Hi, I was going to do some textures and even though I know how to do the physical alteration of textures and stuff I was wondering if there is an explanation of the more technical part of texture creation for games. like DXT1,2,3, etc., alpha channels, which are better or worse for games textures 8-bit, 16-bit, etc. Are there any good articles about it? I google some but they are a bit short and very slim on info. Thanks.

What are you trying to do? Seriously, you are asking for the equivalent of articles on "how to do math"

I don't know about general articles, but I've found lots of tutorials on how to do specific things with specific tools. Most are Photoshop oriented, but with a bit of adjustment, most can be done with the Gimp. There are also tutorials on how to use the DDS exporter as well. However, you might want to be a bit more specific.

Wikipedia has some articles on DXT

There are some good threads in this forum to search on

Online I use the http://blenderart.org/tag/tutorial/

Also this bookmark I use for http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/gimptutorials/GIMP_Tutorials_Learning_The_GIMP.htm

Here's one on http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/dds_types.html

Thanks for the links. I found this link about quality texture making. It talks about the mechanics of DXT1 compression.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2467/making_quality_game_textures.php

Btw, the link for "DDS formats" was a very good one.

The DDS format variations are pretty self-explanatory. Morrowind supports the usual set, DXT1, 1a, 3, 5, and so on. Most of the RGB/RGBA formats, up to 64-bit (16/16/16/16) are supported, sizes ranging from 4x4x1 to 2048x2048x1.
Non-RGB(A/X) formats are generally not supported, I think, so YuYv and such aren't good. MW can't handle any floating-point ones and chokes on more than 16bpc, but 8/16bpc integer textures are well beyond what DX8 can really show anyway and would take MGE and true HDR support to pull out the details.
8 and 16 bpp textures are absolutely useless these days, don't even consider going below 24 bpp (standard) or 32 if you have an alpha channel. The size you get back isn't enough to matter, and the lack of quality is pretty obvious. IIRC, the DXT1 formats are 5/5/5/1 or something low along those lines, and you can often tell ingame.

Thanks for that invaluable information @peachykeen. This is exactly the kind of info I was looking for. I will write this down.

I dunno if you'll take some advice for someone who found some links to great stuff, but hasn't really made any art yet... but here.

several good links here including the pdf of texturing for dummies (and not so dummies):
http://www.leighvanderbyl.com/tutorials.html

and this which includes a crap ton of info including (but not limited to) the comprehensive guide to alpha channels
http://www.yacoby.net/es/forum/12/5397201155933900.html

ST

Thanks for the links. I'm sure I'll find them helpful.