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Hi, I need advice please,

I created a huge set of office wall textures for my map, made from a pre existing stock set of HL2 textures the textures don't seem to tile seamlessly but I made sure they were seamless when I created them. If I select fit in the texture/face edit menu the texture is off by 1,2,3 pixels at either end. I then need to resize it to 0.251/0.252 and even then it does not look well, why is this happening the texture should be seamless but it is not I don't know what is wrong.

The textures are all 512x512

The set


Example in hammer why do these lines appear??


example in game does not look very good


example in game full bright 2 the lines seem more prominent here they have a bump map as well as plaster details. The textures work by themselves but not like this.


Seamless when created


example of the VMT in the set used other HL2 vmt's as a guide to mine


what have I done wrong in the texture creation process? or is this a problem with hammer?

Just to clarify I have made sure the groups of textures are all seamless I can provide more pictures if need be to show this.

Thanks

Have you tried with the clamp U and V flags?

Other than that.. Are the normal maps tiled too? I have that problem with stock textures sometimes. From what I know by working on other engines, it could simply be a parameter that is not set correctly (in the render code). It is very likely that the superdupper steampipe update have screwed up that too. And well, just for the heck of it, I´d comment the detail lines, there´s a very slim chance of the detail texture not tiling with the other walls and generating that undesired effect.

Have you tried simply enlarging the textures by one pixel in Photoshop?

Also what conversion program are you using? VTFedit? The Photoshop VTF plugin?

Thanks for the advice

Overall I think there is a 2 issues wrong with my textures one with the normals and the one with the textures themselves in how hammer represents them. I redone the normal maps they had strange issues at the edges so I redone the normals I thought this would fix it but it did not.

I use VTF Edit, I use version 7.1 for conversion for both diffuse and normal maps. I heard different versions of VTFedit cause problems, so I tried version 7.5 and the textures did not even load in my hammer. So I went back to 7.1. The VTFs use normal format of DXT1 and alpha format DXT5

This is a picture of the normals for this particular group of textures


I also redone a new plaster details just modified the original a little, made the details at 512x512


Light info of the textures in game using Mat fullbright2 normals are a bit better these normals tile better


Redone the texture with clamp U


The texture still has issues, I am not sure why the lines appear (this picture is in game) a closer look at the texture and it seems to have taken/deleted a pixel or 4 pixels at 0.25 of 512 from the edges in a single column (top/down) from both these 512 textures, I am not sure why this is happening. The textures are seamless but in hammer they are not perhaps it is the steampipe update I really hope not or I hope this can be fixed.


Thanks,

Have you tried simply enlarging the textures by one pixel in Photoshop?
I did not do this, I kept the edges from the original stock textures.

I created a 512x512 image and made sure that they reached the edges of 512.

I noticed when creating textures for models one should have a good margin in the UVs. If there was no margin, when one zooms out the edges at the seams of the mesh would have strange errors like a white line. Should I leave a margin of some kind for these textures? but how would that work? I mean the textures fill up 512x512 in entirety. I would effectively be going out of the 512x512 boundaries of the image.

perhaps make an image of 516x516 and in the VTF edit use the resize option to 512x512 this seems wrong I don't think this would work either I don't know.

I would use the Psshop version of VFT if it would fix this does it have batch export? with no batch export this really is not something I want to do. To get normals into hammer is also long, and when errors happened I needed to reselect everything it takes so long. I have deleted everything for now I am trying to fix this set if I can then I will add the rest.

In addition to this problem, I would like to ask is there a way in windows 7 to be able to select multiple files of the same file type in the folder by just selecting one? like an option " find all similar file types in selected folder" does something like this exist? in this case it really would help me save time with the problem I am having.

Thanks

I should add again the textures are seamless, I am viewing them side by side using a grid there is no yellow at the edges.

These are 2 textures raw as is, no VTF no seams present(these textures are 512x512 only a part is shown)


Enlarging the textures will in addition of making it extra complicated mess up how the textures seam together. It must be something in the conversion stage of the texture to VTF that I am doing wrong.

Just to update on this problem I seem to be having,

I think this is something to do with hammer I tried changing mipmaps on import changing various filters and what not ,still no fix.I flagged Clamp U and even Point Sample.

point sample flagged in hammer this shows a line appearing as point sample shows the texture as pixels this is probably the clearest evidence that this is a hammer problem.


I have tried stretching it beyond the 512x512 boundaries of the image no fix.
stretching the texture to 101% Height and width beyond the boundaries of 512x512


I have even tried looking at a hammer HL2 stock texture rotated 180 degrees and that line appears also this is a hammer problem I really think that maybe I am wrong but this is what it looks like to me.


One last picture I have painted the edges at full 100% opacity with basic colours and those lines are still showing hammer has failed me here.



Overall it looks terrible I hope this can be fixed somehow.

