Question regarding exporting textures

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               Remember too:  If your TGA was created by you as a new texture, fine, convert them to dds.  But if you just exported/converted them from original .dds files, do NOT reconvert them back to dds from tga.  Keep the original dds, renaming as necessary if you changed the name of the tga during your processing.

IE, don't export from dds to tga, and then go back to convert to dds from that same tga.  Keep the original dds.

Otherwise, each time you convert, you lose quality, and it really, really adds up.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 24 mars 2011 - 10:38 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Wall3T]

               thanks for the quick replies :3

@ Michael DarkAngel - thanks for the link ill be sure to have that up and running in no time, i planned on trying to convert my tga into a dds and ive looked everywhere for a version that actualy works...

& @ Bannor Bloodfist- thanks for the warning! i actualy was just about to do that with my newst airship model '>

i did a few fixes with its textures so i had to convert it to a tga and planned to re-convert it to a dds again so... i wont be doing that lol

but... without losing quality, how can i make my new changes to the model? im assuming just make a new dds file?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               If you have actually modified the TGA file, then you have no choice but to convert it back to DDS, but if you are just talking about changing what part of the texture is mapped to the model, and not actually changing the TGA then no, you don't need to convert it back.

Anyway, the link that Michael gave you is the same link I had given you before, the DDSTools by Janus.  Is not going to give you the reverse option of going from TGA to DDS.

The only one I have found that does that is the original dds.zip by bioware.  You create two sub folders below where you have the .exe file, "IN", "OUT" and place the source file(s) in the "IN" folder.  run the batch files called runme.bat file and it will convert from whatever form is in the input folder and place the results in the output folder.  

Note that the runme.bat file assumes your are going from tga to dds.  The processtextures.exe CAN go both ways, but you would have to create another runme2.bat and change the contents to handle processing in reverse order:
--------

cd in
REM First we rename all *.DDS to *. so we can remove the .DDS extension
REM For the mipmap processing
ren *.dds *.
REM Cycle every *. in the /in/ directory
FOR %%i in (*.) DO (
   ECHO Processing %%i.dds
   
   REM Rename it back to a .DDS
   ren %%i %%i.dds
   REM Convert it from DDS to TGA
   ..\\DDSTools.exe -d %%i.dds
   
   REM delete the mipmaps
   IF EXIST %%i1.tga DEL %%i1.tga 
   IF EXIST %%i2.tga DEL %%i2.tga 
   IF EXIST %%i3.tga DEL %%i3.tga 
   IF EXIST %%i4.tga DEL %%i4.tga 
   IF EXIST %%i5.tga DEL %%i5.tga 
   IF EXIST %%i6.tga DEL %%i6.tga 
   IF EXIST %%i7.tga DEL %%i7.tga 
   IF EXIST %%i8.tga DEL %%i8.tga 
   IF EXIST %%i9.tga DEL %%i9.tga 
   IF EXIST %%i10.tga DEL %%i10.tga 
   
   REM Rename the 0 to remove the 0 index
   IF EXIST %%i0.tga ren %%i0.tga %%i.tga
   
   REM And move it to the /out/ folder
   IF EXIST %%i.tga move %%i.tga ..\\out\\
)
pause

--------


I am not sure who gave me that code, but it wasn't me.  It may actually have been Michael at some point in the past.  Just name that batch file to be "dds2tga.bat" and rename your runme.bat to be tga2dds.bat and you should be fine.

Note that the actual .exe is called processtextures.exe and MUST be run by batch file.  Depending on windows version, you may have issues with rights, and for that, I can't really help much.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 25 mars 2011 - 10:00 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Wall3T]

               alright-

without further ado i present to all the airship ive worked rather hard on to get right... and still im not satisfied quite yet lol

@ B.B- thanks for the dds link, but it seems that when i re-converted the quality of the tga degrated so terribly that it messed up inside the toolset rendering it... useless '> so ive been trying to opt for a "bit" better txture but could only find what i have below...



so far... this is it for my airship, when i release it i am in high hopes that someone will come by and add/ improve upon them better than i can... of course im still willing to work on it if anyone has any suggestions :3
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               You need more textures than just one for that airship. Even if you only used one texture for all the wooden parts, you'd still need a fabric texture for the sails, a rope texture and a metal texture for the propellers.
If this is based on an NWN2 ship, you'd have to use the texture for that ship as a base for the texture you are making, or you'd have to take the ship apart so you could texture the ropes and sails and so on separately. NWN2 uses a single texture for the whole placeable.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Wall3T]

               yeah... ive noticed that about nwn2 objects, and ive changed the texture so it looks much better than this. the only problem ive ran into is when i try to put in multiple textures i get alot of problems for them to show up even when i link them to the base (aurorabase)

i really wanted to keep the origional... but i had big problems with the rope part of the texture appearing on different parts of the ship, so i opted to go for a completly different look...

now origionaly i attempted to change that texture (thus the reason why i made this topic) and eliminated the rope altogether... but re-converting it back into a dds made it worse...

other than that im keeping at it when i can, rl stuff is getting in my way... so i hope to have a better model to show for soon...
               
               

               

                     Modifié par oOKyeOo, 27 mars 2011 - 10:26 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Wall3T]

               now...

ive got some ideas to add/ improve on the ships texture, but id hate to ask... if anyone could actualy provide with .dds of the ghost ship without the ship mast texture that would be great! i cant seem to create one without it going on the fritz :-|
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               You want the mast texture removed? Why? The file will be the same size with or without the mast texture so you could just leave it in. Or do you want it replaced by a different texture?

