Hey guys, i wanted to write an art tutorial, but i dont have the time, this is what i have so far:

Ultimate texturing guide.

Many new texturers/artists don't really know where exactly to start, understand some terminology, or where to find all the resources they will need.
Thats where the Ultimate Texturing Guide comes in!

This guide assumes you have an art program, and have a basic knowledge of how it works.

Contents:

1. How to make a texture.
1.1 Finding the right format
1.2 Examining the wrap, and using a texture in single player.
1.3 The artistic part

2. Texturing techniques
2.1 Using layers
2.2 Using filters
2.3 Copying and pasting

3. Terminology

4. Resources

Now to begin!

1. How to make a texture

Texturing begins with the creation of a blank image, this image will be the basis of all your textures.
I will be using Photoshop (CS2), but the creation process will be close to the same for all programs.

1.1 Finding the right format

Simply open your art editing program, and create a blank document, size 128 by 128 at 72 pixels per inch resolution. You will also need to make sure it is RGB colour, other formats will not work.

Next you will need a texture to produce, the "The ultimate guide to unleashing the true potential of your custom folder" has all the textures, but it doesnt show you the templates, and it has ALL of them, which is far too many for newbies. It will be interesting to look at, but don't try making textures for all of them when you start off!

The Torishop Textures list has the ones people will most probably ask you to make, and it has templates! Just click on the "templates" link of the texture you would like to make.

In my example I will be making a head texture, so I click the "template" link on the "head texture" row, I then copied it (right click on the image and select "copy image" from the drop down list), and pasted it into the blank documet i had created.

Then, to make things easier for me in the future, I saved the document with template as "Head_template", the extension i used was the native Photoshop format, ".psd", but you can save it as a jpeg or a tga if you want.

Now resave it as your desired name, so you dont accidently overwrite your template. I saved mine as "Head_New".

1.2 Examining the wrap, and using a texture in single player.

Now to examine the wrap! A wrap is the way that the texture is applied to a 3d object, as you could imagine it would be hard to wrap a sqaure piece of paper around a ball without some kind of folding or overlapping, which is what your computer does for you.

Using your image with only a template on it draw an arrow on each of the sides facing to the top right corner. Be careful not to draw it ontop of the writing, as then you wont know what part is what!

If your using the head template, like me, Draw a couple of stripes going from the center of each edge, and each corner into the center. This will create a nice cross.

Now to find the path to your own "custom folder", this is the folder where you can put your own textures into and they will show on your Tori in single player, or in multiplayer but only you can see them! The custom folder will be in your Toribash folder, the defult path to the custom folder is "C: \Games\Toribash-3.4\Custom\[YOUR NAME]". As you can see there is many differnt folders, one for every player (i think). One of them is yours, this is where you can try out your own textures.

However, you cant just use any old file name, you have to find the correct one. Using the "The ultimate guide to unleashing the true potential of your custom folder" we can find the correct name for our texture, for example the head texture's name is "head", and the right bicep name is "r_biceps". Its always best to check here if your unsure of a name, as some of them can be hard to guess. You will need to save it as a "Targa", the extension is ".TGA".

Save your file with the correct file name and location, and you will see a message asking for the "Bit compression" or "resolution", you will need to select 24 bits/pixel

Now you can load up Toribash! Toribash will grab the textures from the folder when ever you enter single or multiplayer, so if its already loaded just press 'Escape' and then click single player.

You can now view your texture!

Tip: The 'B' key allows you to toggle view of both players ghosts, click it a few times and they should disapear, then you can view your texture without an annoying ghost!

Examine the way the lines you drew bend and turn to circle the model, it is very important to understand how the wrap works. Change the texture a couple of times and review them, until you are confident that you understand how the texture works. This is a very important step, try not to rush it.

1.3 The artistic part

Now that you understand how the texture is applied, and how to make it work you can begin the artistic side of things!

I suggest trying out a few simple faces first, such as a smiley face, or a "x.x" face. A few of these will help you understand how more complex objects are applied, and how you should position importand features, such as eyes.

And thats what i have so far, but i dont have the time to write up any more at the moment, or add in other texturing techniques, or even check to see if this works ok for gimp, or if ive missed anything.

If anyone can write up additional sections, or write some of the unwritten sections, or even check if this is all ok for Gimp (and any other errors) please post, no need to tell me what you are doing before hand, ill just add it in.

Just try to keep it of reasonable quality!

I really need stuff for part 2 (texturing techniques), part 3 (terminology) (stuff like what does shading mean, or directional or 3d lighting etc.) and also part 4 (resources) (Anything useful for a texturer, such as the texture list in the shop, or anything else useful!)

Thanks for any help anyone can lend, lets make this the best guide ever!