Planet Explorers

Planet Explorers

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Planet Explorers - Custom Textures Guide
Av Blackløch°
After being asked "How to do it?" numerous times, I thought the Planet Explorers community could have use for a more detailed guide on how to create your own custom textures for use in the in-game editor.

This is a fairly easy walkthrough explaining how to create a new texture material, what are the requirements and how to share it with your friends. To save you from "Can I haz?" questions, I have also included a Starter Pack of custom textures for you to use.

Enjoy, fellow Explorers!
   
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Getting Started


Since you are looking on how to create custom textures for Planet Explorers, I'm assuming you are already familiar with the editor and I don't have to go into detail explaining how the tools work.

To start up creating your custom texture, select the Material tab on the left side of the editor UI and double click the "Create New Material". This will open a new window where you can set the parameters for your new texture.


After you have named your new material, you can then select what base material (that can be found in game) it uses. In the picture I have named this new texture as "Armor Pattern" and selected iron as required material, since it feels like a realistic choice.

You can of course grab a nice texture, select wood as required matter since it's the easiest and fastest one to get. It's also very light and fits well for many building projects.

Custom textures require a 128x128 pixel pattern that is seamlessly looping in horizontal and vertical direction, so that it looks natural and the texture doesn't have edges once you create a building block.

If you want your creation to have a bigger/smaller texture pattern, you can scale it up and down from the Tile section in New Material window.



Remember to copy/paste the texture link into bottom part (diffuse & bump) of the window. This will guide the editor into correct file and if the link is correct, it will immediately show you the new texture in the New Material window.

Example: You have created a new texture fie into 128x128 pixel dimension, saved it into desktop as a .PNG-file (required file format). The link you paste into diffuse / bump part should look something like this: C:\Users\Your Username\Desktop\Armor Pattern.PNG

Editor Bug
After you have created a bunch of new textures in your Materials tab at editor, there is this one annoying bug that you might want to be aware.

The amount of new custom textures might "push" the Create New Material-button on top of your select tool and brush tool, making it bit awkward to click them. It can be done however with careful aiming.

It's not a game breaking issue, but in the long run this is a little bit annoying and slowing you down and I've reported this bug to Pathea earlier. Let's hope they fix it soon.
Custom Texture location
Once you have created a bunch of nice textures and feel like sharing them with your friends, or just want to backup them, you can find all your Planet Explorer textures in following folder:
C:\Users\Your Username\Documents\PlanetExplorers\VoxelCreationData\Materials

The files are in .vcmat-format and include all your custom textures AND the few pre made textures everyone has at start.
Example creations
Here are some of my custom textures in use. Now, I'm not nearly as good builder as I've seen many of you are, but I'm still having fun!

My Startup Packet for You!


Here are the textures I have created so far. I'm sharing both
AND

Hope this will get your creative juices flowing!
14 kommentarer
Aoi Blue 9. okt. 2019 kl. 13.51 
I know the ones that ship with the game are DDS.

DDS gives some additional options, such as in-format compression (so you can use a higher quality program to manage the compression.)
Blackløch°  [skaper] 9. okt. 2019 kl. 10.45 
Hi Aoi Blue - I have no idea. I haven't touched the game in eons and I don't know if the editor has since changed or what it supports currently. You just have to dig in and go play with it. :csdsmile:
Aoi Blue 7. okt. 2019 kl. 23.12 
If I recall you can also use DDS format if you have the tools to create it.

BTW, do you know if it supports RGBA transparency?
Blackløch°  [skaper] 16. juni 2019 kl. 23.32 
Hi Firefox! Thanks for letting me know - I updated the links.
However, I haven't played the game in a long time so I'm not 100% if all the info in this guide is still completely valid. Good luck though! :)
FireFox 16. juni 2019 kl. 10.54 
OneDrive Links have changed or Expired
Blackløch°  [skaper] 6. sep. 2017 kl. 9.52 
Found the texture packets again and updated the download links too! Enjoy guys!
Blackløch°  [skaper] 5. sep. 2017 kl. 14.20 
Hey Thundercraft! Yeah, I'm sorry years have gone by and dropbox got too stiff and was replaced by better, larger services.

But fear not, I'll see if I still have the ZIPs in my stash. I usually save everything so there's a good chance I might be able to toss you fresh links tomorrow and update the guide too.

I'll let you know tomorrow! :csdsmile:
Thundercraft 5. sep. 2017 kl. 14.12 
Aww... Shucks! Both dropbox downloads are broken links. Could you fix the downloads? Pretty please?
willderyes 26. mai 2017 kl. 19.43 
Hey this is some cool stuff. Thanks alot for sharing the tips!!!
Kid_McHutt 13. nov. 2016 kl. 0.57 
thank you - for both guide and textures :)