Once you have your textures you can load them up in a graphics editing program for processing and conversion. Try to use a photo-paint program with a good selection of image processing tools, this will allow you to get the best results even when doing simple things, such as changing color depth or resizing images. I recommend Paint Shop Pro 5 or beyond, in fact, PSP is the only graphics editor I'm aware of that can save .RAW files AND is freely available (I understand the Photoshop demo is useless).

Paint Shop Pro (shareware): You can find any version of PSP you like, on servers all over the world, by doing an FTP search.

If you've ever tried to create custom textures and discovered the colors look completely different in the game than they did in your paint program then you've run into the track palette limitation.

Each MTM2 track has a single 256 color "track palette", this palette is almost always "trackname.act". Ideally speaking, all textures used in a track should be made to match the track palette, if they do not then the colors in the textures will be shifted (during gameplay) to the nearest matching color in the track palette. Sometimes this approximation is not bad, although many delicate shades of a color may all be rendered as a solid patch of a single color. Sometimes the color approximation is far from the intended color value and the effect is seen as many 'wrong' colored pixels in the game.

If you want your textures to look the same in the game as they do in your paint program then you must apply the track palette to your image before you make it into a RAW texture. You can do this by simply loading the appropriate palette into your image within your paint program.

Using Paint Shop Pro 5 and later versions you can simply "load palette" into your image, browsing for a palette in the PAL format. This will automatically reduce your image's color depth to 256 colors (8 bit) and will do it's best to match the colors in your image to the colors in the palette. Note: reducing your image's color depth this way will result in a much better color match than if you reduce the image to 8 bit before loading the track palette.

After loading a track palette, the image you see in your paint program will appear as it will appear in the game, and if there are pixels with colors that are way off target you can use the eyedropper tool to select another color in the current palette and paint over or "replace" the bad pixels.

As I understand it, the original Monster Truck Madness only uses one track palette for all tracks, covering both models and textures, the "metalcr2.act" palette. Make your MTM textures using this palette and all will be well.

It seems that MTM textures do not require an accompanying ACT palette since they all use the ever present "metalcr2.act" automatically, indeed, any texture that does not have a color palette file (.act) will automatically use "metalcr2.act" when it's displayed in the game. Thus you do not need to make pallete files for each texture using this palette. Note: Does this mean textures with their own unique palettes will use those palettes? I doubt it, but here's a experiment for you POD hackers out there, as I write this I'm not even sure if it will work: edit a .LVL file and replace the "metalcr2.act" line with another (and include it in the pod), to define a different global palette, one that fits your textures. Will it work? I don't know. Try it and let me know. ;-)

One thing seems certain, if you make your model textures with "metalcr2.act" you can be sure they'll look good in both MTM1 and MTM2, and you won't have to fuss with palette files. Both games? But what about the track palette limitation?? I dunno, it just seems to work, which may indicate the track palette limitation is not absolute.

Model texture palettes may be made totally custom of course, but use of "metalcr2" or the "traxx 1.2" palettes may prove the best for re-use in other tracks.

When Traxx 1.2 loads a terrain texture without a palette it automatically generates one for it when the pod is written to disk, it gives it the "metalcr2.act" as expected, but in the game (MTM2) I notice the terrain texture uses the track palette and not the metalcr2 one. Thus I conclude that ALL terrain textures must use the track palette or they'll be assimilated anyway. ;-) Model textures? That one is still up in the air.

If you are combining two or more different colored source images into a single mixed texture image then you should test their ability to all combine into a 256 color palette while retaining their distinctive look. You can do this by choosing a few textures and putting them together into a single test image in your paint program, then load the track palette to see how much color change the image will undergo (or any other palette if you plan to go the truly custom route). If one texture does not convert well then you can back up and play with it's hue values, put it back in the test image and load the palette again. Using this method you can sometimes get past problem colors that shift far too much in order to match the track palette.

A good way to change texture colors or make them conform to the track palette is to experiment with the hue, saturation, red/green/blue, brightness/contrast and all the color adjustment options. Try adjusting the hue to make a texture go from one color to another. If your image has too much red then adjust the red channel down a bit, then try the hue again. Saturation, brightness and contrast can do wonders for lightening and darkening a texture. Try adjusting these settings in different combinations, all the while loading the track palette into the image to see what shades are going to work, if it doesn't look good then "undo" and keep trying until you have what you want. Getting several source textures to combine and then fit into a single 256 color palette may be one of the most difficult things you may experience in the realm of texture making.

It really pays to learn you paint program's abilities and test all of these things before going through the process of preparing overlaps, slicing and converting to RAW.

If you really want to produce quality textures then you would do well to make sure your work looks good in software rendering too, as it is much less forgiving.

Once you have created a 256 color image (of any dimensions) in your paint program you are ready to convert it into a usable RAW image file accompanied by an ACT color palette.

