This guide walks through creating a tile bank using tile_edit.exe. Screenshots have red highlighted areas to indicate the relevant button or area of the interface.
See tile bank for an explanation of the tile bank structure, and tile textures for how to create the texture files.
¶ Launch
Launch the tile editor (tile_edit.exe). You should see the main tile bank manager window:
Click the button next to Absolute path and set it to the directory containing your tile textures (e.g. Y:\ryzomcore\graphics\landscape\_texture_tiles\). This path is stored in the .bank file and is used to locate tile bitmaps at runtime.
¶ Adding a land
Click Add land to create a new land. Enter the name you want for this land.
¶ Adding a tileset
Click Add tile set to create a new tileset. Enter a name for the tileset (e.g. "grass", "rock", "dirt").
¶ Editing a tileset
Select a tileset in the lower list and click Edit tile set to open the tile browser. This is where you add all the tile textures for a material.
The tile browser has several control groups on the left side:
- Texture — select which channel to add or view: Diffuse, Additive, or Alpha (alpha is only available for transitions).
- Size — controls the display size of tile thumbnails in the editor (Small, Normal, Big).
- Texte info — choose whether to display the tile's index number or filename below each thumbnail.
- Tiles — switch between tile types: 128x128, 256x256, Transitions, or Displace (displacement maps).
- Subtile set — assign tiles to one or more of 12 groups (Group 0–11). These groups can be used by the landscape painter plugin to filter which tiles are available when painting.
- Oriented — when checked, tiles in this tileset have a fixed orientation and will not be randomly rotated during painting.
¶ Adding diffuse tiles
- Select Diffuse in the Texture group.
- Select 128 x 128 or 256 x 256 in the Tiles group, depending on your texture size.
- Right-click on the empty tile area and select Add... from the context menu.
- Browse to your TGA tile image and open it.
Tile TGA images must be saved as uncompressed.
Repeat this process with Additive selected to add the additive channel textures for each tile.
¶ Adding transition tiles
Transitions require all three channels: diffuse, additive, and alpha. The tile browser shows a grid of 48 transition slots (8 rows of 6).
- Select Transitions in the Tiles group.
¶ Transition diffuse and additive
- Select Diffuse (or Additive) in the Texture group.
- Click on the transition slot you want to fill.
- Right-click and select Replace... to assign a texture to that slot.
- Browse to the TGA file.
¶ Transition alpha
- Select Alpha in the Texture group.
- Click a transition slot, right-click, and Replace... to assign the alpha map.
You can use the Batch load... button to load all 12 unique alpha transitions at once. The tool will automatically generate the remaining 36 by rotation. See tile textures — naming conventions for the required file naming.
¶ Adding displacement maps
- Select Displace in the Tiles group.
- Right-click on a slot and use Replace... to assign a 32x32 grayscale TGA displacement map.
Each tileset has 16 displacement map slots. These define micro-height variation on the landscape surface. See tile bank — displacement maps for details.
¶ Assigning tilesets to a land
After editing your tilesets, you need to assign them to a land. A land defines which tilesets are available together when painting terrain.
- Select a land in the upper list and click Edit land (labelled "Edit tile set" in the upper button group — this is the button next to the land list, not the tileset list).
- In the "Tile sets use by Tilebank" dialog, select a tileset from the dropdown.
- Click Add to add the selected tileset to the land.
- Click OK when done.
¶ Other tileset settings
Back in the main tile bank manager window, there are additional settings for the selected tileset:
- Choose Veget — assign a vegetation descriptor file (
.vegetdesc) to this tileset. This defines which vegetation shapes are procedurally spawned on tiles of this material. See vegetation sets. - Surface data — a 32-bit integer value associated with this tileset, used by gameplay code (e.g. for footstep sounds or movement speed modifiers).
- Up / Down — reorder tilesets within the bank.
¶ Saving
Use Save or Save as... to write the tile bank to a .bank file. Use Export... to export the tile bank data.
¶ Terminology
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Tile bank | A file containing lands and tilesets |
| Land | A named group of tilesets that can be used together on terrain |
| Tileset | A set of tiles representing one surface material |
| Tile | A 128x128 or 256x256 pixel terrain surface texture |
| Transition | A set of 48 alpha-blended tiles for smooth transitions between tilesets |
| Displacement | A 32x32 grayscale map for micro-height variation |
| TGA | Uncompressed Targa image format used for tile textures |
| DDS | Compressed texture format used at runtime (converted from TGA at build time) |