Spring RTS Engine

I have a question about texture tiling: How do you get Photoshop to repeat an image over an over without manually copy-pasting? Say I have a 512x512 image and I want to repeat it to make an 8x16 map texture (not that far from the truth, actually), how would I do it the fast way?

Realy simple.

Make your image.

Go menu.... Edit > define pattern

type in a name.

Then get the fill tool and change its fill from Foreground to pattern, selcet the apropriat pattern and away you go!!

aGorm

(PS, use a mask to tile a specific area... and put each fill in its own layer. those are just tips though....)

Since you know what you are talking about aGorm... in PS or GIMP do you know an easy way to fill with a random selection from a set of matching patterns? I have a set of GNU/GPL metal textures that I would like to fill a big metal map with, 4 of them, 256x256... as of right now I've been filling with 1 of them and then pasting the other ones over top of it... but I'd prefer an automated process...

If I've got you right... you have 4 metal textures, and you want to put them randomly over the map?? I assume you mean that they all tile to each other without any problem....

Theres no EASY way... but there is a quicker way than manuly doing it...

Basicly, make a new layer and run the cloud filter on it, black and white.

Then use the mosaic filter to create a whole load of random squares of teh right size.
(I think 200 is the max so you may want to do this in a seperate image and then double its size afterwards... and tehn past it into your map)

Then turn the contrast up on that layer so its just black and white tiles, select either the black or the white ones with teh magic wand, and then just use a fill as described above in my last post.

Its not EASY, but its probablie more random and quicker than manuly putting in different ones.

(Tip, when changing teh contrast, you can also change the brightness, which will cause you to get more or less of one colour of square...)

Anyway, hope thats some sort of help, if someone knows an amazing quick way do tell!

aGorm

You're a genius aGorm... that's exactly what I was looking for... I might have to come up with a different way to do it, but the idea of a mostly random grid of 256x256 with clous and mozaic and fill tools and selecting colour rande/magic wand... sweet... maybe people won't hate my map so much that it DIDN'T EVEN MAKE IT FROM THE UPLOADS SECTION TO THE MAPS SECTION now...

okay, and the tile I wanted to repeat is a .gif because I wanted the transparency thing (please don't tell me .jpg's or maybe other files do transparency and such; I've done it and I don't care about it anymore). So I just take it and do aGorm's instructions to plop it on top of my under-lying image? ask if you need me to clarify this...

Well I try...



aGorm

I wonder what the maximum size that the PHP image functions can handle, one could presumably use them if one had PHP on their computer.

If you know PHP (I dont, well not that well anyway) then maybe you could, but i doubt PHP is up to manipulating Realy big images...

aGorm

True, but it will probably do it anyway if I set the memory limit and execution time high enough.

Well i you fancie writing a PHP that can do it, and putting it on the web somewere Im sure someone would be great full... I'll just stick to photoshop though

aGorm

If I may offer another alternative L3DT tiles its textures by default, and you can use whatever custom textures you like, either 256x256 or 512x512 .jpg you could take say a custom texture you made with photoshop or you could use your favourite Terragen rendered textures and just use L3DT to tile the texture over your heightmap, removing the need to do the tiling in photoshop as a separate step.
Just a thought anyway, it works for me, it also allows you to import a heightmap as a .bmp by default.

Yhe but then you have to have you textures following the heightmap...

aGorm

I am guessing mufdvr222 is editing the climate files in L3DT which is what I did to get DeathValley right.

Thats it.