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Hey guys i got a start on this track. Still have lots to do I know but wanted to get textures right first I've made a few custom textures for it and they turned out ok. The part thats giving me fits is on edges of moving mud i tryed couple times to make it seamless but cant get it. Seams allways get me uuugh. thx fer the help

http://cownap.com/~tracks/dl.cgi?dl=4102

I'd be happy to help although I can't touch it till tomorrow.

What paint program do you use? It's really quite simple to get textures to tile great once you have the primary ones done and know a few tricks. I'll put together a tutorial on how I do it with paint shop pro. If you use photo shop or any other grapic editor it may not help as much but it'll give you a good idea or two if you're familiar with their tools.

Thx Mal . I use paint shop pro 6.
Theres no hurry on this ill be out of town till tuesday.

"Muddslide" sounds like a good tracktitle, that's for sure

Lookin' good HotShoe.

As for the seams I'll assume you are talking about the animation itself, as it aligns with itself, and not how it merges with the static borders. In theory, the borders themselves should be animations too, consisting of half static and half animation of the individual frames of the flowing muddd, but this might create just too many textures.

I've studied your textures and I think I can see the image you started with, and how you went about animating it. The problem seems to be that you didn't begin with the 60x60 core, but dealt with the whole 64x64 texture - therefore creating non-aligning seams.

This is a blowup of the 64x64 image you apparently used as a source texture:

<center><img src=http://mtm2.com/~forum/images/betamuddd.gif></center>

The square you see surrounds the 60x60 core pixels, with the 2 pixel border surrounding it. All mtm textures are meant to be designed based on 60x60 tiles, and the two pixel borders are only added in post processing to create true seamlessness.

If you study the image above, you can see that the two pixel border is actually a repeat of the edge of the 60x60 core (as if it were tiled against itself). I put an "x" on one dark pixel to show the repeat in the pattern.

In cases like this, when using a single tiling 64x64 game texture as a source texture, you need to crop the 60x60 core as outlined above and work with it alone. The two pixel border in all game textures is garbage. So, you'd take that 60x60 core and shift it like you did before to create the animation, then, in post processing the two-pixel borders would be added to create the final 64x64 textures - done with the Slice60 utility preferably.

I would do something like this:
- crop the 60x60 core of the source mud texture
- shift it seven times to create an eight frame animation (the maximum)
- save each frame as a 60x60 true color tga image
- run "Slice60" on each tga to create the final 64x64 images.
- load the new images in Traxx and animate them.

I'm not expecting this will make total sense, but it's the 'why' of why there are seams. Hopefully someone else can fill in the gaps.

I cant help you out with textures making, sorry for this.

I love the mudd slide yeeehaw

btw, here you forgot some textures

this track has a pretty good theme to it. i like the idea. i think the "mudslide" factor would work a little better if the edges of the road next to the mudslide area were slanted into the direction of the mudflow, so that "mudsliding" seems like more of a danger.

as for the seemless textures... i dont know if you did this, but i was imagining copying the whole texture, moving it to the side a little, then pasting the whole texture again on the other side of the canvas, opposite the direction the "mud is sliding". and just keep doing this for the 8 frames. but you probably were already doing this. i guess it takes in 60x60 and not 64x64.

Hey Shoe, I sent ya a E with a new pod and txx file your way, if you didn't get it send me a note.

You should find another backdrop since the one you used doesn't have a bottom to it so coming down the hill we get the hall of mirors effect. I should have one close to the one you used at scraps. (all my backdrops have a floor to prevent the hom)

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Texture seams.

Take note that when using Evo textures you cannot rotate or mirror them without creating a bad seam in MTM, they must be used in their natural state or plan on having to edit the borders to clean them up after you rotate or mirror.

