Texture Map Creation
Use DarkTree 2.5 shaded procedural textures to generate top quality texture maps for use in game development, web graphics, and 3D surfacing.

Output
Render fully-shaded textures for direct use in game and web graphics or generate raw bump (elevation or normal), color, and specular maps for 3D surfaces.

Shaded output uses distant (parallel) lighting.  This gives you even shading across the surface allowing seamless tiling and clean shading in real-time 3D engines.

DarkTree also automatically splits out and renders matching color, bump, and percent texture maps.  These combine in your 3D application to give you the highest quality 3D surfaces and avoid the false lighting cues of photograph-based textures.

Mapping

Custom UVW map (inset) for LightWave swamp creature.

DarkTree 2.5 can generate texture maps for specific types of projections and mappings. You can generate planar, spherical, cylindrical, cubic, and UVW specific bitmaps.  By taking advantage of the 3D nature of procedural shaders, DarkTree-generated maps are seamless and do not warp or distort on the given projection or UVW shape.  (currently .obj and .lws file formats are supported for UVW mapping)

In addition, DarkTree provides an API that allows you to write your own output plugins to fit custom projections or 3D models. All output data is 32 bits per channel and can be written out through a standard bitmap format or any custom format the programmer wishes.

Tiling
DarkTree 2.5 includes three components specifically for making seamless texture map tiles: Blend Tile, VBlend Tile, and Warp Tile.

Tiling DarkTree-generated concrete texture.

These components make creating tiled procedural textures easy and efficient. DarkTree’s Component Editor and Examine window both have tile preview modes that allow you to see how the texture will tile while you are working on them.

The Blend Tile component provides additional support for making tile sets (multiple bitmaps that tile together).  Once an “edge” texture is created, the center of each tile can be modified allowing you to create large high quality tile sets in minutes.