Texture is a bitmap (raster image) used in a texture mapping process.
175
votes
25answers
62k views
Where can I find free sprites and images? [closed]
I need sprites and images, such as characters, landscapes and others. Where can I find them?
27
votes
6answers
3k views
How can I make a good-looking explosion particle effect?
I'm not much of an artist, but I'm trying to make decent particle effects in a 2.5D game. I'm making a replica of Wii Play's "Tanks" and I can't quite get the explosions to look good. I'm not going ...
23
votes
6answers
5k views
Why are textures always square powers of two? What if they aren't?
Why are the resolution of textures in games always a power of two (128x128, 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024, etc.)? Wouldn't it be smart to save on the game's file size and make the texture exactly fit ...
22
votes
5answers
6k views
why would you use textures that are not a power of 2?
In the early days of OpenGL and DirectX, it was required that textures were powers of two. This meant that interpolation of float values could be done very quickly using shifting and such.
Since ...
21
votes
9answers
11k views
Texture packing algorithm
What is a good texture packing algorithm? Technically, bin packing is NP-hard, so a heuristic is what I'm really after.
17
votes
6answers
2k views
Creating a retro-style palette swapping effect in OpenGL
I'm working on a Megaman-like game where I need to change the color of certain pixels at runtime. For reference: in Megaman when you change your selected weapon then main character's palette changes ...
17
votes
5answers
2k views
Procedural Planets, Heightmaps and Textures
I am currently working on an OpenGL procedural planet generator. I hope to use it for a space RPG, that will not allow players to go down to the surface of a planet so I have ignored anything ROAM ...
16
votes
6answers
2k views
What happened to procedurally generated textures?
I recall some time ago that procedurally generated textures were becoming a big deal that a lot of people/companies were really interested in with some serious benefits (smaller deployments, ...
14
votes
2answers
2k views
What exactly is UV and UVW Mapping?
Trying to understand some basic 3D concepts, at the moment I'm trying to figure out how textures actually work. I know that UV and UVW mapping are techniques that map 2D Textures to 3D Objects - ...
13
votes
7answers
7k views
What are some cool examples of procedural pixel shader effects? [closed]
What are some good examples of procedural or screen-space pixel shader effects? No code is necessary; I'm just looking for inspiration.
In particular, I'm looking for effects that are not dependent ...
13
votes
3answers
4k views
What are 3D textures?
Google has failed me, I could not find anything informative. So perhaps GameDev can :).
What are 3D textures?
When are they
used?
Performance costs?
How are they stored?
I have many vague ideas, ...
13
votes
3answers
4k views
How does Megatexture work?
I've been thinking about developing a small engine not only to develop small experimental games, but also to serve as a base to test various rendering techniques and things like that. Right now I've ...
12
votes
4answers
1k views
How to avoid texture bleeding in a texture atlas?
In my game there is a Minecraft-like terrain made out of cubes. I generate a vertex buffer from the voxel data and use a texture atlas for looks of different blocks:
The problem is that the texture ...
12
votes
5answers
2k views
Tools for generating texture atlases/sprites from source images? [closed]
Is there an industry standard file format for texture atlases?
What are the apps that take a directory of images and turns it into a texture atlas png and a text file describing what's on it?
This ...
11
votes
6answers
1k views
How can I create my own sky maps?
What are the methods/tools for generating realistic skies with clouds and atmospheric shading?
FOSS alternatives and spherical projections get extra points.
11
votes
3answers
584 views
How on earth do you get decent color out of 2BPP?
I've been looking into PowerVR textures, and have run into several textures that are apparently 2 bits per-pixel. This, frankly, boggles my mind. How does one get even half way decent color ...
11
votes
4answers
6k views
Preferred way to render text in OpenGL
I'm about tu pick up computer graphics once again for an university project. For a previous project I used a library called ftgl that didn't leave me quite satisfied as it felt kind of heavy (I tried ...
