Texturing tricks with vanilla textures

[DoctorNuriel]

What are some uses/tricks/combinations of purely vanilla textures/flats that you like to use in mapping i.e. for aesthetics or Doomcute?

 

I like to create studless metal slabs and beams by combining the middle of the studded metal with two units of the metal supports on either side (see pic).

[IcarusOfDaggers]

Common ones:

• Marble likes light textures more than torches
• Ashwall likes torches
• Red marble likes flaming rock decorations, as long as they are in a midgate
• Shotgunners are awesome with dark textures like comspan
• Imps love brown and bronze textures
• Spectres like shadows with dim light strips. Try comspan or ashwall with bright blood or lava strips
• Caco likes red
• Pinky doesn't like anything. Seriously, can't find a texture to use with that guy.
• 24 unit part of support 3 is great as a minor seperator
• (Technically vanilla) Most flats can be also converted to custom textures with slade3. Just make sure it's tiled 128x128 or 64x128.
• Shawn support texture looks great on crates
• Some textures can be used without being seperated, mostly bricks. 
• Light levels can be used to seamlessly swap textures
• Liquids are awesome over open skies.
• Forget metals for pillar, wood textures do it better in most settings

 

 

 

 

[Gez]

A trick I've seen in MAP26 of Three Is A Crowd:

Using TEKLITE2 as a 8-pixel-wide support beam. Here used for a door border.

[magicsofa]

I do all sorts of shenanigans with SUPPORT3, my favorite is to split a 91 unit line into two pieces like this:

 

 

I also:

 

- Use pieces of door textures for trim/steps

- Cut the vine midtextures up in order to make better hanging vines

- Cut up computer screens in silly ways

- Actually use that UAC texture with the stone borders in earnest

- Try to make use of other weird textures like that gray one with the red line, or BROWNWEL

- Use the non-face parts of ZZFACE for more varied pipes/wires

- Go wild with SKINTEK

- Make stupid words with EXITSIGN or the UAC logo

[OceanMadman]

Making a wall with a lot of linedefs and misaligned textures like the big brown bricks one can give the illusion of new textures. You might also use mid textures in one sided walls so that it creates some kind of psychedelic new wall with the tutti-frutti effect. The only reason for which I wouldn't use it it's that most if not all sourceports "fix" the effect. Shame.

Edited April 18, 2023 by OceanMadman

[volleyvalley]

 

21 minutes ago, IcarusOfDaggers said:

• Pinky doesn't like anything. Seriously, can't find a texture to use with that guy.

I guess Pinkies could work well in with either various brown textures, BROWNGRN, or low lit areas, the latter of which works especially well with Spectres.

[Sinnesloeschen]

Is "SILVER3" from Doom 1?

 

Because that one is a vending machine.

[baja blast rd.]

Chunky crates.

 

[Biz!]

50 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

Chunky crates.

 

Ooh, I remember using this technique for that one texture that transitions from orange to tan, to make it a single color.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Biz!

[bunnytummy]

I'm making a map with only original Doom 2 textures, and made a custom waterfall texture with (very) small bits of FIREBLU:

 

As little as a 4 mp grid size:

Spoiler

 

 

 

Edited April 19, 2023 by bunnytummy
i forgor

[Chainie]

SupportX equivalent made of MARBLE1

[slugger]

- TEKWALL2 is boss for all kinds of little columns and details

- ZZFACE1-9 is a goldmine, the red tubes go well with blood textures

 

 

- Long stretches of SP_ROCK look repetitive. To prevent this, you can split them up and drag the offsets around. It's such a chaotic texture that it can match up several ways without glaring seams

 

- If you're cheeky you can sneak the Wolfenstein wood in with the regular wood

Edited April 19, 2023 by slugger

[ViolentBeetle]

Upper/lower unpegged is great for aligning the side of the staircases, as long as you don't have them move.

