Updated Jan 23 2005

Material Map Creation with Adobe Photoshop 6.0

This guide may work for other versions of Photoshop as well. This guide uses some information from Giskards’ MCM-Tutorial (Edit: This is now part of the MCM Tutoria and this is how the MCM tutorial has grown so big in the first placel), a handy a resource for those wanting to learn Mechwarrior mapping. Please visit the Technical Support forums at Mechstorm if you have any questions or need further assistance. While written for MechWarrior: Mercenaries, the procedure described here will also work for Mechwarrior: Vengeance and the Black Knight expansion.

**Important Note**
At least one material file no longer works in Mercenaries. This is a problem with the game itself, there is nothing we can do at this point, and there are no known fixes at the time of this writing. The Reference Section at the end of this document lists the Material maps have been confirmed as working normally. I haven’t tested all of them, so don’t assume a material doesn’t work if you don’t see it listed. Email me if you find the unlisted materials do or don’t work, so I can update this list.

Known Bugs:

· The Water material will end up producing an endless looping sound and animation if hit by ballistic weapons, which could lead to lag problems and potentially crash a server (See Figure 1). Note that this does not affect actual pools of water, but rather terrain painted with the water material. It is not advisable that you paint your terrain with this material. However, you must still set up the water material when creating your material list. I’ll explain why later.



Figure 1-Error with Water Material files. Each spray you see was caused by an individual ballistic hit on the terrain. The laser shown firing here did not produce any abnormal effects.

The best way to accurately paint the terrain with the material maps you want is to use your map images themselves. Browse to your MercenariesContentTexturesMapsMapname folder. In it, you’ll see several other folders named AA, AB, etc. Open up the AA folder. Inside, you’ll find 5 tga images. Open the first image, called Mapname_AA_0_0000.tga. As you can see, this is a section of your terrain. We’ll use this section to paint the terrain materials on your map. Save this file off to a different location-do NOT modify the original file-and rename it AA.tga. Photoshop may ask you what color depth, chose anyone you like, as it won’t matter (I use 32-bit myself). Now, making sure you’re using the AA.tga file and not your original in the AA folder, click on the Image tab and select Mode, then Indexed Color. A new dialogue box should appear, as in Figure 2:

Figure 2-Indexed Color Box



Figure 3-Color Table



Under Palette, scroll down until you see Custom, and select it. Now the box changes to a color table (Figure 3). Simply click OK; we don’t need to do anything else here.



By default, Photoshop 6 (and 7) has several tabbed windows open on the desktop. You want the one that says Swatches (if you don’t see it, go to the Window tab on the Photoshop toolbar at the top of the screen, and scroll down the list until you see Show Swatches).

Figure 4-Color Swatches



Here’s where you define your material maps. The material is defined by its’ position in the table, not by its’ color. So the colors don’t matter, so long as you can tell them apart. Also, you must work left-to-right here, not top-to-bottom. Click on the first swatch box. A new dialogue box will open (Figure 5):

Figure .5-Swatch Name



You can name your color swatch. I suggest you do so, using the names in the Material Map list below. Then, whenever you put the color pick tool on a swatch, you can see the name of the material map! Great reference tool, eh? Double-click on the colored square to access the color picker, which will look like this (Figure 6):

Figure 6-Color Picker and close-up of RGB box





Here is a list of material maps compiled by Giskard (thanks mate ) from Mechwarrior: Vengeance and Black Knight. Not all have been tested for compatibility in Mercs, but as I said, the Water Material does not work. However, you must still assign a color for it. For your convenience, I’ve written down the RGB values I use. You can use any color you wish of course, but I know some of you would rather cut to the chase and start creating your material maps right away! To use these, simply enter the values I’ve listed into the RGB boxes in the Color Picker, and click OK.


0 None-0,0,0
1 GrassMaterial-255,255,255
2 WaterMaterial-0,0,255
3 ConcreteMaterial-230,230,230
4 GreyDirtMaterial-0,255,0
5 BrownDirtMaterial-255,0,0
6 RockMaterial-0,255,255
7 DarkConcreteMaterial-57,181,74
8 DarkGreyDirtMaterial-255,255,0
9 DarkBrownDirtMaterial-247,148,29
10 DarkRockMaterial-255,0,255
11 BlacktopMaterial-236,0,140
12 SnowMaterial-237,20,91
13 WoodMaterial-129,129,129
14 LavaMaterial-122,204,200
15 GlassMaterial-0,174,239
16 SteelMaterial-64,64,64
17 UsMaterial-02,24,76
18 ThemMaterial-207,195,126
19 Light Mineral Material-74,0,75
20 Dark Mineral Material-0,96,2
21 Ash Material-101,0,0
22 Cracked Lava Material (will cause heat to 'Mechs)-136,71,2
23 Open Lava Material (will cause heat as well as leg damage)-171,171,255


Now input the RGB values, using my numbers (or create your own-remember, it’s not the color that determines the material being used by the Mechwarrior game engine, it is its’ position on the color swatch table; this is why you must define the Water material, even though you shouldn’t use it!). When you’ve defined all the colors you need-you may not need or want to define all 23 at this point, and you can always add more later-click on the right-pointing arrow on the swatches box (Figure 4), and save your swatch file off somewhere. That’s it! You’ve created your material maps for your map. Now simply paint your terrain, and when you’re done, save the painted image as a .raw file. When you do, you’ll see the following screen (Figure 7):

Figure 7-Raw Options Dialogue Box




Don’t change the options listed; leave Header at zero, and leave the channels in Interleaved Order. Click OK. Now you need to paint all the other Mapname_xx_0_0000.tga files in the AB, AC, etc, folders. The good news is you’ve created your swatches already, and don’t need to do it again! When you convert your other images to 8-bit indexed images, the Index Color (Figure 2) box will show Previous in the dialogue box; choose this, and paint away! Save all your images as raw files when you’re done, close Photoshop, and refer to the MCM Tutorial for the final steps in adding your material maps to you map!

Reference Section

I have tested the following material maps, and they work properly:
Grass, Glass, Rock, Dark Rock, Ash, Grey Dirt, Brown Dirt, Wood, Dark Brown Dirt, Steel, Light Mineral, Dark Mineral, Cracked Lava, Open Lava.

-Draft finished: May 22, 2003
By Starfire.