[TUTORIAL] Injecting Alphamaps

[Eluo]

Injecting Alphamaps

Well an alpha map is the result of painting in noggit. It includes a layer for every texture that is used on a chunk.
By using this method you can create huge textured landscapes in no time.
Blizzard also uses this method  , but so that don't see it when you look at the the gorund textures ingame.
At the end of this post you can find some examples of blizzard using this method.

Another big point beside of the fact that you need just a few hours for many adts, is that the detail level is much bigger than the painted-by-hand version.

Let's start:

Go to a unused adt with noggit and delete all textures on it by crtl+clicking on every field.

 

Now add the first texture. Mostly this is a dirt texture



Now take the 2nd texture and paint over every chunk! But write down somewhere what texture that is, that we can later see wich it is^^
But really : make sure that every chunk is touched by this texture.

I am now using another dirt texture. Take the textures you want to have usually you now use the Rock texture for the 2nd layer



Now i use a grass texture. Again , make sure that the texture touches every chunk.


And now im adding the last texture : a bright grass texture


Leave the 2d mode and save the adt.

For better overview i am copying the adt into the taliis folder.
Im opening it from there with taliis and use the alpha layer - export to png feature.


Now you can find some png's in the folder where the adt is.


Now as you maybe can see the order of the layers is a bit strange but soon you will figure out the order behind it.
The first layer we added after the texture deletion was the dirt texture.
By looking through the pictures you will see that there are two similar pics.
.adt_0_.png
and
.adt_3_.png

The _0_ layer is also the first layer as we added it. It includes also the first layer , this is why _0_ and _3_  are the same pictures.
Well and as said _3_ is the second layer we added in noggit. It is the rock texture.
_1_ is the dark grass texture wich was the 3. texture we added in noggit.
And _2_ is the last ,the bright grass texture.

So the order is like this:
1.Texture: layer _0_
2.Texture: layer _3_
3.Texture: layer _1_
4.Texture: layer _2_

Maybe this pic will show you what i mean:


It is always like that.^^

Now in order to create the beatiful landscape we now must paint it.
I am using Photoshop for that. Feel free to choose which program you want to use.
The only things that you have to keep in mind on painting the landscape:
#1 Use for rocks, grass and so on diffrent layers in the programm because we have to save them seperated.
#2 The size of an adt in photoshop is: 1024x1024
#3 The colour you must use is: 0000f0
#4 You just have to paint 3 Layers: Grass1 , grass2 and rocks!
#5 Take first a big work space to create the landscape and seperate it later. This allows you to create a fluid flow of the texture where no border can be seen.


Now some tips for the Photoshoppers:
1. The Rocks
I am first painting some sort of stamps for the rocks wich i will just copy and arrange them that it looks everywhere diffrent.
2. The grass
I am creating just one seamless texture for the grass. What is a seamless texture? A seamless texture is a texture that is used in every game. Theese are textures that can be applyed together without any borders so you can apply them in everydirection together and you will not see any interruptions between the textures. Here is a link for a tutorial how to create a seamless texture: The tutorial

When i finished the seamless texture in the size of a adt. I am applying them with a 90° change frome one adt to another. Blizz is doing that too^^
3. Keep the size
I first start the Painting by adding boxses of the size of 1024x1024 that i can see how many adts i will use. It also gives you an easier handling with the later saving of the diffrent layers.

4. Use a template. I ripped this one off of many diffrent blizzard adts but if you look closely on the woltk adts, you can clearly see that is is pretty close to their template.

What they only do to make it unrecognizeable, is to paint over it with the same texture to make this layer a bit "thicker" ,and they sometimes change the size of it. Plus what they are doing on nearly every adt of it is to rotate it in a 90° degree which is possible as it is a seamless texture.
Use this template to create a massive already prepainted landscape,and paint a bit over it. It will look blizzlike as they use the same method.Lower the contrast setting in photoshop to make it look more "flat", increase the contrast settings to make it look more wavy.

----End of photoshop tipps-----------

The finished Product can look like this:


Sorry but i had to scale it down that much because it had a size of like 4000x5000.