Nobody will know your textures are misaligned if it's MODWALL1

[Klear]

5 hours ago, slugger said:

- If you're cheeky you can sneak the Wolfenstein wood in with the regular wood

 

Or use it as a curtain:

 

 

[Roofi]

Using STEP4 in order to create smoke (it generates tutti frutti on vanilla compatibility though)

 

Edited April 19, 2023 by Roofi

[Fernito]

Very cool thread! Quite some useful tricks here.

 

A "hack" I've been doing quite a lot lately is using the NUKE textures for grass patches.

 

Another one I like is using the SKY textures for paintings :)

[nrofl]

Amazing thread idea

 

DOORHI and BIGDOOR1 can create borders of computer terminals quite well:

[Walter confetti]

On 4/18/2023 at 6:00 PM, IcarusOfDaggers said:

Pinky doesn't like anything. Seriously, can't find a texture to use with that guy.

Not even SKIN textures?

 

Btw, really useful thread, i could even stole some ideas lol

[Sinnesloeschen]

26 minutes ago, Walter confetti said:

Not even SKIN textures?

 

Btw, really useful thread, i could even stole some ideas lol

 

Ha, indeed. I'm eyeing that vending machine nue made. ^^

 

But since i don't just wanna mooch, here is a laptop made with CEIL3_6 and COMPSTA1 (I'm currently working on a map restricted with DOOM 2 Assets - but i think those are DOOM 1):

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

And a transparent curtain glass thingie in the background made with DOORSTOP.

 

Edited April 19, 2023 by Sinnesloeschen

[Biz!]

10 hours ago, Klear said:

 

Or use it as a curtain:

 

 

Problem with this though is that on software renderers, the midtexture renders past the wall.

[magicsofa]

33 minutes ago, Biz! said:

Problem with this though is that on software renderers, the midtexture renders past the wall.

Looks like it's actually made of sectors though? Also in the original renderer you can prevent midtex bleeding by having a different light value on either side of the line. Any value difference will cause a new visplane calculation (I think) so you can have 128 on one side, 127 on the other. Or is it 129? I forget. The point is, you can use an in-between value to clip the texture without changing the actual light level.

[IcarusOfDaggers]

2 hours ago, Walter confetti said:

Not even SKIN textures?

 

Btw, really useful thread, i could even stole some ideas lol

 

Not even skin textures. for some reason, pinkys don't blend into skin textures at all unless it's 128 brightness or less...and at that point, everything is hard to see, so beats the point

[ViolentBeetle]

1 hour ago, Biz! said:

Problem with this though is that on software renderers, the midtexture renders past the wall.

What you need to fix the bleeding is to make the sectors on both sides at least slightly different. Change of brightness by 1 (Completely imperceptible) is one of the options.

[Klear]

12 hours ago, magicsofa said:

Looks like it's actually made of sectors though? Also in the original renderer you can prevent midtex bleeding by having a different light value on either side of the line. Any value difference will cause a new visplane calculation (I think) so you can have 128 on one side, 127 on the other. Or is it 129? I forget. The point is, you can use an in-between value to clip the texture without changing the actual light level.

 

Oh, that's actually very useful! You're correct that it's thin sectors on the screenshots, but I'm using a lot of midtextures sunk into geometry elsewhere. My solution to software renderer glitches was going to be to tell people to use a hardware renderer. This is much better, thanks!

[magicsofa]

6 hours ago, Klear said:

Oh, that's actually very useful! You're correct that it's thin sectors on the screenshots, but I'm using a lot of midtextures sunk into geometry elsewhere. My solution to software renderer glitches was going to be to tell people to use a hardware renderer. This is much better, thanks!

 

No problem, the only caveat is that some ports increase the possible light levels, I'm pretty sure GZDoom will actually display all 256 possible values distinctly. So it is advisable to use small differences to avoid notice.

