Head models and the Line-Down-The-Middle

[Legacy_TheBarbarian]

               

Yarr!

 

Now that Feb's CCC is over, I took my newly-acquired modeling skillz and got down to something I'd wanted to do for a long time now; making my own head models. All's going fine and well with that, save for one thing:

 

This fine line in the middle of the face appears when I zoom out even slightly, and intensifies with greater distance. Googling the issue, I'm given to understand that the solution is moving the verts on the UVW map further in, to give some buffer space (as they're wrapping around to the other side, so the hair is shining through?).

 

But this is the UVW Map at the moment, and the line is still there, both in the toolset and in game. :-( Is there anything else I can do to combat it? I do not want my heads to have line-down-the-face-syndrome. D:

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_NWN_baba yaga]

               

Ah that error. That is some ugly bug. I mean the UV map is already losing to many pixels of the texture and it still causes a glitch. That has to do with the mip mapping i´m sure. Because when your in close up it´s ok and only from far away (mipmapped) it occurs. So either you can convert it to DDS or well... use no mipmap at all in a txi. file. That may look strange to many but i like it myself. But definately its a mip mapping glitch!

 

Oh and btw. withouth mipmapping the dynamic light on your models/textures will look way better '> try it

 

txi entry:

mipmap 0

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TheBarbarian]

               

'> TXI? What is this sorcery? Creating and adding a text file named after the .plt of the head but ending in .txi, containing only "mipmap 0" has regrettably not removed the line (actually it rather made it worse, because now the line blinks and flashes upon movement), but it has turned the entire head into a glittering, extremely sharp variant of itself. This is fascinating. I'm probably doing it completely wrong, but - fascinating.

 

... I am going to go google this until it stops being funny. o-o

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

http://neverwinterva...are-txi-example

 

 

Not the entire details, but a good start of options.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TheBarbarian]

               

Yep, that popped up on Google too. '> 'tis most helpful and informative, thank you for making it!

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ShadowM]

               

Check to see if the vertices are welded down the middle and try some overlapping. That usually the problem.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TheBarbarian]

               

Sadly, they are. Would've been nice if that'd been the problem, though, it would have been very simply and gracefully fixable. :-/

 

I guess I'm just going to give the stupid thing the stupid tenth of my stupid available texture space that it wants. blergh.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Is that a picture from in game, or from inside gmax or something? Given your tvert placement and the image shown, they certainly do not match up.


Textures in GMAX are screwy and lower quality than most images you import as your texture. If it runs in game just fine, that is what is important.


I assume you are using a PLT in game, so what form of image are you using in gmax? Make sure your modifications you make to a texture and to your model are not overridden by something in the override folder, or by a texture version that takes higher precedence in a hak or texture package in the engine.


Also make sure the shininess is not due to an unwelded egde on the face. If you've made this head from scratch and you welded the points by proximity, if they didn't actually weld, but are close enough to appear welded, the open edge may cast shininess incorrectly in game. Select the seam and ask the editor how many points you actually have selected and compare that to how many you see.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TheBarbarian]

               

It's a cropped screenshot from the toolset, editing a creature that uses the new head. ^^ But yeah, it's there ingame too. Funnily enough, the line doesn't appear in gmax.

 

I was trying to replicate the method by which the original heads were (probably?) created and set up half-a-face, mirrored it, attached it, and welded them together. The verts in the middle, where the two halves were connected, are all welded - model's as well as the UVW map's ("tverts"?). Override folder is empty, pfe0_head021.plt and pfe0_head021.mdl are the only ones of their kind in the single .hak attached to my demo module, although it does contain numerous other edited head files. The gmax image is a .bmp.

 

Checking more closely leads me to notice that the Bioware heads actually all have this same problem as well (well, save for the bald ones, which makes sense, I suppose), though, so maybe I'm not actually doing it wrong and it's just the way graphics in the game work?

 

Solutions that I see so far:

1) Sacrifice texture space to set up a great big buffer

2) ?(maybe? have not tried)? use a full face in the texture rather than drawing half a face and letting it mirror across both halves; that way, the middle of the face is not near the borders of the texture at all

 

It is a dumb problem and I disapprove of it's existence.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zarathustra217]

               

Could you upload the model somewhere?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TheBarbarian]

               

The newer, edited ones, where the line is somewhat less obnoxious due to the increased buffer space size, yes. Here you go: https://www.mediafir...vz2b13qyxbdzlr2

It's best visible with pitch black skin and the palest shade of blonde hair.

 

Keep in mind that these have been edited since the pictures in the original post were taken. ... and I would also like to note that the weird-looking hair is mostly because it's not done yet; there are braids, a flower, and a ribbon still supposed to go on that thing, and I'm planning to obscure the border in the back with that.. :x ::frets::

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

As I had suspected, it's due to how the engine or your video card resamples the texture as it sizes up or down. Basically, the engine resizes your image by powers of 2, so if you have an image that is 256x256, then it will resize to 128 64 or 32 as it shrinks. So if you shrink by half, you lose half the pixels and the engine smudges them together. To do that at the boundaries, it reaches around to the other side so as to make seamless textures.


Most textures used in the game need that, but not creature object. Normally, you need to stay away from edges of your texture if they don't match on the opposite side. If you downsample by a power of 16 (really far away), then you are smudging approximately 8 pixels on either side of your pixel together. This is where the larger and larger line comes in when you resample.


However, you can make your sampling smooth itself using different procedures. You can pick from Nearest or Linear. Default is Linear, and if you pick Nearest, there is little to no wrap around visible when smoothing. I can't say for sure there is ZERO wrap around, but it appears that way to me.

 

To make that change, create a TXI file for your texture and set this value inside

 

filter 0

 

You can now see no seam no matter how far away you get from the object. To test this idea, I took your head model and modified the leftmost tverts all to exactly 0.01 and set the filter to 0. There is NO line at all at any distance.

 

The only drawback I see to this tactic is that your head texture is a little bit more pixelated, both close up and at a distance. Edges are crisper.


If you use any of the visual filtering plugins for neverwinter, this will probably be completely feathered, but I have not tested that theory.


Just so you know, I played with downsample TXI commands and neither had any effect on removing the line. They appear to be for downsampling while performing procedural filters.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zarathustra217]

               

Or you could try using the settings


downsamplemax 2

downsamplemin 0

 

in the txi.


Though couldn't really reproduce the issue in the first place, so can't confirm whether that works.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I couldn't get the downsample stuff to do anything at all. I will have to play with those a bit more

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zarathustra217]

               

Well, I'm not sure if it only works with dds to be honest, since it could refer to the pre-generated mipmaps. A lot of GUI textures have "downsamplemax 0" though, and they are only tga.