Tile Texturing Art by Remixer

[Remixer]

Hello dear Hivers, and more skilled texturers.

For the past couple of days I've been making some terrain pieces and I am, up to a certain degree, quite satisfied with what I've created, but at some points I constantly make flaws and errors making the entire texture unusable, for example not blending the tile edges and saving the over the version that could still be edited easily. I'm using GIMP for the image editing and creation.

Rock Texture

As you can see above, the different tiles blend to each other quite well, but this isn't happening in-game as well as in the actual image. Now as I am not that good or experienced in terrain texturing, I was wondering if that is because the .blp conversion or that Warcraft just doesn't show the textures that well? I am creating the tiles into 128x128 sizes, so for example the rock texture is 1024x512 in entire scale, and is 950KB in .blp format (of course the conversion doesn't need to be that good, what conversion are you guys using?) Could the different size (2x original size) make the edges clip more than in the picture above?

Personally I convert the image from .tga to .blp with Warcraft Viewer, and using the default conversion quality (85).

Gravel Texture

On this texture I used more copy-paste and cutting more than on the other textures, but the gravel is quite good-looking, apart from the horrible in-game clipping.

Dirt Texture

The dirt is probably the best texture I created, it clips less than the other two above, but I guess that is because it has less large objects or shapes than those two, so it's less visible. In case the branches are not defined enough, the white things on the left side are indeed branches.

I make the textures by searching for images online, then copying them and selecting a small portion of that image for example soil. Then I search for more pictures and blend them in (for example the rock texture was 1 cliff image, 1 cracks image and additional definitive images to add small details such as the ores). Now I am not sure if this is allowed or not (according to Hive rules) - it's not "free hand" but it isn't "copy-paste" entirely (for example one crack might me made of 10 different cracks combined and placed carefully on top of or next to each other with different brush styles and shapes / transparencies).

Now, in case some one is still reading this I thank for your time. And in case you have some tips/feedback make sure to leave a comment.

Ingame Screenshot

The clipping isn't that bad but still visible, especially on the gravel texture.

 

[GhostWolf]

Aren't terrain tileset textures supposed to be strictly 256x256 or 512x256 for the extended ones?
In general, I don't believe WC3 supports anything above 512 on any axis.

I am not sure why you'd blend the tile edges. You want the edges of tiles to match the edges of other tiles that can connect to them.
For instance, if we take the regular tile at the top left corner, and the tile at the bottom left corner, you want the edges that connect them (lower edge and upper edge respectively) to connect seamlessly. This has nothing to do with blending.
The same edges that you have on the normal tile, are of course exactly the same for the whole extended section of tile variations - the right half of a 512x256 tileset, and the variation tile in every tileset texture - 4th row, 4th column (right bottom corner of non-extended tilesets).

The style itself has nothing whatsoever to do with Warcraft, in fact it's quite the opposite (photo-realistic versus cartoon), but then I know nothing about your project.

 

[Remixer]

I am not sure why you'd blend the tile edges. You want the edges of tiles to match the edges of other tiles that can connect to them.

I meant I blend the edges together, not the actual texture like with "blend" tool, just match the edges ya' know? Didn't think of better way of saying it. Just make the transition not pop-out of the texture (no edges between whole tile).