Texturing in DarkRadiant
In DarkRadiant there are some quite useful texturing tools available. This document describes these tools and how and when to use them.
Brushes vs. Patches
There are some texturing commands that work differently for brushes and patches, because of the way these primitives store their texture information. So beware that using the same command on a brush doesn't always yield the same result when used on patches, although DarkRadiant tries to do its best.
Natural
Natural for one works differently for patches than for brushes. Basically it tries to apply an undistorted texture with the default scale on the target. This is of course more easily accomplished for brushes (because their textures are always undistorted) than for patches.
Texture Copy & Paste
These are the most powerful texturing tools in DarkRadiant. There are several of them available, all can be accessed via the Middle Mouse Button (MMB):
- MMB: Copy Texture to Clipboard
- Ctrl-MMB: Project Texture from Clipboard onto Target
- Shift-MMB: Paste Texture Natural (undistorted and seamless) onto Target
- Alt-MMB: Clone Texture Coordinates (Patches only, must have same dimensions)
- Ctrl-Alt-MMB: Paste Texture to entire Brush: Copies shader from Clipboard to all faces of the targetted brush.
Please follow the links for a short introduction of these copy & paste operations.
Scrolling Textures with the Mouse
This was thought up by SneaksieDave. You can scroll a texture around to align it using the mouse as follows...
- Select translate mode with the W key
- Put texture lock ON (yes ON)
- All in the camera view....
- Select the WHOLE brush. The red/blue translate arrows should show on it
- Click the Select Faces button - it should lock down and the selected brush loses its red highlight and the translate arrows and a green dot appears on surfaces.
- Now select the FACE (Shift+Ctrl+LMB), it turns pink and the translate arrows re-appear.
- Select either translate arrow to get direction
- LMB to drag the texture around. You can drag outside the texture which is handy if it is small or narrow.
- Adjust the ortho grid size for speed.
- You can also, at this point, use Alt plus the arrows to fine tune the position.
Scrolling Textures with the Keyboard
When a texturable object (brush, single face, patch) is selected, use the arrow keys while holding down Shift. This will translate your texture up/down/left/right. The stepsize is determined by the Surface Inspector's settings.