[IcarusOfDaggers]

More texturing tips:

• On linedefs where you have windows, tag the linedef as lower and upper unpegged. Makes autoaligning textures much easier
• Lower the brightness of non-toxic pits and raise the brightness of toxic pits to enhance the feeling of danger.
• If you want a nice little face on the map, draw a star, then delete the stars pointy tips and leave the pentagonal inner sector intact. Add a pair of hexagons for eyes, and texture with lite3, ceil5_1 as the main texture/flat. Then for eyes use either a flat or change the sector height by 1 unit for anything else. Now you have sinister smiley face.
• Metal and support 3 allow the usage of any texture in any setting
• Lights can often be used as a seperator for different textures.
• Caves can be technological. Use some computer panels in bricks to give extra ruinious feel
• Sometimes a cut off texture is enough to indicate a secret that noone will notice
• Animated textures are good for hiding monsters behind them.
• Forget everything you read in this thread, mash together random textures in a grid and see what sticks. You'll find many more ideas that way, if you keep an open mind even to combinations that may not make sense in that moment. Use 512x512 grid of 64 or 32 units.

 

Interesting combinations:

• Cement+green marble
• Brown base+red and green caves
• Shawn+ any brick texture
• Wood+brown base+comspans+green brick makes for syrreal environment without overwhelming the players senses
• Blood works everywhere, lava most of the times, water is common and nukage rarely fits the bill.

Have fun

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

WOOD5 is your friend. It can be sliced for rusty horizontal and vertical support beams, wood panels, step and teleporter pad reinforcements, and bunch more.

I haven't seen many people making trims, even though it's super easy and looks pretty cool. That can be LITE or the mentioned WOOD5 or whatever fits the theme.

Also, LITE with DOORSTOP.

 

Embedding a simple curve shape helps the room feel more real.

 

This one is pretty obvious but boxes can be offset using ceiling sector.

 

SPACEW5 with some LITEs around it make really easy decoration you can plop just about anywhere a big computer won't fit.

and disregard the recoloured textures in the picture examples.

Edited April 22, 2023 by Sneezy McGlassFace

[StarTanned]

In my recent/first map (Based Refueling), I did a bunch of little things with vanilla texturing to avoid making sector art super intricate by just combining textures that complement each other well. Stuff like using upper/middle/lower textures to break up the monotony of tall walls by using slightly different texture (BRONZE96 over BRONZE1). I also did things like using the white stone floor texture MFLR8_3 for broken ceiling lights, using TEKBRON1 as a "shipping container" type of texture, using MODWALL1 for cement or dirt steps, used still-frames of the blood textures to imply dry blood (also made a tall, repeating wall patch version to use similarly elsewhere), used WOODMET1's horizontal metal sections to match well with SUPPORT3, used COMPBLUE and BLAKWAL1 as upholstery for doomcute sofas and chairs, and generally using bits of textures as creatively as I could (like using SPACEW4 for bars in a doomcute forklift). I'm probably forgetting more than I remembered here.

 

I wish I had more time to make computer consoles more interesting by using bits of them rather than just using the whole textures as often as I did, but in the end I mostly just animated the textures. I found that alignment and lighting were more than half the battle in making vanilla textures look good, and the real fun was finding textures that didn't break the atmosphere of an area (not too subtle, or not subtle enough) and aligned well with one another. I also didn't shy away from using Final Doom textures, which probably went a long way to making the cave-like areas a lot more convincing than they otherwise would have been.

Edited April 22, 2023 by StarTanned

[Pegleg]

7 hours ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

This one is pretty obvious but boxes can be offset using ceiling sector.

<PICTURE OF CRATES>

 

You say "this one is pretty obvious," but doing that particular "trick" with having a lowered ceiling and an upper texture to look like a stacked, overhanging box like that had never occurred to me, even after years of mapping.

 

To contribute, for having two textures on the same wall, put a small sector with 0-height behind the spot where you want the textures to separate, and set the floor and ceiling height to that level. They'll have the same x- and y-offsets, so you have to be careful about that. I think I saw that trick on a video by SublimelyElegant back in 2016 or 2017.

[Sinnesloeschen]

8 hours ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

Some really good stuff

 

Those are some really awesome big brain tricks, i am totally going to nick the crates and the rounded pipe pillar thingie. ;D

 

How about a leather couch made with CEIL5_2 and STEPTOP: