This is a list of Resources and References that I originally created for the forums at Map-Center.com. I'm duplicating it here because I no longer directly maintain the list on that site, but still like keeping it current.

The links here are old, they have not been verified recently, but many are likely still good. I don't plan to update the site, so what is here, is here.


This list focuses on tools, techniques and resources for texture making, mainly (but not entirely) as they deal with world textures for games (like Quake 3 Arena). There are ever so many sites these days that deal with skinning and modeling, but few that give direct service to the map texture creator.Links are organized into general groupings by task or game.

Except where noted, all links are to English language sites.

\??\ Means site is known to be down. We hope it comes back.

\DL-#K\ Means it is a direct download link to a file. For movies, you may want to right click and do a save as rather than try to download and play them. The "#KB" represents the size of the file, if known.

\FPDL-#K\ This is the same as noted above, except that the download comes from GameSpy's File Planet, which requires registration. If you are a model-making hobbyist, you NEED that File Planet account.

Jennell Jaquays

March 18, 2012

LISTS AND SITES LAST UPDATED: June 21, 2005

• The Gimp: Photoshop-like software, there's a Windows Version.
  
• Pakmover: A Pak file managing utility.
  
• Q3ASE: The Q3A shader Editor. For making SFX happen on your skins.
  
• Texsynth: From Bert Peers, the guy who gave you Q3ASE, a utility that manipulates any texture into a tiling texture. Results will vary from texture to texture.
  
• Code Genie: A free-ware text editor (for writing shaders)
  
• Camoflage Creator Plug-in: Has Authentic WW2 patterns.
  
• Wilbur: Wilbur is a tool for manipulating or painting terrain-style height maps. It imports and exports a variety of graphics formats.
  
• Project Dogwaffle: Freeware painting tool. Unusual. Best used as an "additional" tool for painting, not your only tool.
  

Shader Making Tutorials

• Quake 3 Voodoo - A Beginners Guide to Shaders: Harlequin walks the beginner through creating the scripts that are the core of Q3A's special effects department.
  
• Quake III shader syntax file: A basic layout for beginning the writing of a shader. Note: This is a direct download link.
  
• baneforge: Chemical Burn has tutes on Pakfile making, skin making, and creating an alpha channel.

Texture Painting Tutorials

• Hfx Texture Tutorials: evillair tutorials on making, aging and weathering metal.
  
• Painting Hair: Bladekiller shows how she does hair.
  
• CREATING METAL, RUST & CORRODED METAL (1): Part 1 of a 3 part tutorial by Harlequin on creating metal and rusting it.
  
• CREATING A RUST BASE: Part 2 ... making the rust.
  
• CORRODING THE METAL: Part 3 ... combining Rust and Metal into one.
  
• From Top to BottomTexture making tutorial by Christopher "shaithis" Buecheler.
  
• Creating an Alpha Channel in Photoshop: Jezebel shows how to create an alpha channel from a painted texture.
  
• Dirty Metal: Jezebel shows how to paint a dirty texture.
  
• Gritty Pipes: Jezebel shows how she creates gritty pipes against a grungy backdrop.
  
• Gritty Light: Jezebel shows how she creates a gritty light to go with her gritty pipes.
  
• Furry: Jezebel shows how she paints fur.
  
• Brushed Metal: Redlemons technique on painted brushed metal.
  
• Redlemon Tutorials: A collection of painting tutorials by Redlemon and other artists. Some demonstrate painting with Paint Shop Pro.
  
• Tiling Stone: Uses Photoshop clouds filter to make stone.
  
• Metallic Texture: Describes a formula to make a metal surface. Short. No pictures.
  
• Stone Wall in Paint Shop Pro: Uses filters to create a wall of stone using no photo source.
  
• Fixing Lighting Irregulaties in Self-Tiling Maps: Jeremy Birn shows how to correct lighting problems across tiling textures.
  

