NEW- MW Graphics texture tools!

[wolfslayer]

NEW- MW Graphics texture tools!

Noted graphics software designer Martin Wright has most graciously added the *.texture format to his mwgfx dll set, so now MWThumb and DXTBMP can

both handle the Creative Assembly texture format.

1. Download and install "latest version of the mwgfx.DLL package"

http://www.mwgfx.co.uk/mwthumb/mwthumb1.htm

2. Download and install MWThumb : "Windows thumbnail view extensions"

http://www.mwgfx.co.uk/mwthumb/mwthumb1.htm

Note by Gig for Win10

Install the tool for 'vista' - then right click the 'Thumbnail Settings' program on your desktop, choose 'Properties', then 'Compatibility'. Tick mark 'run as administrator' and set 'compatibility' to 'Windows Vista', click 'Apply' and 'OK'. Run tool as usual.
Direct thumbnail view is not supported for texture format, you can however right click the file and select 'image viewer' which will display a large scale preview for about 5 seconds. 'Image Print' is also functional in right click mode.

The interface shown further below is for XP, Vista is simplified.

Spoiler for screenshots: 

Browse all the CA texture formats as thumbnails:

Just add the .texture format to active filetypes and you are set; .tga and

.dds also supported.






3. DXTBmp

DXTBmp is a frontend for texture files that will import/export *.textures or any supported graphics format into your favorite graphics program and save as DXT (no alpha),

DXT1 (1-bit alpha), DXT5 and 32 bit *.texture files.

You can also directly load any .dds or any supported graphics format and save as a .texture file.

It's very easy to use and setup.



You can also import/export the alpha channel separately for editing.

Right click your *.texture thumbnail and associate that filetype with DXTbmp.

That way you can load load and edit all the game textures directly from your thumbnail browser.

Important note: DXTBmp will automatically save DXT1 in the proper format if it includes a 1 bit alpha channel, ie., the alpha channel only contains

pure black (0,0,0) and pure white (255,255,255).

Otherwise it will save as a DXT1 (no alpha).

If it has a interpolated (shaded) alpha (ie, black white , and gray) you must save as a DXT5.

DXTBmp will always default save to the same DXT type that you loaded it in.

DXTBmp also contains the mwgfx.ddl set and can be installed independently of MWThumb; but both are recommended, to facilitate ease of use.

MWThumb, DXTBmp. and mwgfx.dll's available here -

http://www.mwgfx.co.uk/programs/dxtbmp.htm

Edit:Jan 12,2011:

An important note about the DXT compression used in the *.texture files:

From Martin Wright, designer of MWThumb and DXTBmp:

"One major caveat when working with DXT is that repeated editing will degrade the image as it is recompressed each time. DXT compression actually splits the image into 4x4 blocks and only allows 4 colours in each block (or 3 plus transparency) so there is some colour loss involved. Repeatedly loading a DXT image, editing and then saving out in DXT again will eventually turn the image into brown sludge

The advice I give to flightsimmers is to create a master copy in targa first from the original game texture. Do all your editing on this copy and just create a DXT version when you want to put it in the game. This way if you need to edit further just reload the targa version and edit that and then create a new DXT version of the edited targa for ingame use. This way the game image will only have had one application of DXT compression.

Initial Editing process :-

- load the original into DXTBmp and note the format.
- immediately "save as" Targa with Alpha and put this in a safe place
- do the editing
- save out as targa again to overwrite your master copy
- save as Texture in the original format for placing into the game (or change the format if you know what you are doing ;^)

Re-editing process :-

- locate and load your saved master targa copy into DXTBmp
- do your further editing
- save the targa to update your master copy
- save as Texture to use in the game using the format most appropriate"

Added Jan 12, 2011 **IMPORTANT NOTE**

Be careful with the mip SCALING FILTER, it's best to leave this at NONE, especially with battlemap textures, or you will notice a distinct unpleasant "change" (darker/lighter, etc.) when zooming in and out.


I've noticed lot of "pro" skinners don't seem to know the difference between a DXT1 and DXT5 .dds/texture

I've seen several major skin packs where all the texture files that should be saved as DXT1 are saved as DXT5, whcih creates an unneeded alpha channel that doubles the used video memory for that one skin.
This can waste a HUGE amount of video memory and cause crashes in large battles.

DXTbmp is a great way to make sure the skin is saved in the proper format.

If the alpha channel is all white, it's a DXT1.



If the alpha channel is grey scale shaded, like the areas around bow quivers, helm visors, axes, etc, then it's a DXT5.

DXTbmp will also save a shaded DXT5 alpha as a DXT1 with alpha, which has a pure black and white alpha channel.

For a archer militia skin for example, only the bow quiver is represented in the DXT5 alpha channel, grey scaled.

If you save it as a DXT1 with alpha, it decreases the video memory usage by half, but the unit will show more jaggedy around the quiver on the battlemap, since the shading around the quiver has been removed and changed to just black and white, but with AA turned on, the difference is barely noticeable. It's a question of detail vs performance.

Normal map textures and blood/dirt overlay textures are always DXT5s, so they use a significant part of a battle's video memory.

DXT3 dds use TWICE the memory of a DXT1 and both support at the most a pure black/white alpha channel.

DXT3's have no place or need in MTW2 modding, except to needlessly waste video memory! And YES I am seeing them in stratmap textures!

I can answer any questions here or PM me..

Martin can also answer more technical questions at his FORUM

Enjoy!

(Please do not redistribute or upload any MW Graphics tools or programs to any other site.)

[B. Ward]

nice

[The Bruce]

This will save heaps of time (and hard-drive space). Previewing textures without having to convert them will make my life much easier. Excellent news!

[Radioman]

This is nice...Thanks

[wolfslayer]

An important note about the DXT compression used in the *.texture files:

From Martin Wright, designer of MWThumb and DXTBmp:

"One major caveat when working with DXT is that repeated editing will degrade the image as it is recompressed each time. DXT compression actually splits the image into 4x4 blocks and only allows 4 colours in each block (or 3 plus transparency) so there is some colour loss involved. Repeatedly loading a DXT image, editing and then saving out in DXT again will eventually turn the image into brown sludge

The advice I give to flightsimmers is to create a master copy in targa first from the original game texture. Do all your editing on this copy and just create a DXT version when you want to put it in the game. This way if you need to edit further just reload the targa version and edit that and then create a new DXT version of the edited targa for ingame use. This way the game image will only have had one application of DXT compression.

Initial Editing process :-

- load the original into DXTBmp and note the format.
- immediately "save as" Targa with Alpha and put this in a safe place
- do the editing
- save out as targa again to overwrite your master copy
- save as Texture in the original format for placing into the game (or change the format if you know what you are doing ;^)

Re-editing process :-

- locate and load your saved master targa copy into DXTBmp
- do your further editing
- save the targa to update your master copy
- save as Texture to use in the game using the format most appropriate"

[The Bruce]

Hi Wolfslayer

I love DXTBmp but I have a problem with MTW2 tgas. The Alpha is always corrupted:



Do you know if there is a fix for this? Was there an earlier version that worked?

[wolfslayer]

I didn't know this thread had been moved so I lost my subscription..lol.

I responded to your PM. Looks like I need another screenshot host too. ;-)

You can add a white alpha from the alpha menu. Save as a dds or targa 32, then reopen and the noise should be gone.

Open a screenshot tga in DXTBmp and you will see the same noise; since it is just a screenshot and not a texture.

[The Bruce]

The previous picture was not a screenshot but from kingdoms which uses .tga not tga.dds for strat skins.

However I think I chose a bad example. I see with the strat_models you are right when there is no alpha I can save them and they work fine. The real problem I was having was with custom portraits which have an alpha. If I open a 69x96 portrait tga it looks fine. However if I simply save it (without doing anything) as a tga it becomes corrupted. I will PM you with more!

[PurpleScotch]

I might be posting this a bit late, since I downloaded this quite a while ago...but I have to say, this is one of my favorite tools alongside Grumpyoldman and KnightErrant's tools!

I don't need to use the stone-age style converter that came out ages ago, I just pop this program up, click what texture I want, save it as .DDS and work on it, when I'm satisfied I save it as .texture over the old one.

Thanks! +rep!

[wolfslayer]

Glad you are enjoying it ;-)

I'm just learning some basic milkshape stuff and it great to be able to choose the texture I want to use from the MS3D texture load menu, right click on it in the context menu, and load directly into DXTBMP to convert to DDS or BMP to load in MS3D.

One thing though; always first save the texture you are editing as a targa 32 w/ alpha if your texture is a DXT5 and use that as a master copy to edit and save. Or you can use an uncompressed BMP for a DXT1.

DDS/texture , by the nature of their compression, will degrade slightly every time you load, edit and resave it! See post #5.

Another thing; I've been running across a lot of user created textures with no alpha channel that are being saved as DXT5's when they should be DXT1's(no alpha).

DXT5s use TWICE as much video memory as a DXT1, and can be a major factor in performance hits when rendering 1000s of units on the battlemap, plus all the terrain, vegetation and effects, etc.

The only thing it can't handle right now are saving alpha channels in certain odd sized tga.dds's used in portraits and unit cards, and one of the terrain textures that has a height of 1536..

[Caesar Clivus]

This is a great addon. Gonna save a lot of time

[KingCrab]

Fantastic addon for the non-pro skinner, perfect for easy fixes!

If santaclaus exists I would guess his alias is wolfslayer

[wolfslayer]

Thank Martin Wright of MW Graphics. ;-)

I've noticed lot of "pro" skinners don't seem to know the difference between a DXT1 and DXT5 .dds:

I've seen several major skin packs where all the texture files that should be saved as DXT1 are saved as DXT5, whcih creates an unneeded alpha channel that doubles the used video memory for that one skin.

This can waste a HUGE amount of video memory and cause crashes in large battles.

DXTbmp is a great way to make sure the skin is saved in the proper format.

If the alpha channel is all white, it's a DXT1.

If the alpha channel is grey scale shaded, like the areas around bow quivers, helm visors, axes, etc, then it's a DXT5.

DXTbmp will also save a shaded DXT5 alpha as a DXT1 with alpha, which has a pure black and white alpha channel.

For a archer militia skin for example, only the bow quiver is represented in the DXT5 alpha channel, grey scaled.

If you save it as a DXT1 with alpha, it decreases the video memory usage by half, but the unit will show more jaggedy around the quiver on the battlemap, since the shading around the quiver has been removed and changed to just black and white, but with AA turned on, the difference is barely noticeable. It's a question of detail vs performance.

Normal map textures and blood/dirt overlay textures are always DXT5s, so they use a significant part of a battle's video memory.

I'll post some example screens soon as examples.

[makanyane]

Only just found this thread due to the link in the other recently edited thread.... amazing what you can miss! Thanks for posting it....

I've noticed lot of "pro" skinners don't seem to know the difference between a DXT1 and DXT5 .dds:

I've seen several major skin packs where all the texture files that should be saved as DXT1 are saved as DXT5, whcih creates an unneeded alpha channel that doubles the used video memory for that one skin.

This can waste a HUGE amount of video memory and cause crashes in large battles.

Re the above; do you have any idea what is the best way to go for the battlemap building textures? e.g. the 'castle walls' type textures tend to need an alpha due to the portcullis type gate. But as the texture is called again for each structure (and possibly entirely separately from techtree .worlds etc) would it be worth having a differently named DXT1 texture for the re-use of the texture for structures without the gate.

I have to confess I currently have no idea whether having 3 different .worlds on the battlemap that all call the same named texture counts as 1x texture load or 3x in terms of game performance....

[wolfslayer]

**Bump** some extra info added to OP, and some extra info in later posts added to the OP. Please read this if you are a skin creator modder!

[wolfslayer]

Thats a good question worth some experimenting. Play a siege battle in windowed mode woth debugview running and you'll see the walls texture referenced from the HD every time the gate or walls are hit by a ram or projectile; it used to crash my game sometimes in very large battles on my older system with factions like kwarezm where the unit textures were all dxt5, until I converted the no alphas to DXT1.

Otherwise I'm pretty sure once a texture is loaded in memory it is used alone for all meshes that reference it, otherwise most vidcards would be overloaded and CTD.

With DXTbmp you can easily create .world textures with different levels of detail and mem usage.

Start with fullscale vanilla DXT5 textures, for instance.

You can halfscale the normal texture with with minor loss of detail. Rescale the main and alpha channels seperately (use a smart size, not pixel resize option) and reload in DXTbmp, save a tga w alpha backup and then save as DXT5. Normal maps should always be DXT5 or they don't display correctly.

Or you can save the main texture fullscale as a DXT1 w alpha and lose detail on the gate (no shading) but decrease memory usage further.

You can halfscale both main and normal, both dxt5.

Halfscale with main saved as DXT1 w alpha. DXTbmp will automatically convert alpha channels, like for a gate, into 0,0,0 / 255,255,255.

And so forth..

[bobbin]

Just a quick FYI, shading on opacity maps (for units at least) is broken, you can only really have full black or fully white pixels as anything in between doesn't render properly, even then the effect isn't that reliable.

[wolfslayer]

Just a quick FYI, shading on opacity maps (for units at least) is broken, you can only really have full black or fully white pixels as anything in between doesn't render properly, even then the effect isn't that reliable.

Only if you save as DXT1, normal maps need to be DXT5 to render properly, check the DXT type from the file save drop down list when saving, especially if you are creating textures from scratch. If you editing existing textures, DXTbmp will always default to the format of the file that was loaded.

The two screens below are from a heavy spearmen normal texture I had to darken as it was reflecting too brightly on the battlemap. I reloaded after editing to show DXTbmp correctly saved the alpha channel with proper shading.

Maybe you can upload an screenshot of the example you mention.

Also, since DXTbmp was originally designed for editing flight simulator textures, it won't properly save alpha channels in non DirectX "powers of 2" dimensions, like 69 x 96 portrait tgas.

[bobbin]

No it happens in DXT5 as well, not for normal maps though, their alpha works fine, It's the diffuse map, the alpha on that is used to control opacity, for some reason the game does not like to render it properly so you get ragged edges as it decide to make pixels either completely opaque or invisible.

Here is an example of what I mean, you can see that the arms of this guy have some jagged holes in them, although when you look at the alpha fragment for that part of the texture you can see that they should be nice and smooth




M2TW is full of little idiosyncrasies like this, shading in alpha works for normal maps and banner textures, you get this binary alpha for unit, building and stratmap character textures and resource model textures cannot have alpha at all.
By the way, do you know what the creative assembly 32bit filetype does? I notice it is one of the save options but I have not idea what it is used for.

[wolfslayer]

"Just a quick FYI, shading on opacity maps (for units at least) is broken" in MTW2, not DXTbmp.

The game engine doesn't render DXT5 interpolated alpha properly with battlemap textures.

Yes I've read about this here but haven't sat down and looked at it closely.

EDIT: Looking closer I can see this appears to be true.

DXT32 is uncompressed texture used by the globallighting texture environment.texture. It doesn't save the alpha channel.

It can be used also to backup a no alpha texture when editing, since there is no image degredation when resaving.