I just had a look at the texture and the model and there is no texture for just the mast anyway. The mast uses the same part of the texture as other wooden parts of the ship.
There's a part of the texture that is only used for the sails and one for the rigging, so those could be removed, but I don't see why. If you don't want the mast or the sails, simply remove those elements of the model instead of removing the texture. That will also save a lot of polygons.
If you want another texture for the mast, you'll have to detach the mast from the model and assign a different texture to it, because if you just replace the part of the whole ghostship texture that is used for the mast, you'll also have other parts of the ship change texture.
Also the mast is very long, but only uses a tiny bit of the texture, so the texture is very streched and almost appears smeared. It would improve the look of the ship if the mast was detached and got a better texture and a new uvw map so the texture wouldn't be so streched.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Zwerkules, 29 mars 2011 - 03:20 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Wall3T]

               lol okay ill show you why...

i am confidant there to be a mast/ rope texture for the greyghost, the image below proves it lol are you sure it was that you were looking at?

as you can the "mast/ rope" texture overlaps the ship in various sections so i want to get rid of it... period... if i cant then its the reason why i am going for plan b: texturize the airship using bioware ship textures... it wont look as pretty but it will get the job done...



BARE IN MIND: ive taken into account what your telling me and i really appreciate it! :3

but ive already eliminated much of the ships' exterior. The rope that held up the masts are gone as well... so ive pretty much have already done what i wanted with it i just need it to be fixed in a way that looks nice :-S
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               Have you attached your additions to the NWN2 model of the ghostship or are they still separate?
If you didn't attach them to it, I suggest you remove the NWN2 model and put the original model in its stead because it will be properly textured again. Removing the parts of the ship again that need removing will take less time than getting the textures right again.
It looks like you applied one texture to the whole ship. That won't work. Even though the original model uses just one texture the parts of it were textured separately and then put together.
You could select parts of the model, do an uvw unwrap and move the tverts to the proper part of the
texture again, but that would take forever.
It would be far easier to get the original model which already is textured properly back and remove the parts you don't need again.
Keep your additions separate from the original model and from each other so you can texture each of them. You can't texture them all at once. Some are cylinders, some boxes and some are cones and each of them need to be textured in a different way.

I looked for a texturing tutorial at the vault, but most of those don't exist any more, so I can't give you a useful link here. Maybe Bannor Bloodfist has a texturing tutorial somewhere.

Also a word of warning: Since you use a model from NWN 2, turn the shadow of it off. In the best case you might get proper shadows, but they will be far more complex than they need be and will slow the engine down. Propably the shadows won't work and you will get very bad and strange shadows. And in the worst case turning on shadows of an NWN model can crash the game or cause errors in the toolset.
They way NWN 1 handles shadows is very different from NWN 2.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Zwerkules, 29 mars 2011 - 08:00 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               

oOKyeOo wrote...
lol okay ill show you why...

i am confidant there to be a mast/ rope texture for the greyghost, the image below proves it lol are you sure it was that you were looking at?

as you can the "mast/ rope" texture overlaps the ship in various sections so i want to get rid of it... period... if i cant then its the reason why i am going for plan b: texturize the airship using bioware ship textures... it wont look as pretty but it will get the job done...

BARE IN MIND: ive taken into account what your telling me and i really appreciate it! :3

but ive already eliminated much of the ships' exterior. The rope that held up the masts are gone as well... so ive pretty much have already done what i wanted with it i just need it to be fixed in a way that looks nice :-S

What you are seeing is the fact that the original has a VERY complex UVW map applied to it.  That mapping is entirely dependent on the original texture.  When you edit that texture, you destroy tthe actual mapping.

Basically, what I am saying is that you can not accomplish what you wish by just deleting bits of the texture.  You will have to edit the UVW mapping manually and that is a very complex task for such a complicated object.  None of the default, pre-defined UVW maps will work, you can't use box, planar, cylindrical etc, you have to unwrap the object, and manually choose faces, "detach via UVW Edit", and move those particular faces to the piece of the texture that they require.

NWN2 objects do NOT port very well into NWN1.  They are much more complicated objects, with much more complicated textures applied.

As was mentioned, you could split apart the entire ship into seperate objects, which makes it a bit easier to map but you end up with even more faces, more polygons I mean, and that ends up making the whole object more heavy on the game.  Once you split the object into multiples, you would have to ensure that all objects are parented correctly, and likely will have to edit any animation sequences all over again.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Wall3T]

               well after lots of tweaking and some unsatisfied grumbling this is my official airship texture:



Now...

it is only one whole texture... but taking into account everyones feedback (thank you btw) its one that i like and am satisfied with... i would breakup the object but as mentioned by Bannor, that only makes it to be more of a hassle than its worth so... considering that these are my first submissions... i think i did a pretty damn good job at it lol.

ill be starting on my next and final airship: a taxi air cab. They will be present at my Imperial city, as i wanted to give the impression that it was so vast, that the quickest means of transportation was to simply fly.

it may, or may not, be based on this model (this is used largely as a reference)

ill try to make something mosty from scratch this time and see where it takes me, but we'll see... i pesronaly dont like much of this design, but like though i like the idea of a flying air cab (i sure could use one on my way to work lol)

images.wikia.com/finalfantasy/images/f/f2/Air_Cab.jpg

this here is where most the inspiration comes from and is also another reference (id also would like to note that i would like to see a tileset of this city as well... but i like to dream alot :3

City Overlook:

www.youtube.com/watch

Air Cab Ride:

www.youtube.com/watch 

any feedback is always welcome and suggested! ill be releasing these as a package as-is so i want to have some fun while im at it...
               
               

               

                     Modifié par oOKyeOo, 02 avril 2011 - 10:57 .