Modding:Art

Here are the different sub-topics of the Art discipline of modding. For each sub-category, a number of tutorials are listed; generally the easiest to follow will be listed on top for each sub-topic. Beginner Level tutorials are very basic and fundamental; others should not be tried until these are complete. They may also include common simple tasks from this discipline. Intermediate tutorials are more advanced and often more specific; they will teach you all of the necessities of modding, enough to create a mod. Advanced Level tutorials are for more experienced modders, looking to push what is the expected norm.

The first thing you will want to do is read Art for Total War Primer.

Beginner Art/Texturing

• Introduction to Photoshop Video Tutorials
• Skin Editing in Photoshop
• Creating Unit Cards
• Photoshop Eye Candy Tutorial
• Free Texture Database

Beginner Art/Modeling

• 3dsmax Unit Editing Video Tutorials
• 3dsmax Unit Editing
• Rendering in 3dsmax
• UVW Mapping in 3dsmax
• Skin Modifier in 3dsmax
• Getting your unit ingame

Intermediate Tutorials

Intermediate Art/Foliage and Terrain

• Tutorial links here

Intermediate Art/Banners

• New Faction Icons
• New Faction Icon Skins

Intermediate Art/Sprites

• CA's Sprite Generation Tutorial
• Earlier tutorial, for RTW as well

Intermediate Art/Unit Cards

• Wiki page on Unit Cards
• Making Unit Cards

Advanced Tutorials

Advanced Art/Animation

• RTW Binding and Skeleton Tutorials
• Animation Utilities
• M2TW Animations from CA

Advanced Art/Custom Texture Painting

• Painting Hair
• Painting Ears
• Ben Mathis' Deliah Series Textures for gun, face, hair, and body.

Advanced Art/specular, gloss, normal maps

• Video Tutorial on Creating Normal and Specular Maps
• Normal Map Workflow
• Article on Real-Time Shaders and Rendering

Tools

Here are program-specific tutorials for learning programs. These are not necessarily TW-specific, but are high quality tutorials relevant to the programs and tools.

TW-Specific Utilities

Animation Utilities

Knight Errant's M2TW Mesh Converter

Knight Errant's Mesh Converter Docs

Banner Template

.texture <-> .dds Converter

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