I've written my very own on-the-model texture editor for .x files. I've seen some people posting here asking after this sort of program, so I thought I'd share it. Some more information about the program: MODEL PAINTER Model Painter is basically an extension of the technique illustrated in the Pick example included in the DirectX9 SDK, the addition being that instead of merely determining the face and UV coordinate beneath the mouse cursor, the program takes that information, locks the texture responsible for lighting the face, and writes the currently selected color to the texel at the UV intersection coordinates. WHAT IT IS *An on-the-model Texture Editor for X Files only. *Can read in the following texture formats: bmp, dds, (png,jpg,tga,dib with a caveat) *Saves to the following texture formats: bmp,dds. *Allows the user to edit the alpha channel of the texture (can only be saved if dds is being used as the texture format. < *Allows the user to draw with different opacity settings for "do-it-yourself" anti-aliasing *Lets the user select different render options (eg specular lighting) WHAT IT ISN'T *Model Painter is NOT a mesh unwrapper. You still have to assign texture coordinates yourself.
*It is not, in any way, a mesh editor. MP doesn't even save x files, which becomes important in the texture saving section You may grab the zip here And here are a couple of screens: Here I'm showing off MP's ability to edit the texture's alpha channel. The letters 'NEG.' Are written at full transparency on the 'N', up through fully opaque on the '.' This is a WIP enemy space ship I'm working on. Looks good with the specular highlighting on doesn't it? I forgot to add: let me know how it runs or even if (gulp) it doesn't run at all. I'd also like to hear your comments on its usability as a tool, what I could do to improve the UI, etc. [edited by - Muse on April 29, 2003 10:18:11 PM]

No one? Oh well, that''s a little disheartening. If I had known I wouldn''t have spent so much effort on the help system...or commenting the code (did I mention that was included?)
maybe someone will give it a look by the time I get up tomorrow...

thanks Yoda, actually it uses DirectX from first to last, but yeah, thanks for the reply.

Hey, AP, you can get the end-user DX9 runtime here if you want, I don''t think it''s that big of a download...
As for tools, probably the next feature I add will be an option that lets you pick different brush sizes. This will make filling in large areas much easier, since currently it takes a long time to get all the texels in a large region to register interesects. Beyond that I don''t know; it doesn''t seem practical for me to duplicate the feature-set of a 2D paint program, which is why I mainly think of this tool as a way to block out regions of a texture for further detail editing by a traditional paint program like Paint Shop Pro.