[questions] textures and skyboxes.

Uncle_Petey

Quick question, can anyone give me a rundown of what each type of DDS is for? Like, albedo, emissive, etc? I've played around with trial and error but I'd have a better understanding if there were some documentation on them.

Next question, skyboxes. I copy the format for the skybox face material file and replace the image it points to to one of my own; DDS, 2048x2048 or 1024x1024, correct directory. Save and reopen file, and all I see are gray faces. What's wrong with this picture?

Also, the wiki is down for whatever reason - which probably has something on what I'm looking for.

DarkSeraph

One page over: Material files explained

Uncle_Petey

That sort of explains specular images, but that's about it.

Also, the wiki page that somebody linked is down, because the wiki is down.

DarkSeraph

Uncle_Petey wrote: »

Quick question, can anyone give me a rundown of what each type of DDS is for? Like, albedo, emissive, etc? I've played around with trial and error but I'd have a better understanding if there were some documentation on them.

Next question, skyboxes. I copy the format for the skybox face material file and replace the image it points to to one of my own; DDS, 2048x2048 or 1024x1024, correct directory. Save and reopen file, and all I see are gray faces. What's wrong with this picture?

Let me back up then - are you just asking what each layer does? They aren't specific to ns2 - a lot of games use similar mapping for textures.

For the skybox, are you saving the dds as dxt5 w/ alpha?

The wiki being available seems about as reliable as the information in the wiki itself. I was able to find this this post by Hypergrip on how to create textures with a short search.

Uncle_Petey

Alright so I'm starting to figure some things out, but I've got a few problems.

Spotlights don't seem to work and normal lighting only lights about 70% of the spherical area - there's a straight line cut-off from max brightness to pitch black.


Here's what I'm referring to. Ignore the nasty "grass". I just threw something together in gimp for the example image.

What can I do to get balanced lighting? Thanks for the patience, I'm not a seasoned map developer.

Edit: I should add that I've been having this issue since I starting dabbling, before making this post. I've googled around but can't seem to find anything relevant.

Insane

I spotted this so I thought I'd tidy up a guide I wrote for some of our art contractors on using the correct texture maps: http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/130575/ns2-material-guide-choosing-a-shader/p1

I'm not sure what could possibly be causing that lighting issue, I've never seen that before. Have you tried moving the light around into different positions?

Uncle_Petey

I have. It's always at the same angle in the same spot on the specific light. I'm using the official builder and converting PSDs into DDS files that way.

Howser

Is this lighting issue only on your custom textures?
I use Nividia's Photoshop plugin to convert to .DDS with no issues. Its quite a robust system so maybe the issue is with the .material file, the shader you're using or the normal map. Could you upload the .material contents, and the .dds files?

Uncle_Petey

Here they are. Keep in mind, I was playing around with everything a lot so the file names/materials may not match up like they should.

This only happens with custom textures.

Insane

Ok, so I see a couple of problems here. The first is that the shader you are using requires a diffuse, normal and specular map, but your material file only specifies a diffuse map.

Your lighting issue appears to be due to bad surface normals, probably because you're not specifying a normal map in your material. There's also something wrong with your normal map, so setting that won't fix the issue. See below:



For generating normal maps from diffuse maps I strongly suggest you give NDO2 a go (http://quixel.se/ndo/), or the nVidia Photoshop normal map plugin (https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop). This should fix your lighting issue. Then you just need to add a specular map to get those shiny hilights.

Hope this helps!

Uncle_Petey

Yeah I did have it specified in the material but I took it out for troubleshooting. Its not the reason its supposed to look because I was trying to find out how to do all this stuff through trial and error. I'll definitely have to look back into that nvidia plugin, but it doesn't seem to install properly for me.

Thanks.

Edit: NDOS works perfectly, but it'll cost me some money. Definitely gonna play around with it. The NVidia plugin finds the correct CS4 directory but doesn't actually install anything. I then extracted the plugin to my desktop for manual installation, but it still doesn't show up in CS4 after I move everything over. Real pain in the ass.

Howser

Ndo1 is a bit tricky to use, i actually purchased ndo2, its powerful, intuitive and quite affordable compared the other options. If you're struggling, and need some fast pointers add me on steam.

DarkSeraph

Uncle_Petey wrote: »

The NVidia plugin finds the correct CS4 directory but doesn't actually install anything. I then extracted the plugin to my desktop for manual installation, but it still doesn't show up in CS4 after I move everything over. Real pain in the ass.

If you're using the 64-bit version and I recall correctly, the Nvidia plugin does not show up in the x64 version of PS - try using the x84 normal version?

Uncle_Petey

Ah interesting. I'll try that and report back.

Edit: x86 works good. Odd that x86-64 doesn't, but either way. Thanks everyone for putting up with a noob-scrub