Beginners questions on creating custom textures

[Rady]

After around a year of playin sc4 i decided i need to go into creating my own LOTs. The first exercixe should be a 1x1 plaza lot, for which I need a base texture that should be something like those brick-style plazas, and that's where the problems begin:

1) the jpg (or png) file that resembles the texture needs to be 128x128 pixels

2) in order to create a lot that can be placed on adjacent tiles (in order to create a bigger plaza) you must be able to place the lot on each side of itself without a break in the texture.

3) the single bricks (ore stone tiles) need to be in scale with e.g. people or other props.

--> therefore, a whole number of tiles (1, 2, ...18, 19, but not 15 1/2) needs to sum up to 128 pixels, and given existing textures, a 1x1 LOT needs to consist of about 18 .. 20 rows of single bricks



Given that the texture needs to be 128 pixels and i need between 18 .. 20 rows a single row needs to be between 7.1 and 6.4 pixels --> and this is obviously impossible (at least I don't know how to draw half a pixel on my graphics program  )

So I tried to increas the original size to 144 x 144 px which offers the chance to have 18 rows of each 8 pixels. This image is than scaled back to 128 x 128 px.

Despite the texure looks good in its original (144x144) size, due to scaling it gets fuzzy.

So how do you handle that problem? And basically, where do you create such textures: in an image manipulation or an vector graphics programm?

Any help is much appreciated   

[vester]

I would go up quite a bit in the working size of the textures.

Could be 640 (128*5) for 20 rows or 576 (9*64) for 18 rows.

Then downsize the final textures.



Is it fuzzy in the game ?

[RebaLynnTS]

1. You not need to worry about proper scale so much. What matters most is how it looks in the game. If you looked closely, you'd see not everything is exactly the same scale.

2. Any graphics program, including paint, will work fine. Planning is the most important step.

I make most of my textures 4 times the size I will eventually want them (At least the primary textures). For example, I may make a grass texture, and a pavement texture, both would start out as (128 * 4) 512 x 512. Then I re-size them to 128 x 128. I then use those "master" textures to make any others I might need (Parking lots, driveways, etc.)

When I do a brick pattern I make each brick 15x7 (plus a pixel for the grout on 2 sides) or 14x6 if I want double thick grout for standard bricks. I use multiples of 4 (or 16 if working with the large size) pixels when designing any layout.

But that's just me.

[Rady]

Thanks to all of you!!! Gonna give it a try tomorrow   

One good thing about different time zones is that I always get my answers right overnight   


2009-09-07: YEP! SOLVED! Done my first LOT! Thank you!