more defined grain lines. Then darken and clean up the cracks. Don't forget to check tiling!
Finished product.
......
End notes:
Please don't flame. This took hours to make even if the textures themselves are sub-par. Despite their desirability (or lack thereof) they demonstrate the concepts I wanted to get across.
If there is any interest, I can continue this to include more textures, such as chests and beds.
And above all, enjoy.
(Oh, and comment too. I love comments. :smile.gif:)
I love how you focused on the tiling. Too many people are like "This is how you do it! I'm amazing!!" and their examples have clear lines through the texture. And then people comment on how amazing they are. Boggles my mind.
One quick way to do the tiling check is to make the 2x2 texture square and then crop it back down so the borders are in the middle, and then fix the uglies.
This is a wonderful resource for new texture pack artists. The careful step-by-step instructions with pictures was nicely done - detailed enough to avoid confusion and broad enough to encourage each person's own style.
Thank you for the effort you put into this! Please do continue.
Awesome tutorial really helped me looking forward for updates.1 question i can't find the preserve hard edges when changing size i'm using Photoshop 6 and Photoshop cs3 for mac.Thanks
Edit: Sorry for being dumb i found it i use nearest neighbor when resizing sorry for the needless post
Awesome tutorial really helped me looking forward for updates.1 question i can't find the preserver hard edges when changing size i'm using Photoshop 6 and Photoshop cs3 for mac.Thanks
On the 'resize image' screen, there should be a drop down box of different resizing options. 'Preserve hard edges' should be in there-- it's a pretty standard mechanic.
I am going to be completely and brutally honest. This is a great tutorial. I think that we, the texture pack artists, should get together and compile these tutorials into one thread. It would have a much higher chance of getting stickied.
Also, another note. If you are using a program that allows for the creation of custom brushes this can also help with tiling issues. I have two custom brushes that I use when I am creating a natural looking tile like dirt or cobblestone. They consist of 9 points spaced in a grid pattern with the centers of the points 128 pixels apart from eachother. 128 because that is the resolution I draw in. This allows you to, in essence, draw a straight line that wraps around the texture and will tile over to the next and so on.
I would include a screen shot of my brush but it doesn't show up well.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Look, I don't care if your 8 or 20. If you can't take criticism or opinions, then get off the internet." -Stronghold257
I am going to be completely and brutally honest. This is a great tutorial. I think that we, the texture pack artists, should get together and compile these tutorials into one thread. It would have a much higher chance of getting stickied.
Also, another note. If you are using a program that allows for the creation of custom brushes this can also help with tiling issues. I have two custom brushes that I use when I am creating a natural looking tile like dirt or cobblestone. They consist of 9 points spaced in a grid pattern with the centers of the points 128 pixels apart from eachother. 128 because that is the resolution I draw in. This allows you to, in essence, draw a straight line that wraps around the texture and will tile over to the next and so on.
I would include a screen shot of my brush but it doesn't show up well.
I like the idea of having the tutorials in one place, but what if I or someone else wanted to add to it? Having just one person in charge of the thread might cause some problems. Maybe set up a tutorial directory instead, like lilyo's pack list?
Sorry, I don't use custom brushes. I mostly just stick to the pencil tool, a 1 pixel brush, and occasionally a few scatter brushes. So I can't really put a section about it in this tutorial.
1)The following guide assumes some basic knowledge of how to use photoshop, paint.net, or gimp. It also assumes that you know how to locate and open the terrain png.
2)I don't want to hear any flak about copying frigginsandvich. I'm doing this as a favor for a friend. I'm also covering several topics (and a different resolution) than he covered in his tutorial, so stfu if you have a problem with me posting this here. Get a life and grow up.
3)I'm posting this here rather in the tutorials section because, quite frankly, no one ever goes to the tutorials section. I didn't even know there WAS one until sandvich mentioned it in his post. 0_o
Okay, let's get started.
Before you can even begin making textures for a 32x pack, you need a bunch of 32x squares. The easy way to do this is to open up the terrain png and enlarge to 200 % with 'preserve hard edges' checked (which keeps it from getting blurry).
One of the first things I usually start with is stone. Besides dirt and grass, stone is one of the main defining textures of minecraft that sets the 'feel' of any pack. In layman's terms-- if your stone is screwed up, everything else is going to be screwed up.
To start with, color in one of your 32x32 squares. Preferably not with purple or yellow or something equally ridiculous.
This proto-stone is just a flat gray, half-way between white and black. (Note: The middle range of brightness is always the best place to start with any texture-- that way it's easier to make it brighter or darker as needed). This may seem ideal, but stone isn't actually colorless gray in real life. So let's add...yellow-ish green!
There. Much better. Now for some texture.