Winterkilt nailed the problem with the animated textures above as none of the four you had would tile properly on their own, so the first thing I did was was open each of the four animation sequences in psp then cut out the centers creating four 60x60 tiles. Next I swapped the borders of each texture to compensate for the games 2 pixel overlap as detailed by WK here.
Next I laid out four 9x9 patches on the track (each patch made up of just one of the animation sequences) to verify that they tile exact individually. Once that checked out I recreated the ani.

Once that was complete I needed to created 8 more animations to cover the perimeter of the animated mud slide; left side, top left corner, top center, top right corner, right side, bottom right corner, bottom center, and bottom left corner. Each of those eight ani sequences needed to have a portion towards the grass non animated so they would be seamless with the static border textures.

Lastly I cleaned up the grass and dirt tiles that surround the slide. All in all it took about 80 new textures.
Except for the two pixel overlap on the base mud animation textures I used PSP's freehand tool set to a 3 to 6 feathered edge to clean up and create all the others. Time permitting, I will take a stab at illustrating a how to on that asap.

Hey THX Mal it looks great!!!!
Man 80 new textures had no idea it would take that many. I sry it took so much I hope it didn't take up to much of your time. If i need a few custom textures i seem to do ok but when it gets to be more i get lost on witch peice goes where i guess.
On edges of the mud slide was the only place i turned the textures. They looked ok to me but i guess your eyes pick that stuff up better than mine ( getting old bites )lol
Thx fer the tip on backdrop i was planning on changing that just had'nt got around to doing that yet.
Thx again Malibu and thx to the others that posted here fer trying to help.

Hey no problem HotShrew :o)

I actually enjoy working on textures and have never worked with animated ones before and had some spare time so it was my pleasure.

What a fast track. And the mud is another world. Great track man.

Hotshoe, Here's one of the methods I use to fix certain types of texture mismatches, ie Jdak's Jaunt.

http://malibu350.com/tnt/texturedit/roadalign.htm

Hey THX Malibu I never knew how to use that clone option DOH. Had used something like it in MS picture it 99. I knew how to do the cut n paste part have done that fer some time now. But it left sharpe edges. The clone option sure makes it easy geeez.

> sharpe edges...

Setting a 4+ feather when using any of the cut-n-paste functions will make a much better realistic result, and when you use the clone tool (one of my fav tools) be sure and set the opacity down around 50 to 75% to get a cleaner effect as well.

I am working on one more texture tutorial that will cover another texture editing technique I use which comes in real handy. I'll post a note here when I get it together.

If the tutorials I do seem a bit over simplified it's by design and not to insult anyone's intelligence who's in the know. I try to gear em more towards those who are new so they can get the gist of the basics, because once they have that down they have the opportunity to fly with it if they choose to.

Here's another tutorial I put together that deals with track texture animations. I haven't spell checked it or thoroughly proof read it yet so if you spot a mistake or something needs more clarification let me know.

http://malibu350.com/tnt/texturedit/animatetextrs.htm

I'll put up a link to this at TNT for future refference.

Well theres alot there to take in but seems to make sence. It's sure not as easy as useing the clone brush lol. Thx tho i think i'll have to try it on something and go step by step. Maybe then it will sink in some. THX again Malibu!!!

Well thx to Malibu the textures in this are looking great. Iam just about done i think. Least till you all pick it apart lol. I think it will be fun with a large group.

http://cownap.com/~tracks/dl.cgi?dl=4145

Well let me know what ya think.

Hey Shoe, just dl'd muddd slide beta 2. Did you mean for the stumps to be set to no-collide or will they be set to collide in the final release? Other than that, it looks pretty good. Nice work man.

Well i just looked i did miss some stumps that were'nt by the road. Most the ones along the road have a purple box thats a bit smaller than the stump. The stumps are non-collide but the purple box will stop ya lol. The roots stick out so far that you'd be stopped by a root and not be close to the main part of the stump.

All I could find were a couple minor model sinkers. One is a tree up at the top left of the slide, then there are a few flag banners along the slide that are lower than most.

Nice job on the rolling boulders, they fit in great.