Normal Map: The 'normal map' files that Blizzard uses are NOT true normal maps. Therefore, I recommend that all of your ground textures always have a pure black, 100% alpha channel. Values in between, any shade of grey, have a varying amount of blend between textures. When the alpha channel of the texture is 100% (pure black) it blends smoothest with other ground textures in the editor. This could be useful, I suppose, but for the most part it looks extremely ugly. If the alpha channel is non-existent or 0% (pure white) then the texture will not blend at all with other textures when placed on the ground.
After much experimenting, the alpha channel of the texture file determines how well it blends with other textures on the ground. Texture: The texture appears almost black in the editor's file browser because of its alpha channel. First I will explain what the alpha channels do for these textures, then after I will explain how to do it it GIMP. Well, its a very complex system of alpha channels. And the Normal Maps are usually greyscale and sort of look like someone used an "emboss" effect on the texture. So, what is the difference between the Normal Map and the Texture? If you look at the default terrain texture files in the editor, you will notice that they are very dark and do not look like they do when placed on the ground. Ok, so now you hopefully have found yourself a program for editing the. Some programs, such as Irfanview, can open the file type but not save files in that type and will not be useful for creating textures.
Most applications cannot read or save in this format, but there are plug-ins to work with this file type for GIMP (free software) and Photoshop. dds format stands for Direct Draw Surface and is the format that Direct X uses for textures, apparently. These are labeled as "Normal Map" and "Texture" and they are both in the ".dds" format. Therefore, I decided to write up my findings in hopes that they may be useful for others.įirst of all, if you look at the default textures in the terrain sets, you will notice that there is two texture files. It is definitely no easy task through trial-and-error. I spent the better part of 2 full days trying to figure out how to make custom terrain textures work like the default ones in the editor.
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