Program to use for editing textures?

[kakemann]

Hey guys!

I'm just wondering if someone knows which programs are easy to use when making small changes to the graphics on ships land units etc.

Any good suggestions?

Thanks!

[CaptainCox]

I always use Photoshop. There is other like Gimp (freeware), Painter Pro is another.
http://www.gimp.org/
There is also a DDS plug in for Gimp here
http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/~cocidius/dds/

[kakemann]

But do you get the 3 dimensional view?

Does it require a plugin when using Photoshop?

Thanks Cox! ;)

[CaptainCox]

Ah now I see what you mean. No these progs are simply graphic "paint"programs" To actually paint in 3D I only know of "MAYA" or maybe there is a plug in for 3DS MAX that can do that.

Normally you would just open the stock textures from the game in Photoshop (using the DDS import pluggin from Nvidia) and tweak the stuff to your liking and simply let the game handle the rest. In some cases its a bit of guess work, especially heads and stuff that is wrapped, subs and ships might be another one that can be hard to see what it actually will do in 3D.

My experience is simply trial and error. Just got 3DS MAX so I have not actually gotten in to it yet.

My recommendation would still be PS or GIMP. A good trick when doing wraparound textures is to 1st make a kind of checkerboard texture with different colors so you see what area "zone" does what in the texture. Looks weird but its a good way to find the area you are looking for in a particular detail etc.


Checkered texture in Photoshop
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a138/CaptainCox/CHECKER.jpg


Checkered texture applied in game.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a138/CaptainCox/CHECKERINGAME.jpg

[kakemann]

This makes sense! Thanks again Captain!