I'm pretty new to this whole game design business and I just got a copy of A7 about 2 weeks ago (I'm so excited!!). I've been trying to keep to myself and read all the tutorials I can so I don't sound obnoxiously uninformed when I need help on the forums.

So far creating characters, animating them, making them move around a level doesn't seem to give me as much hell as texturing does.

I've been wondering how people pull off the whole seamless texture of large areas of land with different portions looking like grass, rocks, sand etc. I can make tiny little textures like 512x512 and slap it on a terrain I made in MED but it seems MILES away from what I want to do. I read up on the forums and I see a lot about multi-texture shaders...I'm assuming that's what I'm looking for if I want a deeper complexity of land texture...but one look at the source code on them I'm hopelessly lost.

I downloaded the shader tut pack from the GS website but the files were corrupted and it would not open...does anyone else know any other good learning resources for shaders? or could point me to the direction of someone who could explain it?

...oh and also what programs and techniques some of the more professional designers use for creating terrain textures. I just use photoshop cs3 but I don't know if there is something else I should know about (programs that generate patterns or something).

the shader tutorials helped me at a total value of "0". This is because I have no experience with shaders. I would look elsewhere. Not bashing the tuts, I just have no understanding of them what the keywords are, what they mean, what they can effect, or what the syntax is...

There are a few demos getting around, Slins shaders, theres another called massive shader collection. I think they are available on Au magazine site or wilkii.. Some are well documented and others not. I just go threw them and get them to do the things I want to by trial and error and I'm learning bit by bit
Anyway hopefully that should get you started..

can you try again? the shader workshop is actually really good. i knew nothing, and it taught me enough that i can look at almost any shader and figure out what's happening (given it's written well) and write my own shaders.

good luck,

julz

I have a multitexture shader (fairly unoptimized) that I might be able to release with a small explaination, its pretty easy. basically skin1 represents the map, so anywhere you paint blue is going to be rock (or whatever you set that skin for) red- dirt (again can really be anything and green- usually grass.

I have to find it first tho, i know its floating around my hdd somewere.


EDIT; Also almost forgot, the skin1 alpha channel represents the shadow map.

Thanks for the feedback guys. and lostclimate if you do find that somewhere that would be awesome to take a look at.

I have a good idea for a shader that just seems to fall flat. I've been playing with using greyscale images for the tiled textures and using/adding color through the shadow map. This gives me many different shades to play with for grass, stone, dirt, you can even do snow and sand using the same greyscale that you use for the dirt(a standard rough image like stucco).