Now save every layer for every single adt. How do you do that? Well maybe as you remember the common adt with the x and y axis coords is names like this: _x_y.adt

Now as you save every single adt with every single layer,don't forget to also name them correctly.


AND! Remember the order of the layers. Let your self time and don't get confused.

After that, just open again your adt with taliis and use the alphamaps - import from png function.



When everything worked it could look like this:



And after a lilbit terrain-shaping it could look like this:



With a little bit of fine grinding you could make a blizzlike area out of nothing!

Why blizzlike?
Because of that:
[spoiler:1lplb3km]

And in wotlk they didn't even use that... they used a automaticly generated painting that lays a pattern over a defined area. The slopes at a given degree got automaticly applied this texture and the terrain was shaped according to the texture.
As a result you can see theese poorly shaped and painted cliffs.


Cliffs like that can also be found in cataclysm. Also as dirty as you can see them there.
It doesnt look good and is just a result of blizzards lazyness.
Shame on you![/spoiler:1lplb3km]

PS:
Some people think that this is not worldbuilding. And it isnt at some point.
It is just a method for large terrain, without much detail. Still it requires a bit of painting knowledge to make it look good and the time you need to do that shouldnt be underestimated.
You are going to struggle with bugs and texture errors and most likely have to paint over the whole area by yourself again.
Nevertheless it saves you some huge amount of time if you know how to use it.

[Steff]

Why are you saving the single layers?
Do you cut them out, create new pictures , paste them in and save them?
Nice tutorial btw
Could you send me some examplefiles for photoshop?

[Eluo]

At the moment i am using 2 diffrent psd files, the basic.psd and singleadt.psd
In basic.psd i have a single layer layer for every adt and also named correctly.
Then i have a mountains,gras and everything layer.
With the Photoshopaction which i created on my own, photoshop chooses every single adt , takes the upper layer (gras,mountains,everything) and saves it with the singleadt.psd
The action looks like this:
Select gras layer->copy the layer and paste into singleadt.psd->save->Switch to basic.psd->select mountain layer->copy and paste into singleadt.psd->save switch to basic.psd andso on and so on for every single layer.




Every single adt will be named correctly and saved with every layer , also correctly named.


This got one downside:
It is a defined area of some adts and you cant just modify the photoshop action. And it was a tidious work to create that action which took me several hours of work. But it was nevertheless worth it
Now i can just paint the layers, start the action and then just  insert the alpha maps into the adts.

After that i move the complete area with rius zone masher
(You can find that here)

[Eluo]

/updated and released

[Herbalism]

I didn't quite understand the Photoshop part

Did you take all of the ADTs and put them next to each other in Basic.PSD and create different layers for every texture and then move them over to SingleADT.PSD? Also, how would you go about texturing, are you using the Pencil tool or the Brush tool? If it's some sort of special brushes, I think everyone would appreciate uploading them or, if not, tell the name of the brush set

Thanks for the tutorial btw, it's amazing!
Gonna try it out when I get home from practice.

[TheBuG]

Good tutorial and thanks for sharing Eluo, I've been wondering about this for a very long time. Though while I understand most of it, it's probably my lack of photoshop skills that make me completely not understand the part where you start painting shizzle in photoshop .

[Eluo]

I didn't quite understand the Photoshop part

Did you take all of the ADTs and put them next to each other in Basic.PSD and create different layers for every texture and then move them over to SingleADT.PSD? Also, how would you go about texturing, are you using the Pencil tool or the Brush tool? If it's some sort of special brushes, I think everyone would appreciate uploading them or, if not, tell the name of the brush set

Thanks for the tutorial btw, it's amazing!
Gonna try it out when I get home from practice.

Yes
Basicly i start with basic.psd As a single adt has the size of 1024x1024 i use the grass pattern (the seamless texture) and just move them directly together. Then i used the helplines(sorry i dont know how they are called in the english version, they are the blue lines which help you to select) to define the single adts. As i did that for all the adts i combine all the grass layers to one! layer. As the adts are defined, i can now paint the rocks and so on
With the helplines i can then select the adt , and copy from the grass and the mountain layer ect. the exact size and paste it into the singleadt.psd
The singleadt.psd conatins nothing but a black layer as background. So it just helps me to save the every adt on its own

If something is still not clear ill try to explain it more
It took me some while too to understand it and how to use it

Good tutorial and thanks for sharing Eluo, I've been wondering about this for a very long time. Though while I understand most of it, it's probably my lack of photoshop skills that make me completely not understand the part where you start painting shizzle in photoshop .