One way is to "copy" and then paste a single 256 color, 64x64 pixel image into the Traxx 1.2 textures box, this will automatically create a RAW file along with it's necessary ACT. Traxx 1.2 is handy for this purpose but it can only handle single 64x64 textures and it will always create them using the "Traxx/Farmroad" palette. You would do well to load the Traxx/Farmroad palette into your image before sending it to Traxx, that way you can repair off color pixels in your paint program before they become a problem.

Another way is to save the image as a RAW and save the image's color palette directly from your paint program. Photoshop users should be able to save their images and palettes directly to RAW and ACT with ease due to those being native Photoshop formats. Paint Shop Pro users can save their images directly to RAW but the color palette will have to be saved to the PAL format and then converted to ACT (see the next section on palette conversion for instructions and utilities).

Green Giant's Para palette converter:

The Para palette converter is the quickest and easiest to use palette converter available, it converts PAL to ACT or ACT to PAL. I do not recommend any other converter.

Terrain textures larger than 64x64 pixels will require slicing up before they can be used of course, if you are making groups of aligned textures, like five by five blocks of road curves or any other kind of joined group of textures there is an alternative to cutting up and saving all the images and palettes manually. You can use a great utility called Green Giant's Axe to slice up any large RAW file that is divisible by 64 pixels on any side.

You can easily create whole sets of joined textures by using a template, if you want to make one of your own try out this flexible 5x5 concept:

The example image above depicts a simple template for a two texture transition. Lay out evenly spaced control points on a grid and draw lines connecting the points to create your borders, then fill the outside and inside areas with two different textures. When the tiles are split up and rearranged (without rotation) the precise control points allow the borders to merge perfectly in multiple texture configurations.

Below is the start of a 5x5 template you can use to create your own borders, use the control points as a guide and draw one pixel lines connecting them, to within a tolerance of one pixel, consistant at every control point. When finished, fill the outside and inside areas with two different solid colors, then save it and use it again and again with different fill textures, using the instructions provided further below.

Right-click on image and save it.

What follows are step by step Paint Shop Pro instructions for using my template as it was designed to be used. It is also a demonstration of the general principal involved for adding two pixel borders to connected groups of textures. The steps given may not represent the only way of handling the template, but they work well and quickly. Beware: this section relies on you having a complete understanding of the single seamless texture demonstration provided earlier, please master the single texture concept along with your paint program's abilities before proceeding.

Select and open two seamless source textures, increase their color depth to 24bit if they're not already, then resize each of them to 60 by 60 pixels.

Why 60x60? Because of the way Paint Shop Pro uses texture patterns during a "fill" operation. The fill will 'tile' itself evenly through the template, so that every 60x60 grid block will be identical, this is vital for the textures to be able to mix and match and still line up properly when used in a track.

Load the template in your paint program. Note: If you're using my .GIF template you should increase it's color depth to 24bit (16 million colors) and then save it in a 'lossless' format like .PSP or .BMP. Whenever you want to use the template simply load it in your paint program, "copy" the whole image and then "paste" it twice as a new image, so you have two new identical templates to work with.

Load at least two textures and two
templates and you're ready to go.

Select the "flood fill" tool and change the tool properties to a "pattern style" fill, making sure the "tolerance" is set at zero and the "opacity" at one-hundred. Set the "pattern source" to one of your source textures (the one you wish to be the "outside" texture on the template).

Flood fill both areas of one of the template images, making a single seamless image out of it.

Now switch the flood fill tool's "pattern source" to your second source texture.

Select the "magic wand" tool, making sure the options are set to zero tolerance, zero feather and RGB match mode. Click in the "outside" area of the second template so that the black area is "selected". Now switch to the flood fill tool and fill in the selected area.

On the right: The 'outer' perimeter has
just been selected and filled.

Click "selections" in the menu and "invert" the selection, this will cause the inner area to be selected. Fill the inner area using the flood tool. You should now see a solidly textured image with the shape of the template borders outlined as a selection.

Click "selections" - "modify" - "feather" from the menu, then set the feather value to three pixels, then click "OK". The selected inner part of the template will now have 'soft' edges.

Now "copy" the current selection. Switch to the first template image and "paste" the selection as a "new layer". Click "layers" - "merge" - "merge all" to lock the selection down. The pasted selection will be automatically centered on the first template, so be careful not to move it after pasting it in.

The feathered inner selection has been pasted
into the first template and locked down.

This image is basically your finished texture set, minus the necessary two pixel borders for each individual block. Now would be a good time to load the appropriate color palette into the image to reduce it's color depth and set the correct 256 color palette, as described in the palette loading section of this tutorial.

The image is still only 300 by 300 pixels, a 5 by 5 grid of 60 pixels squares. MTM requires 64 by 64 pixel textures so the necessary pixels must now be added, to bring the overall size up to 320 by 320 and to make the individual tiles truly seamless in MTM2.

