Little Helper: AligningHelper.utx

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McFrag
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Little Helper: AligningHelper.utx

Post by McFrag »

Hello,

two years ago I created a little texture pack which includes three textures aiming to help aligning texture properly. The textures themself are kind off ugly, but the idea is to remove them anyways after the alignment was done. Its all manual and automation would be mush better but as with today the editor does not support aligning textures properly in all situations this is better than nothing. So, if you e.g. need to align the textures of a wall so that they appear as one, this might help.
How to use:
  • Check the resolution of the texture you want to align
  • Open AligningHelper.utx and pick the texture with the matching resolution
  • Replace the textures of the surfaces you want to align with the matching texture from aligning helper
  • Now you need to manually move move the textures until all target surfaces are rotated into the same direction and in alphabetical order.
  • Once you are done replace the texture carefully back to the original and make sure not to accidentally move a texture while doing so
  • The alignment should be fine now
The idea is to bring the characters both vertically and horizontally in order. For this the textures are divided into tiles with two characters on them. The first one, at the top left edge is AA.
The 128 * 128 texture has eight rows and eight columns with each eight distinct characters.
The first line and the first column in the 128*128 Texture set looks like:
AA AB AC AD AE AF AG AH
BA
CA
DA
EA
FA
GA
HA

The rest is filled logically in the same way. You'll see it yourself once you've opened the pack
This way you can easily detect where the texture of two surfaces should meat and can make the adjustments accordingly.

The whole process is still kind of cumbersome and painful, but its much easier this way than trying to perform manual alignment with the actual textures.

Link: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AhO0_2oZHvVCg9cnwY6 ... g?e=FscnzY

You are free to use, modify share and distribute this textures as you like. Giving me credit would make me happy, but its not a requirement for using the pack.
Happy Aligning and I hope your eyes will not pop out of your head :P
Please let me know if you have any questions or ideas how to improve it
Buggie
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Re: Little Helper: AligningHelper.utx

Post by Buggie »

File small, so better upload it here. And attach some screenshots. Sometimes picture better from thousand words.
scr_1681660038.png
AligningHelper.zip
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fudgonaut
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Re: Little Helper: AligningHelper.utx

Post by fudgonaut »

McFrag wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 3:53 pmthe editor does not support aligning textures properly in all situations
This can happen if your UEd 3D viewport and your game are not using the same renderer (thanks Buggie for solving that mystery for me!)

McFrag wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 3:53 pm
  • Check the resolution of the texture you want to align
  • Open AligningHelper.utx and pick the texture with the matching resolution
  • Replace the textures of the surfaces you want to align with the matching texture from aligning helper
  • Now you need to manually move move the textures until all target surfaces are rotated into the same direction and in alphabetical order.
  • Once you are done replace the texture carefully back to the original and make sure not to accidentally move a texture while doing so
  • The alignment should be fine now
:thuup: This is a super useful technique, particularly with detailed geometry. I often take a placeholder alignment texture, use Surface Properties to get everything lined up nicely, then swap out the texture with the final one.

McFrag wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 3:53 pm Please let me know if you have any questions or ideas how to improve it
The version I made is very similar to yours, I use color to help make it easy to parse visually.

aligner.png
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Buggie
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Re: Little Helper: AligningHelper.utx

Post by Buggie »

Then need put this picture to that .utx and get version 2.0 for it. :D
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darkbarrage99
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Re: Little Helper: AligningHelper.utx

Post by darkbarrage99 »

fudgonaut wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 6:49 pm This can happen if your UEd 3D viewport and your game are not using the same renderer (thanks Buggie for solving that mystery for me!)
:confused2: :confused2: :confused2: :facepalm:

well that solves that mystery
Buggie
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Re: Little Helper: AligningHelper.utx

Post by Buggie »

From my latest experience, if align jump on different renders, then something bad with brush. Better rebuild it in clean way.

Clean brushes usually not jump align across renders.

OFC we talk about normal textures. Not when P8 not match bc3 or bc7.
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Barbie
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Re: Little Helper: AligningHelper.utx

Post by Barbie »

Nice! Until now I have used the text/letter textures from Engine for this, but they are suboptimal.

PS: Can we expect an UTX version with different sizes of the coloured one? :tu:
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