That is why i always avoided topics like that

It is difficult enough to explain the wow modding related stuff and if i now start to explain photoshop ...
With the minimaps its the same and as it is mostly just photoshop i didnt want to explain that also

The brush set is nothing special. I used mostly the standart brushes for that.
But it definitly is more difficult to paint such stuff without a graphic tablet
One thing you could do is to just make some "patterns" with mountains. Just paint a little bit and then rearrange it, resize it and put it together.
You wont have to paint very much if you do it like that and it goes really quick.

For the files ... i really would like to give them to you but as you can see the tutorial is rather old and i had to resetup my pc a half year ago where i lost much of my old stuff including those files (i just searched them :/ )

If there are further questions dont hesitate to ask , as i kow that it is very strange to follow :/
I did my best to describe it as good as i could without including photoshop too much as there maybe also some gimp users or other graphic program users too

greetings
Eluo


PS:
The only extra brushes i use also for painting are:
http://adonihs.deviantart.com/gallery/? ... 6#/d1ytm3r
and
http://mateuseven.deviantart.com/art/Ma ... -197154966

Some of them are very usefull

[TheBuG]

I'll just take a better look at it when I get back from holidays, I don't even have photoshop on my laptop at the moment, I'll figure it out .

[Herbalism]

So I tried it out, but I got a little problem... The pictures should explain it all, it gets the wrong file type.

[spoiler:3m4yrs71]
yeah, i was too lazy to make the grass cause i found it too complicated so I gave up on that part xD

[/spoiler:3m4yrs71]

Maybe I should have textured all of the 15 adts with those textures and extracted the alphamaps, or..?
Btw, if I only intend on texturing the mountains and rocks in photoshop, can i skip covering the ADT with grass in noggit?

[Eluo]

Btw, if I only intend on texturing the mountains and rocks in photoshop, can i skip covering the ADT with grass in noggit?

Sure.

Maybe I should have textured all of the 15 adts with those textures and extracted the alphamaps, or..?

You wont have to paint everything by hand.
I created in the first place, one! adt painted it like in the tutorial, and then used adt adder to maintain the layers and textures and "copy" the adt to have the whole area ready.
Then i start painting and do the rest of the stuff

For your file type thing:
activate the common file extensions in windows and put .png behind your file
CS3 gets maybe a little bit confused with the .adt name.

[Calibur]

I know this thread is old, but there is no other tutorial like this on the web. At least not any that I can find. So I'm going to have to post my question here.

I understand the whole method and how to do this. But it is very hard to set your mind in the painting and texturing as there are only two colors to work with, it doesn't look like anything tbh ( and I know its only a texture). This is even harder without a tablet.

It's my understandng that the black areas of each image are transparent on the adt. So that the layer beneath the one edited, will show through the black areas. But when you for example texture the ground, then you'll have to keep the mountain areas black to avoid getting the ground texture on them? And painting the texture from scratch by hand is very difficult without a tablet... I think I'll have to buy one.

Would it be possible to use a basic ground texture image found on the web, make it seamless and then just apply it to all the adts?.

Btw, my method for doing this is just that I've created an image just as big as my map. Which is 4 times 4 adts. So the image is 4096x4096, then I just devide it with the slice tool and get 16 separate images at 1024x1024 for each adt per texture. Won't that work?

God this is hard. But great tutorial! Thanks.

[Kaev_old]

EDIT: Just used FuBa to export the Alphamaps.

[Steff]

Yes use FuTa and Grayscale output. he colored layers are useless. I writen in the moment on the part of the Starting Tutorial covering the alpha im and export. Will take some days then its done.

[hinur]

Hi!

I followed your tutorial but when I try and extract the ADT file to png, nothing happens. Does anyone know how to fix this? (If needed, i can provide my ADT files)

[Jøk3r]

Try out Futa for importing/ exporting. It can be found here on the forum.