Time required to make a single, two texture, 5x5 set using my template: Three hours choosing just the right textures. 90 seconds finding out the colors won't convert. Another hour fiddling with the texture palettes while getting a headache. ;-) But seriously... Two minutes to open the images, resize them, fill the templates, and load the color palette. Ten minutes to do all the border work (shifting around/copy and paste) in preparation for slicing. Two minutes to save the RAW (and ACT), load it in Axe and slice it up.

The whole process may be slightly difficult to learn and perform flawlessly but once you learn it you will be able to crank out small textures sets from start to finish in about 20 minutes.

Now is when the "grid" function and "add borders" function of your paint program will be very useful.

In the menu, click "file" - "preferences" - "general program preferences" and then the "rulers and units" tab. Set the grid spacing to 15 by 15 pixels (a multiple of which happens to be 60 ;-). This grid size will make it easy to accurately shift your textures around. Click "view" - "grid" in the menu to see the grid overlay on your image.

Now click "image" - "add borders" and add a symmetric border of 60 pixels. This will give you the perfect amount of room you'll need to shift your textures around. The added border will usually be drawn using the current background color, therefore you may wish to specify a nicely contrasting color before adding the borders.

The grid has been set to 15x15 pixels and
a 60 pixel border has been added to the image.

Make your window as large as you can, then select the magnification tool and increase your image view to something like 3 or 4 to 1 so you can accurately select along the grid lines. Now I mean perfect accuracy, if you are off by one pixel you will ruin your work, therefore high magnification is in order.

Using the "selection" tool set to "rectangle" (with zero feather and no anti-alias), select the top 60 pixel strip from your image, which on the current grid settings should be four grid blocks high.

Once selected, move it up exactly two grid squares (30 pixels).

The first 60 pixel strip has been shifted upward.

Now select the second 60 pixel strip from your image and move it up one grid square.

Repeat the above process for the bottom two 60 pixel strips, moving them down instead of up. When complete, the central 60 pixel strip will not have moved and you will be seeing five horizontal rows, evenly spaced one grid square apart.

Initial dividing is half done.

Now repeat the dividing process on the other axis. Select the 60 pixel strip down the left side of the whole image and move it two grid squares to the left.

Select the next 60 pixel strip down the left side of the image and move it over one grid square to the left.

Repeat the above process for the two 60 pixel strips on the right side of the image. When complete, the central 60 pixel strip will not have moved but you will be seeing five vertical rows, evenly spaced one grid square apart. The whole image should now consist of a grid of twenty-five 60 by 60 squares, each exactly one grid square apart (15 pixels). Use high magnification and make sure you are aligned perfectly with the grid before proceeding.

Fully divided and ready for edge swap.

When dealing with multiple textures that must align with each other, such as a five by five curved section of a roadway or the complete set we're dealing with now, the edges that meet each other when they are laid down are the ones that will "swap" borders.

The color bars depict the horizontal edge pairs to swap.
The same concept applies to the vertical swap.

Now is when you swap the two pixel borders among each of the rows of 60 by 60 squares. This process is done exactly as described in the single texture demonstration, only this time you can select whole five-long rows at once, making it easy to swap the whole grid very quickly (please take note of the image directly above). You will be selecting long two pixel strips at this point, so be sure to use sufficient magnification to be perfectly accurate. Paint Shop Pro 5 and beyond is ideal for this due to the fact that the window will automatically scroll as you drag your select tool from one end of the grid of textures to the other.

The two pixel borders have been swapped
and added to the original textures.

Now that the two pixel borders have been swapped you should use a high magnification and make sure you are not off by a single pixel anywhere along the grid, the divided textures should all extend two pixels beyond the grid lines.

Next use the selection tool to select and then precisely move every section back together, eliminating all gaps between them. Once complete, use the "crop" tool to select and then crop your solid block of textures. If you have made no mistake your image should now be an even 320 by 320 pixels -- a 5 by 5 grid of 64 by 64 pixel squares. You may want to switch your grid settings to 64x64 now and, optionally, put an "X" on the repeated textures for easy elimination later.

Ready to be RAW and get Axe'd.

Now save the image and pass it to the Axe using the process described earlier.

MTM1 textures do not require any special alignment tricks, no two pixel borders are necessary, which makes it easy to create and then slice up entire blocks of combined textures with the Axe. My template can be used for MTM1 textures but you should add a 10 pixel border to the entire image before you start, then you can just select, feather, fill, copy/paste, save and slice. ;-)

Oh, you can create more than two texture transitions if you like, just use more templates and plan your attack well. Personally, I would not want to manually swap as many texture borders as would be required to create a set that would match the many different curves in a track like Crazy 98, that is why I have created my own simple templates consisting of small blocks of textures that can be suited to any terrain curvature. My own simple system cannot match the beauty or complexity of the textures made by TRI and others, but without the benefit of an automated border swapping and slicing utility I would not even want to try to compete. With luck, TRI will be releasing just such a slicing utility after their new 4x4 Evolution game comes out. Lets hope. Meanwhile you must do it manually or purchase Traxx 1.4 from SoftParts to use it's advanced texture capabilties.