With 32x, you don't want to reach for the pencil tool (at least not for stone). Instead, use a brush to lightly mark out the dips in your stone.
Here's where starting in the middle range of brightness comes in handy. I scattered some blobs of shading across our smooth square, using a hue just slightly darker than the original background hue. This is important-- later, when we add in the darkest shades to make cracks, this primer coat will help the cracks to blend in without seeming blurry. In other words: Never start out dark. Work your way up to it. It's easy to make things darker by adding more shading.
Now for my favorite cheap trick: Add a noise filter. :biggrin.gif:
Now you may be thinking, 'Wow, my stone's looking pretty good! I guess I'll move on to the next texture!' (or not). But either way, if you load this up into the texture pack folder and start up minecraft you'll discover...
BAD TILING!! MUWHAHAHA!
Here I copied and pasted the stone texture three times, and set up the four squares to make one larger square.
DO THIS FOR EVERY TEXTURE.
It's the best method for catching bad tiling before it can become epidemic. And for those of you who can't see the issues above, I've circled them in convenient red ink. :wink.gif:
These types of errors are insidious, because you often won't see them until you're staring at the fifty block high wall around your castle.
As you can see, there is a nasty little line of lighter gray at the top of the block, and a large bulge that sticks out in the upper right hand corner.
But don't freak out just yet! Both of these things are easy to fix.
Here's the same stone texture after I went back with a darker gray and filled in the line and broke up the bulge.
In the event that your textures are particularly stubborn about not tiling right, you can set them up as shown above. Surround your target texture with four copies, one for each edge. This will allow you to touch up the edges with greater ease. Make sure the layer you're working on is set so that you can't draw over the borders of the texture!
Cobble
Ah, cobble. Everyone's best friend and worst enemy.
There are two basic ways to make cobble, each with endless variations: Chunk, and block. I'll show the first here, and the latter for brick, since the block method can be applied to both equally.
'Chunky' cobble is cobble that attempts to look like its namesake-- aka, raw lumps of stone, like those found in an old brick wall.
With that in mind, let's take the same greenish-yellowish-gray shade used to make our stone and fill in another 32 by 32 square. (I tend to use a slightly darker shade for the base of the cobble, but you are, of course, free to make your cobble lighter or darker than your stone as you see fit).
And now to outline our stones with a slightly darker gray. Again, save the super dark shades for the finishing touches.
Tip: Avoid horizontal lines at all costs! They stand out and look unnatural. Also...
Here I've marked where the cracks between the stone intersect the edges of the textures. In order for your cobble to tile correctly, these cracks must match up on either side! Also, make sure that some of your stones extend over the edge of the texture-- but be sure to include the other half of the stone on the other side!
Another useful tip-- be sure to include shading for the tops and bottoms of the stones that sit at the top and bottom of the texture. Otherwise they'll end up looking rectangular and awkward.
Again, check for tiling. Don't worry about the little imperfections for now-- just make sure that the stones line up the way they're supposed to. The minor flaws will be smoothed out as we add more shading, and fixing them now will only waste your time.
Went back and darkened up the intersections between cracks. NOTE: For both chunk and block cobble, the intersections between cracks will always be darker than straight cracks.
Here I've started shading in the stones themselves, lighter on the top, darker on the bottom. Some roughness is desired-- the stones will look unnaturally slick if the shading is too perfect, or if the highlights are too bright.
Darkened the cracks even more to add definition....
So now we're done, right? Not quite-- now we need to check for tiling.
Oops. Looks like there are some tiling issues. That one stone stands out too much, and those small stones fall very inconveniently into a straight line. Tip: For natural textures, any sort of straight line is baaadddd.
But don't worry! Both of these problems are fixable.
And voila. One large, obnoxious stone becomes two. After a few more touch ups for tiling...
Not my best textures, but you get the idea.
Brick (or cobble block method)
'But I don't like raw chunks of stone! I want to build cinder block walls!'
Never fear, I can teach you how to do that too. As stated above, although I'm demonstrating brick in this section, these tips can also be easily applied to cobble.
To start with, lay down a background color. I prefer my bricks a little on the orange side, but you can make them pink for all I care.
I usually discourage using the pencil tool, but here you need it to lay down nice, clean lines. For basic horizontal bricks, make sure the lines are evenly spaced (unless you're going for the irregular look), and put one of the lines at the bottom. Why? It's very easy to forget that there needs to be a divide between the row of bricks at the top and the row of bricks at the bottom. Putting one of the cracks along the base of the texture acts as both a nice shadow and as a way to prevent ending up with a row of double-wide bricks.
Now add in the vertical spacers to define the edges of the bricks. I'd recommend not having any fall on the same vertical line-- from experience, it tends to tile awkwardly on the large scale.
