Tools 'n Tips
 
     Creating Q2 Textures With Photoshop
So you've got this great map idea but you need some custom textures for it?  No problem.  Q2 textures are pretty easy to make.  If this tutorial seems a bit long, you can probably just look at the pics and figure it out. :)

The first thing you need to do is install the WAL plugin.  Grab that here.  Extract the wal.8bi file to Photoshop's plugin formats directory (most likely "C:\Adobe\Photoshop\Plugins\Formats\"):

Once you've done that, fire up Photoshop and create a new image.  The image must have dimensions in multiples of 8 (64x64, 128x128, etc.):

Now you're ready to make your texture.  I've got the wall of those large, black, plastic tubes used in paintball fields (splattered with blue paint):

Once you're done, you'll need to load the Quake2 palette.  If you're making textures for a mod such as Paintball II that has a custom palette, you'll need to load that instead.  You can grab the Adobe palette files for Quake, Quake2, and Paintball2 here.  To load a palette go to Image|Mode|Indexed Color...:

Set the palette to "Custom..." and you'll probably want to set Dither to "None" to prevent speckles all over your texture.  Hit OK:

Click on "Load..." and select the palette you want.  I'm going to use one of the Paintball2 ones, since this is a paintball texture, but you'll most likely be using the regular Quake2 palette:

Hopefully you won't get too much color loss.  If the image looks really crappy after you load the palette, you might want to redo it so it uses colors closer to those of the ones in the palette.

If it looks good, you're ready to save it.  Go to File|Save As...  For the "Save As" type, select WAL.  Change your directory to quake2\<moddir>\textures\<texturedir>\.  I'm saving mine as "b_tube1.wal" in quake2\pball\textures\pball\:

It will prompt you for the full texture name.  You can put in the <texturedir>\<texturename>, but it works fine if you just use the texture name again (without the .wal):

If you want to have an animated texture, enter the name of the next texture in the animation under "Enter Animation Texture Name."  When you get to the last texture in the animation, enter in the name of the first texture so it loops.

Note: This tutorial was written for Adobe Photoshop 4.0.  There may be some slight differences in other versions.
If you want the same tutorial for Paint Shop Pro, click here.

If I left out any details, screwed something up, etc, email me: jitspoe

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Created Sep.03,1999.

This disclaimer is a lie.