Or does anyone have any more ideas, I could send just 4 textures (what would be best way to send if one agrees). So one could see for themselves maybe it is something I have done wrong. Perhaps the tools I am using, I just don't know.

I need to move onto the floor textures even with these problems, maybe this can all be fixed later. I spent, maybe wasted 2 days on something I could not fix because I did not understand the problem

anyway peace

Open the Hl2 Map trainstation02, it should be included in the source sdk files for hl2, otherwise just decompile it.
There's the stair with the textures, they should appear with no lines between them, at least they do it for me .

But like someone else said, it's probably photoshop to blame for this, not hammer for once. Make sure the textures you edit are right next to the edges.

Thanks LordDz

It does all grate after a while sorry.

Perhaps it is the Pshop, if it is I don't know what to edit because the pixels all reach the edge of the 512x512 space. I don't know if there are transparent pixels at the edges I don't know how to look for that. To be honest it does not look transparent, if it does need editing, what do I need to edit, the edges? They reach the edge, I really am lost here. I have tried painting the edges that last picture above shows painted lines I put at the edges and those strange lines still appear.

This is one edge of the texture in pshop


The other side in pshop, it cannot go any closer to the edge so I don't know what to do.



Cheers I have to check the map you mention this red plaster style is used in some apartment blocks if I remember correctly.

To me it looks like the red pixels are bleeding into the yellow pixels, that is what seems to be happening, I don't know if it is Pshop or VTF or it is just how hammer blends pixels together. I say this because one side of my texture is red and the other is yellow something is happening as it blends those pixels together.

What this picture shows is that texture at the top is seamless, it looks seamless but that diagonal piece is not seamless as one side has yellow pixels.



I don't know what to edit in the art program the edges are as close to the edges as can be, I also use snap to grid in everything even Pshop. I think one needs to have these textures to see for themselves. Maybe it is something I have or have not done correctly, I have attempted various things with no luck.

Perhaps I can try something I am going to put the red parts of the texture on the opposite side of the same texture this will mess up part of the texture but this might fix it I am not sure though. If that is the case some of the textures cannot work in this way like this one but might prove that what I am saying is not crazy.

I don't think there is a way around this, afaik, it's a engine issue ... I think ingame it takes the 1px border of a texture and repeats it. This is also noticable on the tree card textures.

You could try playing around with vtf settings when you save (no mipmaps and the likes) but I doubt it is an issue that can be fixed.

Yeah thanks marnamai I thought I was going a bit crazy/mad. I done a test just to see, it is not prefect but it is a little smoother between the different textures.

I copied the red parts of the texture over the yellow parts linking up those pixels.







So yeah this is a hammer thing, when the pixels are different colours at both ends it won't match. I have tried clamp U but it did not seem to change anything, I cannot find clamp V I messed with clamp S,T, got strange results. I thought these textures would work well, I guess I can either leave it like that, mess around with the texture edit feature in hammer like 0.252 and so on or try and work something out with the diagonal textures like these test textures.

My knowledge is limited in hammer as I didn't even know these kinds of things can happen.

cheers

yea, your best bet is either to offset the texture a little, scale it up a little or use model and decals to hide the faults.

If you really need to scale stuff I recommend using $basetexturetransform and try scale 1.00195315 1 to see if it works. Go higher/lower if needed.

Yeah the seams are just mipmapping. You could import them with the BGR888 filter which has the best quality, but that still might not fix the problem.

This is how I've always done stairs when I need to angle the wall texture. Turn your wall into a displacement.


Then go to your 'Raise To' tool and punch in your own numbers.


Measure the distance with the selection tool.


There you go.


It doesn't tile perfectly with the texture on the wedge brush but it's not very noticeable. Just angle your ceiling if you don't want it to be like mine. And of course make sure to back your displacements with nodraw brushes so you don't cause leaks, you should be doing this with your stairs anyways.

Hope it works for you.

Hi, I have been creating a new set of floor tiles for my area,

Thanks for all the advice, Mehis, I did try that though it was not working for me. Granted I was in a rush when I tried it, perhaps I can try at a later date. I will have to try that technique Armageddon, cheers. Incidentally that floor texture was the texture I decide on. I have created a whole new set based on the original, I wanted a damaged red carpet office look, so that is what I went for.

The way I have attempted to solve this problem of mipmapping, is overcomplicated/tedious process by creating a special set of textures where there are no different coloured pixels on the opposite sides. It still does not work out perfect but it does fix the strange line mipmap issue I had. The displacement tech is something I would like to try.

New red carpet design


Stairwell design


The floor tile set


For some reason the place I use to store these pictures seem to be running out of bandwidth so I might have to change/delete these pictures and also use a different place to show pictures.

The same pictures shared through onedrive
http://1drv.ms/1urY3KA

Anyway thanks

Hey those carpet tiles look way better as a texture than they would have as a model.