Texturing
4) How To Make A Texture

This is a little tutorial to show you how I do my textures. Here is what I use to do this:

• Milkshape 3D
• Paint Shop Pro (Photoshop or Firework should do it too)
• My imagination

NOTE: what is in gray is optional, it's just a help for some specific shapes. If you feel you can do your texture whitout doing this part. Just ignore it.

First, open your model in Milkshape. Hide all the groups you've done except the one you want to texture. Maximize the most adapted window (In my case, as I do the side of the mainthe side view).

Press [Print Screen] on your keyboard and import the picture in PSP. With the selection tool, only select the
part to be textured and make a new picture of it.

This is what I get with my model

Here comes the big work. Zoom on you picture and draw some lines. These will be the borders of the hull
plates. You can use the with lines as reference marks. This may be usefull for the mapping and for your next
textures. Fill them with colors corresponding to what you want to get at the end. Note that with this method, what you
will get at the end will probably be darker.

You should have something like this:

Select one of the plates.Set the size of the brush tool to 1, it's opacity to 5 and it's color to black. Move frenetically the brush from a side to another into the selections as if you were a little kid with a pencil.

Like this:

You can draw some lines perpedicularly to add some effect (always with the brush). Set the size of your brush
to 10 and darken it at will by moving more slowly into the selection. Set the size to 2 or 3. Pass on the borders
with the brush. Two sides in white, two in black.

Personally, I always consider the light comes from the top-front of the craft. This is what I get:

Do it again for each plates. Finally, you'll get something like this:

Now, we will add some little details. For this, you'll have to unpack the file 'softpal.tga' from 'Resource.hog'
with SL Edit for example. Simply select,copy and past some stickers to your texture.

Look how it's nice:

Now, create a new picture. Size : 256x256. Load the SL palette (available in the SL Edit directory) and copy the texture you've just made into. Resample it if necessary.

Use the classical technique to import and map the texture in MilkShape. It's finished.