is there a way to create a texture in GIMP in half of a 512x512 image, then make the image symetrical?
Example(kindof)

Yeah, why not ? just low the images size to half, and flip it over...

a short tut on what you wanna do.

1) skin the half that you wanna copy....nuf said there
2) using rectangular selection tool: select the area you just skinned and want to recreate
3) COPY
4) make new layer and select layer
5) paste on the un-skinned half in new layer
6) Layer->transform->flip horizontal(or vertical, depends on what you need)
7) save as .tga file type and uncheck RLE compression

hope this was helpful

thanks

no problem.