Texturing Techniques.

This tutorial is going to cover a side of texturing that is often not noted, especially by new mappers and even some of the more experienced out there (although, that's rare!)

Here, I will show you clashing textures and how to avoid them and texture alignment using negative scales.

First, I will cover clashing textures. I will take the half-life.wad and the cs_havana.wad for the example. Here I have created a room using the havana.wad:



Looks quite nice to me! Now, add in two prefabs from your list. Go to:
Category: random objects

And insert an Old Desk, and a Couch. And here is the result:



They look way out of place. Look at the clash between the desk and the walls. The walls look as if the paint is peeling off of them, and there's a bright, shiny new desk! 

Now, the difference here is that one set of textures are done by photographs and the others are 'handmade', i.e. drawn in paint or another program. This is a 'texture clash', two differently made textures being used together. By replacing the textures on the desk and couch, you can make them look as though they're meant to be there:



Here, I am showing the desk. These textures are all from the havana.wad, not the half-life.wad. The difference is great, and looks more as though its meant to be there. Obviously with more objects around, it would look more suitable, like a chair and possibly some books or a candle on the table.

Texture choice for your maps is important, and make sure you have no clashes as stated above, or at least limit them to as little as possible in the worst cases. Using the blazurban.wad and the half-life.wad together is clashing as well, since the blaz ones are photo's, with handmade additions to them (according to his site). However, using the blazurban.wad and the piranesi.wad is fine, since, they are both based on photo's and looks similar in appearance. 
Deciding whether textures clash is ultimately up to you, and that's where previewing your map on one of the many forums on the net before the release of it, is vital. These will be noticed my many experienced mappers, so fixing it before release will give your map a better overall feel.


Next part of this tutorial covers texture scaling. We all know that textures can be scaled by a factor of 1, 1.2, 1.23, 6, 0.5, etc. But, textures can be scaled by a negative value too. Avoid scales under 0.1 and above 10, as these cause errors in the compile stage, known as 'Bad Surface Extents'.

Make yourself an object where sides can be 'reversed' to look backwards. Here, I am using an APC from the half-life.wad:



Now, the textures for the APC in the texture browser of VHE, show it pointing from right to left. So, by looking at the other side of the APC, we are faced with this problem:



Argh! You may, or may not know, that the check boxes in the texture toolbar 'World' and 'Face', can reverse textures. By having one of the boxes can often reverse the textures appearance on a face. However, when faced with this situation, on the above side of the APC...

...you can't change the check boxes to sort the problem out! The only thing that you can do, is to apply a negative scale to the texture. 

So, with one side of the APC looking correct, take the values of all the faces (scales and shift values) and apply them to the incorrect side of the APC. Then, simply put a negative sign in front of the X scale, and it'll mirror itself and be correct with the APC:



Viola! Easy to do but often forgotten about. This can be great for many maps, like our Havana room from earlier:



A before and after shot above. Not bad hey? This is an example to show how this can be used.

Just remember, that just because a texture looks good, it may not go with your chosen texture set. Make sure that its not clashing. If you're unsure, you could ask on forum sites. That's what they're there for, asking questions, sharing knowledge and previewing maps.

The GOD.

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