Map Zone - procedural textures

Richard Kain

Ran across this little digital tidbit recently.

Map Zone Website

Most of you have probably already heard about the company producing this software. They made a pretty big splash in the development community a while back. Their software solution for procedural in-game textures was quite interesting, and was recently implementd in the XBLA game "Robo-Blitz." Well, they've apparently decided to release their texture-editing software for free.

I downloaded it, and played around with it a bit. But I'm finding the learning curve a bit steep. Since this sort of software is still pretty fresh, there haven't been very many tutorials made for it. Does anyone have any experience working with a node-based texture generator like this one? I know Genetica released a product like this a while back. So someone probably has experience using something like this.

Sadly, I am not especially good at painting custom textures. And yet, solid textures are an absolute necessity. This is especially true for environmental work. (where its generally a good idea to keep your geometry fairly simple) I would love to be able to use software like this. Hopefully more in the way of tutorials and step-by-step documentation will be released in the future. For now its trial-and-error.

Is anyone else interested in this type of texture generation? Or is hand-painting environmental textures always going to be the way to go?

Cybroxide

I kind of enjoy hand painting environment textures but this does look pretty neato.

Snowfly

WHOA thanks for posting this.

Eric Chadwick

Thanks for the news, going to play with this soon.

I think it should be noted that you only get out of these programs what you put into them, they aren't a substitute for good painting/art skills. But they can be good tools if used well.

I've been playing with Filter Forge, uses a similar node-based approach. One guy used it to create Doom III textures, complete with normalmaps. They have their UI set up very nicely IMHO. And for beta-testing it, I got a free copy!

Xenobond

I can't seem to find their Map|Zone Photoshop plugin anymore. Seems like they ditched that and went with their own standalone app. I used this alot on my old work PC, but now that they gave me new ones, I can't find it anywheres. *_*

coldwolf

I've been using the Map|Zone PS filter for a while too. It's pretty slick, though limited since you can't make your own.

Thanks for the link Eric! That app looks really good.

I'm kinda wondering the same thing Richard is though. Is being able to paint textures from scratch really a valued skill? I mean, can't it all be done procedurally, if not from photosource? If the tools are good enough (ie capable, which they are, in my humble experience), why waste the extra time needed to paint them?

JordanW

Are you sure that it would take more time to paint them cold wolf? I took a look at this program and I think it looks pretty awesome. It appears as it would take a ton of nodes to actually make a full fledged texture. Just looking at a couple of their wood examples or any of the metals you can see they use a LOT of nodes to get something that could be painted/photosourced quickly.

I do believe that RoboBlitz used this to replace a lot of their textures for disk space concerns. However the textures still end up looking procedural and nothing beats painting a texture for getting in very specific details on a surface.

coldwolf

I did mention that if it can't be done procedurally well enough, photosource is an excellent alternative, while painting, I think, would be a last resort. Though I completely agree with you that in certain situations nothing other than painting can get the job done right and on time.

But it must be said that many people have already done all the work for those textures, so you just have to download them, and perhaps tweak them a little. It would be rare, I think, for you to make one from scratch.

I suppose that answers my question too. To be truly valued you have to be able to produce all of the content needed, and this would require one to be able to paint good textures, should the situation arise.

Richard Kain

Hand-painting textures is great. It's a skill that I very much wish I was more polished at. There is no real substitute for custom hand-painted textures.

I'm not proposing that these programs be used as a substitute. I just think they are a great way to get really good-looking placeholder textures. If you need to get some pretty solid-looking environmental textures into your level quickly, procedural generation is a good solution. In an industry where so much pressure is placed on getting demos up and pretty quickly, these things could be a lifesaver.

And its also a good option for more technical artists, who tend to lean more heavily toward coding. For level designers who have more of a leaning toward geometry and coding, this sort of technical texture tool would probably be very appealing. You essentially program procedural textures. Maps need a crap load of textures. Being able to develop scalable, tileable textures quickly is a big plus for level designers.

Snowfly

Well I was thinking I'd use em for custom brushes and overlays, since this app makes grit so much better than I do. But entirely procedural textures? ...heavens no.

East

This looks very useful, but I don't think it could ever make up the time I'd have to spend to learn how to use it properly, being faaaaar from a technical artist.

Still.. It does look awesome, but I think I will have to try to keep it a secret from my team, lest our programmers will think it will make them artists, and before we know it there's "coder art" everywhere.. -_-

Eric Chadwick

Well, I meant you still need an artist's eye to produce good results with ANY tool. Refining one's aesthetic skill is usually best achieved by good old fashioned sketching/drawing/painting. Then, once you have that solid visual understanding of the world around you, you can use tools like these to make good artwork. When someone doesn't have a solid art base, it really shows, regardless of the tool.

Mongrelman

Started learning it this afternoon, had a go at some dirty tiles as I learned. Quite cool once you start to get to grips with it. This is just diffuse (not had a go at normal map or specular yet, or the previewer), it tiles horizontally. Also handy that you can scale it up at any time without losing quality.

East

I wish the tutorial videos had someone talking me through the steps, explaining what is going on, not to mention it's not the 2.5 version they are showing (2.0) which has some basic differences in the layout. It's also confusing when the mouse cursor goes off screen for a while and does god-knows-what, and then comes back into screen and it takes a while to locate it once again.

I shouldn't complain too much as it's totally free, but I hope someone tutorial savvy in the know will make a solid, intuitive video tutorial

Justin Meisse

[ QUOTE ]
I'm kinda wondering the same thing Richard is though. Is being able to paint textures from scratch really a valued skill? I mean, can't it all be done procedurally, if not from photosource? If the tools are good enough (ie capable, which they are, in my humble experience), why waste the extra time needed to paint them?

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I try to keep photosourcing to a minimal, usually as a final grungemap or a base layer that I paint over. Being able to paint textures is a major major plus on your resume.

coldwolf

[ QUOTE ]
Well, I meant you still need an artist's eye to produce good results with ANY tool. Refining one's aesthetic skill is usually best achieved by good old fashioned sketching/drawing/painting. Then, once you have that solid visual understanding of the world around you, you can use tools like these to make good artwork. When someone doesn't have a solid art base, it really shows, regardless of the tool.

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I've never heard it that way and it makes sense. Thanks