Texture Alignment Tips

Eliminating Unwanted Texture Packages

Hellscrag writes: Sometimes you change the texturing of a map completely, but can't stop the game from loading (and hence requiring) certain texture packages that you no longer use in the map. This is because the old textures are still referenced from surfaces that aren't visible to the world, but are still there. Here's the remedy:

1. Type TEXTURE CULL in the UEd console. This will have removed any textures that only appear on hidden faces that aren't visible to the world. Open the log window - all textures from the package should now be listed as "culled" in the log, so that you can re-open UEd and find that the package has been discarded. If Not:
2. With UnrealEd freshly loaded as above so that only the "used" textures appear in the browser, select a surface somewhere and apply one of the textures. Shift-T to select all surfaces using that texture and then apply something else from a different package.
3. Repeat until you have done this for every texture referenced.
4. Try TEXTURE CULL again. All your unwanted textures should now have been discarded. If not, check your Movers and any Panels you may have used for references to the package.

Skewing Textures

Hellscrag writes: Did you know... that via the console you can skew textures!

I don't mean rotate, but skew, like this:

     ---- 
   /     / 
  /     / 
  ---- 

I used skew heavily in DM-TempleOfCows. It lets you use a brick texture properly in a slanting passage or beam without losing your vertical lines. Consequently you can make a texture align perfectly along a split surface even if your surface has a kink in the middle.

poly texscale UU=1 VV=1 VU=1 UV=1 

This command is always relative so if it comes out wrong you should always Ctrl-Z before trying again. I normally only use VU (UV can be left out) as this is the property you use to skew a wall-aligned texture up or down a slant. Negatives and fractions are widely used in this command.

If you don't get what I mean by skew, look at the alignment of the trim texture on the roof beams above the giant cow statue in DM-TempleOfCows.

Cylindrical Brush Texture Alignment

Turboman asks: Is there a way to wrap textures around a (cylindrical) brush?

Hellscrag writes: Sadly not. You can do it manually either of two ways:

1. Rotate it so that there are no vertical faces and align the lot to floor (which creates a very uneven wraparound), or:

2. My "special technique", which depends on all faces being the same size:

Select all the faces around the brush. Align wall direction and wall pan. Deselect one face and then align all the others until the next face around the cylinder is aligned precisely with the first. Deselect that face and then perform the exact same sequence of clicks on the U-pan buttons. Deselect the next face and repeat until finished.

This technique is pretty effective, but it does of course leave two adjacent polys that won't match perfectly, unless the circumference of the brush is exactly the same as the width of your texture!

I've used this technique for aligning base textures on metal poles many times.