This is an odd beast. It’s like a skin, only generic.
When making a model, it is traditional to use a chequered grid as a placeholder texture, as it shows whether the uv mapping has become distorted when the unwrapping is performed. Various textures have been created for this purpose, with tricks like colour gradients to aid location of components on the UV map. This is my attempt to recreate one of my favourites, but with the twist of being in the Quake palette, so you can keep it on the .mdl file.
The ogre sporting the check texture
The three features of the texture are:
- A basic 8×8 grid in quake palette colours.
- Grid squares that shade from dark to light across the u component, and cycle through colours down the v component.
- 1 pixel wide grid pattern for checking distortion and pixel density in low level details.
Let’s see that last bit in action:
Notice the distortion on the lower half of the pink segment
After editing the UV map the distortion is minimal
The texture comes in pcx, tga and bmp formats, but the texture is the same in each. bmp and tga files are 24 bit for maximum compatibility, pcx file is 8 bit for native palette work.
