Mana Games

[MartynFoster735]

Since a few threads here touch on modding textures and replay thumbnails, I thought it was worth starting a general thread about AI image generators - not as a replacement for hand-made assets, but as a way to get a first draft on screen quickly.

The workflow that tends to hold up:

1) Write the prompt for the material you actually need - a clay court, grass, a sponsor banner, a crowd backdrop - and generate a few variations.
2) Take the closest draft and re-run it with an object reference or an existing texture, so the result keeps the original palette and grain.
3) Clean the output up in your usual editor, then convert and downscale it to the size the mod really expects.

On the prompts themselves: being literal about the physical material helps more than stacking style words - "worn red clay with faded white lines, top-down" gives a usable base faster than "epic tennis court, 8k". And keep the output at the same aspect ratio as the texture slot you are replacing, otherwise the stretch is obvious in-game.

Two habits that help whichever service you use: keep a prompt template per asset type, and check the licence terms before shipping anything inside a public mod.

For draft generation, one option worth a look is Nano Banana 2 Lite - a third-party, independent AI image generation and editing site built around prompts and object references. It is not affiliated with Google or DeepMind. This board strips links for new accounts, so the address sits on the WWW button under my name.

What does everyone else use for textures and covers?