BF2_TPaint

I've created a simple tool to make texturing your maps easier. It will make both the color map and detail map, based on height and gradient.


Screen2
Screen3

It does not make highly realistic textures like terragen and world machine, but it is useful to create a base texture if you want to paint the terrain by hand. It also includes a tool that will split a whole color/detail map into the correct format for the editor (tx00x00.dds...), which will be useful if you use an external program, eg Terragen.

Download:
BF2_TPaint_v0.33

Instructions:
  1. BACKUP your level first, I won't accept any blame if you screw up your map that you have been working on for 20 hours :).
  2. Extract the rar to your level folder so that the files sit in the subfolder ..\MY_LEVEL\bf2_tpaint\
  3. Run "BF2_TPaint.exe"
  4. You have some new (as of v0.3) options now:

    For best results you should select "Mirror colour texture" unless your colours textures are seamless. Deselect "Paint surrounding terrain" if you want to just paint the primary terrain and save time. Click "Go" to make it go.
  5. Delete the folders MY_LEVEL\editor\detailmaps, MY_LEVEL\editor\colormaps and MY_LEVEL\editor\lowdetailmaps. Remember you should have made backups.
  6. Copy the folders "colormaps", "detailmaps" and "lowdetailmaps" (if you painted the surrounding terrains) to ...\MY_LEVEL\editor
  7. Open the editor
  8. Assign detail textures and materials, so that Layer 1 is your steep texture (eg. Rock), Layer 2 is your high texture(eg. Grass) and Layer 3 is your low texture(eg. sand):
  9. Assign LowDetailTypes and generate the Low Detailmap.
  10. Save your level with the following options:

How To Change Colours:
BF2_TPaint uses 3 textures to paint the high areas, the low areas and the steep areas, named "high.tga", "low.tga" and "steep.tga" respectively. You can change these textures to suit your map, but they must be 512x512 24-bit BGR TGA images. The images need to be placed in the "data" subfolder.

How To Change Blending Coefficients:
BF2_TPaint uses 2 gradients to determine how the 3 colour textures are blended together, called "grad_angle.tga" and "grad_height.tga", found in the data subfolder. They are 512x10 8-bit Mono TGA images that can be easily created in an image editing program, such as Photoshop.

grad_height.tga
Open this image and you will see the gradient that determines the height and smoothness of the blend between the low.tga and high.tga.


The maximum height of your terrain can be found on the tweaker bar:


grad_angle.tga
The texture created by blending low.tga and high.tga is then blended with steep.tga depending on the normal angle of the terrain and this gradient.



Command Line Parameters
As of version .33 BF2_TPaint can take command line parameters. If the program is executed with the following parameters then the dialog box will not appear and BF2_TPaint will process the textures maps straight away.

bf2_tpaint -mirror 1 -surround 1 -deltemps 1

Where 1==true and 0==false, be carefull of the case-sensitivity.
 
Token 2005

BF2_TSplit

A simple command line tool, used by BF2_TPaint that will take a full size color / detail texture and split it up in to the smaller textures used by the bf2 editor.

You could also use it to split up textures generated with programs such as Terragen or World Machine. It's syntax is:

bf2_tsplit [detailmap] [colormap]

or you can give "null" as the filename to either argument if you want to just split a colormap, or just split a detailmap. Just make sure that the original images that you are splitting are the right size for your height map.
 
Token 2005