Interlopers.net Forum - Half-Life 2 News & Tutorials

Hey again,

No, this time it's not about my portfolio. Yeah, I miss those threads too

Aaanyway, I haven't really made much use of custom textures, so it came as quite a shock what a jungle finding and editing them is when I started looking around the web today. Being a nerd with too much spare time, the first thing that came to mind was building a texture site of my own. Rational thinking 101.
Laborious at it may be, I do intent to look into the possibilities. I find most of the existing texture collections out there lack thorough tagging systems and discrimination between tileable and untileable specimens. Should I choose to build a new site and implement all necessary features, what are the odds of anyone finding it useful, and what should I be aware of?

Grateful as (almost) always

http://cgtextures.com is the best, noway you can top that so don't even try

source-maps wrote:http://cgtextures.com is the best, noway you can top that so don't even try

Thanks. Does it have a feature to display only tileable ones?

nope it doesn't, but I really don't care for a feature like that.. I don't know how other users think about this though
also I don't use tileable textures from the web, I like to do that stuff my self

source-maps wrote:nope it doesn't, but I really don't care for a feature like that.. I don't know how other users think about this though
also I don't use tileable textures from the web, I like to do that stuff my self

I think many mappers agree with you on the want-to-make-them-tileable-myself thing. However, I don't really see why...?

because then you can say its your own work obviously

source-maps wrote:because then you can say its your own work obviously

"I found this texture picture taken by some guy, uploaded by some other guy and hosted on some site by some third guy. Then I changed it slightly to make it tileable."
Something like that?

yes exactly like that

Most tiled textures on cgtextures are tagged with tile, so it's very easy to find them if you're looking for them.

In any case most people heavily tweak the CGTexture stuff; they're excellent as a base but usually need modifying to be useful.

Perfectionistic as I may be, I consider that a rather loose system.
Nonetheless, I won't disregard CGTex just yet then, although I was unable to successfully find any tileable brick specimens... Does anybody have the experience with the site to tell me what to search for?

krainert wrote:

source-maps wrote:http://cgtextures.com is the best, noway you can top that so don't even try

Thanks. Does it have a feature to display only tileable ones?

Actually they just recently started adding tiled textures. They will say under the thumbnail if they are tiled. However often they are tiled in a way that is not conducive for use in the source engine. IE outside the scope of 16 x 16 measurements. But most of the textures on the site are raw images. There are some great tutorials to help out with learning how to tile them though as well as do other things. Like source maps said, it is the best!

Though it does actually say on the site that you should not use the textures in the original state. They are meant to be used as the base of a texture. Making them tile on your own is not that difficult as long as you are working on the right one. To be honest a lot of the tiled images are done quickly and repeat badly. Doing it yourself will allow you to control how much it repeats.

Semi-unrelated question of the four-and-two-thirds'th degree: Do you guys find texture editing interesting?

I actually find it very relaxing. If I get an idea or a theme in my head I can crank out 25 or 50 textures in a day. Sometimes more then that. I do all my stuff from real world photos though, some people make them from scratch. That I find less interesting however no less impressive when you see the final result...

MayheM wrote:I actually find it very relaxing. If I get an idea or a theme in my head I can crank out 25 or 50 textures in a day. Sometimes more then that. I do all my stuff from real world photos though, some people make them from scratch. That I find less interesting however no less impressive when you see the final result...

Then, would you mind making me... Uh, say, 50-100 textures due tomorrow so I can get mapping? Thanks! Just send by email. Preferably RAR'ed.
Meh. I hate graphical editing. Guess I'll just have to make due with whatever the graphics guys on the team produce - it doesn't make much sense start a large-scale initiative if the majority of mappers out there actually enjoy (more or less) working with textures