Texture Guidelines

This should be a rough guideline for choosing the correct dimensions and format for your custom TDM texture.

Dimensions

• Diffusemap: max. 1024 pixels (when used for smaller areas: 512)
• Normalmap: max. 1024 pixels
• Specular: max. 512 pixels
• Editor image: max. 256 pixels

Compression Standards

• Diffusemaps: DDS (DXT1/DXT3)
• Normalmap: TGA (uncompressed, no RLE)
• Specularmap: DDS
• Editor Image: JPG (medium quality (e.g. 85 in Photoshop), not over-compressed)

• If the texture is to be included in TDM : A high res copy of the diffusemap (can be RLE)

Naming Conventions

Assuming your texture is named rough_grey_dirty, the names are

• Diffusemap: rough_grey_dirty.dds
• Normalmap: rough_grey_dirty_local.tga
• Specularmap: rough_grey_dirty_s.dds
• Editor Image: rough_grey_dirty_ed.jpg

• Nontiling textures have the _nontiling_ part in their name: rough_grey_dirty_nontiling_local.tga
• Textures tiling into one dimension only get the _tiling1d_ part added: rough_grey_dirty_tiling1d_local.tga

• Heightmaps: rough_grey_dirty_h.tga
• Alphamaps: rough_grey_dirty_a.tga
• Occlusion maps: rough_grey_dirty_occ.tga

Material File Conventions

See here: Material File Naming Convention

Remember: Do keep a backup of the ultra hi-res versions of your work as well as your working files (photoshop, gimp files). These should be added to the texture_src repository, which keeps all the "working" or "source files".

See also

• DDS creation
• How to add Textures to The Dark Mod