11
votes
1answer
697 views
How do 2D art assets (eg. sprites) work?
I have an idea on a game and planning on developing a 2D game using XNA for Windows Phone 7.
I've started off today by free hand drawing some concept art of what I want some of the characters to ...
11
votes
1answer
2k views
Procedural Mesh: UV mapping
I made a procedural mesh and now I want to apply a texture to it. The problem is, I cannot get it to stick the way I want it to.
The idea is to have the texture painted only once over the whole ...
11
votes
1answer
455 views
XNA Adding Craters (via GPU) with a “Burn” Effect
I am currently working on a 2D "Worms" clone in XNA, and one of the features is "deformable" terrain (e.g. when a rocket hits the terrain, there is an explosion and a chunk of the terrain disappears). ...
10
votes
2answers
413 views
How can I generate a texture that looks like left-over tea leaves?
We are working on a project for iPhone and Windows Phone 7 where we'd like to be able to generate tea leaves at the bottom of a cup. It doesn't have to look photo-realistic, and actually cartoon-y is ...
10
votes
4answers
867 views
Megatexturing : Evolution from Quake Wars to Rage
I remember John Carmack talking about how they initially used Megatexturing for Quake Wars: Enemy Territory.
The technology has since evolved quite a bit in Rage.
I was wondering if somebody here ...
10
votes
1answer
464 views
10
votes
4answers
2k views
How to deal with arbitrarily large images in 2D games?
Question
When you have a 2D game that uses really large images (larger than your hardware can support), what do you do? Maybe there's some interesting solution to this problem that never occured to ...
10
votes
1answer
443 views
Speeding up procedural texture generation
Recently I've begun working on a game that takes place in a procedurally generated solar system. After a bit of a learning curve (having neither worked with Scala, OpenGL 2 ES or Libgdx before), I ...
9
votes
2answers
211 views
Should the color of a texture be adjusted for display on a television?
If a 24bit RGB image with a range of 0-255 per channel is displayed on a television that displays a range of approx. 16-235 per channel, color detail will be lost, correct?
If so, should images be ...
9
votes
2answers
580 views
Should the content pipeline tools be embedded in the engine?
How minimal should a games engine be? How much of the content pipeline should be embedded in the engine?
Some use cases where the super engine might be useful:
When loading user content, the user ...
9
votes
1answer
2k views
How does UVW texture mapping work?
I'm trying to understand the mathematical theory behind UVW mapping. Can anyone explain me how UVW mapping works? Or at least provide me a pointer?
9
votes
5answers
2k views
Skybox texture artifact on edge
I have strange problem with drawing skybox texture on Mac. On iPhone everything is going fine. I have tried to change near and far planes value with no success.
It is a skybox of six textures, and ...
9
votes
2answers
625 views
Half-Life 2 BSP Lightmaps
I'm writing a BSP viewer for a university project. So far I have the main geometry loaded properly, and the PVS working.
Now I'm trying to apply the lightmaps, but I can't seem to get the texture ...
8
votes
5answers
313 views
Texturing an asteroid
I'm trying to texture this asteroid so it looks reasonable. I'm missing something though.
Following this tutorial, I got this so far.
Now I don't understand the next step: how do you resolve the ...
8
votes
3answers
846 views
Very slow direct3D texture sampling
So I'm writing a small game using Direct3D 9 and I'm using multitexturing for the terrain. All I'm doing is sampling 3 textures and a blend map and getting the overall color from the three textures ...
8
votes
1answer
266 views
How to reduce image size without pixelation?
I see lots of games with smooth edges characters and high res images, however when I try to reduce images to say 64x64 for my character I just get a pixelated mess. even if I start with a 64x64 canvas ...
8
votes
5answers
10k views
How can I get started making textures for 3D games?
Just wondering where to find good tutorials on making textures for 3D games?
Also, is it common practice to take photographs and convert them into game textures or do designers draw the textures ...
