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Thread: The case of the 'iced' soldier

  1. #1
    Gigantus's Avatar I am not special - I am a limited edition.
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    Default The case of the 'iced' soldier

    I have been puttering around porting a RTW mod to M2TW Kingdoms. So far, so good, nothing insurmountable. Until now.
    RTW battle models do not have a normal map texture, so I dug into various tutorials to soak up the wisdom dispensed, being a 2D\skinning noob. Regardless of what I am attempting and what combination of settings I am using I get this result:



    The horses are from vanilla kingdoms - I didn't think it worth the pain trying to convert them from RTW to M2TW. Could it be something with the original graphics?
    RTW works with DDS, so I could work directly with them (*) and simply convert them to TEXTURE format. I have attached the whole set of files including modeldb, edu, sprites etc. For testing one could simply add them to my Bare Geomod set up.

    Any suggestions to restore my sanity are welcome.

    * using GIMP, opening without mipmaps, apply normal map instructions, save as DDS in BC3/DXT5 format with mipmaps










  2. #2
    Heathen Storm's Avatar Where's my axe?
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    Default Re: The case of the 'iced' soldier

    Quote Originally Posted by Gigantus View Post
    I have been puttering around porting a RTW mod to M2TW Kingdoms. So far, so good, nothing insurmountable. Until now.
    RTW battle models do not have a normal map texture, so I dug into various tutorials to soak up the wisdom dispensed, being a 2D\skinning noob. Regardless of what I am attempting and what combination of settings I am using I get this result:



    The horses are from vanilla kingdoms - I didn't think it worth the pain trying to convert them from RTW to M2TW. Could it be something with the original graphics?
    RTW works with DDS, so I could work directly with them (*) and simply convert them to TEXTURE format. I have attached the whole set of files including modeldb, edu, sprites etc. For testing one could simply add them to my Bare Geomod set up.

    Any suggestions to restore my sanity are welcome.

    * using GIMP, opening without mipmaps, apply normal map instructions, save as DDS in BC3/DXT5 format with mipmaps
    I actually had a problem just like this last night - parts of my unit (the attachment sets) were extremely shiny like this. I found out it was something wrong with the normal map alphas, probably happened during converting it from .dds->.texture. Try adding a M2TW normal map to it and see if anything changes - it probably won't look good, but it would be a good idea to try

    Proud mod leader, modeller and public relations officer of Heiğinn Veğr: Total War


  3. #3
    Gigantus's Avatar I am not special - I am a limited edition.
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    Default Re: The case of the 'iced' soldier

    That appears to have been the problem (see pic) - how did you solve it?











  4. #4
    Gigantus's Avatar I am not special - I am a limited edition.
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    Default Re: The case of the 'iced' soldier

    Success! I used the following setting (GIMP):

    Code:
    - image\flatten image
    - layer\transparency\color to alpha (255,255,255)
    - normal map setting:
        Sobel 3*3
        0.50000
        5.00000
        Average RGB
        Height
        None
        None
        Wrap = tick
    - filters\blur\blur
    - layers\transparency\threshold alpha\255
    - save as BC3\DTX5 with mipmaps
    - convert from DDS to texture format










  5. #5
    Heathen Storm's Avatar Where's my axe?
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    Default Re: The case of the 'iced' soldier

    Quote Originally Posted by Gigantus View Post
    Success! I used the following setting (GIMP):

    Code:
    - image\flatten image
    - layer\transparency\color to alpha (255,255,255)
    - normal map setting:
        Sobel 3*3
        0.50000
        5.00000
        Average RGB
        Height
        None
        None
        Wrap = tick
    - filters\blur\blur
    - layers\transparency\threshold alpha\255
    - save as BC3\DTX5 with mipmaps
    - convert from DDS to texture format
    Great! I'm glad you solved it

    Proud mod leader, modeller and public relations officer of Heiğinn Veğr: Total War


  6. #6
    paradamed's Avatar Praepositus
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    Default Re: The case of the 'iced' soldier

    Just to add to the thread in case someone reads this with the same problem but uses photoshop, if you use photoshop, just need to paint the alpha channel in black.

  7. #7

    Default Re: The case of the 'iced' soldier

    Quote Originally Posted by paradamed View Post
    Just to add to the thread in case someone reads this with the same problem but uses photoshop, if you use photoshop, just need to paint the alpha channel in black.
    If you meant normal map's AC then somewhat yes but if you meant in original texture then it's incorrect. Black colour (RGB value 0,0,0), in original textures, enables transparency while white (255,255,255) allows full visibility of textures. That's why if we're not using transparency in this unit we can use 24 bit texture and remove the channel completely to make a less sized texture = more performance when they're loaded in bulk. Example.

    Causes of silver surfer issue happens when:
    1) Its unit entry providing the location of textures is missing from BMDB file.
    2) It's a merc unit so you have missed the merc entry in the BMDB's unit entry.
    3) Its normal map wasn't saved in DXT5 format, meaning resulted in 24 bit (meaning alpha channel of your normal map got lost), but it needs 8 bit space, that's a 32 bit texture to support its alpha channel. If alpha channel is missing then also it will lead to this. Normal map should have darkish AC, obviously there's more than that in this point...

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