Dawn of War Level Design
- Terrain Overview
- Texture Stamping
- Detail Textures
- Decals
Texture Stamping:
The texture stamp is like the first stages of a painting. It is the lowest colour layer of your terrain, which basically allows you to paint in rudimentary colour information that will show through the transparencies of any detail textures and decals you place.
Texture stamping cannot be undone in the editor. The only way to get rid of it is to paint over it with something else. Here is the default texture stamp image that is given to a new map:
As you can see, it is a basic pattern designed to give variance of texture and shade to anything placed on top of it.
Select the texture stamping tool from the ME toolbar. you will find a basic description of the options in the tray on this page of the RDN. To quote it:
- Spacing: This modifies that the textures will "space" apart when you are "painting" with a given texture. Painting in this case is defined as clicking and dragging the mouse on the world map. This creates several instances of a given texture.
- Strength: This determines the "strength" of the brush. Think of this as the "opacity" of the current texture. A low strength texture is "see-through," for example.
- Color: This will modify the color of the given texture, but note that the original color of the texture is taken into account, so you will only get the color you picked when the texture itself is pure white, otherwise you will get a combination of your chosen color and the texture color.
- Refresh Base Texture: This will reset the base texture to what it was before any type of paint was applied to it. You will be asked to confirm your choice before this command is executed.
"Refresh Base Texture" will not reset the Texture Stamp map to the default unless that is what was last saved in the current session with the ME. It simply reloads the file it was saved to, which is:
[game_folder]\W40k\Data\Scenarios\MP\[yourmapname].tga
As with a heightmap, you can edit this file using either the relevant tools in the ME or an external painting program. Saving the map will save the TGA file also, though if you change it in an external editor, using the ME reset function will reload your newly saved TGA, allowing you to easily check your work.
Here is a size comparison image of the basic ME brushes:
There are other presets to experiment with.
Warning: All of these brushes are large. BRUSH_SOFT_TINY16 is almost as wide as a Space Marine HQ is long.
Inside the ME, painting can only be started inside the playable area of the map, though you can then drag your brush outside the area to paint the borders. If it behaves erratically, try changing the camera angle.
Unfortunately, I currently have little expertise in painting, so can only give scant advice on how to use texture stamping effectively: Load other custom maps, or use an sga unpacker (such as Spooky Rat's or Corsix') to extract the official maps from [game_folder]\W40k\W40kData.sga, then load them in the ME and pick them apart to see how they have been painted.
External links:
RDN Wiki:
Mission Editor Guide (Registration required)
SpookyRat's SGA extractor:
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Corsix' SGA reader:
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