Creating textures using CryTIF

The textures we will create throughout the course of this book will be created in Photoshop and will be stored in the TIF image format saved using the CryTIF plugin.

CryTIF is a Photoshop plugin developed by Crytek that can load and save merged Photoshop images as .TIF files. When saving the .TIF file, the plugin calls upon the Resource Compiler to display a dialog to the user where the compression settings can be selected. The settings that get chosen in the dialog are stored as metadata on the TIF file.

It's important to realize though that the .TIF format images are not used directly in the engine but are rather converted to a more optimized format, in this case, from a .tif to a .dds, by the Resource Compiler.

Getting ready

Let's go over what you need to do to be able to create textures for CryENGINE.

Photoshop must be closed for the installation of the CryTIF plugin to work.

You should have completed tutorial one or have run the SettingsMgr.exe to ensure that...