Variety is the spice of life! Make some of your bricks a slightly different shade from the rest. And I do mean VERY slight-- anything more than a miniscule difference will stick out like a sore thumb. Also be sure not to have two accent bricks adjacent to each other-- this creates a very obvious grouping that will cause your brick texture to tile strangely.
Now here's where things get tricky. First: Pick a lighting direction and stick to it like super glue.Nothing looks worse than a texture with two different light sources. Here, as you can see, I have my light coming in from the top left. On most 'block' style bricks you will want to highlight the top and left edge of the brick with a slightly lighter color than the brick itself, and the bottom and right edge with a slightly darker color. But wait! That's not all...
Here I've done the primary shading for the rest of the bricks. See that one little pixel in the upper right hand and bottom left hand corners, where the light shading meets the dark shading? That pixel is important. Because of the limitations of 32x textures, the only way to show sharp corners is to have this pixel match the shade of the center of the brick. It's a simple optical illusion, but trust me, it makes your textures look a lot better.
This next step is small, but important for making realistic bricks. Put down your pencil tool and pick up your brush again. Now go back over the cracks with the same shade you made the cracks with-- and lo and behold, some darker pixels are thrown off onto the bricks. This gives them a necessary irregularity that we'll enhance in the next step.
Using your brush, take a shade just slightly darker than the main color of your brick (but lighter than the dark shading) and speckle the interior rectangle of the brick, concentrating on the area away from the light source. Do the same thing with the highlights and the shadows, using colors just slightly darker (or lighter) than the area you're working on.
And finally, darken the intersections between the cracks and add touches of shading as you see fit.
Planks
Another main texture, one that also helps to set the mood of the pack.
Planks come in as many different styles as cobble, with everything from floorboards to wooden crates popping up in texture packs. Below I'll show you how to whip up quick RPG style wood.
Again, start with a base color and add the lines defining the edges of your planks with the pencil tool.
Now loosely rough out the wood grain using a brush tool and a color slightly darker than your base. Again, you can always go darker.
Don't worry about being messy at this stage-- we'll go back over the cracks at the end.
Go back with a darker shade and add even more defined grain lines. Then darken and clean up the cracks. Don't forget to check tiling!
Finished product.
......
End notes:
Please don't flame. This took hours to make even if the textures themselves are sub-par. Despite their desirability (or lack thereof) they demonstrate the concepts I wanted to get across.
If there is any interest, I can continue this to include more textures, such as chests and beds.
And above all, enjoy.
(Oh, and comment too. I love comments. :smile.gif:)
Thanks! I gave it my best shot.
(Forgot to do it before. Oops)
:biggrin.gif:
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to...."
Thanks!
Yeah, the starter packs are always the ones that bother me-- they frequently have terrible tiling. XP
Not really for the tiling, but more for the techniques you used for making the textures :biggrin.gif:
I just started a 32x pack and am finding it takes a loooooooooooooooooooooong time to fill up the whole block (as I'm used to 16x packs...)
...darn. Knew I shouldn't have given away all my trade secrets. :wink.gif:
Yeah, the thing about 32x is that it's normally just too big to go pixel by pixel, the way you can for 16x.
Some of this can even be applied to 16x16 Atleast I think. lol. just not as much because of the detail limits.
Anyways thanks for the help!
One quick way to do the tiling check is to make the 2x2 texture square and then crop it back down so the borders are in the middle, and then fix the uglies.
Thank you for the effort you put into this! Please do continue.
Contest hosted for Steelfeathers' Enchanted Pack
Edit: Sorry for being dumb i found it i use nearest neighbor when resizing sorry for the needless post
On the 'resize image' screen, there should be a drop down box of different resizing options. 'Preserve hard edges' should be in there-- it's a pretty standard mechanic.
PS: Make more textures!
Haha, no, I've never attempted to do HD fire. Wish I knew how.
Glad you like the brick, though. :smile.gif:
And the way the poll is going, I'll probably end up adding leaves.
Also, another note. If you are using a program that allows for the creation of custom brushes this can also help with tiling issues. I have two custom brushes that I use when I am creating a natural looking tile like dirt or cobblestone. They consist of 9 points spaced in a grid pattern with the centers of the points 128 pixels apart from eachother. 128 because that is the resolution I draw in. This allows you to, in essence, draw a straight line that wraps around the texture and will tile over to the next and so on.
I would include a screen shot of my brush but it doesn't show up well.
I like the idea of having the tutorials in one place, but what if I or someone else wanted to add to it? Having just one person in charge of the thread might cause some problems. Maybe set up a tutorial directory instead, like lilyo's pack list?
Sorry, I don't use custom brushes. I mostly just stick to the pencil tool, a 1 pixel brush, and occasionally a few scatter brushes. So I can't really put a section about it in this tutorial.