The textures we will create throughout the course of this book will be created or edited using Adobe Photoshop. CryTIF is a Photoshop plugin developed by Crytek that can load and save merged Photoshop images as TIF files. It's important to realize though that the .TIF format images are not used when rendered in the launcher or even the editor, but they are rather converted to a more optimized format, in this case from a .TIF file to a .DDS. The following steps show how to install the plugin and save files in the .TIF format:
Copy the following files to the root Photoshop directory:
Bin32\zlib1.dllBin32\jpeg62.dllBin32\libtiff3.dll
Copy the file that enables support for the CryTif format
Tools\CryTIFPlugin.8bito the root Photoshop/Pluginsfolder.Test whether the installation is functioning by first starting Photoshop.
Create a new image with dimensions 512 x 512.
Create a simple pattern or import your own texture.
Next, select File | Save As in Photoshop.
Save this file as a CryTIF (
.TIF) file type. This format should now be available as a file format in the Photoshop file dialog.Create a
texturesdirectory in your game folder and save this texture in your game undergame/textures/test_pattern.tif.
In the previous section, we installed the very important CryTif plugin, which is essential while creating any textures for the CryENGINE. When saving a .TIF file, the CryTif plugin displays a dialog to the user where the compression settings may be selected. The settings that get chosen in the dialog are stored as metadata on the TIF file.
We have finally installed all the tools required for us to make an amazing amount of content from code, to textures, to models, and animation! Having done this, we are now ready to find out how to start putting everything together!