Introduction

So far you have learned how to prepare and model your track, in this tutorial you will learn how to apply texturing. Texturing is technically a very simple process, the only difficult aspect is choosing the right images and applying them appropriately. Hopefully in this instance that won’t prove too much of a problem. Unfortunately I cannot supply you with the textures I will be using, as they are what I use in conjunction with RaceRacer.

Gathering textures

Now, if you haven’t already, you need to decide what setting you are going to have your track in. A few examples include grass, sand, dirt, snow and city. My track will simply be a summer grass track, it’s probably the most appropriate to choose for a tutorial.

You need to now start to gather the textures. The best place to look first is probably Google images - use search terms like ‘grass texture’ or ‘road texture’, you’ll find there is plenty to chose from. Try to gather pre-seamless textures for now, I’ll try to fit in a seamless tutorial in later on, there is a method you can use to convert. I have included a list of resources for free textures at the bottom of this tutorial as well, so I suggest you check them out as well.

Not all the textures you find will be perfect, I recommend you use a program like Photoshop to touch them up, or even make your own. It would be very difficult to find free textures and not have to edit them in some way. If you don’t own any decent graphics application and you’re skint, then I suggest you try ‘The Gimp’, it’s free and has plenty of features to work with for textures (again, the link can be found at the bottom of this tutorial).

Hopefully you now have a decent collection of textures to work with, just make sure you move them to a folder called ‘textures’ in the same directory as your .blend file and name them with appropriate names (e.g. grass.jpg).

The texturing process

To begin, open up your track file. Change the ‘Draw type’ to ‘Textured’ - this will display any textures that are applied to the track. Now make sure you are in object mode, then select the track object and press ‘F’. You should see that the track now appears white with an outline of the mesh, this is in ‘UV Face Select’ mode. UPDATE: Blender 2.46 has now merged the face select tool with edit mode, so now, make sure you are in edit mode (TAB).

What we need to do now is first apply the road texture, and instead of having to select every individual face we can use a couple of cheats. In face mode, press ‘TAB’ to switch to face edit mode, here you can apply all of the mesh deformations and all of the select methods. In edit mode (TAB), hold ‘ALT’ and click the right mouse button on a part of the road. It should loop and select the entire path, if it doesn’t try repeating until it does. Switch back to the normal face mode (’TAB’) and you should see the track route highlighted.

Now what we need to do is apply the road texture to those faces. On the separator between the button and 3D window, split the 3D area in half. Then click on the ‘Window Type’ button to the left of the new window header and select ‘UV/Image Editor’:

You should see the window appear grey with a blue square in the center. All we need to do for now is open the road texture, so select ‘Image > Open…’:

The open dialog should now appear. Select the road texture and click ‘Open Image’ in the top right. That’s it! You have now textured your road. Press ‘F’ again Take a look around. You will notice a slight glitch in the way Blender has laid out the texture, some of the road appears to be rotated the wrong way. To fix this, simply enter face mode again (’F'), select the face texture you wish to rotate and press ‘R’. A small menu will popup, in this case, you need to select ‘Rotate - UV Co-ordinates’:

Usually for the road to flow seamlessly you have to rotate it three times, I’m not sure why. Repeat the process for the rest of the wonkey faces, for quickness you can select multiple faces and apply the same.

At the moment the track looks a bit plain and well, white. Basically the same process applies for any other texture you apply from now on, and I think it’s time to grow some grass. Insted of endlessly trying to select every face, there’s a useful shortcut you can use. Again, loop select the road in edit face mode, then in the Editing window, in the ‘Mesh Tools 1′ box click on ‘ Select Swap’ and you should see the selection invert. Now you are ready to apply your grass texture - same process, make sure you are in normal face mode then: ‘Image > Open…’, select and voalia. Hopefully your track will actually look like a track now, take a look:

Conclusion

Pretty cool, eh? I’ll leave this part of the tutorial at that for now, hopefully you now have enough grounding to apply further textures - maybe a few side textures and rumble strips or even a few gravel traps. In the final part of this series I will be explaining how to add a few final touches like a sky, lighting and a simple test engine.

Extra resources

http://www.gimp.org/ - The GIMP
http://www.mayang.com/textures/ - Over 3000 free textures.
http://www.imageafter.com/ - Free high resolution textures.
http://textures.forrest.cz/ - More free textures.
http://www.mega-tex.nl/textures.php - Arcutectural textures.