Tutorial: Aqua Button Matrix
 

 

This easy-to-understand tutorial demonstrates how two of Texture Maker's exotic functions are used to generate a nice wallpaper.

Step 1: Drawing an aqua button

 

Create anew texture with the Width and Height values both set to 256. In the New Texture Dialog, set the Background Color to White.

Select the plugin function at Plugins/Aqua Button.

Enable 16x16 Snappingat the texture's form.

Draw a circle (make sure the Ellipsetool is selected) from the first snapping point at the upper-left corner to the last one at the lower-right corner of the texture:

The Aqua Button should now be rendered.

 

Step 2: Smoothing the aqua button

 

Select the function Filter/Smooth with the Default settings.

Set the Smooth Radius parameter to 5.

Smooth the Aqua Button by clicking on its texture.

You will ask: Why smooth it? The answer is, that we will downsample it (i.e. reducing its size) later by a huge factor and smoothing before downsampling often leads to better results.

 

Step 3: The same in green

 

Clone the texture by either clicking on the Clonebutton, pressing the keys ALT+Ins or selecting the Edit->Clone menu item.

Open the Color Adjustments with thebutton or at the Tools menu.

After pressing the Resetbutton, all Scaling sliders should reside at 100% and the Bias scrollbars at 0%.

Move the Hue Bias slider to a value between +15% and +20%, which will result in a green color for the Aqua Button.

Press the OK button to apply the changes.

 

Step 4: Plotting lots of buttons

 

Select the function Special/Sprite Matrix.

Go back to your blue Aqua Button from Step 1/2. Set this texture as Source Texture by pressing thebutton on its form.

Bring up anew texture with the dimensions 512x512.

At the Matrix Settings panel, press the Open button and load a matrix file, like Simple Noise.igm, which was used here.

Verify that the Rectangles mapping mode is selected, then click on your new texture and render the blue Aqua Buttons rendered according to the loaded matrix.

 

Step 5: Adding the green ones

 

Now press the Invert button at the Matrix Settings panel.

Set the texture with the green Aqua Button from Step 3 as Source Texture by pressing thebutton on its form.

Run the Sprite Matrix function again on your 512x512 texture to finish this texture and tutorial.