8
votes
3answers
3k views
Premultiplied alpha, yea or nay?
Should I be using premultiplied alpha? Reading Tom Forsyth's article it seems a nobrainer. Premultiplied alpha (AKA additive blending) is superior in every sense.
However, premultiplied alpha seems ...
7
votes
1answer
850 views
What technology does Starcraft 2 use render its maps?
I've got a map that is being procedurally generated at run-time and I'm currently investigating methods of rendering this map.
I've taken an interest in the look of Starcraft 2 and I'd like some ...
7
votes
7answers
3k views
Library to load images into textures, Linux, C and OpenGl
I am looking for simple, self-contained C library for Linux to load images from files into OpenGL textures. The licence should be quite liberal: zlib, bsd, mit or something. I have found SOIL, however ...
7
votes
1answer
568 views
Procedurally generated terrain map. Blend Transitions between terrain types
The question isn't the greatest wording ever sorry.
I have been learning about and prototyping some texture and terrain generation stuff and have run into something perhaps you can help me with.
How ...
7
votes
2answers
375 views
Why are some games using some dithering pattern instead of traditional alpha for transparency?
Recently, I have seen some 3D games (eg: GTA IV) to use some kind of ordered dithering to simulate transparency / alpha.
The polygons are not transparent as usual, but instead render a dithering ...
7
votes
1answer
346 views
Spritebatch drawing sprite with jagged borders
Alright, I've been on the making of a sprite class and a sprite sheet manager, but have come across this problem. Pretty much, the project is acting like so; for example:
Let's take this .png ...
6
votes
7answers
2k views
Best (Most Popular?) Image Format For Texturing
Okay, so I am using C++ with OpenGL, and I am going to create a loader to load in textures for my 3D game. (But the textures are 2D). I want the option of transparency, even if I decide not to use it. ...
6
votes
4answers
4k views
How much memory does a texture take up on the GPU?
A large png on disk may only take up a couple megabytes but I imagine that on the gpu the same png is stored in an uncompressed format which takes up much more space. Is this true? If it is true, how ...
6
votes
3answers
264 views
How to make a hand-drawn squared texture periodic with as little modification as possible?
The obvious part is drawing as periodic as possible, but hand-drawing is impossibly so perfect, so what kind of modifications are possible that do not make the textures loose their hand-drawn ...
6
votes
1answer
230 views
Is there any difference between storing textures and baked lighting for environment meshes?
I assume that when texturing environments, one or several textures will be used, and the UVs of the environment geometry will likely overlap on these textures, so that e.g. a tiling brick texture can ...
6
votes
3answers
604 views
What is a good method for coloring textures based on a palette in XNA?
I've been trying to work on a game with the look of an 8-bit game using XNA, specifically using the NES as a guide.
The NES has a very specific palette and each sprite can use up to 4 colors from ...
6
votes
1answer
177 views
Text on a model
I am trying to put some text on a Model and I want it to be dynamic. Did some research and came up with drawing the text on the texture and then set it on the model. I use something like this:
public ...
6
votes
2answers
476 views
Textures for an underwater environment?
I'm trying to build an underwater scene. I'm including my scene in a large cube, which I'm going to texture with images that resemble an underwater environment. Where can I get textures for something ...
6
votes
1answer
923 views
Xna: Texture2D from a png file
I'm making a tile based game, and I'm working for support of tilesets. I'm trying to make it so that a Texture2D is set as a chosen PNG file. I can do this with no problem f I load the image into the ...
6
votes
3answers
959 views
Common light map practices
My scene consists of individual meshes. At the moment each mesh has its associated light map texture, I was able to implement the light mapping using these many small textures.
1) Of course, I want ...
5
votes
4answers
245 views
Would like some help in understanding rendering geometry vs textures
So I was just pondering whether it is more taxing on the GPU to render geometry or a texture. What I'm trying to see is whether there is a huge difference in rendering two scenes with the same setup:
...