General Painting Tutorials

• Harlequin's qbranch: Harlequin shows how to set up a skin layout, create several texture effects, has one of the best shader tutorials, and has an avi of his work in action on painting a head model.
  
• Phong: A handful of slickly presented Photoshop lessons. Many applicable to texture making. Strong focus on "procedural" use of tools to get effects.
  
• Jezebel's Painting Tutorials: Walkthroughs on how she created some of the effects in her digital paintings. Some good pointers for painting parts of faces and some organic materials like fur and feathers.
  
• Gurus Network: Photoshop tutorials. Some of the more complicated stuff looks good ...
  
• Adobe Photoshop- digital hair: Nuts and bolts tutorial on creating hair on photographs, including creating custom brushes.
  
• sijun.com: Artist Dhabih Eng's website.
  
• 3dcafe: "Clearinghouse" listing of tutorials on other sites. Select "Tutorials" on this page, then "Photoshop" on the next.
  
• Pinoy: Paint Shop Pro Tutorials ... many "procedural" type material creation tutes.
  
• Power of the High Pass Filter: A Gamasutra article about using the high pass filter to even out light values in tiling textures sampled from photographs.
  

Normal and Bump Map Painting Tutorials

• Creating normal maps from images : Quakebits tutorial on painting normal maps for per-pixel lighting games using a paint program and a filter.
  

Skyboxes

• Terragen Tutorial for Wolfenstein: Using the freeware program Terragent to create skyboxes for Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
  
• Making Skybox Seamless for Q3A: Tutorial describes a Photoshop "Action" used to ensure that skyboxes have no seams.
  

Useful Links & Resources, & Reference

• Polycount Reference Image Thread: An ongoing thread on the Polycount forums.
  
• An Artist's Real-Time 3D Glossary: Glossary of 3D art terms.
  
• Polycount's Tool Page: An extensive "clearinghouse" listing of useful tools, plug-ins and reference information from the webmasters of Polycount.
  
• Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction & Fantasy Art: Over 1100 artists and galleries ? pro, fan & pro wannabe.
  
• Clothes: Krow's Skindom article about creating believable fabric and clothes.
  
• 3DLinks: Super Useful general resource for 3D modeling. Tutorials, Plug-ins and links to downloadable textures can be found here.
  
• Security Arms: A reference link for photos of many modern firearms.
  
• Turbosquid: A place to download textures and free or inexpensive model meshes.
  
• Q3A Shader Manual on-line at id FTP site: This is a download link only.
  
• Q3A Shader Manual on-line at qeradiant.com
  
• Maj's Unofficial Shader Docs: More insight into shader use by Maj. Zip and Tar file available.
  

Source Images

These are reference sources for use in creating textures and surfaces, not textures to be used in maps or redistributed unless otherwise noted by the site.
• Photo Vault: This is a stock photo service. The images aren't for reuse, but they are a good source of ideas for models and textures.
  
• Texture Bin 342: Reference source textures. Impressive work. Check out the guy's work.
  
• Slack Studios/Animax: Some great FREE source photos with a variety of ways of getting them (dl'ing from there site, ordering a CD, straight to buying a hard-drive with the high-res images pre-loaded). Large images. Slow downloading. Loads of fantastic architectural surface references.
  
• Corbis: A commercial stock photo reference site.
  
• Photo-essentials: Reference photos ... watermarked, so not really useful as sampling sources. Site currently not active.
  
• Graphic Resources at Foto Search: Watermarked reference photos. Good for image reference, but expensive to own.
  
• Jeremy Engleman's public textures: Some more resources free for the useage. Click on "PHOTOGRAPHY". Scroll down until you see listing for Public Textures.
  
• Stormvision textures: a variety of textures, including fabric, stones, tile and others.

Quake 2 Resources

• Quake 2 Painting Tutorials: Several pages by Carl "Melkior" Kidwell that demonstrate painting techniques for a paletized game like Quake 2.

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