Texture Issue with Custom NPC

[Legacy_Malagant]

               I was going to whip up a nice surprise for the people that game with me here at the homestead by having a little guest appearance by everyone's favorite Pyromancer, but while I have certainly got the model down for the most part, my texture skills are pretty much around zero when dealing with anything other than heads.

The issue I am having is that I've made a full NPC that amounts to a good NWN representation, with some liberty taken, and have him all textured up. He looks quite good in 3DSMax. He even looks good in NWNExplorer. Where he does not look good is in game, where the face and torso are all jacked up like the mapping didn't take but the rest of him looks dandy.

Coming into this with what amounts to 5 experience points in textures, I was quite proud. After being up all night trying to figure it out I've become quite frustrated. Even looked for that box-man tutorial posted ages ago on the vault to no avail.

There's also a small shadow issue with a little blip of shadow some distance from the head of the full body shadow and, while I'd like to figure that out and be rid of it, it's not as important since I doubt any of these people would notice during play.

Any points in the right direction? I'd prefer to get this down before going wild with emitters.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Malagant, 11 novembre 2012 - 02:26 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Malagant wrote...
He looks quite good in 3DSMax. He even looks good in NWNExplorer. Where he does not look good is in game, where the face and torso are all jacked up like the mapping didn't take but the rest of him looks dandy.

Is there any chance that you are overwriting an existing texture from the game and that you only have the replacement TGA in your override directory and not the DDS as well?  Quick way to test this is to convert the TGA to Bioware DDS and have that in your override directory as well when you test, for both the face and torso textures.  Give that a shot.

There's also a small shadow issue with a little blip of shadow some distance from the head of the full body shadow and, while I'd like to figure that out and be rid of it, it's not as important since I doubt any of these people would notice during play.

Select the bits of the model you changed and do a Reset XForms (with safe pivot on).  (?)
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 11 novembre 2012 - 02:40 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Invisig0th]

               If they are not already, you may need to alter your textures to be square (256x256 pixels, 512x512 pixels, etc.) rather than rectangular. Trying to use rectangular textures on creature models can cause problems in-game, and this may well be one of those situations.Depending on your texture, adding extra space to even up the dimensions shouldn't be hard.

Also, be sure to download and read the relevant sections of the Custom Content Guide, which can be found on NWVault. It's a bit outdated now, but most of the basic stuff regarding models and textures is still valid.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Malagant]

               

OldTimeRadio wrote...
Is there any chance that you are overwriting an existing texture from the game and that you only have the replacement TGA in your override directory and not the DDS as well?

The texture for the body and head is not an override, it's a modified texture with it's own name in both TGA and DDS. Tinkering over the years has clued me in to a thing ot two and I regularly use the DDS converter, but I can't shake the feeling I'm missing something obvious.

Select the bits of the model you changed and do a Reset XForms (with safe pivot on).  (?)

I gave this a shot under NWMax plus. On a second look, it appears there are also a couple of long shadow lines coming from the hands (I think). I vaugely recall this might be a vertex issue, but attempting to weld any missing verts nets me a "no vertices within weld threshold" message.

And here I was thinking I was doing good...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Malagant]

               

Invisig0th wrote...

If they are not already, you may need to alter your textures to be square (256x256 pixels, 512x512 pixels, etc.)

It's 512x512. Got that down.

Also, be sure to download and read the relevant sections of the Custom Content Guide, which can be found on NWVault. It's a bit outdated now, but most of the basic stuff regarding models and textures is still valid.

I'll gloss over the CCGuide again. Not sure what I'm missing, and I'm sure it's simple. It's just the first time jumping in something like this as far as NPCs go.

I did do the Ghost King, but that was a simple retexture /recolor and setting emitters for the eyes. That one works fine but didn't entail any modeling. I'm sure it's something goofy that I forgot to click somewhere.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <putting on his...>

Could you post or send images of the problem? Or the model?

On welding vertexes, did your sanity check list any that are close enough to trigger warnings? Have you welded any overlapping tverts on the map?

Just kinda flailing about, at the moment, but I'm always interested in discovering solutions to problems I haven't yet reached...

<...fine lenses>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Invisig0th]

               Try another texture, preferably one directly from Bioware's resources which also doesn't use an alpha layer/selection. That should  give you a clue as to whether the source of the trouble is the model or the texture.

My guess is you're right, it's something simple. The way the game applies textures to static creature models is generally dead simple, and not very prone to problems. The fact that it's an NPC is irreleveant -- a static creature model is a static creature model.  IIRC, I've seen similar problems both with rectangular textures and possibly also in situations when my alpha channel on the image was borked. But it's been a while, so don't quote me on that. (Trying to use a PLT on a static creature might also produce a similar result, but it doesn't sound like you're doing that here.)

Hope this helps!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Invisig0th, 12 novembre 2012 - 01:20 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Malagant]

               It would appear that I fared better than I thought, and the issue was with the modified TGA.

While looking perfectly fine in everything one can view TGAs with (including Max and NWExplorer), the DDS converter was inadvertently flipping the image on export (which I recall was some issue with the actual TGA settings). A quick batch TGA to TGA run through Thumbsplus did away with the issue; I've generally run all my portraits this way for years before wrapping them up in a hak because they had the same issue of showing in game upside down.

With that solved, and no longer beating myself up over some failed texturing skills that hadn't actually failed, I can now do some fine tuning and figure out this pesky shadow blip. Had everything fairly solid and ran clean models on him, but there's obviously something eluding me.

After that it's going emitter crazy and possibly a screenie?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <rle-ing...>

That's a good point to bring home, Malagant. You need to have both Run-Length Encoding turned off and put the origin in the bottom left corner.

In GIMP, a pop-up gives you the option when exporting, but it usually (for me) has RLE checked :-P


Edit: Extra credit. What's the name of the the boy who loves the girl who inherits this castle?

<...from the bottom right like a newb>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 14 novembre 2012 - 12:18 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Pazu. Thats a nice Miyazaki print you've got.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               I always use tga flipper before converting to dds. For some reason, removing the rle compression seems to make the dds smaller... Go figure!

TR

ps Rolo, did you get my pm?
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Tarot Redhand, 14 novembre 2012 - 12:27 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Malagant]

               I must thank you all for letting me bounce this off of you. I went ahead and did what I could; the only thing still causing me grief is the shadow issue:



Everything is welded and no sanity check thrown. I just can't pin this down.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Malagant, 14 novembre 2012 - 03:16 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_-Paganini-]

               I have had this issue a few times, more often then not it is better to just recreate the problem area.