Atlas Editing: Units Not Appearing Until Very Close
Hello everyone,
Hopefully people still browse these forums!
Anyway, I'm getting myself back into modding again after a several-year hiatus. Currently I am working on a project to re-do a certain faction into another one as a fun little project. This is meant to be a follow-up of sorts to a previous mod I made for Empire, and when you look at the files, you will quickly realize what it is. For this, I had to do some atlas modding in order to get some specific textures that I just cannot all find in one faction's atlas. I have used GIMP for the editing, but unfortunately tampering with the atlas files seems to created a bug where units vanish until very close, and there are also still some weird skin quirks. What exactly is happening here, and how can I fix it? "Vanilla" factions do work, the problem is only with uniforms attached to the modded atlas.
My work with the atlas is based on this particular video's walkthrough and advice.
I'm using French_Rebels as a base and I have added in textures for the following:
1. German Helmet replacing Cuirassier Helmet
2. Ottoman Floppy Hat replacing Hussar Shao
3. Fancy Coat replacing Hussar Coat
4. Green Plume replacing Red Plume
5. Danish Bearskin replacing French Dragoon Helmet
Re: Atlas Editing: Units Not Appearing Until Very Close
Thanks Steph. I seem to have stuck close to your instructions with the copy-paste system, except for the Saving part. I suspect now the problem might involve compression and quality decay that caused this to happen. I will try again with Photoshop and L’Aigle’s saving methods to see if that helps.
I see though that he did not complete his tutorials on Gloss and Normal files. Are there special rules for these when saving in PS?
Last edited by EmperorBatman999; July 20, 2018 at 10:52 AM.
Re: Atlas Editing: Units Not Appearing Until Very Close
I don't know, I did all my moding with gimp... no PS. To avoid loss, I have a base xcf file for each faction atlas, and I always save it when I do change.
I export to dds from this XCF file, I never open again the dds to save mutiple times
Re: Atlas Editing: Units Not Appearing Until Very Close
Bartman, not sure if you got this resolved but I have had this issue often when the Atlas file was messed up/corrupted in some mysterious and secret manner. Generally if you try to add another model variant item, say an extra belt variation, and the row in the Atlas is added or edited and the black hole of errors takes place, you get missing body parts.
I have had no heads or hands, but a textured hat, torso and legs... I have had only floating belts... only floating guns. It's ridiculous that the crash log or any log is encrypted. I decided that the game just simply goes through it's load scripts and randomly craps out when it can't cope with something like an Atlas entry and if it avoids a critical error and does not crash, you get a half-assed model drawn.
Best bet, copy out a variant that works/has multiple parts that you are trying to add and rename and import again, then edit as necessary.